Corpus Tools Session Report from the 2015 TESOL Convention

I have just returned from the TESOL 2015 International Convention and English Language Expo in Toronto, Canada. The theme for this year's convention was "Crossing Borders: Building Bridges." In this blog post, I comment on one of the sessions I attended that is of interest to those such as myself who are teaching in university intensive English programs. This year I did not present, but went as an attendee looking to get new ideas on teaching reading, writing and vocabulary. 

Corpus Confidence: Turning Language Data Into Language Learning

Amy Tate, Rice University, USA

In this presentation, the presenter provided examples of activities that used three different corpus tools: Google Ngrams, just the word, and wordandphrase. During my time as a graduate student at Northern Arizona University, I was immersed in talk about corpus as many of our faculty specialized in corpus linguistics, but as a teacher I have not always found corpus tools readily available or accessible for use in the classroom. So I was excited about this presentation's aim of making practical usage of corpus tools, especially for teaching collocations. Here are three activities I found very useful in that I can see using them in my intermediate to advanced reading and writing course I am teaching this term.   

Activity 1: Collocation Forks 

One of the activities Amy mentioned that I am looking forward to trying out for teaching collocations of new academic vocabulary terms was the use of collocation forks. Collocations forks involve selecting an important vocabulary word and then using wordandphrase to look up the most frequent collocations as a first step. Once you have chosen 3-4 collocations, then you write a fork on the board with a number of tines for the number of collocations. You can first teach this explicitly by writing the fork and the collocations for the target vocabulary word (see the post from Leoxicon for more example activities). Later, as a way to review and recall important collocations associated with a vocabulary word, you can write the fork on the board with the only the collocations. Then ask students to look through their vocabulary list to come up with the associated target vocabulary word. 

Activity 2: Student Mis-collocations 

Amy pointed out that often times one of the error codes she commonly puts on student's papers is ww-"wrong word." This error commonly occurs, she said, due to a mis-collocation. She provided the example of "They can buy it for a comfortable price." Once a number of sentences from student's own writing such as the one above are collected from student's first drafts, she goes to the site just-the-word and puts in the word combination in the search box. In this example she used "comfortable price" and selected "alternatives from thesaurus." The results of the search provides a number of collocation combinations for the word " comfortable price." She demonstrated how in the classroom teachers can point out how the green lines next to the combination shows the most commonly used word collocations, while the red are bad combinations. This seems like a great way to have students develop a greater awareness of vocabulary use in their own writing by helping them self-correct. I plan to implement this as a necessary stage in student's revision of their error feedback on essay drafts. 

Activity 3: Repairing Missing Words in Writing

One of the other errors that students have is leaving out words in their essays. Amy showed how Google Ngrams could be used to have students input the word into the search box that is missing a word after it. In her example, she used "refers" to show that the student was missing something after refer. By including *refer in the Google Ngrams search box, she was able to show that "refers to" was much more commonly used than other collocation combinations. This was my first introduction to GoogleNgrams. And even though it searches only google books, it does seem like a great way to show students statistically driven choices in vocabulary usage. 

Notes: 

Amy Tate provided her handout and slide presentation in pdf format online, which can be accessed by logging into the TESOL 2015 Conference Planner and searching for her presentation. You can access as a guest without having to create a profile. 

Preferred Vocabulary Self-Collection Strategies of EAP Reading Students: Prestation at TESOL 2013

In this blog post I have included information regarding my presentation at TESOL 2013 in Dallas, Texas.

On the second day of the conference I presented about using vocabulary self-collection techniques for EAP Reading, which is part of an action research project I conducted in the IEP I teach at under the supervision of Dr. Fredricka Stoller. I was also asked to provide a brief write up of my project for the AL Forum Interest Section of TESOL.

Below is a copy of my presentation that I presented at TESOL.

Tesol 13 presentation from Randy Rebman

  Here is the handout that accompanied my presentation at TESOL.

TESOL 13 Handout by Randy Rebman

I would like to add supplementary materials to this blog post in the future for teachers who are interested in using vocabulary self-collection techniques in their classrooms. If you decide to use any of my materials, please cite my presentation appropriately. And if you have any questions regarding my presentation, please feel free to email me at randy.rebman@oregonstate.edu.

Legitimate Peripheral Participation in Graduate School Through Action Research

In this blog post I discuss how I see Lave and Wenger's (1991) conceptualization of situated learning and "legitimate peripheral participation"(LPP) applying to my graduate school enculturation. The notion of LPP, as it has been described applying to graduate school, is that graduate students engage in tasks that take them from the periphery of the field through contact with old timers towards more fully participating in their community of practice.

One of the participatory practices I feel is important to engage in as a graduate student is conducting research. I have been fortunate to have a TA-ship where research is part of the IEP's mission, which makes attaining IRB permission a more stream-lined process. This past semester I began an action research project related to vocabulary learning strategies based around my own classroom. Throughout the project I have had to make choices about different data collection techniques and how to fit my research goals with the semester schedule of the class.  The process of transcribing data from interviews and computing numerical data from questionnaires has also made me feel more confident in my ability to conduct research. The guidance and mentoring of Applied Linguistics faculty from NAU has been instrumental in guiding me through this process. Overall, the process has helped to demystify the research process and also help me get accustomed to the messy nature of research. I view action research as a step towards more fully developing as a researcher of Applied Linguistics.

Another advantage of taking on action research projects is that I think they help you feel more confident in making different pedagogical decisions. Exploring issues for improving various aspects of your class ensures that what you are doing as a teacher is informed by current research and your own classroom context. In reading and reviewing the different approaches I have students take in developing their vocabulary knowledge, I have felt more confidence in guiding my students to explore different techniques for self-directed vocabulary learning.

Presenting at conferences is the second participatory practice that I feel has helped me develop the ability to 'talk the talk' of the field. I remember when I gave a practice talk involving the use of correlation statistics  and writing assessment in preparation of an upcoming state conference. I was describing the statistic using terms related to significance rather than strength of correlation. A minor mistake, but one that could certainly undermine my own credibility while presenting at a conference about my research. I have come to see these practice conferences as instrumental in preparing me for the larger state and national conferences. This process I feel is exemplar of the type of increasing participatory roles that Lave and Wenger (1991) speak of in their conception of 'legitimate peripheral participation. '  Looking back, I realize that my professors facilitated this type of participation by assigning conference type presentations as course requirements.

I feel the apprentice type of model that Lave and Wenger describe is an appropriate view of graduate school enculturation. I think that keeping this type of framework in mind can help graduate students consider the choices they take in activities they engage in while attending graduate school. Additionally, it can also inform the choices that faculty members make during the mentoring of graduate students.