From Pedagogy to Lexicography and Back

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1 From Pedagogy to Lexicography and Back
Good morning. I hope you are all enjoying yourselves here on the second day, and are now ready to join me on a little return flight from pedagogy to lexicography and back. Which is why I have this little fellow up here in the corner throwing a boomerang. And also because I’m originally from Australia. I was an English teacher for 30 years and for the last 10 years I’ve been a lexicographer. So I hope that explains why I’m here today. Before I get started, would you like to tell me something about yourselves or why you chose to come to this talk? Can we go around the room? Geoff Toister GT: From Pedagogy to Lexicography 13-Nov-18

2 The ESL/EFL Learner Vocabulary acquisition is prime.
Few ESL/EFL publications are devoted exclusively to vocabulary acquisition. Learner’s dictionaries deal with word meanings. It’s possible to communicate in a foreign language without knowing how to use its structures. If you know how to say “bread” and “water” in a foreign language you don’t need to know the correct syntax for saying “I’m hungry. Where’s the closest restaurant?” So, EFL/ESL learners are right to see vocabulary acquisition as their prime objective. But most EFL/ESL publications are either textbooks, or books devoted to grammar, to literature, to reading comprehension, to listening or to writing. [Go to next slide, then back] On the other hand, learner’s dictionaries leave it up to the leaner to learn. They accept no responsibility for actually teaching words. As far as lexicographers are concerned, if the user/learner has understood the entry, then they’ve done their job. Whether or not the learner retains the newly acquired knowledge is immaterial. I believe that the ESL/EFL learner’s needs are not adequately addressed by the available teaching materials. So what about lexicographic publications, which I call “lexicalia”? Lets see … GT: From Pedagogy to Lexicography 13-Nov-18

3 EFL/ESL Publications 20 centimeters 17 meters
On a visit to a pedagogic library I counted 20 centimetres of vocab books and 17 meters of the other types. [Go back to previous slide] 20 centimeters 17 meters GT: From Pedagogy to Lexicography 13-Nov-18

4 Lexicalia Learner’s dictionaries Meaning-to-Word dictionaries
Dictionary skills manuals AND Phillips M. Vocabulary Dictionary and Workbook, A. J. Cornell Publications, New York, 2006 I have coined this word “lexicalia” … …. for want of a single term that encompasses all the various types of lexical publications that in one way or another facilitate vocabulary acquisition. There are three major types, with numerous exemplars of each. There is also a single type, that is unique and one of a kind. Moving on now to each type individually … GT: From Pedagogy to Lexicography 13-Nov-18

5 Learner’s Dictionaries
The first type is the leaner’s dictionary. Learners use these dictionaries to look up a specific word on a specific occasion. If the learner has understood all the senses of the word, he or she is satisfied and the lexicographer is too. But learners report that they often have to repeat a lookup because they don’t remember the word. So, we can say that learners dictionaries do little to support retention. GT: From Pedagogy to Lexicography 13-Nov-18

6 Meaning-to-Word Dictionaries
Enables learners to: look for a particular word collect words that are related to a particular topic area expand vocabulary by looking freely through topic areas The second type is the Meaning-To-Word Dictionary. This one is the Oxford Learner's Wordfinder Dictionary by Hugh Trappes-Lomax, published by OUP in There’s another one by Longmans, too. It takes a different approach. Instead of listing words in alphabetical order, it groups them according to similarities and differences of meaning and use. Instead of giving the word first and then its meaning, it gives the meaning first and then the word (or words) that the learner is looking for. The print edition of the dictionary lacks worksheets for practicing the words and for supporting their retention in memory. But, as an afterthought, the OUP website now provides free photocopiable worksheets. It is a pity that these were not included in the book in the first place … … because it is their very absence that detracts from the book’s efficacy as a learning tool. GT: From Pedagogy to Lexicography 13-Nov-18

7 Dictionary Skills Manuals
Bloch, M. Use Your Dictionary, Karni Publishers Ltd, Tel Aviv, 1974 Excerpt The third type, and a more useful kind of learning tool can be found in various dictionary-skills manuals linked to specific dictionaries but published separately. The Bloch manual is linked to the Hornby edition of the Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English. This happens to be exercise 110 out of the 147 that the book contains. And it is characteristic of the wealth of material in the book. It contains another 7 items in addition to the 3 that you can see here on the screen. Even though it is designed to demonstrate how the dictionary presents phrasal verbs, it actually provides the learner with an opportunity to learn some new phrasal verbs. Who would like to give us the answer to number 1 / 6 / 10 ? Right: ‘turn away’, ‘turn out’ and ‘turn up’. This is perhaps incidental learning, but it is valuable nonetheless. GT: From Pedagogy to Lexicography 13-Nov-18

8 The Three Types Not entirely satisfactory.
Teacher designed exercises as an alternative ?? Time consuming. Worthwhile only if all members of a class possess the same dictionary. From a teacher's point of view, none of the three foregoing types is entirely satisfactory. Of course, teacher-designed exercises are an alternative. But their disadvantage is that they are extremely time-consuming to produce and the effort is only worthwhile if all the members of a class possess the same dictionary. GT: From Pedagogy to Lexicography 13-Nov-18

9 Phillips’ Innovation - 1
A more deliberate approach to integrating lexicography with pedagogy can be found in Phillips' Vocabulary Dictionary and Workbook. This is a lexicon of 2,856 words for academic purposes together with sets of word games for vocabulary practice. The truly innovative feature of the book is its verso-recto page setup. GT: From Pedagogy to Lexicography 13-Nov-18

10 Phillips’ Innovation - 2
The entries are divided into alphabetic groups (so-called 'chapters') of 12 headwords and each double-page spread is devoted to a single chapter, with the lexicon always on the verso and the word games always on the recto. There are two benefits to this setup: Firstly, it sends a very clear message to the learner that merely looking up a word is not sufficient to guarantee retention of its meaning. Secondly, it simplifies and encourages repeated look-ups during practice. However, the games themselves disappoint as there are only 12 test items for the 12 headwords. This decreases the element of risk to the point that the games do not really challenge the intellect. GT: From Pedagogy to Lexicography 13-Nov-18

11 Practice is indispensable to retention. Practice should be immediate.
Learning Theory Practice is indispensable to retention. Practice should be immediate. Practice should be frequent. To the best of my knowledge, Phillips’ is the only piece of lexicalia which recognizes what learning theory tells us. Namely, that: Practice is indispensable to retention. Practice should be immediate. Practice should be frequent. I tried to emulate Phillips’ setup in Bagrut Lexicon. So, the first question I had to face was the content and size of the headword list. GT: From Pedagogy to Lexicography 13-Nov-18

12 The 58-text Corpus To answer that question, I constructed a corpus using TextSTAT, which is a freely downloadable application. The corpus consisted of 58 homogeneous matriculation-level reading comprehension texts, and yielded 21,000 tokens and 5,000 types. Let me just digress here for a moment to explain these terms. The average length of each text was 362 words and we recorded the incidence of novel types per additional text. The result, as you can see here on the screen, was a downward trend in the incidence of novel types per additional text … … which indicated that matriculation-level reading comprehension texts – at least in Israel – constitute a unique genre whose vocabulary tends to be repetitive. The 5,000 types were therefore taken to be the most relevant candidates for a learner's lexicon. GT: From Pedagogy to Lexicography 13-Nov-18

13 Tokens and Types It is a dog eat dog world. 7 Tokens But only 6 Types
There are only 6 types because “dog” is counted only once. GT: From Pedagogy to Lexicography 13-Nov-18

14 The 2,000-word Headword List
The 5,000 candidates, minus: Function words Proper nouns Numbers & Numerals Poorly dispersed words Cognates Elementary-level terms All function words, proper nouns and numbers were deleted from the list of 5,000 candidates. Poorly dispersed words [i.e. those with a high frequency merely because they appeared multiple times in a single text] and Hebrew cognates were also removed. The remaining words were manually lemmatised and POS tagged. In the next stage of selection, words listed in the lexical syllabus for primary schools in Israel (English Syllabus for Schools) were also discarded … thus leaving a final list of 2,000 words. GT: From Pedagogy to Lexicography 13-Nov-18

15 The Lexicon Having finalised the headword list, we then began compiling entries for the lexicon. The lexicon was designed along the lines of a semi-bilingual learner's dictionary. That is to say that each entry consists of a headword, grammatical information, definition, usage example and Hebrew translation equivalent. The translations were verified by a native speaker. The usage examples were adapted from the 58-text corpus or various corpora freely available on the Internet … … and multiple senses were provided whenever they were evidenced in the original corpus. Other features include phonemic pronunciation guides, usage labels, phrasal verbs with separate headword status and alternative spellings. The result is a unidirectional specialised lexicon for passive use. GT: From Pedagogy to Lexicography 13-Nov-18

16 The Exercises We then moved on to pagination.
Having set the pagination at 20 entries per page of the lexicon, we were able to begin composing meaningful practice exercises. Meaningful practice is established in 3 ways. Firstly, the lexicon divides entries into alphabetic groups of 20 headwords and provides 30 practice items per group – 6 exercises of 5 items each, as you can see here on the screen. This ratio of 3:2 increases the element of risk and obliges the user to refer repeatedly to the lexicon. Secondly, the exercises become increasingly difficult as the learner progresses from Exercise A. to Exercise F. The fifth type is particularly difficult as it requires 5 choices from 20 possibilities. Thirdly, the format of Exercise F changes half-way through the book so as to introduce an element of variety. Initially, it places words in a conversational rather than an argumentative context. Later, it calls for unscrambling jumbled sentences. GT: From Pedagogy to Lexicography 13-Nov-18

17 Lexicon and Exercises Together
As you can see here on the screen, this is the final result. In other words …. … a semi-bilingual learner’s lexicon coupled with Phillips' verso-recto page setup, which is … … based on a sound methodology for vocabulary selection. … singles out the vocabulary items most relevant to the learner. … follows the tried and true format of the semi-bilingual dictionary. … and provides challenging, corpus-based practice in real time. GT: From Pedagogy to Lexicography 13-Nov-18

18 Conclusions Small-scale specialist lexicons integrated into textbooks
Full-scale learner’s dictionaries with built-in vocabulary practice exercises More attention to learning theory in the design of learner’s dictionaries Publications similar to Bagrut Lexicon using different language pairs It may be that small-scale specialist lexicons could be integrated into traditional textbooks – and I don’t mean a skeletal E-H glossary. Designers of learner's dictionaries might want to investigate the feasibility of a scaled-down dictionary integrated with a workbook of this type. In any event, it would be worth their while to pay greater heed to learning theory. Similar publications using different language pairs could point the way. I look forward to monitoring developments and seeing others embrace this concept. Thank you for your attention. Are there any questions? GT: From Pedagogy to Lexicography 13-Nov-18