www.shreeprakashan.com Vol-II, Issue-I, Jan -2013 Page - 11 Using Language Corpus in Teaching Foreign Language Vocabulary Ewa Donesch-Jezo Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland Paper Received on: 15/01/2013 Paper Reviewed on: 20 /01/2013 Paper Accepted on: 21/01/2013 Abstract Teaching of L2 vocabulary has regained interest in applied linguistics in recent years. It is mainly due to the development of new ‘word-centered’ approaches to L2 language teaching, as well as to the access to the internet databases of words (language corpora) which comprise a limitless number of various types of vocabulary used in authentic texts. Language corpora can also be used as invaluable sources of various activities for teaching L2 grammar and vocabulary. What can teachers do to facilitate their learners’ acquisition of new words? This paper aims to give the answer to this question by providing a number of examples of learning activities showing how the teaching of vocabulary items can be realized in the L2 classroom in an effective and attractive way with the use of language corpus together with concordancing software. The first part of this paper presents some theoretical information on processing, storing and producing new words, whereas the second part offers learning tasks which aid at vocabulary memorizing. The last section of this paper shows how to teach learners the ways to cope with gaps in their vocabulary. Keywords: vocabulary acquisition, language corpus, concordancing, vocabulary learning tasks Introduction The revival of the interest in vocabulary teaching in the last 20 years has been ascribed to two factors: 1) accessibility of computerized databases of words (language corpora), and development of word centred or lexical approach in vocabulary instruction. For many years learning lexis was secondary to grammar learning in language acquisition due to the assumption held by some researchers (Larsen-Freeman, 2000; Zimmerman, 1997) that once students learnt grammatical structures, lexical items to fill the slots in syntactic frames could be learnt later according to the students’ needs. In the era of autolingualism, which emphasized learning grammatical and phonological structures, vocabulary learning was left to take care of itself (see Schmidt, 2001). International Multidisciplinary e-Journal ISSN 2277 - 4262
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www.shreeprakashan.com Vol-II, Issue-I, Jan -2013 Page - 11
Using Language Corpus in Teaching Foreign Language Vocabulary
Ewa Donesch-Jezo
Jagiellonian University,
Krakow, Poland
Paper Received on: 15/01/2013Paper Reviewed on: 20 /01/2013Paper Accepted on: 21/01/2013
Abstract
Teaching of L2 vocabulary has regained interest in applied linguistics in recent years. It is mainly due to the development of new ‘word-centered’ approaches to L2 language teaching, as well as to the access to the internet databases of words (language corpora) which comprise a limitless number of various types of vocabulary used in authentic texts. Language corpora can also be used as invaluable sources of various activities for teaching L2 grammar and vocabulary. What can teachers do to facilitate their learners’ acquisition of new words?
This paper aims to give the answer to this question by providing a number of examples of learning activities showing how the teaching of vocabulary items can be realized in the L2 classroom in an effective and attractive way with the use of language corpus together with concordancing software. The first part of this paper presents some theoretical information on processing, storing and producing new words, whereas the second part offers learning tasks which aid at vocabulary memorizing. The last section of this paper shows how to teach learners the ways to cope with gaps in their vocabulary.
Keywords: vocabulary acquisition, language corpus, concordancing, vocabulary learning tasks
Introduction
The revival of the interest in vocabulary teaching in the last 20 years has been
ascribed to two factors: 1) accessibility of computerized databases of words (language
corpora), and development of word centred or lexical approach in vocabulary instruction.
For many years learning lexis was secondary to grammar learning in language
acquisition due to the assumption held by some researchers (Larsen-Freeman, 2000;
Zimmerman, 1997) that once students learnt grammatical structures, lexical items to fill the
slots in syntactic frames could be learnt later according to the students’ needs. In the era of
autolingualism, which emphasized learning grammatical and phonological structures,
vocabulary learning was left to take care of itself (see Schmidt, 2001).
International Multidisciplinary e-Journal ISSN 2277 - 4262
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International Multidisciplinary e – Journal / Ewa Donesch-Jezo (11-25)
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Stubbs, M. 1995. Collocations and semantic profiles: On the cause of trouble with quantitative studies. Functions of Language, 2 (1), pp. 1-33.
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