English 737
Final Project
Dr. Keck
Cherry Ngai
Fanny Law
Min Song
Rainie Zhang
Using Corpora to Develop Teaching Materials Synonymous Words
The present paper first attempts to get insights of the definitions of SAY, TELL,
TALK, and SPEAK from the traditional dictionaries, www.dictionary.com, and
corpus-based dictionaries, Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English.
Second, the frequency counts of the target words are collected from COCA,
MICASE, General Service List, and Academic Word List. Next, the
documentation of the procedure, phraseologies, and findings of each of the target
words is presented. Then, results of the findings are synthesized and discussed.
Finally, some reflections about the process of this study and their implications are
offered.
1.
Introduction & Rationale
Many English learners have difficulty using SAY, TELL, TALK, and SPEAK
appropriately in the right context. In many languages, especially Asian languages, there are only
at most two words that represent the same meanings of these four words. Because many bilingual
and monolingual learners’ dictionaries only show the definitions of the words or at most show
some selective example sentences of their usage, many English learners get confused with the
usage especially when they rely heavily on L1 transfer in the beginning phase of learning
English as a second language. The differences of their meaning are subtle. In some cases, more
than one of the words are appropriate in the same context. However, in other contexts, they are
not compatible in the same context. Therefore, even knowing the subtlety of the different
meanings can still cause errors of usage. Besides the lack of clarity of dictionary definitions, not
many ESL textbooks devote a section on explaining the usage of these four commonly used
words or comparison between them.
Especially in speaking, learners make mistakes without knowing. Moreover, the
likelihood of having someone to correct their errors is very slim. Even if they have native
speakers to correct the wrong usage of the words, native intuition is not effective in explaining
why one word should be used over the others. Naturally, self-correction becomes quite
impossible. Besides, even though students have access to vast information of vocabulary online
through the search engine, such as Google, and online dictionaries, they may not be able to
identify the correct uses of the target words in different contexts. Consultation of corpus-based
dictionaries may be promising because not only do they give definitions to the words in query
but also their phraseologies of usage; however, most learners are not aware of their existence on
the Internet. If students are trained to use these corpus-based sources correctly, their vocabulary
acquisition will become more effective by understanding and getting knowledge on registers,
collocations, grammatical patterns, etc. (McCarten, 2007).
In our target teaching context, university ESL courses, teachers generally do not pay too
much attention on teaching SAY, TELL, TALK, and SPEAK. Because it is assumed that these
are low level vocabulary words, they do not present such a need to be taught over those academic
vocabulary words that would enhance students’ understanding of academic texts. For the nearly
synonymous words, there have been corpus-based studies in the literature where synonymous
words are investigated. Butler (2008) studied idea, concept, and notion; Liu (2010) studied make,
take, do, and have and their collocating nouns; Wu (2008) investigated advise, recommend, and
suggest. Dictionaries alone, even corpus-based dictionaries, cannot provide a clearer explanation
of the meanings and usages of these target words as effective as these studies have shown us.
Our purpose of this study is to investigate the different usage of these nearly synonymous
words, SAY, TELL, TALK, and SPEAK, from the corpora. Through learning the lexicogrammatical associations and differences of these four target words, we aim to develop corpus
informed teaching materials and resources that can be helpful to show learners the repeated
occurrences of patterns. We especially believe that the phraseology patterns we can find in the
corpora are convincing evidences to back up dictionary and intuitive knowledge of the usage of
these four words. By showing the contextualized concordance lines from our investigation, the
example sentences of real language would help solve the ambiguity of the usage problems
among SAY, TELL, TALK, and SPEAK. As mentioned above, we are concerned that our target
university ESL learners would not get corrected when they use these words incorrectly in their
daily speech events. Therefore, we decided to conduct our investigation in the interactive spoken
corpus, MICASE, in the academic settings and COCA for its multifunctional search features as
an additional reference. Another purpose of this study is to document the step-by-step process of
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our investigation when developing the corpus-informed materials since not much research has
recorded the procedure and the real challenges being encountered.
2.
Dictionaries
Dictionary.com and Longman dictionary
To learn the listed definitions of SAY, TELL, TALK, and SPEAK in the existing
dictionaries, we chose to employ two online dictionaries, Dictionary.com and Longman
Dictionary of Contemporary English. The former is believed to be used by many English
learners since it is the first return from Google search when “dictionary” is typed in as the search
word. According to Dictionary.com, the contents are from “15 authoritative licensed and
proprietary reference sources.” Having over 50 million visitors per month, the website not only
provides the definitions, but also it offers an access to the other online vocabulary studying tools,
such as Thesauraus.com.
While Dictionary.com is a collection of the traditional dictionaries stored online,
Longman Dictionary is an online corpus-based vocabulary search tool. Therefore, examples
provided in Longman Dictionaries come from real and authentic language that is closer to daily
life usages. Besides, this corpus-based dictionary contains a large number of new words and
meanings highlighting 3000 most frequent words in spoken and written English.
Considering the different characteristics of the two online dictionaries, we started our
search on the four words: SAY, TELL, TALK, and SPEAK. Since our research focus is
differentiating these words in meanings with their interchangeable use, we only searched
definitions of these words as verbs and excluded all other parts of speech and idiomatic
expressions. The definitions we found on the four words are as follows:
Dictionary.com
SAY
Longman Dictionary
–verb (used with object)
-[intransitive only in negatives, transitive]
1. to utter or pronounce; speak:
1. to express an idea, feeling, thought etc using
What did you say? I said “Hello!” words: 'I'm so tired,' she said.
2. to express in words; state;
say (that): A spokesman said that the company had
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declare; word: Say it clearly and
improved its safety standards.
simply. It's hard to know how to
say how/why/who etc :Did she say what
say this tactfully.
happened?; I would like to say how much we
3. to state as an opinion or
appreciate your hard work; 'Why did she leave?' 'I
judgment: I say her plan is the
don't know - she didn't say.'
better one.
say something to somebody: What did you say to
4. to be certain, precise, or assured her?
about; determine: It is hard to say
a terrible/silly/strange etc thing to say: What a silly
what is wrong.
thing to say!
5. to recite or repeat: to say one's
say hello/goodbye/thank you etc (=say something
prayers.
to greet someone, thank someone etc): She left
6. to report or allege; maintain:
without saying goodbye.
People say he will resign.
say you're sorry (=apologize): I've said I'm sorry -
7. to express (a message,
what more do you want?
viewpoint, etc.), as through a
say yes/no (to something) (=agree or refuse): Can I
literary or other artistic medium: a go, Mum? Oh please say yes!
writer with something to say.
say nothing/anything/something (about
8. to indicate or show: What does
something): He looked as if he was going to say
your watch say?
something; I wished I had said nothing about
9. to assume as a hypothesis or
Jordi.
estimate: Let's say, for the sake of
have anything/nothing/something to say: Does
argument, that it's true.
anyone else have anything to say?; Although he
–verb (used without object)
didn't say so, it was clear that he was in pain;
10. to speak; declare; express an
What makes you say that (=why do you think
opinion.
that)?
say to do something (=tell someone to do
something): Nina said to meet her at 4.30; I'd like
to say a few words (=make a short speech): 'So
what are your plans now?'; ' I'd rather not say.
'2. -[transitive not in passive] to give information
in the form of written words, numbers, or pictures 4
used about signs, clocks, letters, messages etc: The
sign said 'Back in 10 minutes.
say (that): He received a letter saying that the
appointment had been cancelled.
say to do something (=gives information about
what you should do): The label says to take one
tablet before meals.
say who/what/how etc: The card doesn't even say
who sent the flowers; It says here they have live
music.
3. mean-[transitive usually in progressive] used to
talk about what someone means: What do you think
the writer is trying to say in this passage?; So what
you're saying is, there's none left.
be saying (that): I'm not saying it's a bad idea.
4. think that something is true
-[transitive] used to talk about something that
people think is true
they say/people say/ it is said (that): They say that
she has been all over the world; It is said that he
was a spy during the war.
somebody is said to be something/do something:
He's said to be the richest man in the world; Well,
you know what they say - blood's thicker than
water; The rest, as they say, is history.
5. show/be a sign of something -[transitive] to
show clearly that something is true about someone
or something's character: The fact that she never
apologized says a lot about (=shows something
very clearly)
b) to show what someone really is feeling or
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thinking, especially without using words: The look
on her face said 'I love you'.
something says everything/says it all : His
expression said it all.
6. speak the words of something
-[transitive] to speak the words that are written in a
play, poem, or prayer: Can you say that line again,
this time with more feeling?
7. pronounce- [transitive] to pronounce a word or
sound: How do you say your last name?
8. suggest/suppose something
[transitive usually in imperative] used when
suggesting or supposing that something might
happen or be true.
TELL
–verb (used with object)
1 [transitive] if someone tells you something, they
1. to give an account or narrative
communicate information, a story, their feelings
of; narrate; relate (a story, tale,
etc to you
etc.): to tell the story of Lincoln's
tell somebody (that): I wish someone had told me
childhood.
the meeting was canceled.
2. to make known by speech or
tell somebody what/how/where/who etc: Jack had
writing (a fact, news, information, to go, but he didn't tell me why.
etc.); communicate.
tell somebody about something: No one had told
3. to announce or proclaim.
them about the drug's side effects.
4. to utter (the truth, a lie, etc.).
tell somebody something: Tell me your phone
5. to express in words (thoughts,
number again.
feelings, etc.).
tell (somebody) a story/joke/secret/lie: She told us
6. to reveal or divulge (something
some funny stories about her sister.
secret or private).
tell somebody straight (=tell someone the truth,
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7. to say plainly or positively: I
even though it might upset them): Tell me straight,
cannot tell just what was done.
Adam. Just answer yes or no.
8. to discern or recognize (a distant 2 [transitive] to give information in ways other
person or thing) so as to be able to than talking
identify or describe: Can you tell
tell somebody how/what/where/who etc: The light
who that is over there?
tells you when the machine is ready.
9. to distinguish; discriminate;
tell somebody about something: What do these
ascertain: You could hardly tell the fossils tell us about climate change?
difference between them.
3 [transitive] to say that someone must do
10. to inform (a person) of
something
something: He told me his
tell somebody (not) to do something: The teacher
//name//.
told the children to sit down quietly.
11. to assure emphatically: I won't, I thought I told you not to touch anything!
I tell you!
tell somebody (that): Bernice was told she had to
12. to bid, order, or command: Tell work late this evening.
him to stop.
tell somebody what/how etc: Stop trying to tell me
13. to mention one after another, as what to do all the time.
in enumerating; count or set one by 4 [intransitive,transitive not in progressive] to
one or in exact amount: to tell the
know something or be able to recognize something
cattle in a herd; All told there were because of certain signs that show this
17 if we are correct.
can/can't tell: She might have been lying. Benjy
–verb (used without object)
couldn't tell.
14. to give an account or report:
tell (that):The moment Kramer walked in, I could
Tell me about your trip.
tell that things were not going well.
15. to give evidence or be an
tell (something) a mile off (=know easily):You
indication: The ruined temples told could tell a mile off that he was lying.
of an ancient culture, long since
tell when/how/whether/if etc: It's hard to tell how
passed from existence.
long the job will take.
16. to disclose something secret or tell something by something/from something: I
private; inform; tattle: She knows
could tell from his tone of voice that Ken was
who did it, but she won't tell.
disappointed.
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17. to say positively; determine;
5. [transitive not in progressive] to be able to see
predict: Who can tell?
how one person or thing is different from another
18. to have force or effect; operate tell something from something: How can you tell a
effectively: a contest in which
fake Vuitton handbag from the real thing?
every stroke tells.
19. to produce a marked or severe
effect: The strain was telling on his
health.
TALK
–verb (used without object)
1 [intransitive] to say things to someone as part of
1. to communicate or exchange
a conversation: I could hear Sarah and Andy
ideas, information, etc., by
talking in the next room.
speaking: to talk about poetry.
talk about: English people love to talk about the
2. to consult or confer: Talk with
weather.
your adviser.
talk to: She spent a long time talking to him.
3. to spread a rumor or tell a
talk with: I got the truth from talking with Elena.
confidence; gossip.
talk together: They were talking together in the
4. to chatter or prate.
hall.
5. to employ speech; perform the
talk in a low voice/a whisper etc: They were talking
act of speaking: to talk very softly; in low voices, and I couldn't catch what they were
to talk into a microphone.
saying.
6. to deliver a speech, lecture, etc.: talk of (=used especially in formal or literary
The professor talked on the uses of contexts): We talked of old times.
comedy in the tragedies of
2 [intransitive] to discuss something serious or
Shakespeare.
important with someone: Is there somewhere we
7. to give or reveal confidential or
can talk in private?
incriminating information: After a talk to: You should talk to a lawyer.
long interrogation, the spy finally
talk about: We've been talking about getting
talked.
married.
8. to communicate ideas by means talk with: Parents should talk with their children
other than speech, as by writing,
about drug abuse.
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signs, or signals.
talk sport/politics/business etc:'Let's not talk
10. to make sounds imitative or
politics now,' said Hugh impatiently.
suggestive of speech.
3. [intransitive] to produce words and express
–verb (used with object)
thoughts, opinions, ideas etc: She was talking so
11. to express in words; utter: to
fast I could hardly understand her.
talk sense.
talk (in) language: They started talking in Spanish.
12. to use (a specified language or 4 [intransitive] to give a speech
idiom) in speaking or conversing:
talk on/about: Professor Davis will talk about
They talk french together for
'Trends in Network Computing'.
practice.
5 [intransitive] if someone who has secret
13. to discuss: to talk politics.
information talks, they tell someone else about it:
14. Informal. (used only in
We should stop meeting like this. People will talk.
progressive tenses) to focus on;
signify or mean; talk about: This
isn't a question of a few hundred
dollars—we're talking serious
money.
15. to bring, put, drive, influence,
etc., by talk: to talk a person to
sleep; to talk a person into doing
something.
–verb (used without object)
1 [intransitive always + adverb/preposition] to talk
1. to utter words or articulate
to someone about something
sounds with the ordinary voice;
speak to: I spoke to her last Wednesday.
talk: He was too ill to speak.
speak to somebody about something: I haven't
SPEAK 2. to communicate vocally;
spoken to Steve about all this.
mention: to speak to a person of
speak with: They did not want to speak with
various matters.
reporters.
3. to converse: She spoke with him speak of: It was the first time she had ever spoken
for an hour.
of marriage.
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4. to deliver an address, discourse, 2 [intransitive] to use your voice to produce words:
etc.: to speak at a meeting.
I was so shocked I couldn't speak.
5. to make a statement in written or 3 [transitive not in progressive] to be able to talk in
printed words.
a particular language: I don't speak a word of
6. to communicate, signify, or
French (=do not speak any French at all).
disclose by any means; convey
4 [intransitive] to make a formal speech
significance.
speak at: Jones spoke at the teachers' annual
7. to utter vocally and articulately: convention.
to speak words of praise.
speak to: She asked me to speak to her students
8. to express or make known with
about my work in marketing.
the voice: to speak the truth.
speak in favour of/against: Only one MP spoke
9. to declare in writing or printing, against the bill.
or by any means of
5 [intransitive always + adverb/preposition] to say
communication.
something that expresses your ideas or opinions
10. to make known, indicate, or
speak as a parent/teacher/democrat etc: He
reveal.
emphasized that he was speaking as a private
11. to use, or be able to use, in oral citizen, not in any official capacity.
utterance, as a language: to speak
speak well/highly/ill of somebody (=say good or
french.
bad things about someone): Her co-workers spoke
highly of her.
strictly/generally/roughly speaking (=used when
expressing an idea that you think is exactly true,
generally true etc): Strictly speaking, it's my
money, not yours. I earned it.
Findings from Dictionary.com and Longman Dictionaries
After searching the definitions of each word in both dictionaries, we found several
challenges that might cause difficulties for students in their vocabulary acquisition.
Starting with the traditional dictionary, Dictionary.com, the number of definitions to each
word is overwhelming and some of the definitions are overlapped. For example, in the case of
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TALK, Dictionary.com differentiates “to tell a confidence” and “to reveal confidential
information” as if they are different in meaning. This seems to cause students’ confusion on
meanings rather than aiding their understanding about it. The use of difficult words in explaining
the meanings of SAY, TELL, TALK, and SPEAK can also cause even more difficulty for
learners to learn these word as it requires them to look up the difficult words such as allege, utter
and prate, which are found in the definitions of TALK. Besides, we are unsure about what the
numbering of definitions in Dictionary.com might entail. Whether the numbering is organized
by its frequency or primary meanings is unknown. Lastly, the examples provided in
Dictionary.com are either decontexualized or omitted, so it does not seem to help learners to
understand the target vocabulary.
Longman Dictionary, on the other hand, has fewer definitions, in which it prioritizes the
frequency of usage, and it does not seem as overwhelming. Examples are provided in each of the
definition in Longman Dictionary. They are also clearer and more explicit because the
collocation and phraseology are highlighted. However, we noticed that the same preposition is
used in different meanings such as TALK “about” for both meaning discussing and gossiping,
and this can be confusing for learners. Besides, our project only focuses on the usage of the four
words not in written but spoken contexts; therefore, we decided that extending our search using
corpora available online is appropriate.
3.
Methodologies
1) Frequencies
In order to obtain a general idea of where these four words are mostly used, we
performed the following searches in COCA.
Methods
We decided to use two corpora: COCA and MICASE for our project. We chose COCA to
get a sense of how the four words are used in both written and spoken contexts while MICASE
was selected to tailor our search and analysis for the needs of our target learners: the usage of the
four words in spoken context.
To find the frequency of each verb in each register of COCA, we first selected the chart
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format, then bracketed the target word to include all the lemma of the word and bracketed v* to
include all the lemma of the word as a verb.
Results
SAY
NEWSPAPE
SECTION
SPOKEN
FICTION
MAGAZINE
FREQ
428064
477949
308135
609270
75574
PER MIL
5,240.08
6,069.03
3,700.22
7,676.49
953.11
SECTION
SPOKEN
FICTION
FREQ
113712
135435
60169
55963
21733
PER MIL
1,391.99
1,719.76
722.54
705.11
274.09
R
ACADEMIC
SEE ALL
SUBSECTIONS
AT ONCE
TELL
MAGAZINE NEWSPAPER ACADEMIC
SEE ALL
SUBSECTIONS
AT ONCE
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TALK
SECTION
SPOKEN
FICTION
MAGAZINE NEWSPAPER ACADEMIC
FREQ
111465
54016
26415
27545
9395
PER MIL
1,364.48
685.90
317.20
347.05
118.49
SECTION
SPOKEN
FICTION
FREQ
30718
37010
15931
16826
16448
PER MIL
376.03
469.96
191.31
212.00
207.44
SEE ALL
SUBSECTIONS
AT ONCE
SPEAK
MAGAZINE NEWSPAPR ACADEMIC
SEE ALL
SUBSECTIONS
AT ONCE
As we can see from the charts above, spoken is either the 1st or 2nd mostly used context
for TELL, TALK and SPEAK while it is the 3rd context for SAY. Based on the overall results,
we can see that the four target words are highly frequently used in the spoken register.
In order to find out how highly frequent these four target words are used by English
speakers, we decided to check the General Service List (GSL) adapted by John Bauman. Again,
we found out that the four target words rank very high among roughly the 2000 frequently used
English words in general:
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SAY--35th
TELL--119th
SPEAK--297th
TALK--319th
Now that we know these four target words are four of the most generically used words in
English and they are mostly used in spoken form, the next fact we would want to find out is
whether these highly frequent words are being taught in the university class. However, when we
checked the Academic Word List (AWL) by Averil Coxhead, none of the four words appears in
the list. In fact, this result is consistent to our searches in COCA. In the tables above, the four
words are least used (or the 2nd least) in the academic context. Due to their absence in AWL and
their low frequency in the academic context, these four words are not the focus of teaching.
Unfortunately, they are highly frequently used in the students’ daily school lives. Here, we see
the gap between the materials being covered in school and the needs of students to cope with
their basic academic interaction.
As the purpose of our research focuses on the verbal use of these four highly frequent
words in the student's daily life while interacting with others, we've decided to use MICASE to
inform our material development.
2) Searches
To emphasize the use of the four words in the interactive context and the specific
language forms we would like the students to learn and the speaking environment in the States,
we narrowed down the search with the following criteria: 1) under speaker attributes, we selected
“ALL” for gender, age, and academic position/role; “native speaker, American English, for the
native speaker status. We set “native speaker, American English” for native speaker status
because our target students are studying in the university in the States. It is our belief that teacher
should present materials that are relevant to their daily lives and the students can benefit the most
from the language model of their community. 2) Under transcript attributes, we selected ALL for
academic division, academic discipline and participant level. But we would like to highlight the
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interactivity of the speech events; therefore, we highlighted the speech event type in advising
sessions, discussing sections, interview, meeting, office hours, study groups and service
encounter. In addition, we set the interactive rating as highly interactive and mostly interactive.
Since MICASE doesn’t allow us to search for all the lemma of a word, we generated a
separate search for each lemma.
Say-1079 hits/ 39 transcripts
says-314 hits/ 34 transcripts
saying-482 hits/ 34 transcripts
said-444 hits/ 38 transcripts
SAY is the most frequent word among the four. It has 2319 hits in total. Its figure is so
high that it is around four times of the second highest word TALK. This result matches with our
hypothesis that SAY is the most generic one, and it has comparatively a lot more meanings than
the other three.
Tell-276 hits/ 39 transcripts
Tells - 25 hits/16 transcripts
Telling - 32 hits/18 transcripts
Told - 75 hits/22 transcripts
In our hypothesis, we originally thought that TELL would be the second frequent word
among the four. However, TELL only has 408 hits in total, which is 217 hits less than TALK. It
is our belief that this might be the result of the high interactive criteria that we’ve set for the
searches, since TELL is more of a unidirectional way of communication while talk is more of a
two-way communication. These characteristics will be discussed in details later on in the
findings of each word in this paper.
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Talk-83 hits/ 6 transcripts
Talks- 33 hits/ 15 transcripts
Talking- 352 hits/ 41 transcripts
Talked- 157 hits/ 35 transcripts
TALK has 625 hits in total. It is the second frequent word among the four. As mentioned,
the nature of TALK is more interactive than TELL, This might be the reason why the frequency
of TALK turned out to be higher than TELL. However, one point deserves to be noted here is
that the words in MICASE are not tagged. In other words, the lemma we generated from the lists
might be of different parts of speech. Therefore, TALK and TALKING might be used as a noun
in some cases. If the number of noun usage is high enough, it might turn out that TELL is
actually more frequent than TALK after all, just like the position stated in GSL. This weakness
in MICASE will be discussed in the implication and reflection, the last part of this paper.
Speak-24 hits/ 11 transcripts
Speaks- 3 hits/ 3 transcripts
Speaking- 15 hits/ 10 transcripts
Spoke- 8 hits/ 7 transcripts
Spoken- 11 hits/ 10 transcripts
SPEAK has 61 hits in total. It is the least frequent among the four words. This result
matches our hypothesis that because SPEAK is used in relatively fixed contexts, the frequency of
the word would be lower.
For the next step, we tried different sorting of the searches for each word. Finally, we’ve
decided to sort different words in different ways:
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SAY – Due to the fact that SAY is the most generic word among the four words and the number
of matches is way too big for analysis, we’ve decided to only analyze around 50 sentences for
each lemma. We divided the matches by 50 and only take the lines of the multiple of 50 to
analyze. Because of the generic usage of the word and the method we’ve decided to use, we
think the analysis of the usage of the word SAY will be more representative if we use a random
list, rather than a neat list in alphabetical order. Therefore, we did not specify the sort for SAY.
TELL – It is our belief that the focus of searches of TELL should be on the right context, as our
hypothesis of TELL is to tell somebody something. Therefore, we sorted the search by 1R and
2R. Again, we analyzed around 50 lines for each lemma of TELL. In other words, we analyzed
all concordance lines for matches around and lower than 50 (TELLS, TELLING and TOLD) and
divided the number of matches by 50 for the matches over 50 (tell).
TALK – Similar to the case of SAY, since the number of matches of three of the lemma is way
higher than 50, we decided not to specify any sort for TALK to generate a random list for
analysis.
SPEAK – All the numbers of matches for SPEAK are lower than 50, which means we would
analyze all the concordance lines generated, so we think sorting can facilitate the process of our
analysis. After a few different attempts, we’ve decided to sort by 1R and 1L.
However, even after trying to slim down the massive number of data we have obtained
from the corpus but to still include data as representative as possible at the same time, it is still
unrealistic for a teacher to process such number of concordance lines to prepare for a class.
Therefore, it is our belief that it makes more sense to go back to the definitions in the dictionary
and base primarily on them to inform our teaching materials. The data we found in corpus will
only be used as a supplementary resource to fill up the gap between the dictionary and the
concordance lines.
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Dictionary.com is the most frequently used dictionary for ESL learners nowadays. It
became popular because when we Google “dictionary,” the first online dictionary generated on
the list is Dictioanry.com. And it seems to provide the most detailed explanations and meanings
for the words to the learners, as it has incorporated 15 dictionaries into their definitions
according to the website. However, we found the meanings given to the four target words are
overwhelming and confusing. There’re ten or more meanings for each of the word and some of
the meanings are very similar to one another, which not only confuse the students, but also
frustrate them to continue to consult the dictionary when they come across difficulties in learning.
Another shortcoming of the traditional dictionaries is sometimes, they don’t provide example
sentence for the meaning. In other words, it is hard for the learners to know how to use the word
even though they know what it means. This is why we turned to consult the corpus-informed
dictionary – Longman Dictionary.
Unfortunately, there are weaknesses in the definitions of each word in Longman
Dictionary and we’ll later on discuss separately in details under the procedure of each word’s
findings. That’s why we still need to consult the concordance lines we’ve generated in the
beginning in order to supplement the deficiency in the corpus-informed dictionary.
4.
Analysis
SAY (all lemmas)
Procedures
Needless to say, SAY is a highly frequently used word in daily conversations. The
definitions we found in dictionary.com are fairly terse with an example sentence for each
definition provided. However, more difficult words are used for defining SAY, and the short
example sentences do not give enough contexts to support the definition provided. Therefore,
we consulted the corpus-based dictionary, Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English.
18
While Dictionary.com provides 10 definitions for SAY, Longman Dictionary has 8
meanings. Some of the definitions are very similar. Although an example sentence is given for
each definition, it is not sufficient to help learners to understand. On the other hand, MICASE
provides a substantial amount of concordance lines. In order to make the analysis more
manageable and keep students’ learning goals in mind, we decided to focus on the prominent and
frequent usage of SAY. However, as we examined the meanings and phraseologies provided by
Longman Dictionary, we found sophisticated subtlety of meaning and similarity of phraseologies.
Thinking in students’ perspective, these numerous definitions and usages can be too
overwhelming. Since there are so many meanings, it is likely that learners would only look at
the first few meanings and not the rest of them. In addition, we observed that different meaning
entries actually show the same phraseology pattern, in which it can be confusing to learners. For
example, the same phraseology patterns, such as SAY (THAT), SAY TO DO SOMETHING,
SAY WHO/WHAT/HOW etc. all appear in meaning entry 1, “express something in words,” and
meaning entry 2, “give information.” The only difference of the subtlety of the two meanings is
whether the subject for SAY is animate or non-animate.
Aiming to make the meaning and usage pattern clearer and more useful for learners, we
closely examined the meaning entries in Longman Dictionary. We picked the ones that we think
are most important and frequently used in the teaching context, and then we looked for
concordance lines that share the same meaning and syntactic pattern to support them. Due to the
tremendous number of hits in MICASE and that the texts are not tagged, it was very difficult to
look for the specific phraseology patterns. Taking the phraseology pattern from Longman
Dictionary as a reference, we used the neighboring words around SAY to do some more specific
searches in MICASE. The following chart shows the meaning, phraseologies, and example
sentences from the search and analysis.
Meaning
To express something in words
verbally
Phraseologies
Quotation, animate subj. +SAY.
Examples
“I’m so tired,” she said.
Animate subj. + SAY + D.O.
+to+ I.O.
…if anyone has, something to
say to myself or Lena about how
you’d like us to…
Do we say something to her?
19
…we need to get out there and
say something to her.
Animate subj. +(modal) +SAY
+wh-clause (what/why/how, etc)
…they say what an entity is in
here.
Well first you have to say what’s
an emotion?
You gotta say why there’s no
mall, in Howell, you know?
To report what someone
expresses in words
Animate subj. + SAY + clause
(that/wh-)
She said that she’s not, that good
with characters.
…when you said that you didn’t
think that it would be too
overwhelming to struggle…
To provide information
nonverbally
Non-animate subj. +SAY +D.O.
That might be something that
says to water all drains from
north to south…
Let’s look at thirteen first.
Thirteen says that a white eye
gene in drosophila is sex-linked.
To express what someone means
“What”+ animate subj. +be
SAYING +is +clause
…that’s what she’s saying is that
like long long time ago right?
Animate subj. +be trying to
+SAY +clause
…what they’re saying is, the
enzyme, um, there’s low
concentration of the enzyme…
…there’s some negatives some
positives and you’re trying to
say whether they on average are
about zero, or whether on
average they are different from
zero.
To pronounce something, such
How do you say _____in
20
as a word in a language
English?
How do you say your last name?
To suggest or suppose something
that leads to be more specific by
giving an example
[let’s say—fixed expression]
In two hours should be back, and
time, let’s say four twenty-three.
To represent/show or be a sign
of something
[don’t/doesn’t say much—fixed
expression]
Let’s say that the assignment,
let’s say you’re employed here
all year round.
Subj. +negation +say much
+(prep.) +obj.
So these might even be shorter.
I don’t know. cuz this this one
doesn’t even say much so…
okay. So, I can sort of expand…
There are some very secretive,
uh marsh-dwelling species that
don’t say much of anything. So
we really have, sampled here, to
uh, for our convenience.
Findings:
Of the four words under investigation, we thought that SAY seemed to be the generic
word since it is the most frequent in the general service word list and it has the broadest meaning
among them. After searching the different lemma of SAY in MICASE, we found that beside
from referring to expressing something in words, SAY carries other meanings when occurred in
other contexts and paired up with other words in some fixed expressions.
•
The most common meaning of SAY is to express something in words verbally by
animate subjects. There are a few phraseologies that are under the same meaning in
direct speech, in which the subject of the sentence is the agent of SAY. e.g. They say
what an entity is. On the other hand, SAY can also be used in indirect speech as a
reporting verb reporting what someone has expressed in words. e.g. …when you said that
you didn’t think that it would be too overwhelming to struggle…
•
When the subject is non-animate, SAY means to give information in written form such as
signs, clocks, pictures, and letters. e.g. Let’s look at thirteen first. Thirteen says that a
white eye gene in drosophila is sex-linked.
21
•
Besides from expressing something, SAY can also be referred to as ‘mean’ in the
phraseology such as …that’s what she’s saying is that like long long time ago right? In
this example, BE SAYING refers to as mean; in other words, “what she’ means’ is long
time ago.”
•
In another sense, SAY as in “how do you say” is used to mean if you could pronounce a
certain word. In which case, SAY here in this context does not entail expressing
something but pronunciation of certain words.
•
We also found some fixed expressions that have special meanings, such as LET’S SAY
or SAY. Instead of meaning expressing something in words, they signal for a supposition
or raising a hypothetical example.
TELL (all lemmas)
Procedures
After comparing Dictionary.com to Longman Dictionary, it is found that (1) the
traditional dictionary concludes 19 entries of meaning and not every meaning entry has example
sentences and the words used in the entries are abstract (e.g. to announce or proclaim), (2) in the
traditional dictionary, meaning entries are categorized into transitive and intransitive but some
meanings under different categories actually are very similar to each other, (3) meanings are
overly specific and even given based on each one of the collocations which always overwhelms
and confuses the learners.
Having found the limitations of the traditional dictionary, the focus is switched to the
corpus-based Longman Dictionary. It is found that frequent phraseologies and meanings are
provided and examples are given to each one of the phraseologies. However, the meanings given
are still overwhelming and not in a logic order. Some phraseologies where the verb TELL have
the same meanings are put under different meanings. For example, the phraseology “tell
somebody (that)” is given two meanings: “if someone tells you something, they communicate
information, a story, their feelings etc. to you” and “to say that someone must do something”.
This way, the learners may be easily confused because the meaning of the verb itself doesn’t
22
really change, and the dictionary is actually giving the meaning of the example sentences rather
than the verb. Like the traditional dictionary, we may argue that giving overly specific meanings
to collocations hinders the learners’ mastery of the target word. Learners may assume that the
meaning entries of the collocations that the dictionary include are the ones they need to
memorize and learn, and they are not provided chances to deduce the use of the target word
when they see it in other contexts. However, the meanings and phraseologies provided by the
Longman Dictionary have their value to be the basis of the current search.
In order to reorganize the phraseologies and meanings of TELL in a clearer way, the
current search consults the corpus MICASE to find out (1) what phraseologies that Longman
Dictionary includes also occur in MICASE within the chosen speech event, (2) what are the
phraseologies that frequently occur in MICASE but are not included in the Longman Dictionary,
and (3) how we could group the phraseologies with similar or same meanings with the help of
context.
Meaning
Phraseologies
Examples
To verbally convey a message
or provide information by a
personal agent.
Personal Subj. + TELL + I.O.
+ D.O.
Non-personal Subjective Pron.
+ TELL + I.O. + finite clause
Non-personal Subj. + TELL +
(I.O.) + finite clause.
Somebody told me that.
Non-personal Subj. + TELL +
I.O. + infinitive/non-finite
clause.
The lord of the manor is the person
who tells them what to do.
When I show this to my professor
he's gonna tell me to throw it all
out anyway.
Personal Subj. + TELL + D.O.
[Democratic servant] tells a story
quite clearly.
Personal Subj. +TELL + I.O. +
D.O.
She told us some funny stories
about her sister
To convey a message or
provide information/direction
by a non-personal agent. (what
is told normally has the power
of causing an consequent
action)
To narrate
23
They told her she couldn’t wear
men’s clothes.
The polarity of the cell tells you
where the head or the anterior or
the butt is [pretty much].
To describe
Non-personal Subj. + TELL +
I.O. + about+ D.O.
What does that story tell us about
politics?
To
recognize/decipher/distinguish/
come up with ideas about.
Personal Subj. + can/cannot +
TELL.
You couldn’t tell just by looking at
them.
Personal Subj. + can/cannot +
TELL + the difference(s)
Or all females were barred and all
males were not barred that would
be_ make it a lot easier to tell the
difference between the sexes.
It is + EASY/HARD + to
+TELL + clause.
It is a novel and it's a very fantastic
novel, it's a very Chinese novel, uh
but all the facts, except for the, you
know the fantastic parts, mhm but
it's hard to tell which are fantastic
and which are just Chinese
I am + TELLING + you.
I am + TELLING + you +
clause.
I am telling you.
I am telling you that there’s more
useful information in the four of
you guys’ heads than there is in
mine.
To emphasize what was said or
what will be said [idiom/fixed
expression]
Findings
•
When TELL means to provide information/message, whether the agent of the action is
animate or non-animate influences the meaning of TELL. If the agent is animate, i.e.
human being(s), TELL entails the meaning that the information/message is given through
verbally talking. On the other hand, if the agent of TELL is non-animate, i.e. an object
such as a picture or a book, TELL does not have the embedded meaning of talking and
means to convey information in other ways
•
When TELL is followed by a direct object (either with an indirect object or not), it means
to narrate. The object in this context is more likely to be nouns such as story, joke, and
secret and the agent of the verb is always animate (note here that if the direct object is the
noun difference, TELL means to recognize/decipher). However, when the preposition
ABOUT is added after TELL (either right after it or after an indirect object), the meaning
of TELL becomes to describe and the agent could be animate or not. It is found that
24
learners are always confused by the two phraseologies mentioned here – i.e. TELL +
(I.O.) + D.O. and TELL + (I.O.) + about + (D.O.), but teaching materials barely address
the confusion and teachers have made very little effort to differentiate them for the
learners.
•
Similar to what has been mentioned in the Longman dictionary, it is found that one of the
uses of TELL as transitive verb is to cause the interlocutor’s action upon what is heard.
The meaning is concluded as giving direction in the current search and the phraseologies
include TELL + I.O. + infinitive (to do), TELL + I.O. + non-finite clause (what/how to
do).
•
When TELL is used as an intransitive verb, the meaning we want to highlight is to
decipher/recognize/distinguish. The most frequent phraseologies used to convey the
meaning are CAN (NOT) + TELL and it’s hard/easy + to +TELL. However, we would
mention here that when TELL functions as transitive verb, is preceded by the modal
CAN (NOT), and followed by nouns like difference or clause like what the problem is, it
has same meaning as mentioned before.
•
In Longman dictionary, a very important use of TELL is missing – that is, the fixed
expression “I am telling you”. It occurs 4 times out of the total 32 concordance lines of
gerund form TELLING, which is significant enough to be included as a frequent use of
TELL.
•
Looking at all the meanings and phraseologies, we found that TELL does now require
immediate response and is a unidirectional communication.
TALK (all lemmas)
Procedure
Through the searches of different meanings of TALK as a verb in Dictionary.com and
Longman Dictionary, I found 15 different meanings of TALK in the former dictionary while we
found 5 meanings of TALK in the later dictionary excluding idiomatic expressions. However,
after reading through all the definitions presented in two dictionaries, we found that some of
25
them are repetitive or only used in special occasions. Besides, definitions given in both
dictionaries are confusing in a way that differences are very subtle. With none or
decontextualized example sentences, definitions in the two dictionaries are very confusing for
our target learners. Therefore, we decided to use the two corpora, COCA and MICASE, as
resources for our project to increase students understanding of the four target words. Since our
project is focused on differentiating the usage of the four words, we focused our search on
finding authentic examples and phraseologies of the target word. Besides, to make our project
manageable, instead of dealing with all the definitions stated in two dictionaries, we regrouped
the meanings that share similar characteristics as follows; 1) to converse about something with
someone, 2) to discuss with or without focus, 3) to consult, 4) to give opinion, and 5) to gossip.
Since our target learners are EFL students recently arrived in the ESL academic setting,
we chose MICASE as a primary search tool to focus on the search of how these four words are
used in the academic spoken context. In MICASE, we first chose all the speech events that are
interactive. However, for the sorting, we left all three columns as “none” since our research focus
is primarily on learning the different meanings of TALK not its collocation. Through the
MICASE search, we found that TALK is used in different spoken contexts delivering different
meanings.
However, concordances lines generated from MICASE are mostly fragments that they are
not helpful to provide good examples for our learners to understand and differentiate various
meanings of TALK. Therefore, I also used COCA as a supplementary search tool to find better
phraseologies, however knowing that the spoken texts in COCA are not pulled from academic
setting but media that talks about contemporary issues.
To discuss
To give a speech
To gossip
(about)
Let+ be+ talk+ about+ object
Let' s talk about the banking
S+ would like to + talk
crisis.
about+ noun phrase
The professor will talk about
S+ don’t+V+ adj+ to
‘Trends in fashion company.’
+talk+about+ pronoun+
I don’t’ feel comfortable to talk
but+clause
about her but I don’t understand
her philosophy.
26
To converse: two- way
1. S+ be+ talking+ with+
(with/to)
conj+talking+ with+ each
other.
talking with each other.
2. I began to talk to people in
2. S+ V+ prep+ talk+ to+ noun
phrase.
To consult (with)
1. We' re sitting down and
the community about the
museum.
Talk+ with+ someone
Talk with your adviser.
Findings
Unlike definitions and collocation stated in the two online dictionaries, we didn’t find
many variations of TALK in MICASE and COCA. Rather, TALK ABOUT and TALK TO are
most frequently found. For instance, in COCA, the former has total 103,788 occurrences while
the later has 53,705 occurrences. Besides these two prepositions that come after TALK, “with” is
also found more frequently than other prepositions stated in the two dictionaries such as “on” “of”
and “in.”
•
The first interesting observation we had through the corpora search is that, same
prepositions (e.g. “about” and “with”) used with TALK deliver different meanings. For
example, TALK ABOUT is used in 1) discussing something with someone, 2) giving
speeches or lectures, and 3) gossiping. In case of TALK WITH, it is used in a general
two- way conversation while it also can be used as a two-way conversation that focuses
more on a certain topic in a more serious manner such as a consultation.
•
This provides us a good teaching implication. Instead of teaching all the definitions
stated in the two online dictionaries, it is more effective for our learners to learn the most
frequent definition of the words.
•
My second observation of TALK is that the conversation always happens in two-ways.
Since the preposition “with” already infers that there are other interlocutors in
communication, students can infer that TALK WITH is two –way communication.
Commonly understood as a directional preposition “to,” it also signals a two-way
27
conversation when it is used with TALK. For instance, “I talked to the community about
the next months’ festival,” students can guess that TALK involves the expectation of
other interlocutors’ responses.
•
Thirdly, when someone talks about or talks with something, the topic can be either
general or has a specific focus. This then differentiates the characteristics of the TALK
from purposeless chat to purposeful lecture or consultation.
SPEAK (all lemmas)
Procedures:
There are 11 meanings in the traditional dictionary, Dictionary.com. It is confusing to the
learners by looking at them, because some of the meanings are very similar and some of them are
overlapped. Therefore, once again, we turned to the corpus-informed dictionary, Longman
Dictionary.
However, it is unfortunate that the first explanation provided in Longman Dictionary is to
talk to someone about something. This doesn’t help the learners as the most difficult usage of
speak is to differentiate it from talk. So if they’re struggling with the usage of talk and speak,
giving another word in a word’s definition doesn’t clarify the differentiation. Therefore, we think
it is necessary to consult the corpus to look at the concordance lines.
Since we focus on helping students converse in the academic setting, we decided to use
MICASE, specifying the interactive speech events.
Meaning
Phraseologies
Examples
To communicate vocally; to
Subject + SPEAK + (prep) +
…is this recently that you spoke
converse formally
Object Pron.
with Eric Lormand?
To use your voice to produce
Subject + SPEAK + (adverb)…
I’m speaking fast because I
know you have to go…
words
To be able to talk in a particular
…pronoun + (negation) +
28
I’m getting ready to go to Italy,
SPEAK + language(s) …
language
and I don’t speak Italian, and
I’m gonna be feeling exactly the
way you felt.
To make a formal speech
Subject + (passive voice) +
I was invited to speak in front of
SPEAK + (adverbial)
them and I just wanted to let you
know what the visiting
committee was…
To express opinions
Subject + SPEAK + (prep) …
Remember I spoke early on
about the law of unintended
consequences?
Findings:
After searching the different lemma of speak in MICASE, we found out that speak has five
main meanings, which matches the meanings in the Longman Dictionary. However, we dispute
the first meaning and there’re a few points we’d like to highlight:
•
Attention should be drawn to the first meaning as it is very similar to talk: to
communicate vocally or to converse formally. The reason why we completely changed
the definition and didn’t use any of the four words to define speak is that we don’t want
to confuse the learners and mislead them to think they’re synonyms. The word “formally”
in the definition is something we’d like to highlight: speak is often used in a conversation
with important people or a person who has a higher status in a formal setting. In other
words, there is a high awareness of the status of the interlocutors in the conversation. The
example in the chart shows that the person being spoken with is being addressed in full
name. This means Eric Lormand is someone who is important enough or should be
addressed formally.
•
To be able to talk in a particular language is the most common usage of speak. And
language cannot be used with any other three words. This is the most prominent and fixed
collocate with speak.
29
•
The fourth meaning of speak is to give a formal speech. This can be easily understood as
it relates to the first meaning of speak, which has a lot to do with the formality of the
conversation.
•
Four out of five meanings of SPEAK don’t necessarily require response from others
except for the first meaning: to communicate vocally or to converse formally. This
explains why this usage is most likely to be confused with the usage of TALK. The
comparison of SPEAK and TALK will be discussed in details under the results of this
paper.
Based on our intuition, speak up is a very useful expression in the interactive speech
events in academic settings. However, there are only 3 matches in all the lemma. We didn’t find
the pattern prominent enough in MICASE, therefore, we turned to consult COCA.
Method
Due to the fact that we want to generate the results of the fixed collocates – speak up, we
put speak up in the context box. We would also want to search for the results of all the lemma of
speak, so we put a bracket around speak. Since we’re focusing on the spoken register, we chose
spoken under section.
Result
CONTEXT
TOT
1
SPEAK UP
269
2
SPEAKING UP
57
3
4
SPOKE UP
SPOKEN UP
49
26
5
SPEAKS UP
21
TOTAL
422
30
SPEAK UP (COCA)
Speak louder
“Speak up. I want to hear what
SPEAK UP
you said.”
Subject + (modal) + SPEAK UP Yeah. Say it again. You need to
speak up, Mr. Fawley.
1) Express opinion
Subject + SPEAK UP …
…he will speak up when he feels
strongly about these issues…
You need someone who will
speak up for the military.
2)Express opinion in favor of
Subject + SPEAK UP + for +
somebody or something
Object Pron.
Findings:
The meanings of speak up match the definitions in Longman Dictionary, which are: to
speak louder and to express opinion. Based on our learning experience in the interactive speech
events in academic settings, speak louder is the main usage of the expression speak up. However,
after looking at the concordance lines in COCA, express opinion is the dominant meaning for the
expression. Therefore, we believe it is important to teach both of the meanings to the students.
5.
Results
SAY vs. TELL
Here we would compare the meanings and phraseologies of SAY and TELL and show
the value of teaching these words together to the learners.
1. SAY + direct object vs. TELL + direct object
From the meanings and phraseologies that we generated for SAY and TELL, when these two
verbs are followed by a direct object, SAY means to pronounce something; in other words, SAY
31
here is more likely to focus on the action of making the utterances. On the other hand, TELL
means to narrate in this context except when the direct object is a noun such as difference. It is
found that learners always find it confusing to differentiate SAY and TELL when they precede a
direct object and teachers often times tend to tell the learners that the phrases like tell a story is
just a fixed use. However, we suggest that this could be well explained with example sentences
chosen from the corpus. Taking the sentence Democratic servant tells a story quite clearly as an
example, if the TELL is replaced by SAY, i.e. Democratic servant says a story quite clearly, the
meaning is no longer to narrate the story but to make the utterance of the word “story”.
2. Non-personal subj. + SAY + clause (finite and non-finite)/infinitive vs. Non-personal subj. +
TELL + (I.O.) + clause (finite and non-finite)/infinitive
The other similar phraseology of SAY and TELL is when they are both preceded by a nonanimate subject (e.g. a book, a sign, a picture). Here SAY never takes an indirect object while
TELL could take the indirect object or not. They could be both followed by a clause (either finite
or non-finite) or an infinitive. Here both SAY and TELL means to convey a message or to
provide information. For example, in the sentence with a finite clause Let’s look at thirteen.
Thirteen says that a white eye gene in drosophila is sex-linked, SAY could be replaced by TELL
and meaning of the sentence will not be changed. Note that here we could either insert an
indirect object after TELL, i.e. Thirteen tells us that …, or not. When the clause is non-finite, we
found that though SAY could be replaced by TELL, we need to insert an indirect object to make
the sentence grammatical. For example, in the sentence That might be something that says to
water all drains from north to south, SAY could be replaced by TELL but an indirect object
must be added, i.e. That might be something that tells us to water all drains from north to south.
It is the same case when the verb precedes an infinitive. For example, in the sentence The sign
says to stop, SAY could be replaced by TELL but an indirect object is required, i.e. The sign tells
us to stop. Therefore, we conclude that when the subject of the sentence is non-animate, the two
verbs are likely to be interchangeable. To be more specific, SAY can be replaced by TELL if it
precedes a finite clause and SAY can be replaced by TELL + indirect object when it precedes
either a non-finite clause or an infinitive.
32
Talk vs. Speak
As we mentioned earlier, in some languages our target search words deliver exactly same
meaning in their L1s. This led me to search the similarity of each word in its meaning in English.
Therefore besides the dictionary and corpora search, I also looked up the four words in
thesauraus.com and found that TALK and SPEAK are interchangeably used in English.
However, the two words are different in that TALK is used for informal conversation while
SPEAK is used for formal communication. To illustrate, “I talked to the supervisor” and “I spoke
to the supervisor” imply different meanings. The former is more informally used in a function of
converse while the later is used in more former manner implying the talk is more serious.
Both TALK and SPEAK require two way communication but more frequently in TALK.
For instance, in a sentence that “I talked to the community about the next month budget”, we can
see the speaker expect listeners’ responses. However, in a sentence like “The professor spoke
trends in Network company” we can see that not all listeners are expected to respond to the
subject.
TALK AND SPEAK also used in function of speaking a language. For instance, we say
“They talked (in) English.” and “They spoke English.” However, the former case, English is
used as a means to communicate while the later focuses on the speaker’s capability to speak the
language.
In addition to these findings, I also could infer where other meanings of TALK and
SPEAK generated from. For instance, besides the general discussion and conversation, “talk”
has meanings of to consult and to gossip which require two –way communication in casual
conversation while SPEAK as in giving a speech which is a formal talk.
6.
Reflections and Implications
Dictionary
It is believed that dictionary is the source that learners most frequently turn to for
explanation of unknown words. However, we found that no matter which kind the dictionary is,
33
either a traditional one similar to Dictionary.com or a corpus-based one such as Longman
dictionary, the meaning entries provided in them are extremely overwhelming for the learners
and not every meaning entry is given to an example sentence. The decontextualization of
meaning entries provides the learner with very little guidelines in terms of the actual use of the
target words and the excessive specificity of meaning entries, instead of giving the learners a
comprehensive understanding of the word, actually confuse the learners very much.
Limitations of MICASE for teachers to consult
When we did the searches in MICASE, we found that the data in MICASE was not
tagged and if we were to include all the lemmas of a single verb, we needed to do separate
searches for each one of the forms of the verb. In addition, after generating the concordance lines
of all the lemmas of the verb, it requires manual work to identify the ones where the forms of the
target word do function as a verb rather than a noun (e.g. gerund) or an adjective (e.g.
gerund/past participle). It is unrealistic for teachers to spend this much amount of time on
reading through the concordance lines and analyzing the grammatical function for each one of
them.
One of our purposes of consulting MICASE is for the teachers to be able to borrow the
concordance lines as examples of the actual use of the target words in spoken English. However,
having looked at the concordance lines closely, we found that most of the sentences were very
likely to be fragments so that they are not polished enough to be the examples that learners are
supposed to learn and imitate though they are very representative in terms of the nature of
spoken English.
Time constraint
Since the current project aims to investigate how teachers could design a workshop of
certain lexical items with the help of corpus, we planned to start with searching the target words
in corpus and trying to generate the list of meanings and phraseologies out of the concordance
lines, compare the list to the meaning entries in the source dictionaries, and incorporate the
overlapping part in the class because we assume that if these meanings and phraseologies occur
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in both the dictionaries and the list we generated from the corpus, they must be the highly
frequent ones that speakers use so that teachers may want to teach them in class. However, this
procedure was proved to be unrealistic for teachers in real life if they are to prepare for a
workshop they are going to teach soon. Therefore, we changed our procedure and decided to
look at the corpus-based dictionary first, search the phraseologies provided by the dictionary in
MICASE, reorganize the phraseologies according to meanings, and pull out complete sentences
from MICASE as examples the phraseologies. This procedure saved us much time, led our
project to consult the dictionary, and took the corpus as the supplementary source for dictionaries.
We consider this procedure more manageable for the teacher and more practical for the learners.
Implications for teaching and further study
Having done the searches and the comparison of words, we believe that our results, to
some extent, have refined the existing material, i.e. the dictionaries in this case, and provided
clearer instructional methods of synonymous words which always confuse the learners. Learners
will be very likely to benefit from the comparisons of confusing synonyms and the examples
teacher borrowed from the concordance lines.
However, we consider a corpus-aided preparation of vocabulary teaching, as what we did, a very
stressful and exhausting burden for teachers. It is not practical and worthwhile for teachers to
spend this much time and energy on a preparation only for a two-hour workshop.
Therefore, more researches and studies are needed to explore the procedures and methods that a
teacher could use when s/he wants to consult the corpus as a supplementary source. We believe
that more studies on this topic will be very helpful to refine the procedure so that there could be
eventually a less time-consuming and more effective way of doing it as a guideline for teachers.
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References
Butler, C. (2008). The very idea! A corpus-based comparison of idea, concept, and notion and
their formal equivalents in Spanish. Journal of the Spanish association of Anglo-American
studies, 30(2):59-77.
Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly, 34, 213-238.
Liu, D. (2010). Going beyond patterns: Involving cognitive analysis in the learning of
collocations. TESOL Quarterly, 40(1): 4-30.
McCarten, J, (2007), Teaching Vocabulary; lessons from the Corpus, lessons for the classroom.
Cambridge University Press
West, M. (1953). General service list, In J. Bauman & B. Culligan (1995), About the GSL.
Retrieved November 6, 2004, from http://jbauman.com/gsl.html
Wu, W. S. (2008, August). The marriage between corpus-based linguistics and lexico-grammar
instruction: Using advise, recommend, and suggest as an example.
WorldCALL 2008 Conference. Fukuoka, Japan.
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