Word Manager and CALL: structured access to the lexicon as a tool for enriching learners’ vocabulary

Abstract

Morphology consists of inflection and word formation. In foreign language teaching it occurs mainly in the form of inflectional paradigms. While this is certainly an important part of mastering a foreign language, an adequate use of morphology, both inflection and word formation, can facilitate the acquisition of foreign language vocabulary. By applying word formation rules as a way to structure their knowledge, advanced learners can multiply their active vocabulary. A practical problem in using inflectional classes and word formation processes in vocabulary teaching is that the information required to devise exercises is not readily available. In a dictionary, it is not possible to get an overview of word formation relationships or classes of words belonging to the same inflectional class. The nature of word formation processes even makes it impossible in principle to fully cover them in a printed dictionary without creating a lot of redundancy. An electronic dictionary does not automatically solve the problems involved, unless it is structured appropriately. In the Word Manager (WM) project morphological relationships have been taken as a starting point in the design of the lexicon. As a consequence, the lexicon is structured in terms of word formation and inflection rules, in such a way that complete and flexible access to the morphological processes and classes of a language is guaranteed. The full flexibility of WM lexicons requires that the entire system be installed locally. For a dedicated operational component, however, no such installation is necessary. It can be installed as an independently running program or be made available through the Internet. Two such applications (which are freely available) and their possible uses for teaching purposes are described.

121. Word-formation in second language acquisition

“…Ten Hacken and Tschichold (2001) analyse the general potential of WM in enhancing second language vocabulary learning. As they note, the different perspectives on wordformation described in the previous paragraph correspond quite closely to the possibilities offered in the DFC, but without the drawbacks caused by the DFC's presentation as a book.…”

King Alfred

“…We are unaware of any existing efforts to encode Anglo-Saxon morphology in such a fashion, although in other learning contexts the system Word Manager (Hacken and Tschichold, 2001) displays a lexicon grouping other words applying the same inflection or formation rule in order to aid the learner in acquiring the rule, a similar goal.…”

Computer-Assisted Language Learning and the Revolution in Computational Linguistics

“…The structure of WM is described in ten Hacken/Domenig (1996). The specific use of the organization of information in WM for CALL was recognized by ten Hacken/Tschichold (2001). The use of this information in the context of ELDIT is described by Knapp et al (2003).…”