Using the Sketch Engine for second language learning: an experiment

1. Using the SketchEngine for second language learning: an experiment Simon Smith & Alice Chen ssmith@mcu.edu.tw | mralice@scu.edu.tw

2. Personnel • Designers of the Sketch Engine • Adam Kilgarriff, Lexical Computing, Brighton • David Tugwell, Tech University, Budapest • Pavel Rychly, Masaryk University, Brno • Chinese implementation • Huang Chu-ren, Simon Smith and colleagues at Academia Sinica • This work • with Alice Mei-rong Chen, and previously with Cecilia Li-zhen Lin • the generous support of Taiwan’s National Science Council (grant 95-2411-H-130-005-) is acknowledged

3. Sketch Engine… • is at http://www.sketchengine.co.uk • is a software program which • analyses VERY large linguistic corpora • gives short summaries of word usage • has been used for dictionary production • has not yet been used extensively in language teaching and learning • is available for Chinese, English and others • gives a lot of information about contextand collocationof words (demo now, party? save?)

4. Word Sketch example: note collocation AND colligation

5. Concordance example

6. Collocation in language learning • Language learners find it difficult to distinguish between (near) synonyms • strong  powerful, but • *powerful tea • *strong car • can consult Sketch Differences

7. Sketch differences example

9. How can students use Sketch Engine? • Read, or do homework, as normal • Try to guess new words from context, as normal • Before using dictionary, go to Sketch Engine • get a word sketch (short summary) of the new word’s usage • explore the word’s usage further, by clicking on links in the word sketch • explore grammatical relations: colligation patterns • use Sketch Differences to compare similar words

10. Experiment: How useful is the Sketch Engine for Chinese learning? • Select some intermediate foreign students of Chinese • Test their knowledge (pre-test) of collocations in Chinese • Ask them to use Sketch Engine regularly in their studies • After a period, test them again (post-test) • Evaluate their progress

11. Background of participants Attempted to recruit current university students Need incentives budget Need teachers committed to project Could assess progress in class Used volunteers from two discussion boards Limited number Asked them to assess their own Chinese standard

12. Sample pre-test questions (4 of 16) Collocation type questions (harder): • 李德朝侵入機場控制區並侵入飛機的行為造成了惡劣的___。 [結果|後果] • 這個小孩很聰明, 可是不太守_____的。 [規定|規矩] Broader context questions (easier): • 為什麼我問你的時候，你沒有____我這件事？ [告訴|告知] • 上課很認真，下了課也認真，可是她的___一直都不太好。 [結果|成績]

14. Average correct answers by question type

15. Pre-test results

16. Post-test • Questions about using SkE • How often • Did they like it? • … • 16 collocation questions • Some same word choices as pre-test (different sentences) • Others different • Problem: only 2 post-tests returned  • Cannot draw any conclusions • Both commented that SkE had helped

17. Future project, next semester • Will teach two very similar English classes • same major, same motivation, same class size • One control group • Traditional vocab teaching • One Sketch Engine user class • Strong reliance on SkE • Teacher and students • In class, and for class prep • Compare grades on certain activities • Predict that SkE class will outperform control group through exposure to real, authentic language!

18. http://www.sketchengine.co.uk Please sign up for a free trial account!