Constructing a Collocation Learning System from the Wikipedia Corpus

The importance of collocations for success in language learning is widely recognized. Concordancers, originally designed for linguists, are among the most popular tools for students to obtain, organize, and study collocations derived from corpora. This paper describes the design and development of a collocation learning system that is built from Wikipedia text and provides language learners with an easy-to-use interface for looking up collocations of any word that occurs in Wikipedia. The use of this corpus exposes learners to contemporary, content-related text, and enables them to search for semantically related words for a given topic. The system organizes collocations by syntactic pattern, sorts them by frequency, and links them to their original context. The paper includes a practical user guide to illustrate how to use the system as a language aid to facilitate academic writing

The Development of Collocations as Constructions in L2 Writing

Cross-sectional and longitudinal learner corpus studies utilizing phraseological, frequency, and association strength approaches to phraseological unit identification have shown how the use of phraseological units varies across proficiency levels and develops over time. However, these methods suffer from several limitations, such as a reliance on native speaker intuition, a limited focus on contiguous word sequences, and a neglect of part of speech information in association strength calculation. This study seeks to address these limitations by defining lexical collocations as constructions (henceforth “collconstructions”) within the framework of Construction Grammar and investigating their cross-sectional variation and longitudinal development in two corpora of L2 writing. The cross-sectional corpus consisted of beginner and intermediate EFL learner texts assessed for overall writing proficiency, while the longitudinal corpus contained freewrites produced by ESL learners over the course of one year. Contiguous and non-contiguous adjective-noun, verb-noun, and adverb-adjective collconstruction tokens were extracted from each learner text in the two learner corpora. Each learner text was assessed for multiple constructional and collostructional indices of collconstruction production. Constructional indices included type frequencies, token frequencies, and normalized entropy scores for each collconstruction category. Collostructional indices consisted of proportion scores for different categories of adjective-noun, adverb-adjective, and verb-noun collconstruction types and tokens based on covarying collexeme scores calculated using frequency information from an academic reference corpus. Variation across proficiency levels was evaluated both qualitatively and quantitatively. The qualitative analysis consisted of examining variation in the production of specific functional collconstruction subcategories from a Usage-based Second Language Acquisition perspective. The quantitative analysis consisted of the calculation of an ordinal logistic regression in order to determine whether any indices of collconstruction production were predictive of L2 writing quality. Longitudinal development at the group level was investigated through the use of linear mixed effects models. Development for individual learners was examined from a Dynamic Systems Theory perspective that focuses on the role of variability in language development as well as interconnected development for multiple indices of collconstruction production. This study has important implications for future research on L2 phraseology research and second language acquisition research as well as phraseology pedagogy

Supporting Collocation Learning

Collocations are of great importance for second language learners. Knowledge of them plays a key role in producing language accurately and fluently. But such knowledge is difficult to acquire, simply because there is so much of it. Collocation resources for learners are limited. Printed dictionaries are restricted in size, and only provide rudimentary search and retrieval options. Free online resources are rare, and learners find the language data they offer hard to interpret. Online collocation exercises are inadequate and scattered, making it difficult to acquire collocations in a systematic way. This thesis makes two claims: (1) corpus data can be presented in different ways to facilitate effective collocation learning, and (2) a computer system can be constructed to help learners systematically strengthen and enhance their collocation knowledge. To investigate the first claim, an enormous Web-derived corpus was processed, filtered, and organized into three searchable digital library collections that support different aspects of collocation learning. Each of these constitutes a vast concordance whose entries are presented in ways that help students use collocations more effectively in their writing. To provide extended context, concordance data is linked to illustrative sample sentences, both on the live Web and in the British National Corpus. Two evaluations were conducted, both of which suggest that these collections can and do help improve student writing. For the second claim, a system was built that automatically identifies collocations in texts that teachers or students provide, using natural language processing techniques. Students study, collect and store collocations of interest while reading. Teachers construct collocation exercises to consolidate what students have learned and amplify their knowledge. The system was evaluated with teachers and students in classroom settings, and positive outcomes were demonstrated. We believe that the deployment of computer-based collocation learning systems is an exciting development that will transform language learning

Using corpora to develop learners’ collocational competence

This article investigates the role of direct corpus use in learners’ collocational competence in academic writing. An experiment was conducted between two groups of Chinese postgraduates who had no previous knowledge of corpora. It was embedded in a regular 4-month linguistics course in the students’ programmes, where a corpus-assisted method was used for the experimental group and a traditional, or rule-based, method was used for the control group. The English essays written by these two groups of learners from different time periods (before, immediately after, and two months after the course) were analysed regarding the learners’ collocational use—in particular, verb-preposition collocations. The results reveal that while both groups showed improvements in their academic writing, the students in the experimental group displayed a significant improvement in the use of collocations, including a higher rate of accuracy, or naturalness, and an increased use of academic collocations and fixed phraseological items. It is thus concluded that the knowledge and use of corpora can help students raise their awareness of habitual collocational use and develop their collocational competence. This supports the positive role of direct corpus application in an EFL context

Visualize online collocation dictionary with force-directed graph

For second-language learners, collocational knowledge is very important. Knowing collocational phrases allows learners to speak and write in their targeted language naturally and reduce dramatically side effect of their first language. In order for learners to learn collocations easily, a lot of learning methods have been introduced. Particularly, learning from online-collocational corpus has become popular due to its accessibility and massive database. Although, its current presentation of information is still simple, it can be improved by using optimized representations in order to help users learning. In this thesis, we represent a suitable way to visualize online collocational dictionary by using graph representation in order to facilitate users’ learning and provide flexible exploration. Animation is also used to increase level of engagement for users. We use force-directed model for the layout, but we develop our own graph component and combine some current algorithms in order to create a proper algorithm for our purposes. The implementation is tested by a small group of participants and the results are promising

Using blended instruction to teach academic vocabulary collocations: A case study

Learning second language vocabulary has always been a challenge for second language (L2) learners. Transferring new vocabulary to an active stage has been an even greater challenge.;In the 1990s, Lewis (2002a) proposed the Lexical Approach as a means to help L2 learners with vocabulary acquisition. This approach encouraged the teaching of vocabulary in chunks, or in other words, putting emphasis on collocations. Focus on vocabulary collocations was suggested by several researchers (Brown, 1974; Hinkel, 2004; Lewis, 2001). They supported the teaching of collocations via in-class exercises. Cobb (1999) and Kaur and Hegelheimer (2005) showed that the use of a concordancer---an online resource which provides information on collocation---was beneficial to learners\u27 development of active vocabulary. However, studies focusing on explicit teaching of academic vocabulary collocation via blended instruction, which consists of a combination of in-class and online instruction, were not found.;This case study examined how teaching academic vocabulary collocations affected the writing development of six students in an Intensive English Program (IEP). Collocation was presented and taught both in-class and via Moodle, the course management software used as the online environment. The study also looked at how these learners perceived blended instruction. These learners came from various language backgrounds. Data were collected via a questionnaire, in-class observations, and learners\u27 journals, writing samples, mid-course reflections, online logs, and interviews. The class instructor also provided data in the form of instructor\u27s journals and an interview.;The results demonstrated that prior to teaching collocations, the teacher needed to clarify the concept and its importance to learners. Moreover, the results showed that learners benefited from explicit teaching of vocabulary collocations. Regarding blended instruction, the learners perceived the online component as a review/practice tool rather than an integral part of the course. The study also revealed a certain lack of commitment with the online exercises, especially when these exercises were not directly affecting the learners\u27 grades

English language vocabulary profiles of undergraduate students at different proficiency levels

Vocabulary knowledge is influential to learners’ language ability. While vocabulary studies in Malaysia have investigated learners’ vocabulary knowledge, they however do not consider learners across various proficiency levels. Furthermore, previous studies do not focus on both the receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge of learners. To fill this gap, the present study systematically investigated the profiles of receptive and productive vocabulary of Malaysian undergraduate students at the Band 1 (very limited), Band 2 (limited), Band 3 (modest), Band 4 (satisfactory) and Band 5 (proficient) levels of the Malaysian University English Test (MUET). The Vocabulary Size Test and the Vocabulary Levels Test were administered to gauge the students’ receptive vocabulary knowledge. Additionally, parts of their written and spoken corpora were analysed to examine the vocabulary they used in terms of lexical variation, lexical density, lexical sophistication, lexical frequency, lexical originality and lexical collocation. The findings reveal that students attain different extent of receptive vocabulary knowledge. Next, the findings also show that Bands 1, 2 and 3 students lacked receptive vocabulary knowledge to use the language at the university. Furthermore, their knowledge of the academic vocabulary is also limited. When writing the essays, the Bands 1, 2 and 3 students produced almost similar extent of lexical variation, lexical density, lexical sophistication, lexical frequency and lexical collocation. When speaking, the Bands 1, 2, 3 and 4 students produced similar extent of lexical variation, lexical sophistication and lexical collocation. All students demonstrated high use of the General Service List when writing and speaking (more than 86%). Lastly, the finding points to an underuse of lexical collocation categories by the students. The profiles of receptive and productive vocabulary unveiled in the study serve as a practical guideline to incorporate effective vocabulary teaching at higher learning institutions in Malaysia for students at various proficiency levels