Mei-Hua Chen
ABSTRACT
Lexical competence is considered as an important indicator of language proficiency. While learning vocabulary, learners need to remember various aspects of knowledge about the word (e.g., meaning, form and use). Many vocabulary learning strategies have been proposed to help learners consolidate vocabulary knowledge. Among them, grouping words belonging to the same meaning categories is conducive to recall (Schmitt, 1997). On the other hand, learning chunks is also a mnemonic device for increasing vocabulary. Taking into consideration these two important vocabulary memory strategies that help students learn faster and recall better, the current study proposes grouping and learning lexical phrases sharing semantic equivalence but differing in use (i.e., phrasal paraphrases) (e.g., “is worth reading”, “is worthy of being read” and “is worthwhile reading”). For this, a corpus-based paraphrasing system, PREFER, was introduced because it provides a sufficient number of paraphrases and corresponding Chinese translations, usage patterns and example sentences. Such information could widen and deepen learners’ vocabulary knowledge. A pre-and post-test was conducted on 49 college freshmen to examine their performance in phrasal paraphrase learning. The results showed that with the assistance of the introduced system, students achieved substantial gains regardless of their proficiency level. Furthermore, students’ errors on the test sheets were thoroughly analyzed for the purpose of understanding students’ learning difficulties while learning paraphrases. Despite its exploratory nature, the current study shed some light on the effects of learning phrasal paraphrases on vocabulary expansion.
Key Words: lexical phrase, phrasal paraphrase, vocabulary knowledge, consolidation strategy
代換短語學習: 探究有效強化詞彙知識策略
陳玫樺
東海大學
摘要
詞彙知識在語言學習上扮演了重要的角色。有許多學者提出不同的策略來強化詞彙學習，其中，語意相近的詞彙一起學習是重要的詞彙記憶策略之一。與此同時，學習詞彙短語相較於學習單字更有助於記憶。有鑑於此，本研究提出群集式代換短語學習。我們導入一語料庫為本的代換短語建議系統PREFER，此系統不僅建議同義的詞彙短語，也提供個別詞彙短語的用法及例句。英語學習者透過對比的方式，學習詞彙短語的用法。如此一來，不但學習者的詞彙量可以擴充，也有助於他們察覺詞彙的形式及用法。本研究利用前後測比較來評估49位大一學生的學習成效，結果顯示在導入系統輔助學習後，學生的詞彙知識有顯著進步。除此之外，我們也分析學生的錯誤並探究背後可能的原因。本研究初探了強化詞彙知識策略，相信目前的成果有助於詞彙擴充相關研究。
關鍵詞：詞彙短語、代換短語、詞彙知識、詞彙強化策略
