Strategies for learning new vocabulary..

garrulous (adjective)

Hard to estimate words in a language, more than one sense. dog. 141,476 different singular words

141,476

evolving – garrulous 93,596. uni edu native – 25,000

garrulous (adjective)

93,596

extensive studies into corpus – linguistics – corpora available – cambridge english corpus

Frequency? Most common English word

Top 100 words Top 100 - 200 words

Neither

would govern write

expensive drink ear

case down however

is and see

public people afraid

Top 100 words Top 100 - 200 words

Neither

and (3)is (7)would (63) people (80)down (93)

see (106)write (120)public (166)govern (173) however (181)

case (727)afraid (927) drink (1472) expensive (1570)ear (3845)

Figures taken from the Cambridge English Corpus, 2011

Relationship between words – collocations , chunks

http://corpus.byu.edu

AfraidHe feels afraidHe is afraid of spidersSpiders make him feel afraidSpiders are terrifyingThe spider terrified himHe is scared to death of spiders

So let’s make our very own small corpus for one of the words earlier - write

Write….

1, 2,3,4,

cambridge english corpus - case

So…what does it mean to

‘know’ a word?

Knowing a word includes…• understanding its core meaning (dictionary

definition)

• spelling and pronunciation

• grammar and construction

• being aware of common phrases associated with it

• recognising collocations

• Noticing formulaic language / chunks

• register – formal, informal or specialist

• getting to know its word family

• grasping prefixes and suffixes

http://dictionary.cambridge.org

sogden@cambridge.org