Effectiveness of Concordancers in synonym learning for Chinese NonEnglish Majors : A BetweenGroup Re

1
Effectiveness of Concordancers in synonym
learning for Chinese Non-English Majors A
Between-Group Research

• By Wang Shuhua
• Beijing Wuzi University

2
Background of the research

• The Input Hypothesis and Context-dependent
  learningThe Input Hypothesis (Krashen, 19853)
  claims that humans acquire language in only one
  way-----by understanding messages, or by
  receiving comprehensible input.
• Concordancers in Learning Vocabulary The use of
  concordances involves discovery learning, where
  the learners are being challenged to actively
  construct generalizations and note patterns and
  exceptions, so that analytical ability is
  fostered and learner autonomy is developed. (
  Nation ,2001 Kata Ogata, 1997)

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Background of the research

• Researches on the Combination of Concordancers
  and Synonym Learning
• A.Researchers have recognized that
  distinguishing synonyms is one of the
  difficulties for L2 learners (PanFeng,2000
  Zhang,2000Xie, 2002 Li, 2003).
• B. Several studies urge the use of
  concordancers for synonym learning as a
  supplement to the study of English synonyms with
  a dictionary (Li,2003 PanFeng,2000).
• C. What these studies lack is experimental
  research on the effectiveness of concordancers on
  synonym learning.

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Jiang(2002)

• Jiang (2002) categorizes synonyms according to
  their translation in L1. He argues that the two
  words of any same-translation pair, for example,
  problem and question, would share very similar or
  identical semantic content because their semantic
  content is copied from the same L1 translation.
  The two members of a different translation pair,
  for example, interfere and intervene, would have
  a low degree of semantic overlap because their
  semantic content comes from two different L1
  translations.

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Hypothesis

• Concordancers will exert a better effect on
  non-English majors synonym learning than
  traditional dictionaries of synonyms.
• Participants will perform differently according
  to the difficulty level of synonyms they will
  score higher in the synonyms with different
  translation in their L1 than in those with the
  same translation in their L1.

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Methodology

• Participants 200 college second-year non-English
  majors who participated in a test of 30 pairs of
  synonyms with either the same or different
  translation of their L1, which were chosen from
  the wordlists for CET test. 60 participants and 6
  pairs of synonyms were chosen according to their
  familiarity.
• Instruments a Bilingual Chinese-English
  Dictionaries of English Synonyms, and a Concise
  English Thesaurus
• http//www. nhce.edu.cn and a concordancer
  at http//140.113.115.21/reading/word/WordGuess6.
  asp.

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Data Analysis and Discussion

• One-way ANOVA is used to analyze if there is any
  difference between the two ways of learning
  synonyms (table1). Since sig. 0.830gt0.05, the
  null hypothesis is accepted
• A Paired T-test was also conducted to see if the
  subjects score differently on the synonyms of
  different difficult levels. Since sig.
  0.001lt0.05, there is significant difference.The
  subjects score higher on the easy-pattern
  synonyms (mean 4.333) than the difficult pattern
  ones (mean 3.4333). In this research, the
  hypothesis that the synonyms with the same L1
  translation are more difficult for the subjects
  to distinguish is proved.

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Conclusion

• This may confirm Cobbs(1999) conclusion about
  the disadvantages of using concordancer because
  of too vast information and the resulting
  confusion. The researcher suggests a survey on
  learners psychological processes.
• Teachers should attach additional importance to
  those synonyms which share the same L1
  translation when help learners out.