VOCABULARY DEVELOPMENT THROUGH CONCORDANCES IN A GREEK ESP CONTEXT

FOTINI KARANIKOLA

UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN MACEDONIA

TOPIC AND MAIN AIM OF THE PAPER

This pilot project deals with an alternative and more

motivating way of approaching vocabulary instruction within a Greek ESP context, with the help of a computer software (concordancer), which analyzes electronically gathered reading texts (corpora) for the discovery of regular patterns and lexical sets, an approach called Data-Driven Learning (DDL).

This approach, which has been decided after a needs analysis, is quite promising since it integrates technology to promote learners’ motivation and vocabulary development.

SAMPLE AND THE PARTICULAR TEACHING CONTEXT

The participants of this advanced ESP course are students of the first semester, 80% female (40 girls) and 20% male (10 boys) of the University of Western Macedonia in Florina, (Department of Primary Education, Faculty of Pedagogy), their age is from 18-39 years old and some of them have got the first and the proficiency certificates.

The English language is a core subject in the two semesters of the department which engages students in reading relevant authentic materials, helping them increase both linguistic and academic skills, enhance their subject knowledge and develop English language skills.

The teaching methods used are traditional teacher centered lectures, vocabulary is taught via translation and synonyms, whereas assessment methods are written exams and mini assignments.

The motivation is very low since most of them dislike studying and learning ESP vocabulary in the traditional way.

Having looked at the problematic context of the Greek reality and in order to introduce an alternative teaching approach the teacher decided to conduct a needs analysis research through the means of questionnaires.

MATERIAL DESIGN

NEEDS ANALYSIS QUESTIONNAIRE

Quoting Sifakis (2000, p. 136) “needs analysis is the process where the profile of a particular teaching situation (involving learners, materials and actual lessons) is drawn”.

By determining students needs is a movement towards a learner-centered instruction, where teaching should be designed to meet the precise needs of the learner.

The particular questionnaire consists of four conceivable parts, each one covering different needs and providing different information.

Part A generally focuses on respondents’ personal facts. Part B seeks information about respondents’ present level of the

target language, their attitude towards English course and their target language needs.

Part C explores difficulties and deficiencies related to all four skills in learning vocabulary.

Part D is regarded as the most crucial as it investigates valuable information concerning learners’ preferred class activities, teaching experiences so far and their learning/ teaching needs.

RESULTS OF THE QUESTIONNAIRE

The total number of questionnaires administered to students was 40 but only 23 were completed and returned (so a limitation of a small sample could not be neglected).

The detailed quantitative data have been analyzed with the SPSS statistical program and the results are presented in a combined way of tables and bars charts (in a more convenient and reader friendly way).

The most prevalent results were that half of the students were holders of the proficiency degree and they wanted to be in contact with the English language (47, 8%), which indicates a positive and promising attitude towards learning English.

They were also interested in terminology acquisition although they had great difficulties in reading vocabulary with relevant terminology. (47, 8%)

They disliked traditional ways of vocabulary instruction and activities (69, 6%), they liked working in groups (47, 8%) and there was obvious favor in the use of the computer lab (95, 7%)!

Athough the majority had never heard about concordances (78, 3%), they believed that collocations and studying whole sentences would offer better results in their vocabulary development and acquisition (47, 8%).

CHOOSING SOFTWARE

The writer after having conducted an extended internet research she decided to use WordSmith Tools 5 concordancer for the particular project. This freeware software package is published by the Oxford University Press, was developed by Mike Scott, it was downloaded from http://www.lexically.net/wordsmith/index.html and is accompanied by a thorough and informative manual.

This program can create concordances, perform keyword analyses and compile word-frequency lists.

The Wordlist tool will let the students see a list of all the words or word-clusters in a text and to identify the contextual information necessary to disambiguate words.

A concordance looks something like this:

COMPILING THE CORPUS Being influenced by Aston (2002), who supports that these corpora can be

specifically targeted to the learners’ knowledge and concerns, the teacher decided to use the internet as a researching and retrieving source.

She had gathered and saved 41 thematically related downloadable articles containing 600-3000 words each, so all together this experimental corpus contains approximately 60.000 words and as the titles of the stored texts suggest, they concern pedagogical and methodological issues.

She also took into consideration Zhang’s (2008) suggestions about self-building a mini corpus[1] and followed Tribble and Jones’s (1990, p.14) suggestions that “a corpus of 50.000 words should be very useful for classroom purposes”.

According to Lewis (2000), cited in Watson Todd (2001), this is a corpus of specific genre of text, being compiled by academic and newspaper/journal feature articles.

[1] Namely a mini-corpus should be learner-oriented (the texts collected must be of learners interest or concern), understandable and difficulty suitable (so as students will not be frustrated by the non comprehensible instances of the corpus. It should be fully analyzable, easy to become familiar with and clearly patterned (collocations and other words associations must be self-evident).

IMPLEMENTATION

THE STAGES (PRE-/WHILE-/POST) OF THE PROCEDURE FOLLOWED DURING THE PROJECT

OBJECTIVE : to enhance vocabulary development and exploitation by using authentic language

TEACHING PROCEDURE >>>>AIMS >>>>TIME

PRE - PHASE

Activity A Sts are divided into two groups

and work in pairs. They read the activity sheet and

follow the instructions to get acquainted with the search and retrieval techniques used in concordance software. They type the word DISCIPLINE and retrieve the concordance list and save it. They observe the collocation sets and consult the stored texts by double clicking on the KWIC

---------------------------------------

Activity B Sts observe and study the

concordaner list concerning the various meanings of the retrieved word.

To practice computer and concordance skills

To raise the interest and motivation to work with authentic material data

To encourage group/pair work

(15 MIN) ----------------------------------------- To focus on specific lexical

patterns To develop interpretative skills To convey meaning from

multiword patterns To teach text analysis techniques To observe habitual collocations

and discover new meanings To engage sts in active

participation in the process of learning

To provide sts with natural examples (10 MIN)

WHILE - PHASE

Activity C Sts write down the examples and infer

meanings -----------------------------------------------

Activity D Sts deal further with collocations and

colligations ----------------------------------------------- Activity E Sts look up the word in an on line

dictionary. They note down useful information about the use of the word. They can also consult the dictionary’s audio file.

----------------------------------------------- Activity F Sts complete the gap filling task

To capture specialized phraseology To break away from rule-based

approach into the DDL approach To consult relevant concordance

material through direct access to the corpora

To analyze data and draw conclusions (10 MIN)

---------------------------------------------- To demonstrate features of

vocabulary, typical collocations and grammar points

To promote sts construction process To relate words to syntax (10 MIN) ---------------------------------------------- To become critical of dictionary entries To engage sts into discovery,

divergent and serendipity learning To base on sts own explorations

(15 MIN) ----------------------------------------------- To stimulate sts cognition To build sts competence To make specific personal

contribution to the tasks (10 MIN)

POST - PHASE

Activity G Sts search the web for

the given word, they skim and scan related texts and save them on their computers for further use.

To bring sts a sense of responsibility

To turn sts into researchers

To become more independent readers

To analyze and interpret data

To encourage sts to act as the producers of research rather than passive receptacles

(20 MIN)

Entries for discipline use [translation] definition [examples] as noun1. discipline noun a branch of knowledge: "in what discipline is

his doctorate?"; "teachers should be well trained in their subject"; "anthropology is the study of human beings" See also: subject , subject area , subject field , field , field of study , study , branch of knowledge 2. discipline noun training to improve strength or self-control 3. discipline noun the trait of being well behaved: "he insisted on discipline among the troops" 4. discipline noun a system of rules of conduct or method of practice: "he quickly learned the discipline of prison routine" or "for such a plan to work requires discipline" 5. discipline noun the act of punishing: "the offenders deserved the harsh discipline they received" See also: correction

as noun, uncountable; countable6. discipline noun, uncountable; countable 訓練，鍛鍊，磨練 training, esp of the mind and character, aimed at producing self-control, obedience; method by which training may be given: 1. Strict discipline is imposed on army recruits. 2. Yoga is a good discipline for learning to relax. 新兵受到嚴格的訓練 See also: training , drill , drilling , schooling , indoctrination , rigor , enforcement of rules , diligent exercise , practice , preparation

as verb7. discipline verb train by instruction and practice; esp. to teach self-control: "Parents must discipline their children" See also: train , check , condition

BENEFITS OF CONCORDANCERS AND CORPORA IN L2 TEACHING AND LEARNING

Corpus is a gold mine of authentic language use and mining that through KWIC concordances can provide students with multiple contexts, from which new vocabulary can be learned.

Language students deduce the meaning and the patterns of the word are immediately clear if students analyze several examples of the word.

What the concordancer does is to “make the invisible visible” by locating or discovering collocations. (Tribble, 1996, p.11)

Learners play the role of a researcher who explores the use of language through investigating an authentic corpus. (Johns and King, 1990)

Concordances help to implement a student-centered approach which empowers the learners to work on an autonomous basis. (Gonzalez, 1999)

Language learners can benefit from teaching materials promoting inductivity, authenticity and learner responsibility for learning. (Stevens, 1991 a)

POSSIBLE LIMITATIONS

Some students may become quickly overwhelmed and demotivated if they are provided with too much data.

The vocabulary would often be beyond their level ability.

Preparation and development of the material takes a lot of time.

Students need to be trained so as to use the resources correctly.

Corpus –based pedagogical materials are not widely used by teachers and learners.

EXPECTED OUTCOMES OF THE PROPOSAL

Teachers can use concordances to find examples of authentic

usage to demonstrate features of vocabulary, typical collocations and they can generate exercises based on examples drawn from a variety of corpora.

Students based on their own explorations can discover rules, new meanings and draw inferences from lexical features by searching for key words in context, turning themselves into researchers.

They can be more active, motivated and autonomous in their vocabulary learning as they observe habitual collocations and relate words to syntax.

They can use the gathered authentic linguistic information for error analysis or as an aid to improve their reading and writing skills.

It is hoped that educators who plan to run or are currently running a similar technology mediated course can benefit from this example of teaching.

THANK YOU !