Extensive Voluntary Reading and Listening (EVR/L). What and How?

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Extensive Voluntary Reading and Listening
(EVR/L). What and How? (B. Templer
T. Seizova-Nankova)
Part II. Dr. Temenuzhka
Seizova-Nankova Intensive Reading/IR - The
role of the teacher in achieving it
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Core Thesis
Intensive Reading/IR and Extensive Voluntary
Reading/EVR (Templer 2012) are complementary
the solution is a blend of intentional and
incidental learning.
IR Reading (in order) to learn A shift of focus
from grammar to lexis (Seizova-Nankova 2011) puts
vocabulary size to the fore this is central to
the teachers role. Even advanced learners with
large vocabularies can continue to fill out their
lexical knowledge, as many (or most) of the words
in their mental lexicons will only be partially
mastered. Even native speakers continue to learn
new words throughout their lifetimes.
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Reading skills

• How to make reading more enjoyable is a big
  challenge.
• Often the failure to find pleasure and meaning in
  reading is caused by a lack of the necessary
  skills and strategies.
• Some suggested strategies
• skimming, scanning, inference etc.

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Skimming and scanning

• Do not read everything but just for
• i) a general idea or
• ii) a specific piece of information

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Previewing

• Consider the clues given by the
• title,
• contents,
• blurb,
• preface,
• introduction, etc.

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Inference

• One cause for worry are unfamiliar words the
  first reaction is to reach for a dictionary, but
  this is time-consuming and also demotivating,
  often unnecessary.

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• Inference Not every word is important in order
  to get the main idea. There are four stages to
  this process
• Decide from your knowledge of English sentence
  structure and word-formation what part of speech
  (noun, adj., verb or adverb) the unfamiliar word
  is,
• the word before or after
• the grammatical endings
• the affix

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Strategies
Success in determining and learning new
meanings, and linking new forms to meanings is
largely determined by the employment of useful
strategies.
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Strategies (cond)
Determination Strategies used by an individual
when faced with discovering a new word's meaning
without recourse to another person's expertise.
Analyze any available pictures or
gestures Guess meaning from textual
context Use a dictionary (bilingual
or monolingual) Social Strategies involve
interaction with other people to improve language
learning. Ask the teacher for a
synonym, paraphrase, or L1 translation of new
word Learn and practice new
words with a study group Interact with
native speakers

(Schmitt 1997)
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Strategies (cond)

• Memory Strategies (traditionally known as
  mnemonics, mental processing) involve relating
  new words to previously learned knowledge, using
  some form of imagery, or grouping. 
• Use semantic maps
• Use the keyword method
• Associate a new word with its already
  known synonyms and
• antonyms
• Deep processing strategies
• Connect with synonyms
• Ask the teacher to use it in sentence
• Analyze the part of speech
• Schmitt (1997) lists and categorizes 58
  different types of strategies.

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Goals of IR

• Linguistic competence knowledge about the
  language system/the code (Chomsky 1957)
• Communicative competence which includes
• grammatical competence words and rules,
• sociolinguistic competence
  appropriateness,
• strategic competence appropriate use of
  
• communication strategies
• Collocational competence Knowledge of a
  co-occurrence of lexical items in combinations.
  How to achieve it?

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Collocation and its role in the study of lexis?

• What is it to know a word? - knowing its
• form spelling/sound,
• morphological structure,
• syntactic pattern,
• meaning,
• connotation,
• pragmatics,
• lexical relations, and
• collocations.

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J.R. Firth

• The British linguist J.P. Firth introduced the
  term collocation. He famously stated (Firth
  1957, 1968, p. 179) You shall know the word
  by the company it keeps! He noted that one of
  the meanings of ass is its habitual
  collocations in a limited set of contexts
  (ibid.)
• E.g. You silly ____, Dont be such an ______
  and in company with a limited set of adjectives
  silly, obstinate, stupid and awful.

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USE vs USAGE
The term usage refers to conventions. When we
refer to "word usage," we mean the conventions
for using words, conventions particular for a
given language. Use of words refers only to the
employment of words. http//www.differencebetwee
n.com/difference-between-use-vs-and-usage/
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Collocation structure
Node/keyword - an item whose collocations are
studied is called a node span - the number of
relevant lexical items on each side of a
node/keyword is defined as a span, collocates
- those items which are found within the span are
called collocates. Left and right collocates,
use of concordances (see J. Léon 2007 pp.
14 and passim)
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Corpus links

• Students can check a word or phrase, or even a
  specific collocation, in several key corpora
  online
• BRITISH NATIONAL CORPUS http//corpus.byu.edu/bnc/
  
• Google books http//googlebooks.byu.edu/
• Corpus of Contemporary American English
  http//corpus.byu.edu/coca/

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Concordance http//www.just-the-word.com/show_ex
amples.pl?triplelazy_ADJmod_ofday_N
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Collocation examples
The adjectives lazy and idle. They can be used in
similar constructions with the verbs to be , to
become etc. (left collocates of adj.) but
actually they differ in the collocations with
nouns they are used with e.g. lazy
morning/river/journalists but Idle
talk/chatter/conversation/time/chat/fun. (right
collocates of adj.). Idle has many more
connotations. Consider There was nothing idle
about it- trivial, silly. FLLs know the basic
meaning of lazy and idle but not necessarily
their collocational range.
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Lazy example 1
Artist/Band Louis Armstrong Album The
Very Best Of Louis Armstrong   Up a lazy river by
the old mill stream That lazy, hazy river where
we both can dream Liger in the shade of an old
oak tree Throw away your troubles, dream a dream
with me   Up a lazy river where the robin's
song Wakes up in the mornin', as we roll
along Blue skies up above ....everyone's in
love Up a lazy river, how happy we will be,
now Up a lazy river with me   (instrumental
break)   Up a lazy river by the old mill run That
lazy, lazy river in the noon day sun You can
linger in the shade of that fine ole tree Throw,
away your troubles, baby, dream with me   Up a
lazy river where the robin's song Wakes a brand
new mornin' as we roll along There are blue skies
up above...and as long as we're in love Up a lazy
river, how happy we could be If you go up a lazy
river with me Ah said with me now.....goin'up
that... lazy river..... with me From
http//www.musicbabylon.com  http//www.musicbaby
lon.com/artist/Louis_Armstrong/The_Very_Best_Of_Lo
uis_Armstrong/Lazy_River.htm Youtube, Mills
Brothers http//www.youtube.com/watch?vQH1e6G0K
3Pk
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Lazy example 2

• Lazy journalism is a term used to describe
  situations where journalists use shortcuts and/or
  simple stereotypes to explain, sometimes
  sensationalising, ideas or thoughts relating to a
  story.
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazy_journalism

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Lazy example 3
Since the third year at University started, lazy
mornings are very rare. But it is really nice to
wake up from the sunlight, coming from the
window. 29 Sept. 2011, http//truedreamcatcher
.blogspot.com/2011/09/lazy-morning.html
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Grammatical collocation/grammatical patterns

• These usually consist of a noun, an adjective or
  a verb plus a preposition or a grammatical
  structure such as to infinitive or
  that-clause, e.g. to be afraid that. Some
  scholars (e.g. Hoey 2000, Firth 1957 pp. 181-82)
  call this colligation. It defines the
  grammatical company and interaction of words as
  well as their preferable position in a sentence
  (see also Léon 2007 pp. 5-6).

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Lexical collocation/lexical patterns
They do not contain prepositions, infinitives or
relative clauses but consist of nouns,
adjectives, verbs and adverbs. verb noun,
e.g. launch a missile adjective noun e.g.
strong tea noun noun e.g. land reform noun
verb naming the activity which is performed by a
designate of this noun e.g. bees sting adverb
adjective e.g. sound asleep verb adverb
e.g. apologize humbly etc. These combinations
vary of course from language to language.
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Predictability Test

• enhance p---------e
• keep a d----
• strong ---d and heavy r---
• lodge a c-------t or p----st
• submit a r----t or pr-----l
• tell a s----

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Key to test

• enhance performance
• keep a diary
• strong wind and heavy rain
• lodge a complaint/ protest
• submit a report or proposal
• tell a story (not say a story)

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Difficulties with collocations for ELLs

• students know the meaning of the English word,
  but they do not know the collocational range of
  that word
• they find it difficult to give collocates of a
  word, especially if it is required to keep to the
  same POS (part-of-speech).
• when translating from English, it is often not
  easy to find the correct translation equivalent.

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Compare English and Bulgarian

• Examples
• English Ride a bike/ride a car
• Bulgarian ????? ?????????/????
• English Make a cake/make my homework
• Bulgarian ????? ????/????????? ??

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Importance of learning collocations

• Part of the meaning of a word is the fact that it
  collocates with another word.
• Enhances listening and reading comprehension.
• Increases fluency and frees the mind for other
  tasks.
• Second language learners rely on the semantic
  framework of their first language, relabeling
  existing concepts and then adjusting for the
  differences/mother tongue interference is both
  positive and negative
• Ways should be found to deal with frustrations of
  this kind.
• In the long run, studying collocations helps
  language learners gain greater confidence.

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References

• Ellis, N. C. (1997). Vocabulary acquisition
  word structure, collocation, word-class, and
• meaning. In N. Schmitt, M. McCarthy
  (Eds.), Vocabulary description, acquisition and
• pedagogy, (pp. 122-139) Cambridge
  Cambridge University Press.
• Firth, J. R. (1957). A Synopsis of Linguistic
  Theory 1930-55, in F.R. Palmer (Ed.), Selected
• Papers of J.R. Firth (1952-59) (pp.
  168-205), London Longmans.
• Hill, J. 2000. Revisiting priorities from
  grammatical failure to collocational success.
  In M.
• Lewis, (Ed.), Teaching Collocation
  Further Developments in the Lexical Approach (pp.
  47-
• 69), London Thomson Heinle LTP.
• Hoey, M. (2000). A World Beyond Collocation New
  Perspectives on Vocabulary Teaching. In
• M. Lewis, (Ed.), Teaching Collocation (pp.
  224-243), London Thomson Heinle LTP.
• Laufer, B. (1997). Whats in a word that makes
  it hard or easy some intralexical factors that
• affect the learning of words. In N.
  Schmitt, M. McCarthy (Eds.), Vocabulary
  description,
• acquisition and pedagogy (pp. 140-155),
  Cambridge Cambridge University Press.
• Léon, J. (2007). Meaning by collocation. The
  Firthian filiation of Corpus Linguistics, In
  D.

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References (2)

• Schmitt, N. (1997). Vocabulary learning
  strategies. In idem, M. McCarthy (eds.),
  Vocabulary description, acquisition and
  pedagogy (pp. 199-227), Cambridge Cambridge UP.
• SeizovaNankova, T. (2011). Primary Language
  Education and Computer-based Language Study.
  Presentation, BETA conference, Sofia/Bulgaria,
  March 31.
• Swan, M. (1997). The influence of the mother
  tongue on second language vocabulary acquisition
  and use. In N. Schmitt, M. McCarthy (Eds.),
  Vocabulary description, acquisition and pedagogy
  (pp. 156-180), Cambridge Cambridge UP.
• Templer, B. (2012). Extensive free voluntary
  reading and free voluntary listeningsome
  thoughts on why? And how? in Bulgaria.
  Presentation, BETA conference Ruse/Bulgaria,
  March 31.

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Author data

• Temenuzhka Seizova-Nankova
• Konstantin Preslavsky University of Shumen
• Shumen, Bulgaria
• tseizova_at_yahoo.com