austraLasia 1338
Fat learner's dictionaries are finished! So what do I do with word lists?
ROME: 25th November 2005 -- Several weeks ago this newsletter promoted a set of English word lists with the 'good' news (and some demonstration of its effectiveness) that anything up to 95% of any normal Salesian text could be covered with the knowledge of a mere three and a half thousand words. Gratifyingly, these lists were then downloaded by most of the formation communities around the English-speaking world, plus another dozen interested individuals. Then cones the question: any ideas on what we do next? 'Learn them' could be one answer! But, gentle reader, you are really asking how best to learn them are you not?
Again just in the space of a paragraph or two, compacted information which you need to explore further, here are some thoughts applicable to learning - or teaching - these lists.
(1) The lists, except for the SWL (Salesian WL), are in 'families' - effectively a list is reduced by a third. Learn the head word - the others beneath it are manipulations of that.
(2) Never, oh never simply try to learn lists. Words rarely if ever exist alone. They keep company. Learn the company they keep. Learn groups, chunks, phrases, form patterns (V + Adv etc)
(3) Work with a good monolingual dictionary.
And at this point - fat dictionaries are finished, I mean, today's good English-English dictionary is based on corpus studies. The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary broke away from conventional 'school' an native speaker dictionaries by providing information about the valency pattern of verbs. Good dictionaries now contain not just more words because English is developing exponentially, but usage comments, register, when and when not to use a word and so on. Dictionaries have gone from 50,000 to 80,000 words in the space of 40 years - plus the comments just mentioned! They are bursting their covers. You just can't carry one around anymore!!
The solution is digital. The 80,000 word plus comments variety can fit on a hand-held or CD medium with room to spare. Searching is fast and flexible and that's what you need. The hand-held approach has been developed in South East Asia, so it's more for bilingual (e.g. Japanese-English) use. Not part of what I am saying here. CD's are interesting - driven by pedagogical needs mostly. Can be costly. Best offers seem to be: "The First English Language Teaching Multimedia CD-ROM" (Longman Interactive English Dictionary); "Helping learners with real English" (COBUILD on CD-ROM); "The easy way to improve your English" (Longman Interactive American Dictionary); "The dictionary that really teaches English" (Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary on CD-ROM).
And then there's the Internet dictionaries. Largely outside the control of pedagogues. The most popular ones are in the public domain. There's the Hypertext Webster Interface and the Roget's Thesaurus. Beyond that there's Wordnet and Wordbot. This last mentioned is what you might call a 'bottom-up'dictionary. Anybody contributes -and that can be both good and bad!
From an Australian reader comes this recommendation of a good learning site - but the pronunciation taught as 'perfect' is an American pronunciation! Does it really matter? You may wish to try this site first, because pronunciation aside, it is good: http://www.learnersdictionary.com/
VOCABULARY
valency: chemical term but used in language to describe things like transitive or intransitive or ditransitive verbs - how many objects a verb can have in simple terms.
_____________________
AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For RSS feeds, subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/rssala.xml. If you subscribe, email this information and your name will come off the regular email list. RSS eliminates problems such as multiple mailings, viruses, email bloat. Think about it!
Fat learner's dictionaries are finished! So what do I do with word lists?
ROME: 25th November 2005 -- Several weeks ago this newsletter promoted a set of English word lists with the 'good' news (and some demonstration of its effectiveness) that anything up to 95% of any normal Salesian text could be covered with the knowledge of a mere three and a half thousand words. Gratifyingly, these lists were then downloaded by most of the formation communities around the English-speaking world, plus another dozen interested individuals. Then cones the question: any ideas on what we do next? 'Learn them' could be one answer! But, gentle reader, you are really asking how best to learn them are you not?
Again just in the space of a paragraph or two, compacted information which you need to explore further, here are some thoughts applicable to learning - or teaching - these lists.
(1) The lists, except for the SWL (Salesian WL), are in 'families' - effectively a list is reduced by a third. Learn the head word - the others beneath it are manipulations of that.
(2) Never, oh never simply try to learn lists. Words rarely if ever exist alone. They keep company. Learn the company they keep. Learn groups, chunks, phrases, form patterns (V + Adv etc)
(3) Work with a good monolingual dictionary.
And at this point - fat dictionaries are finished, I mean, today's good English-English dictionary is based on corpus studies. The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary broke away from conventional 'school' an native speaker dictionaries by providing information about the valency pattern of verbs. Good dictionaries now contain not just more words because English is developing exponentially, but usage comments, register, when and when not to use a word and so on. Dictionaries have gone from 50,000 to 80,000 words in the space of 40 years - plus the comments just mentioned! They are bursting their covers. You just can't carry one around anymore!!
The solution is digital. The 80,000 word plus comments variety can fit on a hand-held or CD medium with room to spare. Searching is fast and flexible and that's what you need. The hand-held approach has been developed in South East Asia, so it's more for bilingual (e.g. Japanese-English) use. Not part of what I am saying here. CD's are interesting - driven by pedagogical needs mostly. Can be costly. Best offers seem to be: "The First English Language Teaching Multimedia CD-ROM" (Longman Interactive English Dictionary); "Helping learners with real English" (COBUILD on CD-ROM); "The easy way to improve your English" (Longman Interactive American Dictionary); "The dictionary that really teaches English" (Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary on CD-ROM).
And then there's the Internet dictionaries. Largely outside the control of pedagogues. The most popular ones are in the public domain. There's the Hypertext Webster Interface and the Roget's Thesaurus. Beyond that there's Wordnet and Wordbot. This last mentioned is what you might call a 'bottom-up'dictionary. Anybody contributes -and that can be both good and bad!
From an Australian reader comes this recommendation of a good learning site - but the pronunciation taught as 'perfect' is an American pronunciation! Does it really matter? You may wish to try this site first, because pronunciation aside, it is good: http://www.learnersdictionary.com/
VOCABULARY
valency: chemical term but used in language to describe things like transitive or intransitive or ditransitive verbs - how many objects a verb can have in simple terms.
_____________________
AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For RSS feeds, subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/rssala.xml. If you subscribe, email this information and your name will come off the regular email list. RSS eliminates problems such as multiple mailings, viruses, email bloat. Think about it!
