A Probatory Study of the Ways to Enrich the Corpora in the ESP Courses A Corpus-based Approach to Terminology Used in ESP Classes

Corpus-based study of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) is increasing in its popularity in the academic thread. Although word frequency (WF) is considered as a natural ally of corpus, previous studies have revealed that too heavy a reliance on WF information cannot portray a representative picture of the students level of skills. This triangulation teacher research was launched to see whether enriching a corpus with a package of seemingly appropriate characteristics in the form of item facility (IF) paves the way for teachers to cater for the ESP university students. By the same token, to examine the teachers ability to alternate between indoor and outdoor instructional-learning situations, the blended method of learning was employed. Accordingly, 80 male (41.2%) and female (58.8%) students from Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences were selected through stratified sampling method to take part in a reading proficiency test. Following purposive sampling method they were divided into WF-based and WFIF-based groups to learn ESP reading comprehension skill during 16 sessions of fall semester of the academic year 2015-2016. Cross-situational comparison via descriptive and inferential analyses of the gathered data indicated that WFIF- (vs. IF in isolation)-enhanced corpus enjoyed more comprehensive data about ESP materials, that is, IF lent to corpus some useful information, which, in turn, kept the teacher adequately informed about the instructional-learning situation. In effect, adding IF feature takes corpus-based teaching of ESP reading comprehension further by pointing to other properties; this way, the use of blended method of learning in the higher education can be facilitated. Taking these properties into account, teachers can plan an effective didactic orchestration.