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Tom Cobb Universit du Qu bec Montr al Professional Development Workshop Seminar Series 22 August 07, CNA-Qatar

2. Or (an alternative title)

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Tom Cobb Universit du Qu bec Montr al Professional Development Workshop Seminar Series 22 August 07, CNA-Qatar

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    1. Tom Cobb Université du Québec ŕ Montréal Professional Development Workshop & Seminar Series 22 August 07, CNA-Qatar “Identifying technical vocabularies: Why and how”

    2. 2 Or (an alternative title)… If we had a (mini-) corpus of texts in our technical domain… Medicine Nursing Business Engineering General Science … how would we get a useful vocab list or vocab course out of it? More to it than just crunching out a frequency list! Many words in a freq list are already known Many are too infrequent to be worth learning Just the important ones please

    3. 3 Plan for my contributions Plenary 1 Aug 22, 8.30-9.30 Identifying technical vocabularies: Why and how Workshop 1 Aug 22, 10.45 – 11.30 Tools for text analysis: Applying principles of Plenary 1 to other domains Plenary 2 Aug 23, 11.30 – 12.30 Building on the strengths of the Arab Learner Workshop 2 Aug 23, 9.30 – 10.15 Online learning tools: learning technical vocabulary with a computer

    4. 4 Where I am coming from (1) A belief that most interesting developments in LT since 1990 involved computer analysis of a corpus – Discovering which words are needed for various tasks Conversation, academic listening, fiction reading, … Discovering the huge role of multi-word units in language learning & use Discovering the technical vocabularies of domains and quasi-domains But that the implications of all this would need to be worked out at ground level… Where access to corpora & software would be an issue

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    6. 6 Where I am coming from (2) PhD project in CCE / SQU Oman 1996 Scenario: S’s preparing to study commerce/economics/management Problem: Cambridge Pet Test as major obstacle Vocab base of 2587 words Ss Vocab Levels Test mean <1000 words Solution: Systematic, corpus-based vocab expansion

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    8. 8 1990s - Research seemed to support optimism in ESP reading… Vocab spotted as the main problem But there was less vocab to learn than it once seemed 2000 word list gives 80% average coverage… Students’ capacity for learning it had been under-estimated Especially with computer learning tools We would shortly have the Academic Word List Shorter and higher coverage than the UWL …and short, high-coverage word lists in the main domains But did this happen?

    9. 9 From CNA-Q needs analysis (Jan. 2006) The background of the students is uneven. Some students entering CNA-Q from local high schools lack academic skills. Students have great difficulty with the reading level and volume of material in the business textbooks. Students need to write clear, concise paragraphs where the information is organized according to the required rhetorical pattern. Students' vocabulary range is too narrow. Because of this lack of vocabulary, reading becomes a huge issue for them. Students need stronger organizational ability and good study skills to succeed in the business program

    10. 10 The Vocabulary Problem - Somewhat inevitable

    11. 11 But the problem can be exaggerated

    12. 12 But, how many words do you have to know… - To know 95% of the words in a text? - An average text - A text in a particular genre, or domain

    13. 13 ‘Coverage’ – a brief review - A measure of a word’s typical repetition - Expressed as a % of items in a text covered by each word

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    18. 18 But getting from 90% words known to 95%?

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    23. 23 More difficult

    24. 24 Less & less frequent = More & more domain specific

    25. 25 Most English words are domain specific

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    53. 53 Provisional conclusion

    54. 54 However… (Here comes Part 2)

    55. 55 A clue…

    56. 56 For this a different way of determining domain-ness is needed

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    58. 58 <img src=new2.gif><img src=new2.gif>

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    66. 66 So any level of vocab can be taught in a domain-specific context

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    70. 70 Conclusion

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    72. 72 Conclusion

    73. 73 Workshops will…

    74. 74 If time permits – Go live and show tech word activities

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