Lesson 3 English Vocabulary

English Vocabulary

Session 1

Lesson 3 How is our word knowledge organized?

chunks

use

words

lexis

meaning

form

Learning outcome:

To recognize the way the mental lexicon works. To differentiate common cross-language errors students make.

"Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed"

Wilkins, 1972

What does it mean to know a word?

form

meaning

use

written form

concepts and referents

To make a sudden change in direction often to avoid a collision abruptly diverge from a straight course a physical, mental, or moral turning away from a given course, often with abruptness

spoken form /swɝv/

form

a noun

grammatical functions

a verb

word parts

swerve

use

register

meaning

colloquial

associations

collocations/expressions

deviate twist swing turn

a sudden swerve

sharply swerve violently swerve suddenly swerve swerve to avoid sth/sb

Knowing a word means:

• having the ability to recognise it in its spoken and written forms.
• knowing its different meanings.
• knowing its part of speech [eg. a noun, a verb]
• being able to pronounce it properly.
• being able to use it correctly within a sentence in an appropriate grammatical form.
• recognizing it in context.
• being able to recognise different types of English e.g boot/trunk, lift/elevator [British/American].

1. The limo surges forward and starts to swerve wildly over the road. 2. The bus driver swerved to avoid hitting the cyclists. 3. She is one of those rare politicians whom one can trust not to swerve from policy and principle. 4. Hitting the brakes would make the bikes swerve more. 5. The driver made no attempt to swerve out of their path. 6. Nothing could swerve him. 7. He managed to pass with a perfect body swerve.

Initial fuzziness

Knowing a word

These are two different entries of the same dictionary. Identify how the different aspects of word knowledge have been presented (similarities and differences) and match them with these categories: meaning, spoken form, grammar, derived forms, collocations, register, frequency.

occur

occurence

From Longman dictionary of Comtemporary English

How is our word knowledge organized?

The mental lexicon

How is our word knowledge organized?

Experiments

Freedman and Loftus (1971)

semantically related items are 'stored together'

systems are interrelated; at a very basic level, there appears to be a phonological system, a system of meaning relations and a spelling system.

Brown and Mc Neil (1966)

1. an overlapping system in which words are stored as 'various entries'

5. several pathways will be activated simultaneously, fanning out across the network in a process called 'spreading activation'

2. one entry containing information about meaning, other about syntax and other about form.

mental lexicon

3. These individual word entries are then linked to words that share similar characteristics, whether of meaning, syntax, form - or the three of them.

4. Finding a word is like following a path through the network, or better, following several paths at once.

Monaikul, Natawut, "Towards an Integrated Model of the Mental Lexicon" (2015). All Student Theses. 59. http://opus.govst.edu/theses/59

Linked to this area of cognition: world knowledge memory Knowing a word, is the sum total of all these connections semantic, syntactic, phonological, orthographic, morphological, cognitive, cultural and autobiographical. It is unlikely, therefore, that any two speakers will 'know' a word in exactly the same way.

L2

Over-reliance on L1 may cause some problems

False friends

• actually (aktualnie in Polish means "at present" or "currently")
• apartment (apartament in Polish is a "hotel suite")
• chef (szef in Polish is for "chief" or boss")
• dress (dres in Polish for "tracksuit")
• history (historia in Polish for "story")
• lunatic (lunatyk in Polish is a "sleepwalker")
• pupil (pupil in Polish is a "pet" or "favorite")

Cognates (real friends)

• apartment (appartamento in Italian)
• garage (garage in Italian)
• balcony (balcone in Italian)
• garden (giardino in Italian)

Strangers

Chinese doesn't have equivalents for the words "privacy" and "community" The words "sinij" and "goluboj" in Russian don't have satisfactory aquivalents in English".

Acquaintances

Class example: the word "hear"

Teamwork

Answer these questions in your portfolio:

1. Name other examples of false friends, cognates, strangers and acquaintances. (four per category) 2. How can we help students learn about these words? Name two techniques. 3. What do you do to increase your vocabulary knowledge?

How many words does a learner need to know?

An educated native speaker

20.000 word families

Adult second language learners

5,000 word families

How many words does a learner need to know?

core vocabulary

2,000

defining vocabulary

2,000

Teach high frequency words

50 words a week

in 40 weeks (a year more or less) = 2, 000 words

Incidental learning

Conclusions:

• Learners need tasks and strategies to help them organize their mental lexicon by building network associations- the more the better.
• Teachers need to accept that the learning of new words involves a period of "initial fuzziness".
• Learners need to wean themselves off an over-reliance on their L1.
• Learners should aim to build a threshold vocabulary as soon as possible.