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Text Analysis

Page history last edited by Steve Neufeld 10 years, 5 months ago

Through the looking glass into the lexical wonderland

 

 

 


  

After doing this activity you will be able to

  1. obtain and interpret a variety of readability statistics for a text
  2. apply vocabulary profiling and the keyness of a text to guide your lexical awareness of the text
  3. apply data driven learning techniques to help students explore the lexis you determine as key

 

Time

  1. It should take you about 75 minutes to complete this wikisheet.

 

Task format

  1. Primarily individual tasks, with a BLOG IT thread to keep notes as you progress through the wikisheet.

 

  

 

Prerequisite Activity

 

Before doing this activity, you should have completed the Introduction to Data-driven Learning and Vocabulary Profiling activities.

 

Session interaction

  1. Issues to blog about will be given throughout the session.  Make notes in one blog post as you go through the activity and save and publish this blog post at the end.  Check out the blog posts of your colleagues to see if they had similar or different points of view as you. 

CONTENTS

 

Here are the contents of this session.  You can click to visit the different activities, or simply scroll down.

 

  1. Through the looking glass into the lexical wonderland
    1. Prerequisite Activity
    2. Session interaction
  2. A tale of two 'pedias'
    1. Climate
      1. Rainfall
    2. Etymology
    3. BLOG IT:  KWL
  3. Text Analysis
    1. Task 1: Readability <10 MINUTES>
    2. Task 2: Word frequency in a text <10 MINUTES>
    3. Task 3: Word frequency in the English language (vocabulary profiling) <15 MINUTES>
    4. Task 4: Keyness <10 MINUTES>
      1. CHALLENGE TASK: <OPTIONAL>
    5. Task 5: Concordances <10 MINUTES>
    6. Task 6: Interactive activities 'pret a porter' <15 MINUTES>
      1. FOR THOSE WHO ARE KEEN ON THIS TYPE OF LEXICAL-FOCUSED PEDAGOGY: Some other tools <Optional>
  4. Follow up:  Over to you
      1. BLOG IT! How could you use text analysis tools in your own teaching?

     

    A tale of two 'pedias'

     

     

    Lets take a look at two texts about Africa: 

     

    TEXT A

    Africa is the second largest continent in the world. It makes up about a fifth of the world's land. It is surrounded by large areas of water. There are 61 countries in Africa, and 14.7% (about a billion) of the world's population lives there.[1] It is thought to be the continent where the first humans evolved.

     

    Climate

    From north to south, Africa has most types of climate. In sequence from the north:

    Running north-east to the south is the East African Great Rift Valley. This has mountains, volcanoes, deep rifts and valleys, rivers and lakes.

    In fact Africa has examples of most of the Earth's climate types.

    Rainfall

    The rainshadow concept, but with wind coming from the west.

    This picture shows where vegetation is most common in February and August (before and after the summer)

    Much of North Africa is dry and hot: it is dominated by the Sahara Desert and does not receive much rain. In Saharan Africa there are few rivers or other water sources. Underground water sources, such as springs are very important in the desert. These often form oases. An oasis is an area of vegetation (plant life) surrounded by desert.

    In that part of the world the wind comes mostly from the east. That does bring rain, but the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau blocks the monsoon rain and prevents it getting to North Africa. Also, the Atlas Mountains near the north coast of Africa prevent rain from coming in from the north. That is another rain shadow.

    These two rain shadows are mainly responsible for the Sahara desert.

    Conditions and winds are different further south, where huge amounts of rain falls near the equator. The equator runs across the middle of Africa (see red line drawn on map). That means much of Africa is between the two tropics:

     

    TEXT B:

    Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most-populous continent. At about 30.2 million km&sup2; (11.7 million sq mi) including adjacent islands, it covers six percent of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4 percent of the total land area. With 1.0 billion people (as of 2009, see table), it accounts for about 15% of the world's human population. The continent is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, both the Suez Canal and the Red Sea along the Sinai Peninsula to the northeast, the Indian Ocean to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. The continent includes Madagascar and various archipelagoes. It has 54 fully recognized sovereign states ("countries"), 9 territories and two de facto independent states with limited or no recognition.

    Africa is the youngest continent in terms of its population - 50 percent of Africans are 19 years old or younger. 

    Africa's name is derived from an ancient area in modern day Tunisia known as Ifriqiya or sunny place, in Tamazight. Algeria is the largest African country by area, and Nigeria is the largest by population. Africa, particularly central Eastern Africa, is widely accepted as the origin of humans and the Hominidae clade (great apes), as evidenced by the discovery of the earliest hominids and their ancestors, as well as later ones that have been dated to around seven million years ago – including Sahelanthropus tchadensis, Australopithecus africanus, A. afarensis, Homo erectus, H. habilis and H. ergaster – with the earliest Homo sapiens (modern human) found in Ethiopia being dated to circa 200,000 years ago. Africa straddles the equator and encompasses numerous climate areas; it is the only continent to stretch from the northern temperate to southern temperate zones.

     

    Etymology

    Afri was a Latin name used to refer to the Carthaginians, who dwelt in North Africa in modern-day Tunisia. This name seems to have originally referred to a native Libyan tribe; however, see Terence#Biography for discussion. The name is usually connected with Phoenician afar, "dust", but a 1981 hypothesis has asserted that it stems from the Berber ifri (plural ifran) "cave", in reference to cave dwellers. The same word may be found in the name of the Banu Ifran from Algeria and Tripolitania, a Berber tribe originally from Yafran (also known as Ifrane) in northwestern Libya.

    Under Roman rule, Carthage became the capital of Africa Province, which also included the coastal part of modern Libya. The Latin suffix "-ica" can sometimes be used to denote a land (e.g., in Celtica from Celtae, as used by Julius Caesar). The later Muslim kingdom of Ifriqiya, modern-day Tunisia, also preserved a form of the name.

    According to the ancient Romans, Africa lay to the west of Egypt, while "Asia" was used to refer to Anatolia and lands to the east. A definite line was drawn between the two continents by the geographer Ptolemy (85–165 AD), indicating Alexandria along the Prime Meridian and making the isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea the boundary between Asia and Africa. As Europeans came to understand the real extent of the continent, the idea of Africa expanded with their knowledge.

    Other etymological hypotheses have been postulated for the ancient name "Africa":

    • The 1st-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (Ant. 1.15) asserted that it was named for Epher, grandson of Abraham according to Gen. 25:4, whose descendants, he claimed, had invaded Libya.
    • Isidore of Seville in Etymologiae XIV.5.2. suggests the Latin aprica "sunny".
    • Leo Africanus (1488–1554) proposed the Greek aphrike (Αφρική), "without cold". Africanus suggested that the Greek phrike (φρίκη, "cold and horror"), combined with the privative prefix "a-", indicated a land free of cold and horror.
    • Another theory is that the word aphrikè comes from aphròs, 'foam' and Aphrikè, 'land of foam', meaning the land of the big waves (like Attica, from the word aktè, Aktikè meaning land of the coasts).[citation needed]
    • Massey, in 1881, states that Africa is derived from the Egyptian af-rui-ka, "to turn toward the opening of the Ka." The Ka is the energetic double of every person and "opening of the Ka" refers to a womb or birthplace. Africa would be, for the Egyptians, "the birthplace."
    • Yet another hypothesis was proposed by Michèle Fruyt in Revue de Philologie 50, 1976: 221–238, linking the Latin word with africus "south wind", which would be of Umbrian origin and mean originally "rainy wind".

     

     

    • Which one would you use with a pre-intermediate group of students? Why? 

     

    BLOG IT:  KWL

     

    1. 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 readability of texts?
      • What more do you want to know more about ways of using the computer to determine readability?
      • At the end of the next activity, you'll return to your blog post and add what you have learned from the activity.

     

    Text Analysis

     

    Task 1: Readability <10 MINUTES>

     

    No doubt, it is clear which text you would use for a pre-intermediate class. But why? Let's take a closer look at the two texts and compare them. 

    1. First let's compare the texts based on readability.  Go to this readability site, copy and paste the texts from the two 'pedia' articles.  Open the site in two tabs so you can compare both.
      • Readability is calculated on the number of 'long' words (with more than one syllable), the number of words in a sentence, and the number of sentences in a paragraph.  Here is the readability output from the original Wikipedia article on Africa.

     

     

     

     

      • Do the readability statistics confirm your idea about which text is more difficult? (Average 'grade level' is for Americans, The higher the FLESCH READING EASE the easier it is to read, above 60 is the general guideline for native speakers.)
      • BLOG IT: What do you think about using readability statistics (which are for native speakers) to determine if a text is suitable for EFL students?

     

    Task 2: Word frequency in a text <10 MINUTES>

     

    Now, let's look at the word frequency. What do these tools tell us about the difficulty of the two texts in terms of lexis?

    1. WORDLE
    2. Lextutor frequency word list
      • This provides similar information as the WORDLE, but in a different format.
      • BLOG IT:  Which is more 'useful', a WORDLE or a LEXTUTOR WORD LIST?  Why?

     

    Task 3: Word frequency in the English language (vocabulary profiling) <15 MINUTES>

     

    Word frequency and readability are good tools, but they don't tell us about the 'difficulty' of the words themselves considering the entire English language.  Difficulty is often determined by how 'rare' or 'common' a word is.

    1. Which words are 'common' and which words are 'rare' in the two texts about Africa?
      • Find out with the BNL vocabulary profiler (based on the most common 2,709 word families in English).  The RED words are proper nouns or words that are not that common.
    2. How much of the two texts is made up of common words? How much by the 'rare' or 'offlist' words?
      • Remember, a text is really only accessible for instructional purposes if the student knows 95% of the words (that is 19 words known out of 20).
      • Compare the BNL profile (based on the most common 2,709 words) to a profile based on the first 20,000 words of English using the BNC-20 profiler. 
    3. BLOG IT: What strategies can you as a teacher use to deal with authentic texts using these tools? (WORDLE, FREQUENCY LIST, VOCABULARY PROFILES)
    4. OPTIONAL:  Other vocabulary profilers to consider - if you want to become more of an expert in vocabulary profiling, here are a few other tools you should learn

    Task 4: Keyness <10 MINUTES>

     

    1. What are the 'key words'?
      1. KEYNESS compares how frequently a word is used in the specific text relative to how frequently it is used in general English.  IF a word occurs relatively more frequently in a text than it does in general English, you might assume that it is a 'KEY' word in the text. 
      2. You can compare how the words are used in the text to the way they are used in general English using the 'keyword analyzer'.
      • BLOG IT: Which of the two texts about Africa has more 'keywords' according to the computer? Why?
    2. Which keywords are common? Find out by pasting the keyword list into the BNL VP.
      1. Now, use Just the Word to look at an 'uncommon' keyword and find out more about the lexico-grammar of that word.
        • Do the same with a 'common' keyword.
      2. Look for common collocations
        • Monitor the collocates--which ones are 'common' words? (Run the collocates through the BNL VP).  These are often useful to focus on, as most teachers assume students know the collocation because they know the common word.  This is rarely the case. ;)

     

    CHALLENGE TASK: <OPTIONAL>

     

    Task 5: Concordances <10 MINUTES>

     

    Viewing the text through the eyes of a concordance can also give us some insight into collocations and lexico-grammatical features we might not notice from a simple reading of the text.

    1. Create a concordance of the second (more difficult) text.
    2. Find one lexico-grammatical feature that you could explore in more depth with students.  
      • Write up your ideas in a blog post and TWEET it to our #CTE319 channel. 
      • Include some screenshots to illustrate. 
    3. Paste the second (more difficult) text into http://wordandphrase.info and use the PHRASE option to explore in more detail the lexico-grammatical feature you identified above.
      1. BLOG IT:  Would you introduce students to http://wordandphrase.info or would you use it as a resource for yourself as a teacher?  

     

    Task 6: Interactive activities 'pret a porter' <15 MINUTES>

     

    Now, look at a few tools to create some activities for students to get them to develop a 'depth and breadth' of knowledge of the common words in English.

    1. I-Dentify Quiz - great for promoting fast word recognition. For production use the Dictator quiz .
    2. Multi-concordance - wonderful tool to generate tasks that challenge students to differentiate between similar words according to collocates and lexico-grammar
    3. Cloze tests - for the teacher in a hurry or the highly motivated student for self-study.

     

    FOR THOSE WHO ARE KEEN ON THIS TYPE OF LEXICAL-FOCUSED PEDAGOGY: Some other tools <Optional>

    1. GOOGLE ngrams - http://books.google.com/ngrams - a great way to demonstrate collocations and word use live in class.
    2. Let words/phrases fight it out at http://googlefight.com. Compare this with http://googlebattle.com/.
    3. Look for synonyms and related words at http://lexipedia.com/ or http://www.snappywords.com/ 
    4. Visit http://whatdoestheinternetthink.net to see about the register and connotations of use in 'real' English
    5. Go to http://visibletweets.com and watch the WORD CLOUD grow from current TWEETS.
    6. View the concordances of the common collocations and lexico-grammatical structures taken from the British National Corpus using Just the Word.
    7. Students can use online concordances as they write at http://www.lextutor.ca/conc_writer/
    8. Make a special type of cloze, called a C-test, using this WORD Macro.

     

    Follow up:  Over to you

     

     

     

    BLOG IT! How could you use text analysis tools in your own teaching?

     

    1. Having looked at various tools to analyze texts, pick two or three you think would be most useful to you. Then post your answers to these questions.
      • Consider some of the new techniques and approaches you learned in analyzing texts and the ways you could use these in teaching.
        1. What are the main features of these tools that help you in designing materials?
        2. Can you think of specific examples of when you would use them?
        3. What are the drawbacks or problems that you need to be aware of in using them?
      • Add to your draft KWL post what you have learned from the activity.
    2. 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.

     

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