Integrating corpus-based
vocabulary activities into an
academic writing course
TESOL 2005, San Antonio, Texas
March 30, 2005
John Bunting
Georgia State University
jbunting@gsu.edu
Ways to build upon vocabulary
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Meaning(s)
The spoken form
The written form
Its frequency (compared with similar words)
Its grammar
Collocations
Register (and any related changes in meaning)
Association with other words/concepts
Its overall positive/negative (or other) coloring?
Its use in any specific textual position?
What challenges exist?
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New ways of seeing
Explaining value to students
Learning new activity types
Finding appropriate material
Using new software
Filtering out ‘noise’
Why integrate new techniques?
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Changing technology leads to
• changes in expectations
• greater student autonomy
• access to a wider range of authentic texts
• new ways to look at patterns in text
What are the goals?
 Learn
about words and phrases
receptively & productively
 Begin to ‘notice’ patterns in text
 Develop strategies for
approaching other words and
phrases
Academic Writing 0950
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Last level before entering the university
Content-based course – American History from
early 1500s to mid 1700s
Focus on writing for tests and classroom
assignments
Writing based on displaying knowledge of
reading of college-level textbooks
Assessment heavily weighted towards exams
based on textbook readings
The students/writers
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Primarily international students
Almost all planning to study at either
graduate or undergraduate level in the
next semester
Highly motivated
Range of L1 and cultural backgrounds:
• Spanish (Latin American), Korean, Chinese,
Japanese, Nepalese, Vietnamese
The timeline project
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Students construct a project creating a
timeline that shows historical events and
people from different countries, relating
or contrasting them with events and
people from US History
Students gain some perspective on how
historical events that shaped the US
connected with the rest of the world
(Snell, 2004)
Timeline project – details
 Semester-long
project
 Requires articles about related
topics (narrow reading)
 The corpus-based activities are
part of this project
Initial steps
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Define and exemplify terminology:
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Collocation
KWIC
Concordancing
Register
Corpus/corpora
Show students ways to copy and save text files
Create links to relevant websites
Initial steps
Building a corpus of studentselected texts
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In small groups, determine topics
Assign tasks based on timeline project
Included in tasks: select articles and read them
Save articles as text files
Send text files to teacher along with assignment
Compile text files and use them for additional
assignments
Adding to the corpus
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Repeat the text-compiling process for each
assignment
Incorporate other tasks into each
assignment
Compile the texts into country-specific
folders and one “complete” text
Finding articles and saving them
as text files
IEP 0950 Writing from Reading Assignment #1
Finding articles about your timeline project, and saving text files
Name:_____________________________
The assignment: Online, find two scholarly articles and two news
articles on your topic. They need to be in readable form (either as
text documents or html files). Read through them and write a one to
two sentence summary of the article.
Time period: ________________________
Country/culture: _____________________
Summary sentences:
1.
2.
Please email me the text files for all articles as text attachments
Finding concordance lines using
an online concordancer
The assignment: For your word, you will need to do the
following for your word:
 Create a definition for the word
 List all its forms (noun, verb, etc. in a chart)
 Find 20 concordance lines from academic readings
for the word, using Compleat Lexical Tutor
 Find one pattern about that word (this can be other
words that go with it, or grammar patterns that seem
common) based on the concordance lines that you
find.
Concordance lines - student
results
Trying to identify patterns from
concordance lines
T1: Pattern: Someone assumes that something
happens [Clause]
Example: People automatically assume that I'm in
college.
S1: Pattern: Something is processed into something
Example: The material will be processed into plastic
pellets.
S2: Pattern: analysis of do/carry out/conduct an
analysis
Example: Further analysis of the data is needed.
They were doing some type of statistical analysis
Reviewing the AWL vocabulary
Connecting articles to the AWL
The assignment:
 Choose one of your texts to use in this website.
 Find and make a list of the AWL words from sublist 1
and 2.
 Choose two words from those that you think are very
important and find then in the text.
 Copy the sentences from the text that includes those
words.
 Write two more sentences (about the same country)
that uses that word (or one of its word forms)
Connecting articles to the AWL–
Student work
Examining word frequency in
articles
Look at the most frequent words in the
articles chosen for all the timeline
projects. Decide which words are
function words, which are probably about
specific countries (the US, China, etc.)
and which might be considered
‘academic’ vocabulary.
Students determine which
words from the frequency
list are function words or
content words. They also
determine which content
words might be more
strongly connected to one
topic (country) or another
Examining phrases in the
corpus
Choosing phrases in the corpus
– student work
Some useful phrases that students chose
from the texts:
• As well as the
• by the end of
• at the same time
• at the end of
• put an end to
• in addition to the
Creating phrases– student work
Some phrases that students chose, not
from the texts:
• The outcome of the
• The British government mentioned that
• Between XXXX and XXXX
• Influenced by World War II
• The independence of Korea from Japan
• A ‘long march’ led by
Next steps
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Add/remove tasks based on student response
Connect this to oral communication class,
using MICASE
Try working with scholarly articles in students’
fields of study (IEP or grad students)
Have students use more sophisticated online
programs for grammar/lexical patterns (WASP
Bench)
Bibliography
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Bunting, J. (2006). College Vocabulary 4. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin.
Schmitt, N. (2000). Vocabulary in language teaching.
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Schmitt, N. and R. Carter (2000). "The Lexical Advantages of
Narrow Reading for Second Language Learners." TESOL
Journal 91: 4-9.
Scott, M. (1999). Wordsmith Tools. Oxford, Oxford University
Press: computer software.
Underhill, A. (2002). MacMillan English dictionary for advanced
learners of American English Workbook. Oxford: MacMillan.
Websites
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Compleat Lexical Tutor (for frequency and
vocabulary profiles)
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Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken
English
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http://www.lextutor.ca/
http://www.hti.umich.edu/m/micase
WASP Bench: A Semi-Automatic
Lexicographer's Workbench for Writing
Word Sense Profiles
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http://wasps.itri.bton.ac.uk/