Final Vocabulary Research Articles

Strategic Vocabulary Learning in Vocabulary List Learning: Insights from EFL Learners in Thailand

Considering the number of class hours and the variety of learning materials provided in an EAP course at a university, the frequently estimated number of words that EFL students must master to function in English appears excessive. Recently, though, vocabulary list learning has evolved as an alternate approach to addressing such concerns. The current research investigated the strategic vocabulary learning that EFL students developed during word list learning. A list of 500 A1-A2 academic words divided into 10 sets was compiled and incorporated into a 10-week EAP English vocabulary course. The vocabulary acquisition of students was evaluated using weekly vocabulary tests (consisting of the words learned each week) and a final vocabulary exam (involving all the words in the 10 vocabulary sets). At the completion of the learning, quantitative and qualitative surveys were administered. The results of a mixed-method analysis revealed 1) memory, selective attention, learning words through use, and dictionaries as the most frequently used strategies; 2) shared learning strategies between male and female students, except for taking notes and visual repetition strategies; and 3) the efficacy of the infrequently used strategies in EFL students' vocabulary acquisition. The findings of the study call for the incorporation of explicit VLS instructions and training into students' word list learning, as well as the evaluation of how long words acquired by students will remain in their memories; continuous monitoring and evaluation; and teachers' continuous technical and emotional support during word list learning. Keywords: strategic vocabulary learning, word list, academic word, vocabulary acquisition, Thai higher education

Distilling Monolingual Models from Large Multilingual Transformers

Although language modeling has been trending upwards steadily, models available for low-resourced languages are limited to large multilingual models such as mBERT and XLM-RoBERTa, which come with significant overheads for deployment vis-à-vis their model size, inference speeds, etc. We attempt to tackle this problem by proposing a novel methodology to apply knowledge distillation techniques to filter language-specific information from a large multilingual model into a small, fast monolingual model that can often outperform the teacher model. We demonstrate the viability of this methodology on two downstream tasks each for six languages. We further dive into the possible modifications to the basic setup for low-resourced languages by exploring ideas to tune the final vocabulary of the distilled models. Lastly, we perform a detailed ablation study to understand the different components of the setup better and find out what works best for the two under-resourced languages, Swahili and Slovene.

An Ironist’s “Final Vocabulary”: Derek Mahon’s Re-Visions

Critics tend to cast a suspicious eye on Derek Mahon’s seemingly obsessive revisions of his works. Though it needs to be acknowledged that Mahon’s habitual practice of revision does not always lead to a definite improvement of the poems’ quality, this article argues that the poet revises to destabilize a formation of what Richard Rorty calls “final vocabulary” as a never quitting ironist. Mahon’s constant undercutting of his stable textual ground stems from a deeper Mahonian poetics which has at its core the urge to work against fixed perspective and settled interpretation in unsettling political and cultural circumstances that produce intolerance and claustrophobia. Mahon also presents a Beckettian resistance of the limitedness of poetic language by pluralizing poetic ambivalence and indeterminacy.

Konotacije leksičkog sloja motiva stida u engleskim prijevodima bošnjačke balade “Hasanaginica”

Translating a work of literary art, especially poetry, also means translating its style. At the lexico-stylistic level, style manifests itself in both denotative and connotative meanings of the lexical units of a text. By analyzing the connotations of the lexical layer of shame motif in English translations of Bosniak ballad “Hasanaginica”, we can identify and problematize the interpretation of this motif in the target texts in relation to the source text. Applying the method of lexico-stylistic analysis to the key verses of the shame motif, both in the source text and in the target texts in English, we examine the ways in which different translators build the mystical motif as the only abstract concept that never develops into a poetic image, leaving space for multi-layered connotations that are imposed on the reader. The results of the analysis point to the translations that are closest to the source text in terms of containing minimal differences in the degree of their interpretive limitation or intrusiveness. The most vividly evoked key verse of the shame motif is found in Francis Jones’ translation. However, the final vocabulary choice made by a discerning translator possessing a high degree of stylistic awareness should also be influenced by other aspects of the original text, such as its established rhythmic pattern or meter that requires preservation and other formal characteristics of this ballad, which are not to be found in Jones’ translation. Therefore, our conclusion is that the results of lexico-stylistic analysis of the original should be weighed against the results of analysis on other linguo-stylistic levels of expression (phonostylistic and syntaxostylistic) in order to synthesize them as successfully as possible, which could help recreate a new, more effective and reliable translation of this masterpiece of our oral literature.

Rorty’s socio-ethnocentrism: the problem of its justification

‘Solidarity’ is one of the key concepts of the late Richard Rorty’s philosophy. Arguing that justification of knowledge is a matter of its acceptance by the community, Rorty reduces social relations to the discursive (intertextual or dialogical) ones. Thereby he faces a number of theoretical difficulties. Rorty’s willingness to substitute the idea of objectivity for that of solidarity is at odds with his socio-ethnocentrism. Antirepresentationalist attitude is not shared by the overwhelming majority of Rorty’s ‘cultural peers’, not to mention professional philosophers, but he strongly holds to antirepresentationalism, considering it to be sufficiently justified, not caring about what others think and whether such a strategy is politically relevant or desirable from a pragmatic point of view. Consequently, he endorses the picture of warrant as independent of communal opinion. Western (Anglo-Saxon) ethnocentrism, Rorty argues, is of a special kind: it is the ethnocentrism of a “we-community” (“we liberals”) which is dedicated to enlarging itself and creating more and more variegated, inclusive and heterogeneous society. It’s a worldview of a liberal “ironist” and cosmopolitan who is always aware of the contingency of her language and moral self, and who “has radical and continuing doubts about the final vocabulary she currently uses”. But to say, with Rorty, “We are lucky that our ethnocentrism is based on distrust of itself,” amounts to recognize the truth of anti-ethnocentrism. One who believes in cultural and social progress towards “a global, cosmopolitan, democratic, egalitarian, classless, casteless society” is de facto anti-ethnocentrist. Even if he denies it verbally.

Knowing ourselves and recognizing others: reading Rorty’s contribution to the epistemology of the self

Neste ensaio, enquadro a narrativa de Rorty com relação ao ego na história das filosofias moderna e contemporânea. Minha tese é que sua rejeição tanto do introspectivismo cartesiano quanto das explicações reducionistas psico-biológicas nasce originalmente de uma epistemologia do ego que está alinhada aos insights de Hume sobre a contingência da individualidade, mas também, introduz uma abordagem complexa à questão filosófica sobre a relação entre os reinos estético e racional. Além disso, avanço em uma leitura anticética, dinâmica e normativa do modelo narrativo de Rorty do ego, a qual associa seu entendimento de ironia – nós podemos sempre duvidar que nosso vocabulário final é o melhor disponível – e de solidariedade – concebido não apenas como um movimento afetivo em direção ao outro, mas também, como uma condição lógica para o funcionamento da comunicação humana.

Redescribing Final Vocabularies

Richard Rorty in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity presents the character of the liberal ironist. An ironist is a person that has pressing and continuing doubts about her “final vocabulary.” A final vocabulary is a set of words that one uses to justify and narrate oneself. An interesting question is why words, and not beliefs, are used by Rorty to characterize someone’s identity. In this paper I take a step back from liberal ironism and focus on the notion of “final vocabulary” and its role on a Rortian picture of moral identity. In order to do this, I explore it alongside concepts from the field of sociolinguistics and from other pragmatist theories of selfhood. I claim that Rorty presents important insights for a pragmatic naturalist conception of our moral identities.

ПРОФЕССИОНАЛЬНО ОРИЕНТИРОВАННЫЕ ЛЕКСИЧЕСКИЕ МИНИМУМЫ ДЛЯ ИНОСТРАННЫХ ВОЕННОСЛУЖАЩИХ

The paper covers the issues of the formation of profession-oriented lexical minimums of elementary, basic, and first certified levels for foreign military-artillerymen. The analysis of the scientific, educational, and reference literature on the Russian as a foreign language allows speaking about the absence of lexical minimums for foreign officers and cadets. This fact causes the relevance of the study. The absence of a contemporary standard training program for foreign servicemen in the preparatory course, as well as the lack of instructions in the guiding documents, dictate the necessity to describe the basic principles and criteria for the selection of lexical material, as well as its distribution among the levels of the Russian language proficiency. The author formed the representative groups of texts on a specialty, the sources of which were combat manuals, tutorials on tactics, shooting, weapon ordnance, military dictionaries, and encyclopedias. To select a primary glossary, the author treated the selected texts using the program of counting the total quantity of words and sorting them. To form and structure the final vocabulary, the author identified and described basic principles of military vocabulary selection: the application frequency, the importance of the concept expressed by a word, the thematic attribution of a word, the communicative value, and the paradigmatic, syntagmatic, and word-forming relations between words. Based on the guideline documents analysis and the method of expert evaluation, the author determined the quantitative composition of the minimums of elementary, basic, and first certificate levels. The novelty of the paper is to determine the principles of selection and the number of lexical units included in the profession-oriented lexical minimums for foreign military-artillerymen.

Formative peer assessment in primary school: the effects of involving pupils in setting assessment criteria on their appraisal and feedback style

This experimental study is aimed at examining the effect of involving pupils in primary education in setting assessment criteria and standards on their appraisal of a peer’s work and their peer feedback style. It is expected that our intervention will lead to (1) a criteria-referenced appraisal and (2) more final vocabulary, which is associated with a more authoritative style. In total, 95 sixth grade pupils from The Netherlands were randomly assigned to one of two conditions. In the experimental group, the pupils first received an exemplar, which was followed by a group discussion about appropriate assessment criteria and standards. In the control group, the pupils provided peer feedback without this discussion. Their peer appraisal was measured with a questionnaire and feedback style was determined by analysing the written feedback using a person-oriented approach (cluster analysis). Results showed that the chance that pupils in the experimental group had an authoritative style was three times higher than in the control group. Theoretical and practical implications of the study are discussed.

Long-term Outcomes of Cochlear Implantation in Children With Congenital Cytomegalovirus Infection.

To investigate the role of the developmental delay often observed in children with congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection on the improvement of language understanding after cochlear implantation (CI). Retrospective chart review. Sixteen children with severe and/or profound hearing loss due to congenital CMV infection (CMV group) and 107 congenitally deaf children (168 ears) without CMV infection as the cause of deafness (non-CMV group). Mean age at which patients underwent CI was 2.9 years in both groups. The mean follow-up period was 7.8 versus 8.2 years, respectively. The Enjoji Scale of Infant Analytical Development was used to evaluate/compare pre- and postoperative hearing level, word recognition score, speech discrimination score, and language production and perception skills. The Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised was used to assess vocabulary understanding skill. Correlation between the final vocabulary understanding skill assessment and several factors was also examined. Improvement in hearing thresholds (mean: 106.0 dB) was greater after the first CI, (27-45 dB; mean: 33.8 dB) compared with hearing aid (48-74 dB; mean: 63.1 dB). Similarly, language perception and production were better in the CMV group. However, in the long term, differences between good and poor cases became prominent, especially in children with motor or cognitive delay and brain abnormalities who performed poorly in the CMV group. Long-term language perception and production after CI were overall satisfactory in congenital CMV-deafened children. CI was effective, particularly in the absence of CMV-induced disorders. However, this effectiveness was limited in those with motor or cognitive delay.

The Black Panther Party: a Virtuous Alignment with an African Worldview

This work will locate the Black Panther Party as resistance against the final vocabulary as articulated by philosopher Richard Rorty (1989) in his book, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, on two fronts. The first front is a re-articulation of his idea of the final vocabulary, and the second front is the language of resistance and discursive interventions put forth by the Black Panther Party. This paper will explore the actions of the Black Panther Party and its relationship to an African-Centered communal orientation in terms of its organizational activities and service/survival programs. Lastly, this research will explore the theoretical construction Afrocentricity to analyze the Black Panther Party’s resistance role against the machinations of the state.

A Review of Agency and Structure: Where does Rorty’s Ironist Stand?

This paper intends to reread what Richard Rorty introduced as ironist in the context of one of the most contested topics in the realm of social sciences; i.e. agency and structure. Rorty maintains that ironist is the potential citizen of utopian liberal democracy. An ironist, in his words, is a person who a) has radical and continuing doubts about the final vocabulary she currently uses, b) realizes that argument phrased in her present vocabulary can neither underwrite nor dissolve possible doubts, and c) she does not think that her vocabulary is closer to reality than others. The main question of this study is where this conscious subject stands within the context of agency-structure dispute. First, relevant literature on the dichotomy is going to be examined, and then, while discussing other relevant terms in his philosophy, this paper will show how Rorty solves the agentic problem of his ironist with his introducing of the public-private distinction.

A method for the development of disease-specific reference standards vocabularies from textual biomedical literature resources.

Disease-specific vocabularies are fundamental to many knowledge-based intelligent systems and applications like text annotation, cohort selection, disease diagnostic modeling, and therapy recommendation. Reference standards are critical in the development and validation of automated methods for disease-specific vocabularies. The goal of the present study is to design and test a generalizable method for the development of vocabulary reference standards from expert-curated, disease-specific biomedical literature resources. We formed disease-specific corpora from literature resources like textbooks, evidence-based synthesized online sources, clinical practice guidelines, and journal articles. Medical experts annotated and adjudicated disease-specific terms in four classes (i.e., causes or risk factors, signs or symptoms, diagnostic tests or results, and treatment). Annotations were mapped to UMLS concepts. We assessed source variation, the contribution of each source to build disease-specific vocabularies, the saturation of the vocabularies with respect to the number of used sources, and the generalizability of the method with different diseases. The study resulted in 2588 string-unique annotations for heart failure in four classes, and 193 and 425 respectively for pulmonary embolism and rheumatoid arthritis in treatment class. Approximately 80% of the annotations were mapped to UMLS concepts. The agreement among heart failure sources ranged between 0.28 and 0.46. The contribution of these sources to the final vocabulary ranged between 18% and 49%. With the sources explored, the heart failure vocabulary reached near saturation in all four classes with the inclusion of minimal six sources (or between four to seven sources if only counting terms occurred in two or more sources). It took fewer sources to reach near saturation for the other two diseases in terms of the treatment class. We developed a method for the development of disease-specific reference vocabularies. Expert-curated biomedical literature resources are substantial for acquiring disease-specific medical knowledge. It is feasible to reach near saturation in a disease-specific vocabulary using a relatively small number of literature sources.

Zhuangzi’s Ironic Detachment and Political Commitment

Paul Gewirtz has suggested that contemporary Chinese society lacks a shared framework. A Rortian might describe this by saying that China lacks a “final vocabulary” of “thick terms” with which to resolve ethical disagreements. I briefly examine the strengths and weaknesses of Confucianism and Legalism as potential sources of such a final vocabulary, but most of this essay focuses on Zhuangzian Daoism. Zhuangzi 莊子 provides many stories and metaphors that can inspire advocates of political pluralism. However, I suggest that Zhuangzi is ultimately an “ironist” in Rorty’s sense. Many intellectuals assume there is something progressive and liberating about broadly ironic stances like relativism and skepticism. Ethically, though, irony is “the night in which all cows are black”: since it regards all positions as equally undermined, an ironic stance cannot be enlisted in support of tolerance or humanitarianism or in opposition to absolutism or cruelty.

Predicting self-concept, interest and achievement for first-year students: The seeds of lifelong learning

After achievement, academic self-concept and interest are essential learning outcomes in the transition to higher education and then lifelong learning. The current study examines self-concept, instrumental goals, interest and three types of achievement in the context of English language learning at one Japanese university. First-year students (n=381) from seven departments participated in a yearlong study, completing surveys at three time points. Course grade, pre–post standardized English language proficiency tests and a final vocabulary test were also included in modeling.The self-concept and proficiency students come to university with play a substantial role in their future motivation and achievement. Distal internally regulated goals had the overall largest predictive effect on future personal interest. A small/moderate predictive gender effect on self-concept, prior ability and distal internally regulated goals was also observed. Male students are entering university at a distinct disadvantage to female students, a trend widely observed throughout formal education. Implications for practice are discussed.

Hybrid Learning and Iranian EFL Learners’ Autonomy in Vocabulary Learning

Abstract Hybrid Learning (HL) is a learning approach comprising traditional classroom learning, computer-assisted language learning (CALL), and self-directed learning (SDL) ( Barenfanger, 2005 ). The present study is an investigation of how Iranian advanced EFL learners improved in their autonomy level and vocabulary knowledge by attending a HL vocabulary course. In addition to class attendance, the participants planned, monitored, and evaluated self-directed activities done in SDL gatherings held during the course. The course also incorporated a course weblog, online dictionaries and various vocabulary-related websites. Data was collected quantitatively by means of a final vocabulary test and an autonomy questionnaire, as well as qualitatively via class and weblog observations, and also the learners’ reflective essays. Based on the findings, the learners’ autonomy level and vocabulary knowledge increased after attending this HL course.

Focus on the forms

This study examines the effect of recognition-based retrieval practice on vocabulary learning in a university Chinese class. Students (N=26) were given practice retrieving new vocabulary (single or two-character words) in a series of simple form recognition tests administered over four weeks. The test sets consisted of target vocabulary that appeared in the previous week’s lesson and distracter items drawn from upcoming vocabulary. Tests were group-administered via PowerPoint and students used a checklist response to indicate whether a given item had appeared in the previous week’s material. Responses relied on episodic knowledge of previous exposure and required no processing of semantic information. Students were able to reliably identify the target items in the retrieval task with performance on these items being found superior to that for supplementary list control words on midterm and final vocabulary tests. The findings indicate that a focus on word forms can have a measurable effect on vocabulary learning in the classroom and underscores the efficacy of retrievalbased testing (the testing effect, Barcroft, 2007; Roediger & Karpicke, 2006) in facilitating vocabulary learning. The implications for recognition-based retrieval practice in vocabulary instruction in the Chinese classroom are discussed.

The Effect of Exercise Types on EFL Learners’ Vocabulary Retention

This paper is an attempt to investigate whether the Elementary EFL learners’ vocabulary retention of the newly learned words significantly differs by using recognition exercises (fill-in-the-blank, and matching) and production exercises (paraphrasing, and glossing) in immediate and delayed vocabulary tests. 46 Iranian Elementary learners who were studying English in a language Institute participated. Four texts were selected from Elementary Total English book. Each text contained ten unknown words followed by one exercise type. Each session the learners read a text, and then did the following exercises. The meaning of the words was provided in a mini dictionary. After doing each exercise, the learners were instructed to provide an English synonym, or an English definition, or translation of the word in L1 for each word. Before the test, mini dictionaries were collected. After a two week interval, the participants' vocabulary learning was tested through the final vocabulary test containing all the words presented in four exercise types. The results of comparing four exercise types revealed that learners recalled more words in fill-in-the-blank exercise than other exercise types both in immediate and delayed tests. Moreover, the results indicated that recognition exercises were more effective than production exercises in EFL vocabulary retention. In addition, learners’ scores in immediate tests were better than their scores in delayed tests in four different exercise types. Thus, unknown words should be repeated in different exercises, in order to be stored in long term memory and to be retained easily.

"El secreto de los flamencos", de Federico Andahazi, y el otro Aleph

This essay has the purpose of discussing the main issues addressed in the novel The secret of the Flemish, by Federico Andahazi, departing from the texts that have determined its composition. Among these texts, the most influential has been Jorge Luis Borges’s “The Aleph”; not only that the story is mentioned specifically in Andahazi’s novel but also the ideas developed in it depart from the Borgesian concept of the Aleph. Borges’s Aleph, however, comes from the mathematician Georg Cantor, who developed a transfinite epistemological system that Borges makes his own to question what we call reality to later suggest that nothing apart from language is real. Both, Borges and Andahazi, may be classified as ‘ironist’ writers who, being aware of the finitude of the epistemic systems that we humans utilize, develop a style of writing that is characterized by a constant metaphorical re-description, not with the intention of establishing a final vocabulary but to maintain open the intellectual dialogue among the different disciplines that deal with theories of knowledge.

Comparing cognitive maps using graph algorithms.

The purpose of this project is two-fold: (1) to examine researchers' knowledge structures on research topics; (2) to compare knowledge structures of experts with those of non-experts. Expert is defined as the researcher who had conducted in-depth research and published on the topic and whose vocabulary used to describe the topic for online searching was the basis for constructing maps. Non-experts are also researchers in the same field but had not done any in-depth work on the topics when they were asked to make a map using the given vocabulary. Both experts and non-experts were allowed to add new terms to or drop original terms from the given vocabulary. The finished cognitive map is a structured layout of the terms on a two-dimensional plane. During the mapping process, subjects also provided thinking-aloud protocols, which revealed additional information on how they saw the relationships of the concepts represented by the terms. Preliminary analyses of ten sets of cognitive maps for ten research topics revealed differences in final vocabulary (after adding and dropping terms), configuration (topdown, left-right, radial, etc.), and foci (focusing on problems, issues or processes). These results were reported at the 1999 ASIS Annual Meeting. Work has just been completed to advance the comparison of semantic closeness using graph theory to convert maps into matrices and to calculate similarities. The following algorithms have been developed for the conversion and calculation of cognitive maps.