for materials design the theory & practice of concordancing
TRANSCRIPT
for Materials Design
The Theory & Practice of Concordancing
Richard S. LavinRichard S. Lavin
Prefectural University of KumamotoPrefectural University of Kumamoto
[email protected]@pu-kumamoto.ac.jp
Create materials for a new graduate school reading course.
Students from more than 10 different disciplines under broad umbrella of Environmental Science.
Goals & situation
Easy
Quick
Low cost
Customizable
Preferably learnable by students
Criteria
All students need to be able to read science texts
For this they need:
general English vocabulary (GSL or LDV)
academic vocabulary (AWL)
specialist vocabulary
More on purpose and teaching context
Students of widely differing abilities & learning histories
Preparation for a 2nd semester writing course
Allow students to create own syllabus
More on purpose & context
Graded readers
LDV and basic sentence patterns
Analysis of specialist texts
Concordancing, etc.
Summarizing/translation of scientific texts
better done after analysis of same texts
Three-part syllabus
Johns, T. F. (1994) From printout to handout: grammar and vocabulary teaching in the context of data-driven learning. In Odlin, T. (ed.), Perspectives on pedagogical grammar. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Data-driven learning
Hadley, G. (1997) Sensing the winds of change: an introduction to data-driven learning. Available from http://web.bham.ac.uk/johnstf/winds.htm
Data-driven learning
Focusing on words and then on how they are used in sources chosen by students may increase motivation.
Students can learn a little grammar by stealth.
Approaches to grammar teaching
Find suitable texts
Create corpus
Analyze corpus
Create learning/teaching materials
Concordancing: outline of method
Encourage students to find a journal that is as close as possible to their narrow field of specialization.
What are suitable texts?
It is desirable that students “absorb” lexical, syntactic, stylistic features “incidentally”.
Using a single journal limits variability to some extent, making this more likely.
Students probably know many specialist terms already.
Creates an understandable context for new words.
What are suitable texts?
taken care of in each student’s lab?
already known or learnt through ER
difficult to learn without formal study
relatively manageable number of words
effect is large relative to number of words
www.sciencedirect.com
from Elsevier Science
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com
from Blackwell Publishers
www.doaj.org
Directory of Open Access Journals
1. Finding suitable texts
Most offer free abstracts.
Most allow purchase of full-text articles by credit card.
Sometimes, a few sample full-text articles are offered at no charge.
What’s available?
Large quantity of text required
Abstracts are short
Copying and pasting hundreds of abstracts can be very time-consuming
Use text capture tool like StickyBrain or DEVONthink
Capturing text
Lots of abstracts may be better than a few full-text articles: representative of a genre
Probably best to get all abstracts from one journal: enables mastery of that journal style
good preparation for 2nd semester writing course
Important to motivate students
Capturing text
Use concordancer
Create list of words in texts
Give frequencies of words
Show contexts
Analyze corpus
Use more generic science texts to generate handouts for the most important words in AWL. Do these together before asking students to make their own materials in their field of specialization... OR
Make abstracts or papers in each student’s field the main focus of the course.
Options
AWL Highlighter
AWL Gapmaker
Other tools
abstract from Atmopheric Environment, 34(17), from ScienceDirect
http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/r21270/textools/web_vp.html
This program color-codes the words in a text in 4 categories: top 1000, 2nd 1000, AWL, other
Web Vocab Profiler
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Teaching students to use a concordancer and related tools can enable them to use
materials that match their interests, even if the content difficulty is far beyond their
present level. These tools do this by allowing students to focus on specific
features of texts. Hopefully, students will be able to make generalizations about
particular genres and sub-genres, deepening their understanding by degrees.