learning skills - students

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)

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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

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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?

Take an online quiz to find out

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

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LEARNING & TEACHING CENTRE

www.uefap.com/vocab/select/awl.htm

N Hawthorne - http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/34121_Section1.pdf

Online tool for making word connections http://www.wordle.net/

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/