Autonomous corpus use by graduate students: A long-term trend study (2009–2017)

Corpus use by EAP students has reportedly increased over the last decade, with considerable optimism about future of this approach (Chen & Flowerdew, 2018a). However, much research employs data from short classroom courses; little is known how student corpus varied a span multiple years. This paper uses long-term trend corpus-based course for graduates which ran 50 times (2009–2017) at UK university. The taught to build do-it-yourself corpora based on their topic and promoted autonomous consultation resource. Questionnaires were administered three stages: pre-course (544 students), immediate post-course (343) delayed post-course, after one year (221). show that was constant (mean 24%), while 87%) rose only slightly 62%) 2009 2017. lack appreciable growth in nine years does not support expectation take-up future. means regular (≥1/week) 61% (immediate post-course) 37% (delayed post-course), success fostering graduates.