Memory Strategy – Using Mental Images

(Adapted from forthcoming “Loong Y & Chan S W L, A Study of Vocabulary Learning Strategies Adopted by Dentistry Students in Hong Kong In Learning Specialized Dental Vocabulary, September 2012, Asian ESP Journal”)

Memory Strategy – The Keyword Technique

(Adapted from Brahler, C. J. & Walker, D. (2008). Learning scientific and medical terminology with a mnemonic strategy using an illogical association technique. Advances in Physiology Education, 32, 219-224.)

Step One: Think of a word that you know that has a similar sound (audionym “Keyword” )Step Two: Create a mental image to link up the Keyword with the target word

The “keyword” techniqueJapanese word and meaning

English word that has a similar sound

Link and visual image created

kurai (dark)

karada (body)

The “keyword” techniqueJapanese word and meaning

English word that has a similar sound

Link and visual image created

kurai (dark) cry A baby cries when it is dark

karada (body) colored a colored body

Kurai - Cry

Imagine the visual of a baby crying when it’s dark

Karada - colored

a colored body

Use of ConcordancersUse of Concordancers

A corpus (plural corpora) – a large collection of texts, written or spoken, stored on a computer.

A concordancer – a computer programme used to search this database

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Considerations

General English / Academic English / Specialised English (e.g. medical, law, 1K and 2K graded, UWW corpora on Compleat Lexical Tutor http://www.lextutor.ca/)?

Written / Spoken? Size? Currency? Free of charge?

Corpus SizeCorpus Size

“I don’t think there can be any corpora, however large, that contain information about all of the areas of English….that I want to explore [but] every corpus that I’ve had a chance to examine, however small, has taught me facts that I couldn’t imagine finding out about in any other way.” (Fillmore, 1992, p. 35)

Use of CorporaUse of Corpora Word lists and dictionary entries

(different senses of a word / typical examples of usage / frequency information) are compiled by computational linguists using a corpus of the language. E.g. the COBUILD project was the first project using

a computerised corpus for dictionary making in the 1980s, Collins started to use a computerised

corpus (then called the COBUILD corpus) with John Sinclair of University of Birmingham; now the Collins Cobuild Corpus has 2.5 billion words (part of which is the Bank of English Corpus)

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Major CorporaMajor Corpora

Matching exerciseMatching exercise

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Major corpus: BNC

100 million words Written (90%) and spoken (10%)

samples British English from the 1980’s to

1993 General English http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/

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Major corpus: Brown corpus 1 million words American English One of the earliest corpora / compiled in

1960s 500 text samples from 15 text categories Searchable through Compleat Lexical

Tutor at http://www.lextutor.ca/concordancers/concord_e.html

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Major corpus: Bank of English Part of Collins Cobuild Corpus 450 million words as of 2005 (650

million words as of 2012) 75% written and 25% spoken 70% British, 20% American and 10%

others Contemporary English http://www.titania.bham.ac.uk/docs/

svenguide.html

Major Corpus: The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) Contemporary American English

containing about 450 million words (from 1990 to 2011)

five genres: spoken, fiction, popular five genres: spoken, fiction, popular magazines, newspapers, and magazines, newspapers, and academic journalsacademic journals

http://www.americancorpus.org/

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Major corpus: MICASE

Michigan Corpus of Michigan Corpus of Academic Academic Spoken Spoken EnglishEnglish

started in 1997started in 1997 contains transcripts and audio files contains transcripts and audio files

of academic speechof academic speech http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/micase/

Some Some user-friendlyuser-friendly concordancersconcordancers

1. Word Neighbors (developed by University of Science and Technology)

2. www.just-the-word.com3. COCA (needs registration)4. Create your own concordance using

tools provided by CAES, HKU: http://www4.caes.hku.hk/vocabulary/

tools_cp.htm

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Tasks - answers

The public have expressed concern about … / … are of great concern to the public

Improve / increase / promote efficency

Substitute for

How can corpora be used in How can corpora be used in the classroom?the classroom?

Among these suggestions by Nicholas Medley, which ones are applicable in your classroom?

Using Word NeighboursUsing Word Neighbours

Which 3 nouns come most frequently after “underlying”? Then, compare your results with examples from a dictionary.

How to use the phrase “not only … but (also) …”

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AnswersAnswersWord Neighbours:Underlying cause/s Underlying assumptionsUnderlying principleCambridge Dictionary Online:Underlying significance

Not only (verb) but also (verb)Not only (noun) but also (noun)Not only (adjective) but also (adjective)Not only (prep + noun) but also (prep + noun)

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How can concordancers be How can concordancers be used to facilitate vocabulary used to facilitate vocabulary

learning/teaching?learning/teaching?1. See which words are low-frequency words (off-list

words using Vocab Profiler) to see which words are likely to cause difficulty (can pre-teach these words), and see whether a text is likely to cause difficulty to students.

2. Study words in context and increase depth of processing

3. Check grammatical behaviour of words e.g. what prepositions to use after a verb

4. Check collocations and lexical patterns5. Find out about the frequencies of words / word

combinations6. Find out about usage of a word in different text

types (e.g. fiction vs academic / spoken vs written), e.g. by using “Range” on Compleat Lexical Tutor

Preparation for next Preparation for next classclass

Give an oral outline of your assignment

Can consider: Conference abstracts of JALT

Vocabulary Symposium (2012) (post-session 4 reading)

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