Task 1: How many of the surrounding words does a student need to know to guess an unknown word? (10 MINUTES)
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.
BLOG IT: Consider the following point and add your thoughts to a draft blog post.
How often have seen students fail to guess the meaning of an unknown word? Does it happen to you?
Task 2: How many words does a student need to know in order to recognize nine out of ten words in any English text? (15 MINUTES)
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? (10 MINUTES)
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 your 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.
BLOG IT: Consider the following points and add your thoughts to your draft blog post.
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 (5 MINUTES)
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 next activity, you'll return to your blog post and add what you have learned from the activity.
Using Lextutor's Vocabulary Profiler (40 MINUTES)
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. (10 MINUTES)
Vocabulary Profilers let us see the colour of words.
The Hubble telescope lets us see the colour of space.
BLOG IT: Consider the following points and add your thoughts to your draft blog post.
In what way is a vocabulary profiler like a "prism" for lexis?
Do you think that the same word will always have the same colour (same frequency of use) in different genres, i.e., would a word that is frequently used in speaking have the same frequency of use in writing?
Step 2. Creating a vocabulary profile (15 MINUTES)
Let's take a look at one of the tools in Tom Cobb's Lextutor site: the Vocabulary Profiler.
Watch the video and then try your hand at using the same text from the reading A suitable boy.
The video explores the use of the CoBuild concordance of the Bank of English and collocate tables but this is no longer available for free access.
Find a current news article (BBC, VOA, CNN, etc.) that you would like to use in class with pre-intermediate and above students.
Analyze the article with the vocabulary profiler--follow the same procedure and look at ways of dealing with unknown words.
What words would you exploit with the students for language learning purposes.
BLOG IT: Consider the following points and add your thoughts to your draft blog post.
How could you use a vocabulary profiler as a teacher?
Is it possible to get students as learners to use a vocabulary profiler? What tasks would you give to them?
To what extent is a word cloud generated from http://wordle.net the same as a vocabulary profile from http://lextutor.ca? What are the key differences. When would you use a word cloud, and when would you use a vocabulary profile?
Step 3: Analyzing and using the profile (15 MINUTES)
"Keyness" is a way of the computer determining which words in a text a 'key'. The computer looks at the frequency of a word in the target text, and then compares this to the relative frequency of the same word in general English. If a word occurs relatively more frequently in the text than in general English, it assumes that word is of greater importance in the text.
Watch the video and then us the news article you found in the previous step to:
Determine the 'key words' in the text.
Create a concordance of that text to explore some of the 'key words' you've identified.
Find a set of three or four words that can be used to create a meaningful 'multi-conc' at Lextutor.
BLOG IT: Consider the following points and add your thoughts to your draft blog post.
How useful is it to learn what the computer things are 'key words' in a text? Is the computer better at picking out key words than you?
Is the use of a concordance useful in seeing words in context in a text? How does this give you a different perspective on the words that you can't get from just reading the text? Give an example for the text you used.
To what extent can a tool like Multi-conc help students discover the lexico-grammar of a word? Would students need special training to use this tool effectively? Give the link to a multi-conc you created for the text you used.
Follow up: Over to you
BLOG IT! 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 vocabulary profiling and the ways you could use these in teaching.
Add to your draft KWL post what you have learned from the activity.
Focus on applying this in teaching English and practical ideas for you to try with students.
Publish your post and TAG it with 'vocabulary profiling' and the category "CTE319" and "data driven learning".
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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