Data-driven learning (DDL) activities: do they truly promote EFL students’ writing skills development?

Data-driven learning (DDL) has been demonstrated to be an operative strategy for assisting learners to handle a range of writing-related problems. Several studies have been conducted to compare the pedagogical effectiveness of DDL in English as a foreign language (EFL) writing. However, only a few studies have identified key factors that may affect learning outcomes when designing DDL activities. To bridge this gap, the present study looked at the medium-term effects of DDL activities in EFL writing. A pre-post quasi-experimental research design and semi-structural interviews were arranged to collect data from 64 Arab EFL undergraduate students. The DDL was carried out with the aid of BNCweb and offered the assessment of the findings by contrasting the efficiency of BNCweb with that of Sketch Engine, which is employed as a reference tool by EFL learners. The quantitative results showed that the experimental group’s use of BNCweb inspired their writing to be more fluid and consistent in the posttest as compared to the control group, which employed the Sketch Engine tool. However, no significant difference was detected between the groups in writing intricacy. The qualitative results indicated that students had positive attitudes toward using BNCweb, despite the challenges of implementing corpora in the writing process. It was recommended that integrating corpora with other types of reference sources would be a viable solution to overcome any potential obstacles for EFL learners.