1. DR. Charles Browne
Learning Vocabulary Webinar

2. Dr. Charles Browne, Professor of TESOL & Applied Linguistics
Director, EFL Teacher Education Program
Meiji Gakuin University; Tokyo, Japan
browne@ltr.meijigakuin.ac.jp

3. A few of my many online vocabulary learning projects…

4. Outline of Presentation(s):

Why focus on Vocabulary?

A quick introduction to corpus linguistics and associated
online tools

Introduction to several important word lists

Introduce online tools related to identifying, analyzing and
teaching important vocabulary words

Introducing sites that do graded reading and listening in a
way that also considers the teaching of vocabulary

5. Why Focus
on
Vocabulary?

6. The seminal work in
vocabulary instruction…
(2000, Cambridge University Press)
(1990, Heinle & Heinle)

7. 600,000
The largest dictionary of English (the
Oxford English Dictionary) contains
over 600,000 word families…
3
2
1
of
and
the

8. 600,00
0
The number of words we
need is actually much
less…
580,000 unknown words!
20,000
1
The average college-educated native
speaker of English only knows about
20,000 of these words….

9. 600,000
Average Native
Speaker Vocabulary
20,000
5,000
20,000
95% is minimum threshold
for comprehension…
Knowledge of just the first 5000
most frequent words of English
gives an astonishing 95%
coverage of all books,
magazines and newspapers…

10. Problem 1: most EFL Learners know far fewer
than 5000 words…
Country
Vocab.
Size
Hours of
Instruction
Reference
Japan (University)
2000-2200
800-1200
Shillaw (95), Barrow (99)
Indonesia (University)
1220
900
Nurweni & Read (99)
Oman (University)
2000
1350
Hort et al (98)
Israel (HS graduates)
3500
1500
Laufer (98)
France (HS students)
1000
400
Arnaud et al (85)
Greece (age 15, HS)
1680
660
Milton & Meara (98)
Germany (age 15, HS)
1200
400
Milton & Meara (98)

11. Problem 2: Studying the wrong words…
Frequency
The Negative Effect of “Test English” in
Japan…
600,000
・
・
・
・
84,168
・
exasperate
・
42,024
digress
・
 PROBLEM: Students NEED to learn the first 5000
words of English to use English in the real word…
・
25,537
・
abstain
・
23,371
・
・
14,641
・
emigrate
torment
 But entrance exams and school textbooks force
students to memorize hundreds of low-frequency words…
・
・
5,000
・
chaos
・
・
4,441
・
・
・
2,566
permission
bid
・
HFW
・
2,289
・
sum
 The same appears to be true for learners from countries
all over the world…
・
・
3
2
1
 RESULT? Students can’t deal with real world English
because they don’t know hundreds of the most important
high frequency words…
ace
and
of
the
11

12. Solution:
Use the science of corpus linguistics to
create short lists of words that give learners
the maximum amount of coverage…
The NGSL’s 2800 words give an amazing 90%
coverage!www.newgeneralservicelist.org

13. OK, so what’s a Corpus?

14. A more precise
definition…
A corpus can be defined as a collection of texts
assumed to be representative of a given language
put together so that it can be used for linguistic
analysis. Usually the assumption is that the
language stored in a corpus is naturally-occurring,
that is gathered according to explicit design
criteria, with a specific purpose in mind, and with a
claim to represent natural chunks of language
selected according to specific typology.
Tognini-Bonelli (2001:2)

15. And a less
precise one…
A corpus is
basically just a
huge bunch of
texts….

16. Types of Corpora:

Written vs. Spoken

General vs. Specialized
 e.g. ESP, Learner corpora

Monolingual vs. Multilingual

Annotated vs. Unannotated

Synchronic vs. Diachronic

17. 17

18. One Problem with Corpus and
Vocabulary List Development:
WYPIIWYGO (????)

19. A few current Corpus
Projects…
1.
Business English Word List for NHK TV Show in Japan
2.
EnglishCentral (a HUGE video corpus of authentic English)
3.
New General Service List (using Cambridge International Corpus)
4.
New Academic Word List (using Cambridge International Corpus)
5.
TOEIC Vocabulary Study List (using past tests and prep books)

20. A New General Service List
www.newgeneralservicelist.org

21. Basic Corpus Analysis
Tools

A Corpus: a systematic collection of speech
or writing that is built according to explicit
design criteria for a specific purpose

A Concordancer Tool: search engine
(e.g. Tom Cobb’s Concordancer or Laurence
Anthony’s tools such as AntConc)

A Concordance: occurrences of search item,
displayed in list with immediate context
shown
21

22. OK, so what’s a
concordance look like?
22

23. So how can
we use a
concordanc
e in the
classroom?
www.lextutor.ca/c
oncordancers/

24. EnglishCentral.com’s Cool Video Concordancer

25. A typical readout from a Concordancer

26. Select any word from
any video and instantly
get multiple
contextualized
examples of the word in
use in authentic
videos…

28. Another Cool Corpus Tool:
Tom Cobb’s Keyword Extractor
http://www.lextutor.ca/

29. Key Words identified for Dracula…

30. How about
Word Clouds?
www.wordle.net

31. Free Graded Text Editor & Analysis
Tool www.er-central.com/ogte/

32. Google’s N-Gram Tool
TV vs. Radio vs. Magazine vs. Cell Phoneover the past 150 years…

33. •
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
British National Corpus BNC
Sight Words (Dolche, 1948)
GSL (West, 1953)
AWL (Coxhead, 2000)
New GSL (Browne, Culligan & Phillips, 2013)
New ASL (Browne, Culligan & Phillips, 2013)
100 Most Frequent Idioms (based on MICASE Corpus)
The Oxford 3000 Word List

34. Dr. Charles Browne, Professor of TESOL & Applied Linguistics
Director, EFL Teacher Education Program
Meiji Gakuin University; Tokyo, Japan
browne@ltr.meijigakuin.ac.jp