Second Language Acquisition - Assignment Example

Second Language Acquisition Introduction Research on second language acquisition for non-English speakers show that a variety of errors are strongly associated with the process of learning second language (Gass, and Selinker, 2003). Paying attention to the needs of second language students, it is observed that educators or teachers have a variety of methods to apply in ensuring that the teaching objectives are met. However, in order to ensure that the students and the teacher do not conflict over the content in written and spoken English (Elfers et al. 2009). To identify how suitable a text is, the use of the RANGE program is applied to analyze a text. In this analysis, the RANGE programs is used for the analysis of word frequencies at each vocabulary level. Among the useful functions that the program will be used for include the determination of vocabulary size, creation of wordlists, and the measurement of vocabulary load. Based on the usability and applicability of the RANGE program, it is suitable for teachers to use the output to determine vocabulary load and influence the preparation of suitable text for classwork. Additionally, based on BNC, 90% is text and 10% is spoken text as Nation (2006) puts it. The standard measures of the BNC include 14000 words whereas 16 wordlists are created. The 16word lists are set of 1000-word lists generated for 16 levels. Under each word list of 1000, the consecutive wordlist adds up to the next. Thus, at the first wordlist, 1000 words are considered while at the 5th wordlist, 5000 words are considered. In this analysis, range analysis will be taken into consideration to show how comprehensively appropriate the text (cited as range_2_range.txt) is in the teaching of L2. Method Nation (2010) is referenced arguing that any text should be 98% comprehendible by students given 8000 to 9000 word families. With reference to Laufer’s (2010) argument on the other hand, indicates that a 95% coverage in written text should be treated as the standard comprehension level. Based on the two arguments from Laufer (2010) and Nation (2006), the current Range Analysis will consider the 95% coverage recommendation by Laufer (2010) to ensure that the current text can be understood up to 95% by the students. However, based on the requirements of the current study, the scope of the study will consider the first and second wordlists to showcase whether the students can attain 95% comprehension of the target text (range_2_range.txt). In this case wordlists 3 through 16 will not be considered in this study as it is only interested in testing whether the text at hand meets the 98% comprehension measure considering the 2000 world family. The current text comprised of 533 words which meets the baseline requirements of a text with at least 400 words. Results Analysis Wordlist Tokens/% Types/% Families 1 453/84.99 188/70.94 158 2 30/ 5.63 30/11.32 30 Table 1: Range Analysis Results (see full output under Appendix 1) From the range analysis of the range1.txt text file shows a variety of results that indicate the level of suitability of the text in teaching and comprehending L2. From the computed analysis results in table 1, it is observed that there are 453-words which make 84.99% of the total number of words within the first word list category. Under 1st 1000 wordlist, it is observed the 84.99% of the commonly used words appearing within the text comprises of 188 types of words making only 70.94 of the total text. While considering the 2nd wordlist making the 2000 wordlist, it is observed that there are 30 words more, making 5.63%, to the 1000-words which comprises of 453 words out of the total. In this case, the results can be interpreted such that the 2000 word families is seen to reflect 90.62% (84.9%+5.63%) comprehension level for the target text. By considering that Nation (2006) recommends the comprehension level of any text to be at least 98% comprehendible, the current text does not meet this measure and therefore can be ruled useless under Nation’s (2006) suggestions. However, since the text is analyzed with consideration of Laufer’s (2010) suggestion of 95% lexical coverage within the text, the associated 90.62% comprehension level indicates that the text still does not meet the comprehension objective of 95%. Based on this constraint, it is therefore recommended that a variety of methods to make the text more comprehendible. Among these applicable methods include pre-teaching, preview, and replacement. These methods aim at ensuring that written text improves to the 95% comprehension level suggested by Laufer (2010). While Nation (2006) would assume 98% to be the ideal coverage, getting the current score to 95% requires integration of the above-listed methods. From the 1000 word families considered, the number of words contained within the entire text only makes up to 84.99%. On the other hand, the 2000 word families indicate that there is 90.62% coverage of the vocabulary under the 2nd word list. However, when considering that the aim of this analysis to find methods capable of increasing the suitability of the text for teaching second language learners. As a containment measure to ensure that the students reading the text do not waste time without comprehension of at least 95% of the written text, the method of pre-teaching is applied to contain this challenges. When applying the pre-teaching technique, the teacher goes through the text before it is presented in a formal teaching or vocabulary testing exam. Two advantages are related with pre-teaching. Among these include an opportunity to the teacher to evaluate the text and then teaching the students words that are most likely to be vocabulary to them. For instance, in the 2000 word families considered for comprehension analysis, the range results show that there are about 158 word families contained in the 1000 word families while there are 188 word families within the 2000 word families. Based on the results, the 188 word families out of the 2000 indicates that the text is 1812 word families short. However, given the current score of 90.62% coverage the number of word families within the text does not measure the suitability of the text provided that the entire text is 533 words. Hence, considering that the current coverage is 4.68% short of 95% coverage, pre-teaching can help students in comprehending the meanings of the words, from the analyzed text, appearing the least number of times. With prior knowledge of the words appearing the least times within the text, the students are able to recall the meanings and relevance of these words (James et al., 2012). However, to the learners, it is observed that the lower the frequency of some words under each wordlist, the little the comprehension of such words by the students. In response to this vocabulary learning challenge, the teacher or educator is recommended to make use of the frequency scores to review and replace words making the least meaning to the students. As Nation (2011 & 2007) notes, frequency of understood words within any text shows how much the learners need to develop their language competencies (Echevarría, Vogt, and Short, 2008). High frequency words are identified to indicate that students do not have comprehension problems regarding the recurring words. Under the circumstance that high and low frequencies ere noted, the low frequency values, such as the frequency of the words, “And, I, The, A, To, and Of” is 11, 20, 30, 8, 25, and 14 respectively. From the indicated results, it is seen that the use of “A” is the lowest from the selected words while ‘The’ is the high frequency word within the above listed words. However, given that other words within the text appear as few times as once, their frequency indicates that the teacher can concentrate on these words to make the L2 learners more conversant with the low frequency words. For instance, the Range Analysis shows that words like ‘perhaps’, ‘often’, and ‘schemes’ among others appear only once within the 2000 word families. Therefore, since these words appear the least number of times, the teacher can approach the situation in two ways. Firstly, in order to comprehend words properly, it is observed that the more they appear in a text, the higher the chances of the students comprehending their meanings based on their use within the text (Zimmerman, & Schmitt, 2005). Therefore, while some words appear more times than others such as the same of ‘To’ which appears 30 times and ‘Perhaps’ which appears only once indicates that the latter word is less likely to be comprehended given its inability to present multiple cases from which context-related meaning can be developed (Schmitt and Jiang, 2011). Following these observations, it is recommended that the analyzed text can be made suitable for vocabulary teaching by considering the frequencies of words used (Kurnia, 2003). Secondly, the benefits of replacing words is to ensure that they do not create comprehension problems to the students (Koosha, Sharifi, 2004). In order to make the words more comprehensive to the level of 95% on the students’ side, replacing hard words and confusing words is recommended as a solution to this challenge. For instance, the use of the word ‘Scheme’ is only seen to appear once. With replacement of this word, probable confusion is avoided with other words that have the same sounds such as ‘skim’ (Nation and Meara, 2010). Thus, to solve this problem and promote better comprehension of the vocabulary, the teacher can embark on replacing some of the words to ensure their replacement drives the coverage level from the current 2000 word families (Yudin, 2010). Conclusion With reference to the target text file analyzed with the RANGE program, it is observed that the 1st and 2nd wordlists add up to make the 2000 word families. By analyzing the frequency and the coverage score of the 533-word text, it is observed that 188 word families were observed. On the other hand, with the aim of ensuring that Fauler’s (2010) 95% coverage recommendation is met, the text shows a 90.62% coverage score indicating that methods to improve the text were necessary. The three most suitable methods of ensuring that the text meets the 95% coverage include pre-teaching which prepares students before they are given a chance to read the text. The method requires the teacher to preview the text making notes of the rarely used words within the word families the range analysis is considered. Lastly, the replacement of words that appear rarely within a text as well as those falling out of the word families considered ensures that the introduction of new words likely to reduce the coverage level to less than 95% (Webb, 2007). References Doughty, C., & Long. M. (2003). The Handbook of Second Language Acquisition. MA: Blackwell. Echevarría, J., Vogt, M., & Short, D. J. (2008). Making Content Comprehensible for English Learners: The SIOP Model (Third Ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson. Elfers, M.A., Stritikus, T., Calaff, P. K., Esch, S. K., Lucero, A., Knapp, S.M., And Plecki, L. M. (2009). Building Systems of Support for Classroom Teachers Working with Second Language Learners. The Center for Strengthening the Teaching Profession. Seattle, WA: University of Wasington. Gass, S.M., & Selinker, L. (2003). Second Language Acquisition. (3rd Ed.). New York: Routledge. James, F. et al. (2012). Vocabulary Instructions Second Edition: Research to Practice. New York. N.Y: Guilford Press. Koosha, M. (2010). An Evaluation of the Vocabulary Used in Iranian EFL Secondary and High School Textbooks Based On The BNC First Three1000 High Frequency Word Lists. Curriculum Planning Knowledge & Research in Educational Sciences. No. 26, Pp. 157-186. Koosha, M., & Sharifi, M. (2004). Estimating The Vocabulary Size of Iranian EFL Learners. Journal of Science and Research, Vol. 4, No.1, Pp. 15-30. Kurnia, N. (2003). Retention of Multi-Word Strings and Meaning Derivation from L2 Reading. Ph.D. Thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. L Nation, I. (2011). Research into Practice: Vocabulary. Language Teaching, Vol. 44, Pp. 529-539. Nation, I. (2007). New Roles for L2 Vocabulary. In V. Cook & L.Wei (Eds.),Contemporary Applied Linguistics: Language Teaching And Learning. London: Continuum. Nation, P., & Meara, P. (2010). Vocabulary. In N. Schmitt (Ed.), An Introduction to Applied Linguistics (2nd Ed.). London: Hodder Education. Schmitt, N., & Jiang, X. (2011). The Relation Between Percentage of Vocabulary Knowledge and Level of Comprehension, The Modern Language Journal, Vol. 95, No. 1, P. 26 Webb, S. (2007). The Effects of Repetition Vocabulary Knowledge. Applied Linguistics. Vol. 28, No. 1, Pp. 46 -65. Yudin, A. (2010). Language and Literacy Development in Bilingual Setting. New York. N.Y: Guilford Press. Zimmerman, C. B., & Schmitt, N. (2005). Lexical Questions to Guide the Teaching and Learning of Words. CATESOL Journal, Vol. 17, Pp. 164-170. Appendix: Range_2_range.txt Wordlist Tokens/% Types/% Families 1 453/84.99 188/70.94 158 2 30/ 5.63 30/11.32 30 3 14/2.63 14/5.28 13 4 11/2.06 8/3/2002 7 5 3/0.56 3/1.13 3 6 7/1.31 7/2.64 7 7 1/0.19 1/0.38 1 8 2/0.38 2/0.75 2 9 1/0.19 1/0.38 1 10 0/0.00 0/0.00 0 11 3/0.56 3/1.13 3 12 0/0.00 0/0.00 0 13 1/0.19 1/0.38 1 14 0/0.00 0/0.00 0 15 1/0.19 1/0.38 1 16 0/0.00 0/0.00 0 Total 533 256 277 Full range analysis result attached separately as range_2_range.txt Read More