learning skills - students
TRANSCRIPT
Building your academic vocabulary LEARNING SKILLS
What kind of vocabulary do you need at
university?
How much vocabulary do you know?
How can you build up your vocabulary?
Is there anything else you want to get from this workshop?
Overview of this workshop
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What kind of vocabulary do you need at university?
The set of 2,000 words selected to be of the greatest "general service" to learners of English
West, 1953, A General Service List of English Words, Longman, London
http://jbauman.com/gsl.html
Words are listed in order of frequency of use
1. General Service List (2000 words)
ILEARNING SKILLS GROUP 2015 COPYRIGHT ©
LEARNING & TEACHING CENTRE
Academic vocabulary is the set of words within every discipline that represent its concepts and processes.
These are often “words that characterize written text, but are not so common in everyday language (p.7).”
Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2008).
Creating robust vocabulary: Frequently asked questions
and extended examples. New York: Guilford
Press. In N Hawthorne - http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/34121_Section1.pdf
ILEARNING SKILLS GROUP 2015 COPYRIGHT ©
LEARNING & TEACHING CENTRE
What kind of vocabulary do you need at university?
2. Academic vocabulary
Academic Word List
(570 word families, 3000 words)
Words which appear with high frequency in English-language academic texts.
http://www.uefap.com/vocab/select/awl.htm
Subject specific vocabulary http://www.uefap.com/vocab/select/selframs.htm
How much vocabulary do you know?
How to do the online quiz
How much vocabulary do you know?
Sample online quiz feedback
A word family is the base form of a word plus its inflected forms and derived forms made from affixes (Hirsh & Nation 1992, p. 692).
e.g. commentaries, commentary, commentator, commentators, commented, commenting, comments
How much vocabulary do you need
for daily life?
http://my.vocabularysize.com/result/3fbaef7c622b273b2456db9d4448f5e4
http://my.vocabularysize.com/blog/why-measure-vocabulary-size
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How can you build up your vocabulary?
• Read a variety of genre (fiction, non-fiction, newspapers, etc.)
• Read a variety of topics
• Read texts from your discipline (journal articles, trade magazines, reports, etc.)
1. Read extensively
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Reference: http://www.enhancemyvocabulary.com/improve-expand-vocabulary.html
How can you build up your vocabulary?
• Use a dictionary and thesaurus
dictionary.com, thesaurus.com
• Use vocabulary notebook/flashcards www.funnelbrain.com
• Create semantic/word maps visuwords.com
• Study prefixes and suffixes
StudyWISE, prefixsuffix.com
• Identify the key words from your field of study and create a glossary http://dynamo.dictionary.com/make
Reference: http://www.enhancemyvocabulary.com/improve-expand-vocabulary.html
2. Find ways to deal with meaning and make connections with other words
ILEARNING SKILLS GROUP 2015 COPYRIGHT ©
LEARNING & TEACHING CENTRE
N Hawthorne - http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/34121_Section1.pdf
How can you build up your vocabulary?
• Academic Word List Quiz
• www.vocabulary.com
• freerice.com
• Scrabble, Boggle, crossword puzzles
Reference: http://www.enhancemyvocabulary.com/improve-expand-vocabulary.html
3. Play games and do quizzes
http://www.englishvocabularyexercises.com/AWL
Example: online quiz
http://www.englishvocabularyexercises.com/AWL
Example: online quiz
How can you build up your vocabulary?
• Write
- your own sentences (use different forms of the same
word, e.g. noun, adjective, verb)
- a paragraph (use many of the words you learned)
- your assignments
• Use the words during conversations with others
• Explain/Teach the vocabulary you learn (to your friends, fellow students)
Reference: http://www.enhancemyvocabulary.com/improve-expand-vocabulary.html
4. Activate/Use the vocabulary you learn
Online tools to help you use vocabulary
accurately and naturally
http://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/
Online tools to help you use vocabulary
accurately and naturally http://www2.elc.polyu.edu.hk/CILL/exercises/
Online tools to help you use vocabulary
accurately and naturally Google.com
Is it natural to say or write “agree about (something)”?
Online tools to help you use vocabulary
accurately and naturally
http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/