الفهرس 
CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW AND RELATED STUDIESOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
 |  | from | 389 |  |  |
| | | from | 389 | | |
Abstract
ABSTRACT
Since 2000s, usage-based approaches to L2 learning have gained traction. There has been a call to integrate data-driven learning (DDL), a corpus-based pedagogical approach, within a usage-based framework; however, small practical steps have been made in this direction. The current study aimed at employing a usage-based DDL as a mainstream approach within the EAP/ academic writing classroom to enhance university students’ academic writing performance as well as evaluating participants’ attitudes toward the proposed program. 52 juniors and seniors at a university of science and technology in Egypt participated in the study. They were equally divided between two experimental and control groups. Both groups were intact classes which were doing an advanced academic writing course in science and engineering at the time of the intervention. Only the participants of the experimental group were exposed to the suggested program while the control group depended on coursebook material and formal teaching methods. The intervention lasted for twelve weeks in the Fall semester of the academic year 2021–2022. Data were collected via academic writing tests and an evaluation questionnaire. Utilizing automatic, fine-grained indices of three academic writing constructs: syntactic sophistication, lexical sophistication, and cohesion, the academic writing production of the participants was evaluated. Also, the experimental group participants’ responses to the questionnaire were analyzed. The results showed that, on the one hand, the program was effective in enhancing the participants’ academic writing performance and that participants were generally satisfied with the program, on the other. Pedagogical implications and recommendations for further studies are provided at the end of the dissertation.