13 Temmuz 2008 Pazar

Advanced Vocabulary Lessons

In the past several decades, the use of language corpora has resulted in
considerable advances in our understanding of the quantitative aspects of languages. In the case of English, for instance, most corpora show that around 2,000 word-forms are used very frequently in everyday spoken and written language These word-forms may be said to represent the core of the lexicon. Equally, by measuring how frequent and how widely distributed grammatical structures are in general corpora, we can arrive at a set of core grammatical structures. In the case of the lexicon, the remaining, non-core vocabulary occurs with relatively low frequency but is massive in size (between 30-50,000 word-forms being in use in everyday talk, and considerably more in everyday written texts, perhaps up to 80,000 in the case of English).
To develop awareness and skills that will stand the learner in good stead for becoming an autonomous vocabulary-learner is a question of developing activities alongside the actual learning of words which introduce to the learner notions such as collocation, metaphor, connotation, etc. For example, in the case of English, many learners have an awareness of idioms of the verb+complement type (hit the sack, carry the can, jump on the bandwagon), but probably few are aware of the pervasiveness in everyday language of binomial idioms (rough and ready, part and parcel, out and about, down and out). Explicit focus on such items may be necessary to tune the learner’s antennae to be receptive to new ones, and to foster learner agency and independence. Vocabulary skills include ways of maximising learning opportunities during interaction (e.g. asking for paraphrases, probing the meaning of unfamiliar items with one’s interlocutor, etc.).
The advanced level learner will not be defined only by his/her vocabulary size or absolute coverage of all syntactic patterns vis-à-vis native speakers, but rather more by his/her ability to develop depth of knowledge and the tools and strategies to pursue vocabulary learning independently. With a combination of corpus-based research and the pursuit of strategic training for learners who will have to complete the task for themselves, we may go a long way towards defining advanced language proficiency in terms of traceable development on axes other than the purely quantitative increase of acquired structures and words.
Holiday Vocabulary Lessons
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