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CALL 2008 Antwerp Choosing words and their order for vocabulary CALL

CALL 2008 Antwerp Choosing words and their order for vocabulary CALL. Cornelia Tschichold Swansea. lexical errors. all errors. Lexical errors. The foreign language lexicon is the main difficulty for learners and the main source of errors and communication problems

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CALL 2008 Antwerp Choosing words and their order for vocabulary CALL

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  1. CALL 2008 Antwerp Choosing words and their order for vocabulary CALL Cornelia Tschichold Swansea

  2. lexical errors all errors Lexical errors • The foreign language lexicon is the main difficulty for learners and the main source of errors and communication problems • lack of appropriate word • misuse, overuse of individual words • collocational errors • lexically based syntax errors

  3. What we know • Start with high-frequency words. • Spaced repetition is best for long-term retention. • Words are best learned in context. • Words with a high learning burden require more repetitions. • unrelated words (L1 and L2 typologically distant) • difficult to spell or pronounce • polysemous words

  4. something I came across • “You have been asked to critique reading materials for child second language learners. The publisher says vocabulary was selected on the basis of frequency and that each word is repeated a minimum of eight times in a book. You find the word space used for Sally Ride’s spacesuit, for blank spaces on a page, for a space heater, and the space a dog needs for exercise. Do you severely criticize the materials based on such observations?” E. Hatch & C. Brown (1995:9-10)

  5. shade Wand Schatten wall Mauer shadow fleuve office river bureau desk rivière Divergent polysemy • partial cognates where the term is more polysemous in one language than the other English German German English English French French English

  6. Words are best learned in context. Start with high-frequency words. Spaced repetition is best for long-term retention. Words with a high learning burden require more repetitions. unrelated words (L1 and L2 typologically distant) difficult to spell or pronounce polysemous words How much context? 1K, 2K? How many repetitions? How do we estimate the learning burden for these factors? Vocabulary CALLWhere do we start?

  7. The problem with word frequency • Vocabulary lists (and tests) exploit corpus-based frequency lists. • Frequency lists can only come from corpora. • Corpora are not unproblematic • size • coverage (loss of context) • bias (written bias, native-speaker bias) • This will be reflected in the frequency list.

  8. What counts as one item? corpora • orthographic word • homographs not distinguished • lemma • inflected forms only • word family • inflected and derived forms • on an expansion scale teaching

  9. A word family:develop • If you know the meaning of develop, does this mean you know what a developer is? • developer (LDCE) • a person or company that makes money by buying land and then building houses, factories etc on it • a Florida property developer • a person or an organization that works on a new idea, product etc to make it successful • software developers • a chemical substance used for making images appear on film or photographic paper • developmental • not used for the subsenses found in developer

  10. What counts as one item? corpora • orthographic word • homographs not distinguished • lemma • inflected forms only • word family • inflected and derived forms • on an expansion scale • collocations / MWUs • lexical item teaching

  11. The General Service List • GSL • not just frequency-based • 2000 headwords >> 5000+ lemmas • includes frequency of subsenses! • BUT dated

  12. Discrepancy BNC - GSL • BNC frequencies • blow (orthographic word) 3127 occ. • blow (VVB) 268 occ. • blow up 170 occ. • blow _ up 44 occ. • GSL • blow 853 • blow (verb) • of wind 307 • exhale 85 • instrument 110 • blow up (of explosives) 51 • blow (noun) • stroke 247 • disaster 25

  13. divergent meaning for known form new (marked) meaning for known form new (unmarked) meaning for known form completely new word Learning burden • Frequent words are normally polysemous, eg. paper • Polysemous words differ in their polysemy in different languages. • New senses can be learnt, but this requires more effort on the part of the learner.

  14. The most efficient learners’ vocabulary • An “easy” vocabulary would be small and multifunctional • i.e. ambiguous • and polysemous higher learning burden aim: small learning burden few words ambiguous words

  15. Vocabulary CALL • live with the fact that learners will need more than 2000 words • combine • frequency • saliency • usefulness of lexical items • spaced repetition • vary the (grammatical) context • introduce new subsenses gradually

  16. + + + Conclusion Limitations of corpora Unit that is counted Problems with recognizing multi-word units Problems of (divergent) polysemy make for unreliable frequency lists  We need better lexical databases!

  17. Thank You c.tschichold@swansea.ac.uk

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