AU kursuskatalog arkiv

"Without grammar, very little can be conveyed,

without vocabulary, nothing can be conveyed."

  (D.A. Wilkins 1972: 111, emphasis in the original)

In the last decade or so, vocabulary has (re)emerged as an important element in language use and language learning, and it now competes alongside grammar for the attention of foreign language teachers and acquisition scholars. Although much of the research that has brought vocabulary to the forefront deals exclusively with single words , a fast-growing body of research has subsequently expanded the range of investigation to include multi-word lexical items (MWIs). According to some estimates,   the number of MWIs in a native English speaker's lexicon is of the same order of magnitude as the number of single words. The purpose of this seminar is to aid students in obtaining an overview of the central areas of research in foreign language vocabulary, including acquisition, competence, and assessment. Students will explore a number of vocabulary issues, including what it means to know a word, how words are acquired incidentally, and how words are learned systematically. Students will gain familiarity with various instruments used to assess learners' breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge. Students will be encouraged to direct their investigation of these vocabulary issues and assessment instruments beyond single words to include lexical items consisting of two or more words, such as collocations, lexical phrases, and idioms.

Students in this course will have the opportunity to engage in small-scale hands-on empirical research, either individually or in groups. Research topic and scope will be addressed early on in the course to ensure that student projects are both feasible and manageable within the time constraint of a single semester. Students will obtain knowledge of basic research concepts and methods. Students will also be introduced to useful linguistic tools and internet resources such as the British National Corpus (BNC), Phrases in English (PIE), and lexical profilers.

The reading for this course will be a compendium consisting of book chapters and research articles. An important objective of the readings will be to identify the role that is assigned to multi-word lexical items in various accounts of foreign language learning, knowledge, and use. Part of each seminar will be devoted to issues concerning the design and development of the participants' own research.

No previous knowledge of either foreign vocabulary acquisition or foreign language acquisition is necessary for this course.