A Statistical Analysis of Corpus Based Computer vs Traditional Human Teaching Methods of Part of Speech Analysis

Two approaches to teaching grammar were compared with respect to accuracy of participant response over time. Of seventeen first year English Language undergraduates who participated in the seven week experiment, nine were taught grammar via the traditional classroom‐based “human teacher” method, while the remainder used CyberTutor, a corpus based computer aided linguistic learning program. This program allowed subjects to annotate sentences whilst providing instant feedback and help facilities. The computer aided group out‐performed their human‐taught counterparts in terms of accuracy and number of words analysed. At the end of the experiment, mean accuracy was 89.34% for the computer aided group, whereas it was only 13.64% for the human‐taught group. The overall finding was that in terms of teaching the parts‐of‐speech at least, corpus‐based CALL programs may be more effective than traditional classroom interaction.