SLAT7830 The lexicon and L2 learning

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SLAT7830 The lexicon and L2 learning

• Week 6
• Semester 1, 2005

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Specialised technical vocabulary

• What is specialised vocabulary?
• Who should teach it?

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Academic vocabulary

• generally useful scientific vocabulary
• semi-technical vocabulary

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The nature of academic vocabulary knowledge

• Meyer (1990) taxonomy (text, p 195)
• 1 Vocabulary related to the domain of the text.
  Tells what the the authors are doing and what the
  ascribe to others survey, argue examine.
• 2. Vocabulary describing scientific activities
  analyse, relate, implement
• 3. Vocabulary referring to the subject matter of
  scientific activities structure, transform,
  reduce, affect
• Task How well does this taxonomy apply to the
  AWL?

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• basic
  vocabulary
• Academic texts academic vocabulary
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  sub-technical
• technical

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How does technical vocabulary differ from
academic vocabulary?

• A technical word is specific to a particular
  topic, field or discipline.
• Nation identifies four categories of technical
  words.
• Category 1. The word form rarely if ever appears
  outside the field. E.g. in Computing modem
• Category 2. The word form is used inside and
  outside the field but not with the same meaning.
  execute
• Category 3. The word form is used inside and
  outside the field but majority of uses with a
  particular meaning are in the field. Specialised
  meaning clear from general meaning memory
• Category 4. The word is more common in the field
  but little specialisation of meaning program

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• The end Week6