Handout (With Notes)

Cheryl Boyd Zimmerman, Ph.D. WAESOL Assoc. Professor, California State University, Fullerton October 24, 2009 Dept. of Modern Languages and Literatures Email: [email protected] Website: http://hssfaculty.fullerton.edu/mll/cbzimmerman/

Online Resources for Word Learning

Compleat Lexical Tutor - http://www.lextutor.ca/ An Online Resource for Vocabulary Development Created by Tom Cobb, University of Quebec, Montreal

This site provides a wide range of computer-based resources for work on vocabulary, reading, and writing in English and French. Vocabulary profiling, concordancing and glossed readings with hypertext are only a few of the tools available. Frequency lists (including the Academic Word List) are provided and explained, as are activities and research related to them. (For a related site which focuses on the AWL, see Haywood, 2003.)

WordSift – http://www.wordsift.com/ An Online Resource for “Playing” With Words Created by Kenji Hakuta and Greg Wientjes, Stanford University

WordSift is a “tagcloud” program with additional features such as a Visual Thesaurus, AWL online supplements and interface with Google Images and YouTube. Cut and paste any text into WordSift and it instantly displays the vocabulary structure of the text in a “tag cloud” of the 50 most frequent words in the text, excluding function words (such as is, of, at, the). The words in the cloud are alphabetically ordered, and their relative frequency is indicated by text size. Singular and plural nouns are, for the most part, counted together. Words from the Academic Word List are marked in orange text. Click on the words and let the “play” begin.

Word Generation - http://wordgeneration.org/index.html A Middle-School Academic Language Program –Available Online Created by Catherine Snow, Harvard University and Developed by The Strategic Education Research Project (SERP) , Washington, DC

The program is strategically designed to create a coherent school-wide effort that gives students the sustained exposure to academic language they need for success in school—even while demanding relatively little (15 minutes, once a week) from any single subject area teacher. The Word Generation program is built around a series of questions and activities, including debates and essays. It consists of short, engaging vocabulary-boosting lessons that are taught each day by different teachers across the middle school curriculum.

Because the materials are currently in development, SERP is eager for schools to use and evaluate the current version of the program. The student books, teacher guides, assessment materials, and other support documents can be downloaded for use at your school or district free of charge if you are willing to provide limited information. See the website for details.

1 List of References

Burgmeier, A. (2009). Inside Reading: The Academic Word List in Context, Level 1, ed. C. B. Zimmerman. New York: Oxford University Press. Burke, J. (2003). The English teacher’s companion. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Heinemann. Cobb, T. (2006) The compleat lexical tutor http://www.lextutor.ca/ Corson, D. (1985). The lexical bar. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly 34, 213-238. Haywood, S. (2003). University of Nottingham website for academic vocabulary study. http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/~alzsh3/acvocab/ (accessed June, 2009). Koda, K. (2005). Insights into second language reading. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Krauss, M. (2002). Electronic forums for written interaction. Retrieved February 20, 2009, from http://www.lclark.edu/~krauss/tesol98/forums.html Laufer, B. (1991). The development of L2 lexis in the expression of the advanced learner. The Modern Language Journal, 75(4), 440-448. Laufer, B. (1997). What’s in a word that makes it hard or easy: Some intralexical factors that affect the learning of words. In N. Schmitt & M. McCarthy (Eds.), Vocabulary: Description, acquisition and pedagogy (pp. 140-155). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marzano, R., & Pickering, D. (2005). Building academic vocabulary: Teacher's manual. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. Nagy, W. (2005). Why vocabulary instruction needs to be long-term and comprehensive. In E. Hiebert & M. Kakil (Eds.), Teaching and learning vocabulary: Bringing research to practice (pp. 27-44). Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates. Nation, I.S.P. (2001). Learning vocabulary in another language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Richmond, K. (2009). Inside Reading: The Academic Word List in Context, Level 4, ed. C. B. Zimmerman. New York: Oxford University Press. Rubin, B. (2009). Inside Reading: The Academic Word List in Context, Level 3, ed. C. B. Zimmerman. New York: Oxford University Press. Schmidt, R. (1990). The role of consciousness in second language learning. Applied Linguistics, 11, 129-158. Schmidt, R. (1995). Consciousness and foreign language learning: A tutorial on the role of attention and awareness. In R. Schmidt (Ed.), Attention and awareness in foreign language teaching and learning (Technical Report No. 9) (pp. 1- 64). Honolulu: University of Hawai'i at Manoa. Schmitt, N. (2000). Vocabulary in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scott, J. A., and Nagy, W.E.. (2004) Developing word consciousness. In Vocabulary instruction: Research to practice, edited by James F. Baumann and Edward J. Kame’enui, 201–217. New York: Guilford Press, 2004. Van Lier, L. (2004). Perception and awareness: An ecological perspective. Unpublished conference presentation for the Association for Language Awareness, Lleida, July, 21. Xue Guoyi & Nation, ISP (1984). A university word list. Language Learning and Communication, 3, 215-219. Zimmerman, C. B. (2009). Word knowledge: A vocabulary teacher’s handbook. New York: Oxford University Press. Zwier, L.. (2009). Inside Reading: The Academic Word List in Context, Level 2, ed. C. B. Zimmerman. New York: Oxford University Press.

I would like to thank past and current students for contributing data samples of partial word knowledge. In particular: Chad Davidson, Annie Cheung, Yi Han Hung, Hye Young Koo, Shu-wei Peng, Marianne Roberts and Pedro Stasiuk.