Using the Sketch Engine for second language learning: an experiment Simon Smith & Alice Chen |

2 Personnel Designers of the Sketch Engine – Adam Kilgarriff, Lexical Computing, Brighton – David Tugwell, Tech University, Budapest – Pavel Rychly, Masaryk University, Brno Chinese implementation – Huang Chu-ren, Simon Smith and colleagues at Academia Sinica This work – with Alice Mei-rong Chen, and previously with Cecilia Li-zhen Lin – the generous support of the NSC (grant H ) is acknowledged

Sketch Engine… is at is a software program which – analyses VERY large linguistic corpora – gives short summaries of word usage has been used for dictionary production has not yet been used extensively in language teaching and learning is available for Chinese, English and others gives a lot of information about context 語境 and collocation 詞語搭配 of words

Word Sketch example

Concordance example

Synonyms in language learning Language learners find it difficult to distinguish between (near) synonyms strong  powerful, but – *powerful tea – *strong car (J R Firth, 1957) can consult Sketch Differences

Sketch differences example

9 How can students use Sketch Engine? Read, or do homework, as normal Try to guess new words from context, as normal Before using dictionary, go to Sketch Engine – get a word sketch (short summary) of the new word ’ s usage – explore the word ’ s usage further, by clicking on links in the word sketch – use Sketch Differences to compare similar words

10 Experiment: How useful is the Sketch Engine for Chinese learning? 1. Select some intermediate foreign students of Chinese 2. Test their knowledge (pre-test) of collocations in Chinese 3. Ask them to use Sketch Engine regularly in their studies 4. After a period, test them again (post-test) 5. Evaluate their progress

Background of participants Used 23 volunteers from two internet discussion boards Asked them to assess their own Chinese standard

12 Sample pre-test questions (4 of 16) Collocation type questions (harder):  李德朝侵入機場控制區並侵入飛機的行 為造成了惡劣的 ___ 。 [ 結果 | 後果 ]  這個小孩很聰明, 可是不太守 _____ 的。 [ 規定 | 規矩 ] Broader context questions (easier):  為什麼我問你的時候，你沒有 ____ 我這 件事？ [ 告訴 | 告知 ]  上課很認真，下了課也認真，可是她的 ___ 一直都不太好。 [ 結果 | 成績 ]

Pre-test results Number of Tests Graded Maximum Score Minimum Score 15 7 Mean Score Standard Deviation

Work outstanding Distribute post-test and collect results Determine improvement, if any, on – collocation questions – broader context questions Get feedback on extended Sketch Engine use from participants How can CSL/ESL teachers integrate SkE into their syllabi? – currently a hot issue in ELC at MCU

Future project, next semester Will teach two very similar English classes – PE7 in MCU’s ELC One control group – Traditional vocab teaching One Sketch Engine user class – Strong reliance on SkE »Teacher and students »In class, and for class prep Compare grades on certain activities Predict that SkE class will outperform control group through exposure to real, authentic language!

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