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activity - introduction to ddl

This version was saved 12 years, 5 months ago View current version     Page history
Saved by Steve Neufeld
on October 7, 2011 at 1:21:27 pm
 

Lextutor - one stop shopping for data-driven learning

 

 

 

After doing this activity you will be able to

  1. describe the key characteristics of data-driven learning
  2. make a vocabulary profile of a text
  3. use a concordance to analyze lexical patterns in a text
  4. access and navigate the Lextutor site

 

Time

  1. It should take you about 60 minutes to complete this task.

 

Task format

  1. Primarily individual tasks.

 

 

 


CONTENTS

 

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

 



 

What is data driven learning?

 

 

"In teaching a second language we must design forms of work in which the student's attention shall be directed to the subject matter and away from the form in which it is expressed."

Harold Palmer (1877-1949)

 

Task 1:  What is data-driven learning? (5 MINUTES)

 

  1. The principles behind data-driven learning are not new or bound by the use of computers. 
    • As Palmer suggested in the quote above, learning is a process of discovery.  Data-driven learning builds on this foundation to encourage the learner to construct knowledge by a cycle of hypothesizing, experimentation and observation.  This is one of the key elements of a constructivist approach.  Other approaches, such as task-based learning and the lexical approach, share this founding principle and are therefore complementary approaches.
  2. Here are four key characteristics of data-driven learning - match the two halves of each characteristic.

 

 

 

DISCUSSION POINTS: Post your ideas to http://tweetchat.com/room/cte319

  • How easily can you follow the data-driven learning principles in a f2f classroom?
  • Is data-driven learning more suited to individual or group work?
  • To what extent might computers and the internet enhance data-driven learning?

 

 

Task 2:  What is a vocabulary profile? (20 MINUTES)

 

A vocabulary profile shows us how many unique words make up a text, and how frequently each word is used

  • A vocabulary profile of a text is a good place to start when using a data-driven learning approach. 
  • Knowing which words are used more frequently provides a focus for learning patterns that involve such higher frequency words.

 

  1. Open this document: A brief rationale for data-driven learning.
    • Quickly skim read the rationale.
    • Write down the five to ten keywords that  you could use to summarize the rationale.
  2. Highlight and copy the text.
  3. Go to http://wordle.net
  4. Click CREATE.
  5. Paste the text into the input window and press GO.
    • Wait for the 'word cloud' to appear--the larger the word, the more often it appears in the text.  This is a simple graphical representation of a vocabulary profile.
  6. Compare the most frequent words in the 'word cloud' to the words you identified as keywords.  Were any the same?

 

You will get a graphical representation of the vocabulary profile of the text that shows the top 150 words, with words in different sizes according to how frequently they appear in the text.  It will look like this:  

Wordle: data-driven learning rationale

 

 

DISCUSSION POINTS: Post your answers http://tweetchat.com/room/cte319

  • What are the top five words in the text according to frequency?
  • How can such a view of a text be useful in teaching English?
  • What other information from the original text would be useful to see as part of such a vocabulary profile?

 

 

There are many tools for creating vocabulary profiles.  We'll look in detail at the vocabulary profilers in Lextutor in the next section.

 

Task 3:  What is a concordance? (20 MINUTES)

 

Aside from a vocabulary profile, a concordance is one of the other essential tools in data-driven learning.  The most common kind of concordance is called KWIC - Key Word In Context.  Let's take a look at another simple tool to illustrate the basic features of a concordance and contrast it to a vocabulary profile.

 

 

  1. Open this page:  CONCORDLE
  2. You will see the text taken from "A brief rationale for data-driven learning' in the text input box.
  3. Below the text area you will see a vocabulary profile, showing words in different font sizes according to how often they are used in the text.  This will appear as a 'word cloud', similar to the profile your created in the previous step with WORDLE.
  4. Click a word in the 'word cloud' vocabulary profile of the text - start with the word "MATERIALS"
  5. Scroll down to see the area below the 'word cloud' and you will see a list of all the times the "key word" MATERIALS was used, with the context to the left and right of the word.  This is a KWIC display.
    • What extra information does a concordance provide that you couldn't get from the vocabulary profile?
    • Take the word "MATERIALS" as an example -- what lexico-grammatical information does the KWIC suggest about the word?
    • Try to explore the collocates of "MATERIALS" - compare the collocates 'ENHANCED" with "AUTHENTIC" (Find these words in the word cloud and click on them - the KWIC of each will appear in sections above the MATERIALS KWIC
    • Which is a 'stronger' collocate of MATERIALS in this text?  

Concordances in literature have a long history.
The early concordances were of the Bible,
the earliest being done in 1230. 

 

 

 

DISCUSSION POINTS:  Post your answers to http://blog.metu.edu.tr/steve/2010/10/04/what-is-a-concordance/ 

  • How can the additional information given by a concordance be used in a data-driven learning approach?

 

 


What is Lextutor? (10 MINUTES)

 

Lextutor is a free web-based resource.  It was developed by Tom Cobb, a professor in applied linguistics at UQAM, with a view to the practical application of data-driven learning using principled approaches supported by published research.

 

Here is short video about ''Lextutor'. Watch it and then answer the following questions.

 

 

Now, see what you can remember by taking this quiz:

 

 

We'll take a closer look at Lextutor in another wikiworksheet.

 

 


Follow up:  Over to you

 

How could you use Lextutor  in teaching?

 

  1. Create a new blog post in your blog
    • Consider the two basic tools in data-driven learning we looked at: a vocabulary profile and a concordance.
    • List a few ways you would like to try using these tools in teaching.   Tag this with "teaching ideas" "CTE319" and "Data-driven learning"
  2. Visit some of your colleagues blogs and find their blog post about using data-driven learning in teaching.

 


REFERENCES

 

My GOOGLE library bookshelf

 

Want to learn more about using Lextutor?

 

 

Video tutorials about Lextutor

 

 

More on Harold Palmer

 

 

Creative Commons License
This work by Kristina Smith & Steve Neufeld is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at kristinaweb20.pbworks.com.

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