The Effect of Corpus Assisted Creative Writing Sessions on Intermediate Learners' Writing Skills at the Arab International University

Abstract

This paper aims at investigating the progress achieved by a group of intermediate English language learners in creative writing sessions. The main tool used for assessing learners' writing was the online British National Corpus. The learners were trained to use and consult the BNC in a couple of sessions. Then, they were asked to write two descriptive excerpts of a natural scene; one without consulting the BNC and the other one was done with the aid of the BNC. When comparing the two excerpts, several developments were noted with regard to the learners' use of vocabulary and grammatical structures.