More systematic studies are needed in order to test the benefits of DDL

In different ways, the use of concordancers, concordance lines and language corpora promoted the use of information technologies and active search strategies, which was perceived as a valuable asset. Recently, Johansson (2009:41) claimed that more systematic studies are needed in order to test the benefits of DDL and that it is necessary to discuss “students’ problems with corpus investigation” so that specialists can “suggest how [learners] could be better equipped to be corpus researchers”. 

From Pérez-Paredes, P.Sánchez-Tornel, M. and Alcaraz Calero, J.M. Learners’ search patterns during corpus-based focus-on-form activities. A study on hands-on concordancing. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 17:4. 2012. iii, 150 pp. (pp. 482–515)