Integrating Corpus-based Methods to Determine Grammatical Topics for Teaching English Writing in the Thai Context

Abstract

Grammatical knowledge for effective English writing remains a significant need among Thai university students, while identifying the relevant grammatical topics to address this need continues to be a challenge in teaching writing courses.Previous papers on writing in Thai universities have mainly focused on writing performance issues, rather than proposing methods to address these issues, particularly in grammar.This quantitative case study employed corpus analyses to determine the relevant grammatical topics that address the grammatical needs of a specific group of Thai university students in English writing.ChatGPT was utilized to improve the essays of the target students, resulting in two datasets (namely, students' essays and refined essays).Keyword analysis was employed to illustrate their grammatical characteristics.Biber 's (1988; 1989) multidimensional analysis and key part-of-speech analysis were applied to verify the keyword findings and determine the target grammatical topics for teaching writing.The analyses revealed 12 significant grammatical features that address the grammatical needs of the target students in English writing (namely, nominalizations, determiners, present participial clauses, prepositional phrases, attributive adjectives,