Learners as Multi-players from the Perspective of Data-Driven Learning

As one of the approaches in corpus-based language learning, Data-Driven Learning (DDL) emphasises learners’ role, focusing on the autonomous analysis of corpus data. Based on the three features of DDL (serendipity, inductive manner, and DDL procedure), the role of learners is considered to be a key element in successful DDL application to language pedagogy. To this end, the study investigates learners’ roles in DDL from a theoretical perspective. First, the three existing metaphors of learners’ role (i.e., researcher, traveller, and spy) are critically investigated. Even though the metaphors share the three DDL features, the study highlights that they are not sufficient to describe the complete roles of learners in ESL/EFL contexts. Second, from this perspective, the researcher presents a new role, a multiplayer, which has a more flexible nature in defining and illustrating the role in DDL. In this metaphor, the role of learners can be determined by their pedagogical circumstances, rather than by a particular fixed type of DDL. Therefore, they can adjust their role and adopt a suitable type of DDL which can maximise their interlanguage development.