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Lexial set? flash card pros and cons

Submitted by easygoing on 14 November, 2008 - 20:02.

Hello can you please explain to me the term lexial set and give me some examples of this term

also what are the pros and cons of using flash cards in a vocabulary lesson

Thank you very much

Paul

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Heath

A variety of lexical sets?

Submitted on 20 November, 2008 - 01:12

Often the term is used for a group of hyponyms or words related by topic. Examples:

Hyponyms

Fruit: apple banana orange lemon strawberry melon
Days of the week: Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday
Body parts: head hand chest shoulder foot

Topic-related

Doctors & hospitals: doctor nurse hospital ambulance X-ray medicine
Crime: theif white-collar crime petty theft burglary murder
New Year's Eve celebrations: fireworks celebration wine countdown midnight

In a practice test for the TKT (Teaching Knowledge Test), in Spratt, Pulverness & William's "The TKT Course" (CUP, 2005) the group trees, flowers, and grass is a Lexical Set.

In relation to phonology and/or etymology (the history of words) a lexical set is a group of words that share a phoneme (single sound). Examples:

Phoneme Sharing

pig six fit hit drip minute eclipse (they all have the /I/ sound)

But I don't know all that much about how it is used in this sense, and the TKT is a Cambridge ESOL award specifically for language teachers, so I'll assume the definition you're looking for is that group of topic related words I've mentioned above.

Heath

Flashcards - making a con a pro?

Submitted on 19 November, 2008 - 01:17

Sorry, forgot to comment on flashcards.

I assume you mean two-sided ones (eg. English on one side, Chinese on the other side; picture on one side, word on the other side; etc), and I'm only commenting on self-made and regularly updated ones.

Pros

They show a record of learning.
They can be moved around and reorganised in different ways (nouns together; synonyms together; topic-related together; etc, etc), helping to build connections between words in our memories.
They can be used as prompts for production (eg. if I saw the English and produced the Chinese) or reception (eg. if I saw the Chinese and recognise how the meaning is expressed in English)
They can be tailored to different types of learners (pictures vs diagrams vs words; direct translation vs definition)
They can have varying amounts of information (phonemic script; part of speech; collocations; etc)
You can carry them around with you and practice in 'dead time', like when you're on the subway commuting to work.

Cons

They're usually used for direct translation word-to-word (two problems: 1. often there's no direct translation and this results in missing the subtle differences between the two words. 2. it doesn't give you any idea of how to use it in connection with other words)
You have to be a dedicated learner to get much out of them (most learners will set them aside after a week or two)

The first of the cons can be counteracted if you use flashcards for phrases, expressions, and sentences - so it translates phrase for phrase instead of word for word. That way you get practice with the structures the words usually occur in as well.