Vocabulary Expansion Research Articles

Student Vocabulary Expansion with the Help of a Learner Corpus

In courses of general English, and in preparation for examination in particular, students need much feedback when they submit written works. Besides tips concerning content, coherence and cohesion, grammatical range and accuracy, all of which are standardly included in instructor’s comments, more efficient advice touches upon directions towards lexical improvements. However, such feedback requires a huge amount of time and effort on the part of the instructor, whose workload is heavy enough to make any extra effort undesirable. Besides, the wealth of student texts in the learner corpus allows researchers to make use of the many samples of student writing by applying certain computer tools. As a result, the authors set themselves a task of developing a system of automated lexical inspection of student works. Initially, we used essays in the corpus to work out which formal parameters in the essays demonstrate in what ways essays that have been evaluated as good by the examination experts can be distinguished, then we applied those parameters in the process of automated inspection, after which we proceeded to checking the correlation between the inspection results and the traditional grading. Finally, after a thorough analysis a system of lexical inspection of student essays was established, which paves way to the development of automated lexical feedback in order to orient students in how to improve the lexical variety in their writing.

НЕОЛОГИЗМЫ И СЛОВА ГОДА

The article analyzes vocabulary expansion processes in the Russian language and problems of capturing neologisms in dictionaries. Main focus is on new technologies for analyzing activity levels of word-usage, its first definition and definition forms (the Internet resources “Word of the Year”, “Dictionary of the Year”. “Change Dictionary”, etc). High usage frequency in media supports actualization of certain words and expressions. In the end of 2016 - beginning of 2017 “current moment” words became such words as Trump, trumpism, trumpocalypse, etc, this was a result of wide media coverage of the US Election.

A study of Korean vocabulary learning contents in graded steps based on vocabulary expansion

학습자들이 학습해야 하는 어휘의 수는 너무 많아서 짧은 학습 과정 내에 원하는 수준까지 학습하기가 쉽지 않다. 현재 학습자들이 개인적으로 학습할 수 있는 교재들은 어휘 목록과 그 풀이, 용례 등이 나열되어 있거나 어휘들 간의 의미 관계를 주로 다루고 있어서 학습자들은 단편적인 유의어, 반의어 정도를 익힐 수 있을 뿐이다. 이에 본고는 학습자들이 초급에서 배운 기초 어휘를 이용하여 연어나 관용어, 관습적 표현, 문화적 표현, 은유적 표현 등으로 어휘를 확장하여 양적인 확장과 질적인 확장을 동시에 꾀할 수 있는 학습 내용을 제시하고자 하였다. 특히 한국어 학습자의 상당수에 해당하는 중국인 학습자들을 대상으로 학습 내용을 구성하였는데, 본고의 논의 대상인 기초동사인 ‘먹다’와 중국어의 ‘吃’는 그 다의가 중복되는 부분도 있지만 차이나는 부분도 있다. 이를 밝혀 중국인 학습자들이 개념적으로 한국어 동사 ‘먹다’의 다의를 이해하는 데 도움을 주고자 하였다. 이어 사전 표제어들을 중심으로 ‘먹다’를 포함하는 합성어와 파생어 목록을 제시하고 1차 의미와 2차 의미로 나누어 등급별 어휘 학습 내용을 다르게 배열하도록 하였다. 마지막으로 대규모 코퍼스에 나타나는 ‘먹다’를 포함하는 문장 용례를 추출하고 목적어를 유형별로 분류한 후 관습적 표현, 은유적 표현 등으로 나누어 학습 자료로 활용할 수 있도록 고급 단계에 배치하였다. 이러한 학습 내용은 이후 학습자들이 스스로 학습할 때 활용하거나 수업 내용이나 교재를 편찬하기 위한 자료로 활용될 수 있을 것이다.

VOCABULARY EXPANSION AND WORD COMPREHENSION FORMATION TO THE FIRST GRADE CHILDREN WITH INSUFFICIENT DEVELOPMENT OF THE LANGUAGE SYSTEM FOR ACQUIRING THE MATHEMATICS

The title of the master’s work is „Vocabulary expansion and word comprehension formation to the first grade children with insufficient development of the language system for acquiring the mathematics”. The aim of the master’s work is to analyze theory and to gather methods of vocabulary expansion and word comprehension formation to children with insufficient development of the language system and to test usefulness of methodological material made by master’s work author. The master’s work contains the theory of development and characteristics of the first grade children with insufficient development of the language system, there are methods of vocabulary expansion described and there are words that are indispensable for acquiring the mathematics detected in master’s work. The master’s work also contains methodological material for vocabulary expansion and word comprehension formation to the first grade children with insufficient development of the language system for acquiring the mathematics made by master’s work author. There was proved usefulness of methodological material made by author by making pedagogical work. Material can be used by speech therapists at speech therapy classes and teacher of mathematics at lessons of math, in the second chapter of master’s work. The master’s work consists of 157 pages, 25 pictures, 7 tables, 73 information sources, 1 appendix.

ASSESSING POTENTIALS OF INTEGRATING EDUCATIONAL CD-ROM IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION IN TANZANIA: CONSTRUCTIVISM APPROACH VIEWS

Unlike other stages of human development, early childhood is the critical stage that forms the foundation for children’s’ future wellbeing and learning ((UNICEF, 2001). Early Childhood Education helps a learner to develop skills, knowledge, personal competence and confidence and a sense of social responsibility. Information Communication and Technology in Early Childhood Education is significant as it supports and strengthens early childhood education practice. The present study is interested in assessing the integration of ICT particularly educational Compact Disc ROM as modern tool in Education. The study bases on the potentials brought by Educational Compact Disc. The researcher went through different literature on the potentials by linking them with the Constructive approach of learning. In the study it was found that the application of CD–ROMs was used more in language development, development of literacy skills as well as in the expansion of language vocabularies. However, changes in education were also seen that is from traditional mode of teaching into new model of teaching which is mostly supported by the Constructivism theory of learning. Thus, Educational CD-ROM as multimedia technologies is potential in creating high quality learning environments in early childhood education. Article visualizations:

Expansion of medical vocabularies using distributional semantics on Japanese patient blogs.

BackgroundResearch on medical vocabulary expansion from large corpora has primarily been conducted using text written in English or similar languages, due to a limited availability of large biomedical corpora in most languages. Medical vocabularies are, however, essential also for text mining from corpora written in other languages than English and belonging to a variety of medical genres. The aim of this study was therefore to evaluate medical vocabulary expansion using a corpus very different from those previously used, in terms of grammar and orthographics, as well as in terms of text genre. This was carried out by applying a method based on distributional semantics to the task of extracting medical vocabulary terms from a large corpus of Japanese patient blogs.MethodsDistributional properties of terms were modelled with random indexing, followed by agglomerative hierarchical clustering of 3 ×100 seed terms from existing vocabularies, belonging to three semantic categories: Medical Finding, Pharmaceutical Drug and Body Part. By automatically extracting unknown terms close to the centroids of the created clusters, candidates for new terms to include in the vocabulary were suggested. The method was evaluated for its ability to retrieve the remaining n terms in existing medical vocabularies.ResultsRemoving case particles and using a context window size of 1+1 was a successful strategy for Medical Finding and Pharmaceutical Drug, while retaining case particles and using a window size of 8+8 was better for Body Part. For a 10n long candidate list, the use of different cluster sizes affected the result for Pharmaceutical Drug, while the effect was only marginal for the other two categories. For a list of top n candidates for Body Part, however, clusters with a size of up to two terms were slightly more useful than larger clusters. For Pharmaceutical Drug, the best settings resulted in a recall of 25 % for a candidate list of top n terms and a recall of 68 % for top 10n. For a candidate list of top 10n candidates, the second best results were obtained for Medical Finding: a recall of 58 %, compared to 46 % for Body Part. Only taking the top n candidates into account, however, resulted in a recall of 23 % for Body Part, compared to 16 % for Medical Finding.ConclusionsDifferent settings for corpus pre-processing, window sizes and cluster sizes were suitable for different semantic categories and for different lengths of candidate lists, showing the need to adapt parameters, not only to the language and text genre used, but also to the semantic category for which the vocabulary is to be expanded. The results show, however, that the investigated choices for pre-processing and parameter settings were successful, and that a Japanese blog corpus, which in many ways differs from those used in previous studies, can be a useful resource for medical vocabulary expansion.

In Memoriam: Sam L. No'eau Warner, July 24, 1954–July 19, 2016

Figure 1. Dr. Sam L. No`eau Warner. Photo­ graph courtesy of Moku Kaaloa. J O U R N A L O F A M E R I C A N I N D I A N E D U C A T I O N — 5 5 , I S S U E 3 7 In Memoriam Sam L. No`eau Warner July 24, 1954–­ July 19, 2016 ALOHA NŌ KA LAMA KŪ O KA NO`EAU. Ua hala. `A`ohe nàe he wā e pio ai ke kukui. Ua ola iā kākou haumāna. Dr. No`eau Warner, renowned researcher and teacher, taught countless students the value of speaking Hawaiian through his innovative approaches to language teaching. His work represents a tremendous contribution to the preservation and revitalization of the Hawaiian language. No`eau was a founder of thèAha Pūnana Leo, the Hawaiian “language nest” preschool and beginning of the Hawaiian-­ language immersion movement—­ a precursor and model for Indigenous-­ language education programs throughout the world. His Ke A`a Mākālei program, established with funds from a federal grant, was designed to introduce Hawaiian language to the arena of sports, thus increasing the number of ­ viable domains of use available to a growing community of speakers. This effort required an expansion of vocabulary and ways of speaking to accommodate the expression of novel thoughts. A new vocabulary was developed based on existing concepts in order to support this expansion. He even served as the public address announcer for Nā Koa Ānuenue’s Interscholastic League of Honolulu ’s football games. ­ Later, he researched and developed a set of 31­ children’s books that ­ were designed to strengthen appropriate Hawaiian-­ language use across a variety of topics. Again, ­ these ­ were produced with funds from a federal grant that afforded wide distribution of current literary materials, ­ free of charge, to all families of Hawaiian-­ language immersion school ­ children. He also worked with immersion teachers to develop a pedagogy that could accompany his books. Moreover, No`eau had begun to revolutionize the Hawaiian language pedagogy at the university by creating a grammatical schematic that is culturally relevant and simplifies the acquisition of abstract grammatical concepts. 8 J O U R N A L O F A M E R I C A N I N D I A N E D U C A T I O N — 5 5 , I S S U E 3 Although ­ these endeavors ­ were all part of his job, ­ whether on or off the clock, he was clearly driven to increase the number of participants in the Hawaiian-­ language revitalization movement. He would talk to students, colleagues, legislators, or anyone ­ else at any time in an effort to support their involvement in Hawaiian-­ language development. No`eau was first employed at the University of Hawai‘i (UH)-­ Mānoa in 1978 as a lecturer teaching Hawaiian 101 in the Indo-­ Pacific Language Department (IPLD). He continued to teach through spring 1984, ­ after which he left for a semester to take up an instructor position in Hawaiian at UH-­ Hilo. In spring 1985, he returned to IPLD as an instructor of Hawaiian. He continued in this position ­ until he was appointed assistant professor in 1994 with the Department of Hawaiian and Indo-­ Pacific Languages and Lit­ er­ a­ tures. In 2003, No`eau was promoted to associate professor, a position in which he held several leadership positions, including director of Kawaihuelani Center for Hawaiian Language. No`eau is survived by his ­ brother, Herbert, his ­ sister, Claudia, and his brother-­ in-­ law, Roy. He is also remembered with ­ great admiration and aloha by his colleagues and students: • Dr. J. Keawèaimoku Kaholokula: Although I did not have the good fortune of having No`eau as a Kumu, I have been taught and mentored by many excellent Hawaiian language instructors and Figure 2. Sam No`eau Warner. Photo­ graph by Alicia Perez. J O U R N A L O F A M E R I C A N I N D I A N E D U C A T I O N — 5 5 , I S S U E 3 9 professors...

Online Independent Vocabulary Learning Experience of Hong Kong University Students

In response to the limited vocabulary size of its undergraduates, an independent vocabulary learning platform, VLearn was designed and launched in a university in Hong Kong. As an elearning environment that supports self-directed vocabulary learning of Chinese learners, the primary aim of VLearn is to equip users with appropriate knowledge and skills for vocabulary expansion. This paper introduces the contents of VLearn, and the theoretical underpinnings of its design. It also reports on the vocabulary learning experience of its users during an eight week evaluation study. Suggestions are made on how independent vocabulary building at higher education, as well as comprehensive vocabulary instruction at early years could be supported by means of technology.

A systematic study of knowledge graph analysis for cross-language plagiarism detection

Cross-language plagiarism detection aims to detect plagiarised fragments of text among documents in different languages. In this paper, we perform a systematic examination of Cross-language Knowledge Graph Analysis; an approach that represents text fragments using knowledge graphs as a language independent content model. We analyse the contributions to cross-language plagiarism detection of the different aspects covered by knowledge graphs: word sense disambiguation, vocabulary expansion, and representation by similarities with a collection of concepts. In addition, we study both the relevance of concepts and their relations when detecting plagiarism. Finally, as a key component of the knowledge graph construction, we present a new weighting scheme of relations between concepts based on distributed representations of concepts. Experimental results in Spanish–English and German–English plagiarism detection show state-of-the-art performance and provide interesting insights on the use of knowledge graphs.

Cross-domain polarity classification using a knowledge-enhanced meta-classifier

Current approaches to single and cross-domain polarity classification usually use bag of words, n-grams or lexical resource-based classifiers. In this paper, we propose the use of meta-learning to combine and enrich those approaches by adding also other knowledge-based features. In addition to the aforementioned classical approaches, our system uses the BabelNet multilingual semantic network to generate features derived from word sense disambiguation and vocabulary expansion. Experimental results show state-of-the-art performance on single and cross-domain polarity classification. Contrary to other approaches, ours is generic. These results were obtained without any domain adaptation technique. Moreover, the use of meta-learning allows our approach to obtain the most stable results across domains. Finally, our empirical analysis provides interesting insights on the use of semantic network-based features.

SEMANTIC BOUNDARIES OF PROFESSIONAL NAMES IN ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN THE CONTEXT OF A SECONDARY SCHOOL

The article deals with lexical semantic aspect of English and French as a foreign language in contradistinction to learning context. The aim of the article is to enquire lexical semantic boarders in English and French within topic profession and to analyze how lexical transparency from French influence English word form orthographic representation in students’ consciousness. Theories about lexis processing in mental lexicon are used to for words lexical semantic analysis: French psycholinguist Daniel Gaonach’s (Daniel Gaonac’h) conclusions about cognitive action in access to lexis and its semantic reference, memory representation models (Judith Kroll & Erika Stewart 1994) as well as lexical network model in bilingual situation (Annette de Groot 1998). Altogether 46 professions were selected from 1000 most frequently used word lists and theoretically compared semantic structure consistency of words in English and French. It is concluded that from 46 selected words, 30 words are formally similar and 16 are semantically close but graphically different. As a result of analysis of lexical semantic structures a practical research was carried out, to diagnose English and French crosslinguistic influence. The research was carried out in two schools, and altogether 40 students were involved in the research. Students were asked to do three tasks. One of the tasks is to determine the language of the given professions by their graphic representations. The aim of the task is to find out if students are able to separate already in English mastered professions from equivalents in French and if they are able to recognise the words which are the same in both languages – English and French. The second task was to write a suitable name in English for 10 already given professions in French. The third task was to write three suitable adjectives in English for the given professions. In the research it was concluded that more than a half of students tend to fully separate words in English or in French, although some of the words formally and as well as semantically comply in both languages. Reproduction of professions artist, doctor, chef and officer in English does not make any difficulties but some words’ incorrect reproduction (minister, judge, professor and soldier) can be explained by interference of French and Latvian as well as insufficient knowledge of English orthography and semantics of words in French. Finally, it is concluded that for expansion of vocabulary, very important is input of collocations in both languages separately. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7220/2335-2027.6.3

医療用語資源の語彙拡張と診療情報抽出への応用

医療用語資源の語彙拡張と診療情報抽出への応用

Prácticas pedagógicas para la enseñanza de la lectura inicial: un estudio en el contexto de la evaluación docente chilena

The article presents the results of a study focusing on the reading instruction practices used in the first 2 years of elementary education and the approaches underlying them. A mixed methodology was applied to a random sample of 90 video recordings of 1st and 2nd grade teachers, made in the context of the 2008 Chilean teacher evaluation. Their practices were characterized according to these approaches by observing classroom activities and how they were conducted in classroom interaction. Descriptive, exploratory factor, and individual differences analyses were conducted. Regarding the activities, the results showed that teachers privilege reading over the other core lines of their subject area, acting as protagonists of the activities and asking most questions. Those who performed better in the evaluation tended to present greater cognitive challenges to their students. Regarding the interactions, the results showed that they are characterized by the predominance of teacher discourse, with little student participation, that opportunities for vocabulary expansion and acquisition of metalinguistic concepts are meager, and that the cognitive challenge posed to readers is limited.

Review: The London Square: Gardens in the Midst of Town, by Todd Longstaffe-Gowan

Todd Longstaffe-Gowan The London Square: Gardens in the Midst of Town New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2012, 348 pp., 88 color and 202 b/w illus. $65 (cloth), ISBN 9780300152012 In the illuminated distance of Elias Martin’s 1769 View of Hanover Square , Trinity Chapel sits on the horizon line. A Protestant edifice situated at the end of a long axial view across this new London square, it is a counterpoint to the imposing facade of St. George’s Church. This painting suggests that streets were designed to converge perspectivally on this diminutive chapel, a fact borne out by contemporary maps. Trinity Chapel was a recent addition to London’s cityscape and was made to replace a temporary wooden chapel on wheels. The wooden structure was replaced by a “chapel of ease,” shown in Martin’s image, and was designated as such by the Parish of St. Martin’s in the Fields. Its parish church was overflowing with new members after the construction of sophisticated London squares in the West End.1 Trinity Chapel was hence a product of the city’s expanding population and the new geography of parish life responding to the construction of London’s ubiquitous squares. Martin’s image serves as the cover for Todd Longstaffe-Gowan’s The London Square: Gardens in the Midst of Town , and although the image is briefly described for its representation of the new Hanover Square, Trinity Chapel is nowhere mentioned in the text. Longstaffe-Gowan’s book is not about painting, nor is it about London’s myriad churches, and yet not discussing a central aspect of the book’s cover image—a chapel so implicitly woven into the narrative of landscape, urban development, and the outcomes of London’s rampant square-building—is the sort of omission that occurs too often in this large and well-illustrated text. For many images, the author provides little interpretation, and there are contradictions, especially in the early chapters, between images and text. Within the text itself, each chapter has its own host of loose threads: topics never fully …

Young Children's Self-Generated Object Views and Object Recognition

Two important and related developments in children between 18 and 24 months of age are the rapid expansion of object name vocabularies and the emergence of an ability to recognize objects from sparse representations of their geometric shapes. In the same period, children also begin to show a preference for planar views (i.e., views of objects held perpendicular to the line of sight) of objects they manually explore. Are children's emerging view preferences somehow related to contemporary changes in object name vocabulary and object perception? Children aged 18 to 24 months old explored richly detailed toy objects while wearing a head camera that recorded their object views. Both children's vocabulary size and their success in recognizing sparse three-dimensional representations of the geometric shapes of objects were significantly related to their spontaneous choice of planar views of those objects during exploration. The results suggest important interdependencies among developmental changes in perception, action, word learning, and categorization in very young children.

Interaction Relation Ontology Learning

Ontology is widely used in semantic computing and reasoning, and various biomedicine ontologies have become institutionalized to make the heterogeneous knowledge computationally amenable. Relation words, especially verbs, play an important role when describing the interaction between biological entities in molecular function, biological process, and cellular component; however, comprehensive research and analysis are still lacking. In this article, we propose an automatic method to build interaction relation ontology by investigating relation verbs, analyzing the syntactic relation of PubMed abstracts to perform relation vocabulary expansion, and integrating WordNet into our method to construct the hierarchy of relation vocabulary. Five attributes are populated automatically for each word in interaction relation ontology. As a result, the interaction relation ontology is constructed; it contains a total of 963 words and covers the most relation words used in existing methods of proteins interaction relation.

Slave to the rhythm or love, sex and the dialectic of freedom

Current changes in the intimate sphere are denoted by an expansion of emotional vocabularies, of freedom in sex and sexual preference, and the extension of sexual life with neither inhibition, nor obligation, nor marriage for both women and men. This reading of the works of Jean-Claude Kaufmann and Niklas Luhmann suggests that the result of this current revolution of the intimate sphere is mixed. A new differentiated form of the intimate sphere has developed with an internal distinction between sex qua leisure and committed love-relationality. Although sex qua leisure is mediated by the new communications technology, this technological mediation is not what is important here. Rather, the actions are configured and mediated by the neo-liberal paradigm by all participants. Leisure-sex is simply a game that combines autonomy, leisure, power and rational choice – a combination that is open to men and women alike. But there is still love, and in ways that enable it to be expressed beyond traditional forms. From the position of committed love-relationality, rather than marriage, love is between people – but it is a different between to the one of leisure sex. Love is double-sided: whilst heightening a sense of self-orientation, one is also focused on an other. Love involves all kinds of complexity in the everyday because it involves the well-being of an other or others – with joys and heartaches, responsibilities and conflicts.

2872 – Psychosemantic study of interoception experience and pain perception in patients with mitral valve prolapse

A considerable dissonance between the numerous subjective complaints of mitral valve prolapse (MVP) patients and the dramatic scarcity of data from objective medical studies is the important problem of modern medicine and psychology. To study the features of interoception experience and pain perception in MVP patients. The psychosemantic technique «Classification of sensations» was used. Testees had only 80 Russian words to describe their interoception experience and pain perception. They had to select words which can be used for the description of interoception experience; then it was necessary to choose consistently familiar sensations, the painful sensations, often felt sensations, and, at last, words which are suitable for the description «sensations in heart». We examined 134 MVP patients and 73 healthy subjects. MVP patients reliably distinguish (p< 0.05) from healthy individuals by fairly large amount of interoception vocabularies (see Table 1). [Table 1.Interoception vocabularies (descriptors)] Types of vocabularies MVP Healthy subjects General vocabulary of sensations 59.2 ± 1.66 * 46.7 ± 1.42 Familiar sensations 45.36 ± 2.05 * 33.99 ± 2.81 Painful sensations 11.04 ± 1.53 * 7.74 ± 1.61 Often felt sensations 4.17 ± 1.98 * 1.79 ± 0.23 «Sensations in heart» 10.12 ± 1.22 * 4.88 ± 1.07 Qualitative analysis of the results showed that the expansion of interoception vocabularies of MVP patients is due to inclusion of the words that describe the mental states and emotions. Received results prove a role of psychological factors in an etiology of pain syndromes in MVP patients.

Vocabulary growth of the advanced EFL learner

This article reports the results of two studies on the vocabulary growth of advanced learners of English as a foreign language in an English-medium degree programme. Growth in learners’ written receptive and productive vocabularies was investigated in one cross-sectional and one longitudinal study over three years. The effect of word frequency on vocabulary development and the growth in academic vocabulary were also investigated. The overall results of the two studies suggested that learners’ receptive vocabularies did not grow significantly, whereas the longitudinal data indicated expansion of productive vocabularies by about 10%. Both receptive and productive knowledge of academic vocabulary improved significantly in the longitudinal data. Frequency seemed to have a stable overall effect in vocabulary development. However, evidence for an implicational scale among the frequency levels was obtained only for the receptive test.

Designing Distance Learning Tasks to Help Maximize Vocabulary Development

Task-based language learning using the benefits of online computer-assisted language learning (CALL) can be effective for rapid vocabulary expansion, especially when target vocabulary has been pre-arranged into bilingual categories under simpler, common Semantic Field Keywords. Results and satisfaction levels for both Chinese English majors and Japanese Engineering majors were high in this qualitative comparative study, indicating its potential for helping many students from various language backgrounds to rapidly expand their target language vocabulary, especially when blended with other real language negotiation tasks, preferably for an authentic audience. Print versus online reading and vocabulary development methods are compared, as well as surveys of both Chinese and Japanese college students, after they were engaged in a “Collaborative Writing Exchange Project” using similar online vocabulary development tools. All target terms were pre-organized and made available under common Semantic Field Keywords online in both Japanese and Chinese, but students had freedom to choose within sets of most relevant words from five academic disciplines. Writing themes were suggested to learners in both countries to keep their email exchanges consistent.