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Post by Dee Broughton on Jun 28, 2015 13:26:14 GMT 5
The second reading is the first chapter of Paul Nation's, Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Download the chapter and read, then come back to check out some of the discussion questions and tips for writing your own ideas about the reading. Here, Paul Nation talks about how extensive reading of graded readers can help students. This may directly relate to your material designs now that you know how to test and modify the vocabulary. Paul Nation is an extremely generous teacher and researcher. Two or three of our readings will be his. Start with this first chapter of a classic source in vocabulary. We talked a lot during training about ESP vocabulary needs. In this week's reading, Nation advises, "Where technical vocabulary requires specialist knowledge of the field, teachers should train learners in strategies which will help them understand and remember words" Nation (2001, p. 19). Nation, I.S.P. (2001) Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Do you agree, partially agree, or disagree with this advice, and what will you do about low-frequency ESP technical vocabulary as you design materials for ESP? Practice the quote framing technique (described below) to give your answer.
You may also wish to look at this new site on the New GSL. The article on the site details how this list was developed. It is still very similar to the original GSL and to the GSL used in Range, but that, in itself, is interesting.
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Post by Dee Broughton on Jun 28, 2015 13:55:00 GMT 5
To fully understand the reading and apply the information in it to your own teaching and materials design, you will want to make sure you fully understand the difference between vocabulary size and "coverage" as explained in this chapter. You should also pay careful attention to the differences in methods for dealing with high-frequency (common) and low-frequency (rare) vocabulary. If you have any questions, feel free to start a discussion here.
The writing strategy we'll try during our discussion this time is "framing quotations." This is an extremely useful way of writing about sources. The idea is that writers don't just drop quotations into the middle of documents and expect them to stand on their own. Instead, they frame them, often within a paragraph that has this pattern:
1) Introductory sentence that gives the reader some idea of the topic and why the quote is used. 2) Reference to show where the quote comes from 3) The quote itself 4) Paraphrase of the quote to show what the writer thinks it means 5) The writer's response to the quote.
Here's an example using a quote from the 1st Krashen reading. The parts are numbered and colored to illustrate the frame.
(1)Many popular materials carefully introduce new grammatical structures to students, but this may not be the best method for promoting language acquisition. (2)As far back as 1982, Krashen, in Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition, questioned this practice, (3)"...The input hypothesis implies that such a deliberate attempt to provide i + 1 is not necessary. ...there are reasons to suspect that it may even be harmful." (4)In other words, Krashen believed that acquisition might even be hindered by deliberate attempts to make the input slightly more difficult than the learner understood. (5)In my opinion, this is a strong argument for providing rich authentic and graded input that naturally introduces more structures simply because of its richness. It seems likely that this type of input will more interesting while also allowing students to naturally pick up on those structures that help them further understand meaning.
Krashen, S.D. (1982). Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Pergamon
Try using this frame technique to answer this weeks' discussion question.
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margarita
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Post by margarita on Jul 3, 2015 23:35:47 GMT 5
This week reading reminded the information with which we were provided in the training. It was then when I realized that ESP teacher’s responsibility is not to teach future specialists certain subjects, instead, to assist learners in building of their vocabulary by developing personal strategies for further comprehension of the materials, with which learner will encounter while majoring in their fields. I.S.P. Nation in his book Learning Vocabulary in Another Language, mentions, "Where technical vocabulary requires specialist knowledge of the field, teachers should train learners in strategies which will help them understand and remember words". In other words, the purpose of ESP is not to teach science or the Arts but to demonstrate various strategies applying which, learners will widen the range of vocabulary for further education. In my opinion, this is a good point which every ESP teacher should accept and follow.
Nation, I.S.P. (2001) Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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margarita
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Post by margarita on Jul 3, 2015 23:54:30 GMT 5
The reading has provided with good strategies of how to teach different types of vocabulary. However, I still have lack of knowledge about efficient assessment of it. Vocabulary quizzes are required at my school and it is extremely essential for me to be aware of good and bad types of vocabulary assessment. I would appreciate if somebody shares his experience in this.
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Post by dilafruz on Jul 7, 2015 1:49:20 GMT 5
Dear Margarita, Traditionally, assessment clearly shows us where our learners are (in learning), are the methods and techniques we use in teaching effective or not, what decisions we should take to improve the situation and etc. I personally do not think that there is bad or good type of assessment in vocabulary. In my context of teaching learners’ progress in language mostly assessed through several testing and evaluation of vocabulary competence is considered as one of the most important. And I think that the most essential point to pay attention here is the purpose of assessment. Here is one more point we should keep in mind is that what form of assessment is it: formative or summative. Based on the form and aim, tasks for assessment should be chosen. For example, if I want to check the degree of my learners’ understanding a word’s different meanings due to the context, I usually design contextual tests to evaluate their ability to differentiate the same word’s meanings in various situations. If the purpose is just to know how vocabulary of the unit learnt, gap filling or MCT designed. However, the attitudes to assessment is changing and educators over the world, especially in Europe are trying to do it less stressed and gentle to practitioners by addressing to alternative ways of assessment. As for me alternative assessment mostly suited the formative assessment whether than summative: the results of summative assessment are very essential and important I consider. Regards, Dilafruz
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Post by dilafruz on Jul 7, 2015 2:03:20 GMT 5
Hi Dear all, As this week the discussion is running on the topic vocabulary teaching, I remembered my fist teaching in ESP classes. It was Business English for future accountants. During a month I tried to teach participants specific vocabulary of their field. While teaching I feel that something is wrong with my classes that they are not running as attractive as supposed to be. Then I thought and consulted the colleagues about my problem. But unfortunately, there was not any sufficient advice or comment. So I decided to do needs analysis. This technique helped me a lot as the purpose of the lesson changed from teaching words into teaching context. I found this week reading very useful and helpful in materials design and teaching context. In here the essential topic about vocabulary choice in teaching ESP students we discussed in the training described. The only lesson I got from reading and the training is that ESP educator’s task is not to teach technical terminology of the sphere only, but to enable learners to work on their vocabulary by themselves presenting strategies and techniques for it. Nation in his book Vocabulary in Another Language advises, "Where technical vocabulary requires specialist knowledge of the field, teachers should train learners in strategies which will help them understand and remember words" Nation (2001, p. 19). That is, ESP teacher’s role is not teaching special (technical) vocabulary, but to guide learner how to do it providing them by necessary strategies to understand and remember words. Based on drawbacks of my own experience in teaching ESP class, I think it is good principle that each should focus. In my case of teaching and materials design for ESP context I will follow the advice of author and will pay much attention to high-frequency vocabulary, as in the book he advises teacher to be more concentrated on high-frequency words advocating by the fact that in any sphere these words are quite essential. And that some technical vocabulary occurs in the high-frequency words and academic word list. Nation (2001, p. 18). Based on this fact, I will range the words of the text and study low frequency word’s list. Because some of them can be typical high-frequent words but in another context and meaning (if such I will design task asking learners to clarify meaning of them as a term and as a common frequent word); some can be very essential terms and I will present their meaning providing new word box; and some can just meet in the context and do not worth so much. However, we should not forget that if ESP was associated with dealing with technical terms-teaching special vocabulary in the past, it is context and meaningful teaching by now, and may be in the future its function and principles will be changed and enlarged. Nation, I.S.P. (2001) Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Regards,
Dilafruz
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Post by Dee Broughton on Jul 8, 2015 15:41:27 GMT 5
As far as vocabulary testing, it can get a bit complicated because there are many different kinds of vocabulary testing, so it's important for the teacher to understand that and to choose the right kind. There are at least 4 very different types: 1) For example, there are some tests designed to find out exactly how large an individual's vocabulary is. These are mostly for research if they are serious, for amusement if they are not, because how to figure out the exact size is not something that any reputable researchers agree on. 2) There are tests designed to test whether individual's know particular words. These are common on high-stakes tests such as admission exams, but they are of very limited value to the language teacher because anyone can teach/learn a particular list of words for a test. It's clear to any second language researcher that the choice of lists would be very important and, much of the time, the choice is arbitrary. It may be of some value if you teach a course specifically designed to teach the academic word list, for example, but you should be careful that you are not just arbitrarily teaching words of little use in raising the comprehension level of students. 3) There are tests that help teachers see if students fall within certain levels of vocabulary such as where the first 1000 are known, but the second 1000 are not, etc. These are very useful but only if done properly. Teachers must never teach the actual words on the list being tested and must never use this as a summative test. Rather, it should be used to see what level of words students are picking up incidentally so that we can see what level of text they could read or understand when listening. 4) Finally, there are different tests that measure receptive vs productive vocabulary. Productive tests are probably more useful in research, but may be of some value if used carefully. Again, it would probably not be very useful if the teacher tried to teach a specific list. The EVP might be a more useful tool for judging what students produce, but this is just my opinion. Norbert Schmitt is one of the most prolific and generous researchers in vocabulary testing. You can read many of his journal articles directly from his website. Here are three very interesting articles of his: Schmitt, N. (2014). Size and depth of vocabulary knowledge: What the research shows. Language Learning, 64, 4, 913–951. Schmitt, N., Schmitt, D. and Clapham, C. (2001). Developing and exploring the behaviour of two new versions of the Vocabulary Levels Test. Language Testing 18, 1: 55-88. Pellicer-Sánchez, A. and Schmitt, N. (2012). Scoring Yes-No vocabulary tests: Reaction time vs. nonword approaches. Language Testing 29, 4: 489-509. If anyone reads and finds something interesting from Schmitt, please come back and share.
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Post by ninaev on Jul 8, 2015 22:35:16 GMT 5
Hi everyone
I think that the size of vocabulary connects with the ways of organizing it. We use the textbooks whish are divided into the units and each unit has a main topic. It corresponds with Nation’s idea about “using word families as the unit is to decided what should be included in a world family and what shouldn’t.” //at Nation p. 8 and the vocabulary should be chosen according to “learner’s present level of proficiency” Here I absolutely agree.
However I don’t agree that high-frequency words of the language are so important that “considerable of the time should be spent on them by teachers and learners” // at Nation p. 16. First, I think that teachers and learners should pay attention to this group of words only at the elementary level. Second, I don’t think that high-frequency words maintain proper understanding of the text. And third, Nation stipulates, “the second language learners need to know very large numbers of words”// at Nation P.,9 because second language learners try to achieve better understanding of the text. However, it is impossible if the sufficient portion of time will be taken by learning high-frequency words.
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Feruza
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Post by Feruza on Jul 12, 2015 16:33:11 GMT 5
Hi, dear All, In the video Paul Nation states very important point regarding the useful words in graded books. He says that in any book half of the words occur only once, and many of them are not useful. Graded readers get rid of the useless words, but keep all of the useful words to understand the text and concentrate on them. Each time when the word occurs, it occurs in a slightly different way that helps the learner to learn the words and it sticks in their memory for a long time. When I listened to his answer, I thought about how learners keep the useful words and get rid of useless words at any given situation. For example, I a non-native speaker of English appears at the airport of an English speaking country, the useful words for him or her to go through the customs would be the words such as passport, control, sign, form, right, left, straight, etc, not the words related to ocean or a cotton field. So, teaching useful words seems to be very important in my opinion. Don’t we remember the words that are useful to us? best regards, Feruza
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Feruza
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Post by Feruza on Jul 12, 2015 16:37:20 GMT 5
Dear teachers, I read the chapter with great enthusiasm! Paul Nation (2001) explained all of the factors that teachers or course book designers should take into consideration in teaching or designing any materials. One of the factors in designing the course or a study is setting specific goals says the author, and I agree with it (Nation, 2001). The course without goals will not bring us to desired results. We must take into consideration the size of the vocabulary that we are going to teach, its frequency, weather the words are in the academic word list or not, do they belong to specialized vocabulary or not, and other factors. In my opinion high frequency words should be taught first. It is because these words will appear more than once in the language and as author states they “cover a very large proportion of the running words in spoken and written texts and occurs in all kinds of uses of the language” (Nation, 2001, p.13). I was amazed to learn that 80% or more of the academic text is covered by high frequency words as shown in Figure 1. 1.(Nation, 2001, p. 14). Since most of the academic texts cover high frequency words, they should be learned in the first place. best regards, Feruza
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Feruza
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Post by Feruza on Jul 12, 2015 16:48:51 GMT 5
What do we do with low frequency words? As the author humorously pointed out “one person’s technical vocabulary is another person’s low-frequency words,” and I agree with it (Nation 2001, p.20). In designing ESP we should take into consideration this statement. If certain words are highly used in Chemistry classes, they will not be used in Linguistics classes. Both of these subjects’ vocabulary usage and frequency will differ from each other. We will not probably use words such as ‘lemma,’ ‘morpheme,’ ‘adjective clause,’ ‘noun phrase’ in designing materials for subjects in science, particularly in Chemistry, Biology, Physics, and others. The number and the size of the vocabulary will depend on how the words will be counted. In teaching these words, teachers can use direct teaching methods, including through flash cards, looking up the word in the dictionary, guessing the word meaning from the context, and providing the students with the explanation of the word parts as the author mentioned (Nation 2001, p. 20). bests, Feruza
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Post by Dee Broughton on Aug 21, 2015 12:59:11 GMT 5
What do we do with low frequency words? As the author humorously pointed out “one person’s technical vocabulary is another person’s low-frequency words,” and I agree with it (Nation 2001, p.20). In designing ESP we should take into consideration this statement. If certain words are highly used in Chemistry classes, they will not be used in Linguistics classes. Both of these subjects’ vocabulary usage and frequency will differ from each other. We will not probably use words such as ‘lemma,’ ‘morpheme,’ ‘adjective clause,’ ‘noun phrase’ in designing materials for subjects in science, particularly in Chemistry, Biology, Physics, and others. The number and the size of the vocabulary will depend on how the words will be counted. In teaching these words, teachers can use direct teaching methods, including through flash cards, looking up the word in the dictionary, guessing the word meaning from the context, and providing the students with the explanation of the word parts as the author mentioned (Nation 2001, p. 20). bests, Feruza Remember our point, though, from training, that if students can understand the high-frequency words, then they can read well enough to learn the technical or low-frequency words. In other words, you don't need to teach them those words, you need to teach them to read all the words that will help them define and learn about those words. Remember English teachers are creating chemistry students, not chemists.
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Post by Dee Broughton on Aug 21, 2015 13:03:46 GMT 5
Hi everyone I think that the size of vocabulary connects with the ways of organizing it. We use the textbooks whish are divided into the units and each unit has a main topic. It corresponds with Nation’s idea about “using word families as the unit is to decided what should be included in a world family and what shouldn’t.” I think you may be confusing semantically connected words, such as all the words about body parts or weather or whatever, with "word families" which has a specific meaning. Word families are words that share a common root, such as "rose," "roses," "rosy." In this context, it has more to do with how the words are counted than how they are learned. In fact, we have good research that shows that words that are unrelated semantically are easier to remember. In other words, it would be easier to learn "train," "stormy," and "rose" at the same time than it would to learn "rose," "dandelion," and "daisy" at the same time.
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