Do some words matter more or the frequency fallacy?

Leo Selivan looks at the importance of collocation in vocabulary teaching.

Date
Duration
30 minutes

About the talk

Much research on second language vocabulary acquisition has pointed out that high-frequency vocabulary should be given priority in the classroom. However, by their very nature, highly frequent  words carry multiple meanings, some more common than others. This talk focuses on the importance of collocation when selecting vocabulary for teaching and discusses whether corpus frequency should always dictate the syllabus.

 

 

Downloads
Leo's handout394.67 KB

Comments

Submitted by keziamcdonald on Tue, 05/15/2018 - 04:39

The usual interpretation is that the extrinsic motivation provided by the fine 'crowds out' intrinsic motivation provided by a sense of duty. Without the fine, people feel a moral obligation to collect their children on time. When there is a fine, they feel that they are paying for being late, so the feeling of moral obligation not to be late recedes. It seems there may be a similar effect in the case of term-time holidays.

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