CALL 2008 Antwerp Choosing words and their order for vocabulary CALL Cornelia Tschichold Swansea

Lexical errors The foreign language lexicon is the main difficulty for learners and the main source of errors and communication problems –lack of appropriate word –misuse, overuse of individual words –collocational errors –lexically based syntax errors all errors lexical errors

What we know Start with high-frequency words. Spaced repetition is best for long-term retention. Words are best learned in context. Words with a high learning burden require more repetitions. –unrelated words (L1 and L2 typologically distant) –difficult to spell or pronounce –polysemous words

something I came across -“You have been asked to critique reading materials for child second language learners. The publisher says vocabulary was selected on the basis of frequency and that each word is repeated a minimum of eight times in a book. You find the word space used for Sally Ride’s spacesuit, for blank spaces on a page, for a space heater, and the space a dog needs for exercise. Do you severely criticize the materials based on such observations?” E. Hatch & C. Brown (1995:9-10)

Divergent polysemy partial cognates where the term is more polysemous in one language than the other English German German English English French French English wall Wand Mauer Schatten shade shadow river fleuve rivière bureau office desk

Vocabulary CALL Where do we start? Words are best learned in context. Start with high-frequency words. Spaced repetition is best for long-term retention. Words with a high learning burden require more repetitions. –unrelated words (L1 and L2 typologically distant) –difficult to spell or pronounce –polysemous words  How much context?  1K, 2K?  How many repetitions?  How do we estimate the learning burden for these factors?

The problem with word frequency Vocabulary lists (and tests) exploit corpus- based frequency lists. Frequency lists can only come from corpora. Corpora are not unproblematic –size –coverage (loss of context) –bias (written bias, native-speaker bias) This will be reflected in the frequency list.

What counts as one item? orthographic word –homographs not distinguished corpora teaching word family –inflected and derived forms –on an expansion scale lemma –inflected forms only

A word family: develop If you know the meaning of develop, does this mean you know what a developer is? developer (LDCE) –a person or company that makes money by buying land and then building houses, factories etc on it a Florida property developer –a person or an organization that works on a new idea, product etc to make it successful software developers –a chemical substance used for making images appear on film or photographic paper developmental –not used for the subsenses found in developer

What counts as one item? orthographic word –homographs not distinguished corpora teaching word family –inflected and derived forms –on an expansion scale lemma –inflected forms only collocations / MWUs lexical item

The General Service List GSL –not just frequency-based –2000 headwords >> lemmas –includes frequency of subsenses! –BUT dated

Discrepancy BNC - GSL BNC frequencies –blow (orthographic word) 3127 occ. –blow (VVB) 268 occ. –blow up 170 occ. –blow _ up 44 occ. GSL –blow 853 –blow (verb) of wind 307 exhale 85 instrument 110 blow up (of explosives) 51 –blow (noun) stroke 247 disaster 25

Learning burden Frequent words are normally polysemous, eg. paper Polysemous words differ in their polysemy in different languages. New senses can be learnt, but this requires more effort on the part of the learner. completely new word new (marked) meaning for known form new (unmarked) meaning for known form divergent meaning for known form

The most efficient learners’ vocabulary An “easy” vocabulary would be small and multifunctional i.e. ambiguous and polysemous few words ambiguous words higher learning burden aim: small learning burden

Vocabulary CALL live with the fact that learners will need more than 2000 words combine –frequency –saliency –usefulness of lexical items spaced repetition vary the (grammatical) context introduce new subsenses gradually

Conclusion Limitations of corpora Problems with recognizing multi-word units Problems of (divergent) polysemy Unit that is counted make for unreliable frequency lists  We need better lexical databases!

Thank You