Task 1: How many of the surrounding words does a student need to know to guess an unknown word?
Most teachers have been indoctrinated to believe that the only way to teach vocabulary is in context.
The trouble with that argument is that you need to know the context before you can learn from it, i.e., you need to know quite a few words before you can learn more words.
Researchers in applied linguistics have shown exactly how many surrounding words that the reader needs to know to have a reasonable chance at guessing the unknown word.
As teachers, we shouldn't expect our students to magically guess an unknown word unless they know enough of the surrounding words.
How many words out of ten must a student know to guess one unknown word?
Take the poll on the left, and then watch the slidecast on the right to find out more about the context dilemma and the challenges student face when dealing with authentic texts.
How often do your students fail to guess the meaning of an unknown word?
Do your coursebooks include lots of 'guess the meaning from context' activities? What strategies do they advocate? Is the "9 out of 10" rule in guessing from context observed?
To what extent would it be good for teachers to develop their sense of word frequency in terms of teaching?
Task 2: How many words does a student need to know in order to recognize nine out of ten words in any English text?
It is perhaps a surprising fact that around 45% of every English text is made up of words from a pool of about 125 words.
These are often referred to as function words: prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, adverbs, interjections, determiners, and articles.
What is a more intriguing fact is that there is a set of commonly used words beyond these 'function words' that accounts for 90 out of 100 words in a text.
Obviously, knowing these words is a high priority for anyone learning English.
How many words do you think a learner needs to know to be able to recognize 90 out of 100 words in any English text?
Take the poll on the left, and then watch the slidecast on the right to find out more about the nature of lexis and the commonly used words in English.
Task 3: How good is your knowledge of word frequency?
Every moment in the classroom we are faced with decisions about which vocabulary to focus our students' attention on. Obviously, we need to know not just whether the word is going to be useful to spend time learning, but also whether our students are at the point where they can assimilate the new vocabulary.
The latter is a skill that we as teachers develop through long years of experience, and are able to adapt according to the level and ability of our students.
The former, however, is intuitive. It is dependent on our own in-built awareness of the nature of lexis. In order to make good decisions about the usefulness of a word, it is important to know how common the word is used in English. If we spend too much time focusing our students' attention on words that are seldom used then they will not develop fluency in using the most common words.
How good is you intuition about how common a word is?
Watch the video on the right to show you how the test works, and then try it out for yourself at Lextutor's Frequency Trainer.
See whether you can correctly identify all the word frequencies in three or fewer attempts.
DISCUSSION POINTS:
Who would score better results in such a test - a native speaker or a non-native speaker? Why?
Were you surprised by the frequency levels of some words? Would word frequency vary according to the type of English, e.g., American versus British English?
To what extent would it be good for teachers to develop their sense of word frequency in terms of teaching?
Task 3: KWL
Take a moment to jot down some notes in your blog -- keep the post DRAFT at the moment:
What do you already know about the nature of lexis in English texts?
What more do you want to know more about lexis and word frequency?
At the end of the activity, you'll return to your blog post and add what you have learned from the activity.
Using Lextutor's Vocabulary Profiler
Follow the sets of instructions to start you on a corpus-informed approach to teaching lexis.
What colour is space? Light? Lexis?
Task 1: Watch this slidecast and then discuss the following questions.
How could you use vocabulary profiling in teaching?
Open up your draft post in your blog for KWL
Consider some of the new techniques and approaches you learned in XXX and the ways you could use these in teaching.
Add to your draft KWL post what you have learned from the activity.
Focus of applying this in teaching English and practical ideas for you to take back to your institution.
Publish your post and TAG it with 'KWL' and a keyword to describe XXXX.
When you get a chance, have a look at the posts in your colleagues' blogs.
REFERENCES
Want to learn more about the colour of words?
You can find a series of slidecasts at http://blog.metu.edu.tr/steve/colour-of-words/ that introduces and explains the fundamental lexical nature of English, with pratical examples of how to apply this knowledge in teaching.
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