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Conclusion of International Journal
Lessons
from the Corpus
On summing up;
INTRODUCTION TO THE JOURNAL
This
research is conducted based on some problems that the researcher found on
teaching vocabullary in second language classroom and the researcher applying
some methodology on how we are able to learn and teach vocabullary well for
instance using corpus. Therefore, in this journal we are going to find how the
appropriate way to teach vocabullary in class and how’s the teaching strategic vocabulary or fundamentals for a syllabus.
As the researcher has
concernced that it’s not possible or unlikely to say how many words you may found in
English,virtually. Based on the journal, the Global Language Monitor, which
tracks language trends, especially in the media, has counted up to almost a
million at 988,968. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary,
Unabridged, together with its 1993 Addenda Section, includes around 470,000
entries.
However, counting the
amount of English words is not an easy matter. For a beginning, we need to know
what do we understand about a word? Let take a look on these members of the
word family RUN:
run,
runs,
running,
ran,
runner,
and runners.
Do we have to count
these as one “word” or six? How do we count different uses of the same word?
For example, is the verb run the same in run a marathon as in run
a company? Is it the same as the noun a run? How do we deal with
idiomatic uses like run out of gas, feel run down, or a run of bad
luck? And, of course, new words are being added to the language all the
time; the Internet especially has given us lots of new words like podcast,
netizen, and blog, as well as new meanings such as surf as in
surf the web.
Consequently, there
are two lessons to be learned from above explanation. Firstly, it seems very
urgent to identify what the most frequent 2,000 to 5,000 vocabulary items are
and to give them priority in teaching and secondly student need to become a self-sufficient
learner.
The Study :
What can a corpus tell us about vocabulary?
What is a corpus?
A corpus is basically a collection of texts which is stored in a
computer. The texts can be written or spoken language. Written texts like
newspapers and magazines can be entered into the computer from a scanner, a CD,
or the Internet. Spoken texts, like conversations, are recorded and then the
recordings are transcribed; that is, they are written down word for word, so
that the texts of these conversations can be fed into the computer database. It
is then possible to analyze the language in the corpus with corpus software
tools to see how people really speak or write.
What kind of corpus do we need to use?
A large corpus is often divided into sections, or subcorpora,
which contain different types of English. For example, there are subcorpora of
different varieties such as North American English and British English, or
different types of language like conversation, newspapers, business English,
and academic English. To use a corpus in designing a syllabus, the first thing
to decide is what kind of English we want to base our material on, because
different corpora will give us different words and often different uses of
words to teach.
Example 1
Someone describes his relationship with his neighbors to a
stranger:
You see I have neighbors that I’m good friends with, as far as
neighbor-wise.
So our choice of
corpus may affect which words we will include in our materials and which
meanings of those words we will teach. For most students in general English
courses, the priority is speaking, so for these students it makes sense to base
much of the syllabus on a spoken corpus. Many students also have to write in
English, especially for examinations, so again it makes sense to look at a
corpus that includes the kinds of texts students will have to write. Most of the
examples in this booklet are taken from conversations found in the North
American spoken corpus, which is part of the Cambridge International Corpus (referred
to as “the Corpus” hereafter).
The Discussion
Based on the journal,
the urgent point is what can we learn
from the Corpus about vocabulary? Essentially it can tell us about:
a.
Frequency: Which words and expressions are most frequent and which are rare
b.
Differences in speaking and writing: Which vocabulary is
more often spoken and which is more often written.
c.
Contexts of use: The situations in which people use certain vocabulary
d.
Collocation: Which words are often used together
e.
Grammatical patterns: How words and grammar combine to form patterns
f.
Strategic use of vocabulary: Which words and expressions are used to
organize and manage discourse.
Frequency
A list from the
Corpus of the most frequently used words can give us lots of interesting
information about the spoken language. I is the most common word; the
five most common verbs (apart from parts of the verbs be and have)
are know, think, get, go, and mean; the most common nouns are people,
time, and things; the most common adjective is good. We can
also see which words are more common than similar or related words: Yeah is
more frequent than yes; little is more frequent than small;
some plurals like things, years, kids, and children are more
frequent than the singular forms (thing, year, etc.). The list raises
questions such as: Why are the adverbs just and actually more
frequent than grammatical items like doesn’t? Why is something more
frequent than anything, everything, and nothing?
How can we use this information in teaching materials? Frequency
lists are useful to help us make choices about what to teach and in what order.
For example, we can see that many idioms are rare, so we can teach them later
in the language program. On the other hand, we can see which items in a large
vocabulary set (colors, types of music, clothing, health problems, etc.) people
talk about most and teach those first, leaving the less frequent words until
later. The way that frequency information is used in corpus-informed materials
can be almost invisible, but some of this frequency information is fun to know
and can be used in guessing game activities in class. .
Contexts of use
The Corpus includes
information about speakers and situations in which conversations take place.
It is possible to see, for example, whether an item of vocabulary is used by everyone
in all kinds of situations, or mostly by people who know each other very well,
or mostly in more polite situations with strangers or work colleagues, etc.
Information like this from the Corpus enables us to present vocabulary
appropriately and to point out to students examples of more formal usage such
as Goodbye vs. Bye and, perhaps more importantly, very informal
usage such as using the word like for reporting speech (I was like
“Hey!”) or the expression and stuff (We have a lot of parties and
stuff).
The vocabulary of grammar
In addition to seeing the grammar of individual words – the
grammar of vocabulary – we can also learn about the vocabulary used with
certain grammar structures – the vocabulary of grammar. For example, the
Corpus can tell us the most frequent verbs used in the past continuous
structure was . . . ing. The top ten are going, thinking, talking,
doing, saying, trying, telling, wondering, looking, working.
Notice that five of
these verbs describe “saying” and “thinking.” In addition, 12 percent of the
uses of was going to are in the phrases was going to say or was
going to ask, and 28 percent of the uses of was trying are with
similar verbs of saying and thinking. So it seems that these verbs are an
important part of the vocabulary of this structure.
Strategic vocabulary
Teachers are familiar
with the kinds of words and expressions that writers use strategically to
organize written texts, from simple conjunctions like and and however,
which organize ideas within and across sentences, and adverbs such as first,
secondly, etc., which list ideas within a paragraph or text, to expressions
such as in conclusion, which signal that the text is about to end.
Written texts are easy to find in newspapers, books, on the Internet, etc., as
models for teaching or our own writing. But what is the strategic vocabulary that
speakers use to organize and manage conversations, and how can we find it? To
help us answer these questions, we need a corpus so we can analyze many
different conversations. We can start by looking again at frequency lists to
identify and analyze the kind of strategic vocabulary speakers use.
The Finding of vocabulary on conversation
When we look at the most frequent words and phrases in conversation,
we find many items that conversation shares with the written language, such as
grammatical words (articles, pronouns, prepositions, etc.), common everyday
nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs (people, money; go, see; different,
interesting; still, usually), and modal items (can, should,
maybe, probably). As we saw earlier, some of these may be far more frequent
in conversation than in writing (probably) or have different uses (see).
Below are examples of
the types of this vocabulary with extracts from the Corpus to show how people
have actually used them. Note that some of the frequent expressions have
several uses and fall into more than one category.
Discourse markers
A discourse marker is a word or phrase that organizes or
manages the discourse in some way. In this case the type of discourse is
conversation. Some of these expressions help organize the conversation as a
whole, and some organize the speaker’s own speech. Examples include anyway, which
speakers use (often with words like so or well) to come back to
the main point after a digression or interruption, as in Example 2.
Example 2
Speaker A gets back to the main point of her story, using anyway.
A: [. . .] I won
first prize.
B: Oh you always win.
A: I don’t win.
B: Yes you do.
A: And so anyway the prize was ten dollars . . .
Anyway is also used to show
that a conversation is coming to an end:
Example 3
Well, anyway. Gotta run.
Speakers organize
their own speech; an example is the expression I mean, which signals the
speaker is going to restate, repeat, clarify, or add to what was just said.
Example 4
Here the speaker uses I mean to explain what she means by
“pretty much grown”:
[. . .] this is home for my kids now. Um they’re pretty much
grown. I mean they’re nineteen and seventeen.
Speakers also have
ways of highlighting and emphasizing the main points of what they want to say
with expressions such as the point is or the thing is and
variations like the only thing is or the funny/weird thing is to
show their attitude toward what they will say.
Here speaker A makes the main point of her news about a publishing
project using the expression the thing is:
A: [. . .] they want
to really publish it.
B: Wow.
A: So but I mean the thing is they want the completed
manuscript in a month.
Responses
Words and expressions are very frequent that people use to react
and giving respond to what other people say, before they add their own
contribution to the conversation. These include expressions to show agreement (Exactly,
Absolutely, That’s true); expressions to show understanding (I know, I
know what you mean, I see); reactions to good or bad news (Great!,
That’s nice, That’s too bad), or expressions which simply show the listener
is still listening and participating in the conversation (Uh huh, Mmm, Yeah,
Huh).
Monitoring expressions
In conversation, speakers often involve the other participants to
measure how the conversation is going. For example, a speaker may use
expressions like you know what I mean, or the shorter you know, to
check if others in the conversation understand, sympathize with, or even agree
with what he or she is saying. These expressions can create the impression that
the speaker feels the listener shares his or her view or knowledge of the
topic. In contrast, expressions such as you see, let me tell you, and actually
create the opposite impression that the speaker is “telling” the listener
something that he or she may not already know. These strategies are not just
luxuries or optional extras, but they are important in creating true dialogue
and in creating good relationships between the people involved in the
conversation.
Vague expressions
Vague language, include expressions that use very general, often
informal words, instead of specific words to refer to things, activities, or
situations. Some of the most frequent are the phrases or something, and
things like that, and stuff, and everything, or whatever, and that kind of
thing, and and that sort of stuff. More formal examples are and
so on, and so forth, and etcetera. These expressions basically mean
“I don’t need to say this in detail because I think you know what I’m saying.
Following are some examples of these expressions in extracts from
the Corpus.
Example 6
Someone talking about the fall season:
. . . the trees are turning different colors and it’s nice to walk
around and the state parks are nice and it’s nice to go out to a restaurant or
something you know like for a snack or something like that.
Example 7
Someone talking about shoes:
Like they’re more for
outdoor running and stuff like that.
Example 8
Someone describing an aunt:
She’s very
sophisticated and she travels and things like that.
The examples above
show how these expressions can refer to a range of items including places (Example
6: a restaurant), things (Example 6: a snack), and activities
(Example 7: running and Example 8: travels). They are versatile
expressions that are not restricted by conventional grammar rules. For example,
or something can refer back to singular and plural nouns, adjectives,
adverbs, and verbs. The expression and stuff with its non-count noun stuff
mostly follows plural count nouns (what about sweaters and stuff?),
and the plural and things can follow singular and non count nouns (I
can call him up for advice and things), as well as verbs.
Hedging expressions
Speakers use hedging expressions when they want to avoid sounding
blunt, too direct, too sure of themselves, or too “black and white.” These expressions can introduce shades of gray,
give the speaker a chance to go back and modify something he or she Lessons
from the Corpus said earlier, and allow the listener to challenge or
question what the speaker says. They include expressions such as kind of,
sort of, just, I guess, a little, in a way, probably and speakers often use
more than one in the same sentence. Below are examples of speakers using some
of these expressions in a variety of situations.
Example 9
Someone talking about her new boyfriend; she uses kind of and
sort of to “soften” the adjectives, to sound less unequivocal or
precise.
He’s very smart but he’s also kind of young and naïve and
quiet and sort of shy.
Example 10
Someone leaves a voicemail message for a friend; he uses just to
show that the reason for his call isn’t too important or urgent. This act of
“downtoning” an invitation or suggestion makes it sound less coercive or
restricting for the listener.
I was just wondering if you were up for Chinese dinner
tonight before bowling so give me a buzz if you’re around.
Example 11
Here a speaker uses hedges when a “yes” or “no” answer isn’t
possible:
A: Do you still live with your family?
B: Uh sort of, in a way.
Hedging is very
useful in situations where it is important to be “polite,” for example, in
stores and restaurants. Notice in Example 12 how the customer uses more than
one hedge.
Example 12
In a restaurant:
Server: Would you
like cream in it?
Customer: Just a little bit, I guess.
Hedging expressions
can also be found in conversations when speakers feel they may be imposing on
someone – even friends or family:
Example 13
A request in a family conversation:
A: Could you do me a favor?
B: Yeah.
A: That glass thing. Could you just put it back out on the
um . . . the table out there.
Expressions of stance
Stance refers to how speakers express their attitude to what they
say. So, for example, they may give information as a personal opinion and use
expressions like personally, I think, from my point of view, etc.
Sometimes they present information as facts about which they are very certain
with words and phrases like definitely, in fact, as a matter of fact, or
less certain using maybe, probably, I don’t know, I’m not sure. Sometimes
they want to assure the listener they are being truthful: to be honest (with
you). And of course speakers express an emotional response to what they
say with expressions like Unfortunately, I would hate to, the awful thing
was.
Teaching strategic
vocabulary: Fundamentals for a syllabus
How can this kind of
strategic language be fitted into language materials? It is best taught in the
context of teaching conversation strategies and skills. By categorizing the
types of expressions and observing the kinds of strategies that speakers in the
Corpus use to manage and conduct conversations, it is possible to construct a
conversation syllabus that includes this vocabulary of conversation. The
syllabus can be built around four broad functional areas that we find in all
successful conversations in the Corpus:
1.
Organizing your own talk
2.
Taking account of another speaker
3.
Showing listenership, that is, showing on conversations.
Teaching vocabulary in class
Focus on vocabulary
One of the first
vocabulary learning strategies for any classroom is how to ask for words you
don’t know in English, and how to ask the meaning of English words you don’t
understand. In the other words, an important vocabulary acquisition strategy
which Nation (2001) calls “noticing” is seeing a word as something to be
learned. In this view, knowing what to learn is a necessary prerequisite to
learning. Teachers can help learners get into the habit of noticing by making
clear in classroom instruction and homework assignments: which items should be
learned, what each item is (a single word, a phrase, a collocation etc.) and
for what purpose (active use or passive recognition). And materials can help
teachers in this in the following ways:
a.
Providing clearly marked vocabulary lessons
b.
Making the target vocabulary set stand out, including focused
practice and regular review
c.
Giving lists of vocabulary to be learned for the lesson
Teachers
can use different ways to present vocabulary including pictures, sounds, and
different text types with which students can identify: stories, conversations,
web pages, questionnaires, news reports, etc. In each of these contexts, topics
should be relevant to students’ interests.
Repeat and recycle
Learning vocabulary is largely about remembering, and students
generally need to see, say, and write new words many times before they can be
said or written and at least come up with learning those words. Most
of experts agree that repetition is an important aid to learning and that
having to actively recall or “retrieve” a word is a more effective way of learning
than simple exposure or just seeing a word over and over (Sökmen 1997).
Researchers
also agree that repeating words aloud helps students remember words better than
repeating them silently.
Provide opportunities to organize vocabulary
Organizing vocabulary in meaningful ways makes it easier to learn
(Schmitt 1997; Sökmen 1997). There are some ways to describe that;
1.
Real-world groups occur in the real
world, such as the countries within each continent, parts of the body, the
foods in each food type (carbohydrate, protein, fats, etc.), activities that
take place for a celebration (e.g., at a wedding), expressions people typically
use in everyday situations (e.g., when someone passes an examination, has bad
luck, etc.). Students can draw on their general knowledge to group English
vocabulary according to concepts with which they are already familiar.
2.
Language-based groups
draw on
linguistic criteria as ways of grouping, for example, the different parts of
speech of a word family; words that have the same prefix or suffix, or the same
sound; verbs and dependent prepositions; collocations of different kinds (verb
+ noun; adjective + noun, etc.).
3.
Personalized groups use students’ own
preferences and experiences as the basis for the groups. It might include
grouping vocabulary according to likes and dislikes, personal habits or
personal history, for example, foods that you like and don’t like, or eat
often, sometimes, rarely, or that you ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner
yesterday. Making vocabulary personal helps to make it more memorable.
There are many
different manners of practicing newly presented vocabulary in class,thus run
for:
a.
from repeating the words,
b.
controlled practice, or reacting to the content in some way,
c.
to using the vocabulary to say true things about oneself. For
example, in learning the vocabulary of countries, students can:
1.
Listen to the names of countries and repeat them
2.
Identify the countries they know in English, and add new ones
3.
Say which languages people speak in different countries
4.
Say which countries are near their own, or which they have
personal connections with (I’m from .
. . ; My brother lives in . . . , etc.), or which
Make vocabulary learning personal
Related to the main point above, materials have to provide
opportunities for students to use the vocabulary meaningfully, to say and write
true things about themselves and their lives. Students should be encouraged to
add vocabulary they want to learn, too and it will be very good and excellent
if the experience of learning is also enjoyable. A warning is that
personalization may be more appropriate for some students than others. In a
large study of vocabulary learning strategies used by students at different
ages, Schmitt (1997) reports that younger (junior high school) students found
that personalization was less helpful to them than the older students in
university and adult classes.
Don’t overdo it!
Another important point is not to overload students – there are
limits to how much vocabulary anyone can absorb for productive use in one
lesson and this will be affected by how “difficult” the words are and how much
students are required to know about them [on the notion of difficulty, see
Laufer (1997)]. If vocabulary sets ever seem too daunting for students, allow
them to choose which items they want to prioritize.
Use strategic vocabulary in class
The classroom can be the only place that students mostly hear or
use English, therfore It might be useful here to look at the different types of
talk that happen in classrooms, which Walsh (2006) divides into four “modes”:
managerial, materials, skills and systems, and classroom context, each of which
has different teaching aims and can include different functions.
a.
Managerial
mode refers to
the way teachers organize the class and move between activities. In doing this,
it’s possible to use a range of basic discourse markers for starting,
concluding, and changing topics, such as All right/Okay, So, Let’s start,
Let’s move on. Although Walsh sees this type of
talk primarily as the teacher’s, as the one who organizes and manages what
happens in the classroom, there are aspects of managerial talk that students
can usefully learn to help them organize pair and group work (OK, let’s
change roles; That’s it, we’re finished), or to interact with the teacher
in order to change the way the class proceeds (Could you explain that again,
please?).
b.
Materials mode refers
to the talk that takes place when teachers and students are doing an activity in
the materials. This includes eliciting answers from students, checking and
explaining answers, and giving feedback on answers. In this type of talk, it
would be useful for teachers to model different kinds of responses when
evaluating students’ answers (That’s right; Excellent) and when seeking
clarification (You mean . . . ?; He went where?).
c.
Skills and systems mode is the largely teacher-directed talk that goes on when the teacher
is trying to get students to use a particular language item or skill and will
involve the teacher in giving feedback, explaining, and correcting. In this
mode teachers can model phrases for reformulation (I mean . . .) and for
organizing and staging information (Now, . . . First of all, . . .)
d.
Classroom context mode refers to the type of language learners use when they are talking
about their personal experience or feelings – sometimes called “freer practice
activities.” Here the teacher’s role is to listen and support the interaction,
which is the most like casual conversation that learners will engage in.
Teachers can support these “conversations” by teaching the types of strategic
vocabulary identified on pages 14–17 in this booklet, in order to help students
manage their own talk, relate to other students, respond, and manage the
conversation as a whole..
Helping students
become independent learners in and out of class
A lot of vocabulary learning research points to the relative
success of learners who are independent, devote time to self-study, use a
variety of learning strategies, and keep good vocabulary notes. As Gu (2003)
summarizes his own and other studies, “Good learners seem to be those who initiate
their own learning, selectively attend to words of their own choice, studiously
try to remember these words, and seek opportunities to use them.” We
can help students be better learners and acquire good learning habits by
setting structured learning tasks that can be done out of class. These might
include helping students construct a vocabulary notebook, using resources such
as dictionaries and the Internet, and finding opportunities to use English.
Let’s look at these three
areas:
Vocabulary notebooks
Materials which give space to personal learning logs, like
vocabulary notebooks, encourage students to continue learning outside of class.
Very often students’ own vocabulary note-taking consists only of writing
translations of single words in lists, but it can be much more varied than
this, including labeling pictures and diagrams, completing charts and word
webs, writing true sentences, creating short dialogues, etc. Good vocabulary
notebook activities show students what is worth writing down and give ideas
for various ways of organizing vocabulary notes, using different grouping
ideas, as mentioned above.
Research tools
Students now have access to vast resources such as the Internet
and the wealth of information in learners’ and online dictionaries. If students
are trained how to use these resources and understand how they can provide
information on formality, collocation, grammatical patterns, etc., they can
exploit these resources more effectively and become more independent in their
learning.
Everyday usage
Materials can also provide students with ideas to activate and
practice vocabulary in their everyday life, which is especially useful for
students who live in non-English-speaking environments. Activities might
include labeling items of furniture in English in a room, or trying to remember
the English name for all the items they see in a clothing store. As mentioned
earlier, the act of retrieving vocabulary seems to be an effective way of
learning, and such activities can take place at any point in the day – not just
at times designated for studying English.
On
the conslusion;
The acquisition
of vocabulary is arguably the most critical component of successful language
learning. Until recently, however, it has been difficult to determine the most
important words and phrases needed to establish a suitable vocabulary for
conducting conversations most effectively. The Corpus’ massive collection of
texts has given us access to a wealth of information regarding spoken and
written English that was previously unavailable.
We need to repeat
vocabulary often, because students must work with a word or phrase many times
before acquisition takes place, and we must offer variety to keep the exercises
fresh and to cater to different learning styles. Finally, we need to help
students understand that learning is a gradual process that takes place in small.
manageable increments over time, and to encourage them to seek additional
information on their own, personalizing the learning experience and tailoring
it to their own specific needs.
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