Dictionaries and Vocabulary Learning: the Roles of L1 and L2 Information
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Teaching Vocabulary Across the Curriculum
Teaching Vocabulary Across the Curriculum William P. Bintz Learning vocabulary is an important instructional aim learning vocabulary. This research clearly indicates for teachers in all content areas in middle grades schools that enlargement of vocabulary has always been and (Harmon, Wood, & Kiser, 2009). Recent research, however, continues to be an important goal in literacy and indicates that vocabulary instruction may be problematic learning (National Institute of Child Health and Human because many teachers are not “confident about best Development, 2004). Educators have long recognized practice in vocabulary instruction and at times don’t know the importance of vocabulary development. In the early where to begin to form an instructional emphasis on word 20th century, John Dewey (1910) stated that vocabulary is learning” (Berne & Blachowicz, 2008, p. 315). critically important because a word is an instrument for In this article, I summarize important research on thinking about the meanings which it expresses. Since vocabulary growth and development and share effective then, there has been an “ebb and flow of concern for instructional strategies that middle school teachers vocabulary” (Manzo, Manzo, & Thomas, 2006, p. 612; can use to teach vocabulary across the content areas. see also Blachowicz & Fisher, 2000). At times, interest in My hope is that teachers will use these strategies to vocabulary has been high and intense, and at other times help students become verbophiles—“people who enjoy low and neglected, alternating back and forth over time word study and become language enthusiasts, lovers of (Berne & Blachowicz, 2008). words, appreciative readers, and word-conscious writers” (Mountain, 2002, p. 62). Research on vocabulary growth and development The importance of vocabulary Vocabulary has long been an important topic in middle Vocabulary can be defined as “the words we must grades education, but today it could be considered a know to communicate effectively: words in speaking hot topic (Cassidy & Cassidy, 2003/2004). -
Bridge of Vocabulary: Evidence Based Activities for Academic Success (NCS Pearson Inc, 2007)
The following information was based on information from Judy K. Montgomery’s book: The Bridge of Vocabulary: Evidence Based Activities for Academic Success (NCS Pearson Inc, 2007) There are 4 types of vocabulary: □ Listening □ Speaking □ Reading Writing The first two constitute spoken vocabulary and the last two, written vocabulary. Children begin to acquire listening and speaking vocabularies many years before they start to build reading and writing vocabularies. Spoken language forms the basis for written language. Each type has a different purpose and, luckily, vocabulary development in one type facilitates growth in another. Listening Vocabulary: The words we hear and understand. Starting in the womb, fetuses can detect sounds as early as 16 weeks. Furthermore, babies are listening during all their waking hours – and we continue to learn new words this way all of our lives. By the time we reach adulthood, most of us will recognize and understand close to 50,000 words. (Stahl, 1999; Tompkins, 2005) Children who are completely deaf do not get exposed to a listening vocabulary. Instead, if they have signing models at home or school, they will be exposed to a “visual” listening vocabulary. The amount of words modeled is much less than a hearing child’s incidental listening vocabulary. Speaking Vocabulary: The words we use when we speak. Our speaking vocabulary is relatively limited: Most adults use a mere 5,000 to 10,000 words for all their conversations and instructions. This number is much less than our listening vocabulary most likely due to ease of use. Reading Vocabulary: The words we understand when we read text. -
Teaching and Learning Academic Vocabulary
Musa Nushi Shahid Beheshti University Homa Jenabzadeh Shahid Beheshti University Teaching and Learning Academic Vocabulary Developing learners' lexical competence through vocabulary instruction has always been high on second language teachers' agenda. This paper will be focusing on the importance of academic vocabulary and how to teach such vocabulary to adult EFL/ESL learners at intermediate and higher levels of proficiency in the English language. It will also introduce several techniques, mostly those that engage students’ cognitive abilities, which can in turn facilitate the process of teaching and learning academic vocabulary. Several online tools that can assist academic vocabulary teaching and learning will also be introduced. The paper concludes with the introduction and discussion of four important academic vocabulary word lists which can help second language teachers with the identification and selection of academic vocabulary in their instructional planning. Keywords: Vocabulary, Academic, Second language, Word lists, Instruction. 1. Introduction Vocabulary is essential to conveying meaning in a second language (L2). Schmitt (2010) notes that L2 learners seem cognizant of the importance of vocabulary in language learning, as evidenced by their tendency to carry dictionaries, and not grammar books, around with them. It has even been suggested that the main difference between intermediate and advanced L2 learners lies not in how complex their grammatical knowledge is but in how expanded and developed their mental lexicon is (Lewis, 1997). Similarly, McCarthy (1990) observes that "no matter how well the student learns grammar, no matter how successfully the sounds of L2 are mastered, without words to express a wide range of meanings, communication in an L2 just cannot happen in any meaningful way" (p. -
Defining Vocabulary Words Grades
Vocabulary Instruction Booster Session 2: Defining Vocabulary Words Grades 5–8 Vaughn Gross Center for Reading and Language Arts at The University of Texas at Austin © 2014 Texas Education Agency/The University of Texas System Acknowledgments Vocabulary Instruction Booster Session 2: Defining Vocabulary Words was developed with funding from the Texas Education Agency and the support and talent of many individuals whose names do not appear here, but whose hard work and ideas are represented throughout. These individuals include national and state reading experts; researchers; and those who work for the Vaughn Gross Center for Reading and Language Arts at The University of Texas at Austin and the Texas Education Agency. Vaughn Gross Center for Reading and Language Arts College of Education The University of Texas at Austin www.meadowscenter.org/vgc Manuel J. Justiz, Dean Greg Roberts, Director Texas Education Agency Michael L. Williams, Commissioner of Education Monica Martinez, Associate Commissioner, Standards and Programs Development Team Meghan Coleman, Lead Author Phil Capin Karla Estrada David Osman Jennifer B. Schnakenberg Jacob Williams Design and Editing Matthew Slater, Editor Carlos Treviño, Designer Special thanks to Alice Independent School District in Alice, Texas Vaughn Gross Center for Reading and Language Arts at The University of Texas at Austin © 2014 Texas Education Agency/The University of Texas System Vaughn Gross Center for Reading and Language Arts at The University of Texas at Austin © 2014 Texas Education Agency/The University of Texas System Introduction Explicit and robust vocabulary instruction can make a significant difference when we are purposeful in the words we choose to teach our students. -
The Impact of Using a Bilingual Dictionary (English-Arabic) for Reading and Writing in a Saudi High School
THE IMPACT OF USING A BILINGUAL DICTIONARY (ENGLISH-ARABIC) FOR READING AND WRITING IN A SAUDI HIGH SCHOOL By Ali Almaliki A Master’s Thesis/Project Capstone Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Education Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) Department of Language, Learning and leadership State University of New York at Fredonia Fredonia, New York December 2017 THE IMPACT OF USING A BILINGUAL DICTIONARY (ENGLISH-ARABIC) FOR READING AND WRITING IN A SAUDI HIGH SCHOOL ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of using a bilingual dictionary (English- Arabic) for reading and writing in a Saudi high school and also to explore the Saudi Arabian students’ attitudes and EFL teachers’ perceptions toward the use of bilingual dictionaries. This study involves 65 EFL students and 5 EFL teachers in one Saudi high school in the city of Alkobar. Mixed methods research is used in which both qualitative and quantitative data are collected. For participating students, pre-test, post-test, and surveys are used to collect quantitative data. For participating teachers and students, in-person interviews are conducted with select teachers and students so as to collect qualitative data. This study has produced eight findings; first is that the use of a bilingual dictionary has a significant effect on the reading and writing scores for both high and low proficiency EFL students. Other findings include that most EFL students feel that using a bilingual dictionary in EFL classrooms is very important to help them translate and learn new vocabulary words but their use of a bilingual dictionary is limited by the strategies for use that students know or are taught, and that both invoice and experienced EFL teachers agree that the use of a bilingual dictionary is important for learning word meaning and vocabulary, but they do not all agree about which grades should use bilingual dictionaries. -
Aspects of Idiom*
University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository Calgary (Working) Papers in Linguistics Volume 07, Winter 1982 1982-01 Aspects of idiom* Sayers, Coral University of Calgary Sayers, C. (1982). Aspects of idiom*. Calgary Working Papers in Linguistics, 7(Winter), 13-32. http://hdl.handle.net/1880/51297 journal article Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca Aspects of Idiom* Coral Sayers • 1. Introduction Weinreich (1969) defines an idiom as "a complex expression • whose meaning cannot be derived from the meanings of its elements." This writer has collected examples of idioms from the English, German, Australian English, and Quebec French dialects (Appendix I) in order to examine the properties of the idiom, to explore in the literature the current concepts of idiom, and to relate relevant knowledge gained by these processes to the teaching of English as a Second Language. An idiom may be a word, a "lexical idiom," or, if it has a more complicated constituent structure, a "phrasal idiom." (Katz and Postal, 1964, cited by Fraser, 1970:23) As the lexical idiom, domi nated by a single branch syntactic category (e.g. "squatter," a noun) does not present as much difficulty as does the phrasal idiom, this paper will focus upon the latter. Despite the difficulties presented by idioms to the Trans formational Grammar model, e.g. the contradiction of the claim that virtually all sentences have a low occurrence probability and frequency (Coulmas, 1979), the consensus of opinion seems to be that idioms can be accommodated in the grammatical description. Phrasal idioms of English should be considered as a "more complicated variety of mono morphemic lexical entries." (Fraser, 1970:41) 2. -
Expanding Academic Vocabulary with an Interactive On-Line Database
Language Learning & Technology May 2005, Volume 9, Number 2 http://llt.msu.edu/vol9num2/horst/ pp. 90-110 EXPANDING ACADEMIC VOCABULARY WITH AN INTERACTIVE ON-LINE DATABASE Marlise Horst Concordia University Tom Cobb Université de Québec à Montreal Ioana Nicolae Concordia University ABSTRACT University students used a set of existing and purpose-built on-line tools for vocabulary learning in an experimental ESL course. The resources included concordance, dictionary, cloze-builder, hypertext, and a database with interactive self-quizzing feature (all freely available at www.lextutor.ca). The vocabulary targeted for learning consisted of (a) Coxhead's (2000) Academic Word List, a list of items that occur frequently in university textbooks, and (b) unfamiliar words students had met in academic texts and selected for entry into the class database. The suite of tools were designed to foster retention by engaging learners in deep processing, an aspect that is often described as missing in computer exercises for vocabulary learning. Database entries were examined to determine whether context sentences supported word meanings adequately and whether entered words reflected the unavailability of cognates in the various first languages of the participants. Pre- and post-treatment performance on tests of knowledge of words targeted for learning in the course were compared to establish learning gains. Regression analyses investigated connections between use of specific computer tools and gains. INTRODUCTION In a 1997 review of research-informed techniques for teaching and learning L2 vocabulary, Sökmen issued the following challenge to designers of software for language learners: There is a need for programs which specialize on a useful corpus, provide expanded rehearsal, and engage the learner on deeper levels and in a variety of ways as they practice vocabulary. -
SELECTING and CREATING a WORD LIST for ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING by Deny A
Teaching English with Technology, 17(1), 60-72, http://www.tewtjournal.org 60 SELECTING AND CREATING A WORD LIST FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING by Deny A. Kwary and Jurianto Universitas Airlangga Dharmawangsa Dalam Selatan, Surabaya 60286, Indonesia d.a.kwary @ unair.ac.id / [email protected] Abstract Since the introduction of the General Service List (GSL) in 1953, a number of studies have confirmed the significant role of a word list, particularly GSL, in helping ESL students learn English. Given the recent development in technology, several researchers have created word lists, each of them claims to provide a better coverage of a text and a significant role in helping students learn English. This article aims at analyzing the claims made by the existing word lists and proposing a method for selecting words and a creating a word list. The result of this study shows that there are differences in the coverage of the word lists due to the difference in the corpora and the source text analysed. This article also suggests that we should create our own word list, which is both personalized and comprehensive. This means that the word list is not just a list of words. The word list needs to be accompanied with the senses and the patterns of the words, in order to really help ESL students learn English. Keywords: English; GSL; NGSL; vocabulary; word list 1. Introduction A word list has been noted as an essential resource for language teaching, especially for second language teaching. The main purpose for the creation of a word list is to determine the words that the learners need to know, in order to provide more focused learning materials. -
Teaching and Learning Vocabulary Through
THE PEOPLE’S DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF ALGERIA MINISTRY OF HIGHER EDUCATION AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH MENTOURI UNIVERSITY, CONSTANTINE FACULTY OF LETTERS AND LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGES/ ENGLISH TEACHING AND LE ARNING VOCABULARY THROUGH SPELLING STRATEGY A CASE STUDY OF FIRST-YEAR L MD STUDENTS Dissertation submitted to the Department of Foreign Languages in Partial Fulfillment for the Requirements of the Master Degree in Language and Sciences Candidate: BOUKHIRA Meriem Supervisor: Dr. NEMOUCHI Abdelhak Examiner : Pr: SAADI Hacene Academic Year 2009-2010 DEDICATION In living memory of my grandfather MASSAOUD, whom I have recently lost. To my dear grandmother ZOULIKHA who has always been my caring and tender second mother. To my parents for their support: my mother ALDJIA and my father SALEH. To my brothers: NABIL, ALI, FARESS, ZAKI and CHAWKI. To all my relatives. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and formost; I am extremely thankful to my supervisor Dr. NEMOUCHI Abdelhak for his valuable knowledge and precious guidance. I owe a deep gratitude and love to Pr.ABDERRAHIM Farida for trusting my abilities and for encouraging me. I want to thank Prof. SAADI Hacène for accepting to be my examiner. I also want to show my cordial gratitude to all those who have been my teachers especially: Dr. LABED Nacif , and Miss BENZAHRA Radia for their valuable advice. ABSTRACT Spelling is an element of language that should be studied at school/ university. This, in turn, can help students to realize its greater influence in uplifting their writing situations. However, the teacher should interact and help them to understand how the English orthographe functions and how to apply their knowledge while writing. -
An Analysis of the Merriam-Webster's Advanced Learner's English Dictionary^ Second Edition
An Analysis of the Merriam-Webster's Advanced Learner's English Dictionary^ Second Edition Takahiro Kokawa Y ukiyoshi Asada JUNKO SUGIMOTO TETSUO OSADA Kazuo Iked a 1. Introduction The year 2016 saw the publication of the revised Second Edition of the Merriam-Webster^ Advanced Learner }s English Dictionary (henceforth MWALED2)y after the eight year interval since the first edition was put on the market in 2008. We would like to discuss in this paper how it has, or has not changed through nearly a decade of updating between the two publications. In fact,when we saw the striking indigo color on the new edition ’s front and back covers, which happens to be prevalent among many EFL dictionaries on the market nowadays, yet totally different from the emerald green appearance of the previous edition, MWALED1, we anticipated rather extensive renovations in terms of lexicographic fea tures, ways of presentation and the descriptions themselves, as well as the extensiveness of information presented in MWALED2. However, when we compare the facts and figures presented in the blurbs of both editions, we find little difference between the two versions —‘more than 160,000 example sentences ,’ ‘100,000 words and phrases with definitions that are easy to understand/ ‘3,000 core vocabulary words ,’ ’32,000 IPA pronunciations ,,‘More than 22,000 idioms, verbal collocations, and commonly used phrases from Ameri can and British English/ (More than 12,000 usage labels, notes, and paragraphs’ and 'Original drawings and full-color art aid understand ing [sic]5 are the common claims by the two editions. -
Prototypes and Discreteness in Terminology Examples of Domains
Prototypes and Discreteness in Terminology Pius ten Hacken Swansea University Characterizing the nature of terms in their opposition to general language words is one of the tasks of a theory of terminology. It determines the selection of entries for a terminological dictionary. This task is by no means straightforward, because terms seem to have different properties depending on the field that is studied. This is illustrated by a brief discussion of examples: terms in mathematical linguistics, traffic law, piano manufacturing, and non-terms in the reporting of general experiences. Two properties can be derived from these discussions as candidates for the delimitation of terms from general words. Firstly, the degree of specialization. This property distinguishes specialized expressions in mathematical linguistics and in piano manufacturing from non-specialized expressions in traffic law and reporting general experiences. Secondly, the lack of a prototype. In mathematical linguistics and in traffic law, the definition of terms concentrates on the boundaries of the concept. In piano manufacturing and in reporting general experiences, concepts have a prototype and fuzzy boundaries. Defining the word term as a disjunction of the two properties implies that it is a less coherent concept than general language word, because it is only the complement of the latter. When the two properties are considered in isolation, it can be shown that the degree of specialization is a gradual property whereas the lack of a prototype is an absolute property. Whether or not we choose to use the name term for it, the latter property identifies a concept that is ontologically different from general vocabulary. -
English Monolingual Learner's Dictionaries in a Cognitive Perspective
Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich Institute for English Philology Prof. Dr. Hans-Jörg Schmid PhD student: Carolin Hanika English monolingual learner’s dictionaries in a cognitive perspective (working title) 1. Research background and research question Pupils in Bavarian Grammar schools are allowed to use an English monolingual dictionary from year 10 onwards when completing homework or when sitting exams, for example the famous Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary ; students of English are encouraged to use it all the way up to their final examinations. But despite a long history of using a monolingual learner’s dictionary, only a very small number of users is able to make the most out of the tool: many admit to not knowing how to handle the dictionary but stress that they preferred bilingual over monolingual dictionaries anyway, since the former offered the requested information much more easily and at a higher speed. This incompetence in use is on the one hand often a result of a lack of instruction, on the other hand, it seems to be a sustained fact or even a “curse”: I had the opportunity to gain experience as a teacher in this field and had to accept that even a well-prepared and well-intended instruction is by far anything but a guarantee for the successful use of a dictionary by the pupils. But dictionary use is not solely a didactic matter; many experimental scientific studies have dealt with the topic and have tried to find out how users perform e.g. in reading or text production tasks. Apart from the (not surprising!) insight that success in dictionary performance strongly correlates with a learner’s proficiency level of the language, studies have mostly dealt with performance tasks and left out cognitive processes of the user.