Making and Using Word Lists for Language Learning and Testing
Author
Word lists lie at the heart of good vocabulary course design, the development of graded materials for extensive listening and extensive reading, research on vocabulary load, and vocabulary test development. This book has been written for vocabulary researchers and curriculum designers to describe the factors they need to consider when they create frequency-based word lists. These include the purpose for which the word list is to be used, the design of the corpus from which the list will be made, the unit of counting, and what should and should not be counted as words. The book draws on research to show the current state of knowledge of these factors and provides very practical guidelines for making word lists for language teaching and testing. The writer is well known for his work in the teaching and learning of vocabulary and in the creation of word lists and vocabulary size tests based on word lists.
[Not in series, 208] 2016. xiv, 210 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
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Acknowledgements | p. ix
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Introduction | pp. xi–xiv
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Section 1: The uses of word lists
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Chapter 1: Word lists | pp. 3–13
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Section 2: Deciding what to count as words
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Chapter 2: Types, lemmas, word families | pp. 23–39
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Chapter 3: Homoforms and polysemesI.S.P. Nation and Parent | pp. 41–53
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Chapter 4: Proper namesI.S.P. Nation and Polina Kobeleva | pp. 55–64
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Chapter 5: Hyphenated words and transparent compounds | pp. 65–70
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Chapter 6: Multiword unitsI.S.P. Nation, Shin and Lynn E. Grant | pp. 71–79
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Chapter 7: Marginal words and foreign words | pp. 81–83
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Chapter 8: Acronyms | pp. 85–87
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Chapter 9: Function words | pp. 89–92
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Section 3: Choosing and preparing the corpus
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Chapter 10: Corpus selection and designI.S.P. Nation and Sorell | pp. 95–105
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Chapter 11: Preparation for making word lists | pp. 107–110
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Section 4: Making the lists
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Chapter 12: Taking account of your purpose | pp. 113–130
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Chapter 13: Critiquing a word list: the BNC/COCA lists | pp. 131–143
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Chapter 14: Specialized word listsI.S.P. Nation, Averil Coxhead, Teresa Mihwa Chung and Quero | pp. 145–151
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Chapter 15: Making an essential word list for beginnersThi Ngoc Yen Dang and Stuart Webb | pp. 153–167
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Section 5: Using the lists
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Chapter 16: Using word lists | pp. 171–182
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Appendix 1: Proper noun tagging in the BNC | pp. 183–186
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Appendix 2: Closed lexical set headwords | p. 187
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Appendix 3: The Essential Word List | pp. 188–195
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References
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Author index | pp. 207–208
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Subject index | pp. 209–210
“For any educator who wishes to learn about using corpora and making word lists, this book is both an invaluable guide an a pleasure to read.”
Caroline Handley, Asia University, in JALT 40(1): 51-53, 2017
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Subjects
Main BIC Subject
CJA: Language teaching theory & methods
Main BISAC Subject
LAN020000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Study & Teaching