Ackermann slides
- 1. An Academic Collocation List Kirsten Ackermann BALEAP 2011, Portsmouth 1
- 2. Contents 1. Introduction 2. Corpus 3. Methodology 4. Sample list 5. Discussion 3 An Academic Collocation List l 11/04/11 Introduction 4 An Academic Collocation List l 11/04/11 2
- 3. Motivation • Significance: collocations are essential for successful language processing and language use • Dilemma: collocations are instantly recognized by native speakers, but remain difficult for learners to acquire and use properly • Proficiency: collocations make fluent language possible, support comprehension, create a register Objective • To compile a list of the most frequent and pedagogically relevant collocations in written academic English in order to devise efficient learning, teaching and assessment resources Tool • Pearson International Corpus of Academic English (PICAE) 5 An Academic Collocation List l 11/04/11 Pearson International Corpus of Academic English (PICAE) 6 An Academic Collocation List l 11/04/11 3
- 4. PICAE WRITTEN SPOKEN Curricular Curricular Textbook Article Lecture Seminar Extracurricular Extracurricular Administrative TV broadcasts material University/student/ Radio broadcasts alumni magazines Employment and career information 7 An Academic Collocation List l 11/04/11 PICAE: Written curricular component • 333 documents – From 4 academic disciplines: Humanities, Social Science, Natural and Formal Science, Professions and Applied Science – Covering 28 academic subjects: 7 per academic discipline 8 An Academic Collocation List l 11/04/11 4
- 5. PICAE: Academic disciplines and subjects Natural / Professions / Humanities Social Science Formal Science Applied Science Subject Tokens Subject Tokens Subject Tokens Subject Tokens Earth History 946,707 Anthropology 413,237 Sciences 1,343,723 Architecture 167,074 Linguistics 855,128 Archaeology 184,089 Chemistry 1,502,277 Business 1,644,180 Literature 1,562,046 Cultural studies 861,656 Physics 662,054 Education 405,202 Art incl. Computer Music 728,532 Gender studies 520,395 sciences 1,124,097 Engineering 1,134,950 General Health academia 627,951 Politics 1,090,800 Mathematics 295,565 sciences 1,429,679 Media Philosophy 602,233 Psychology 1,560,745 Biology 858,597 studies 1,500,485 Religion 198,165 Sociology 1,832,588 Ecology 239,787 Law 1,962,002 Total 5,520,762 Total 6,463,510 Total 6,026,100 Total 8,243,572 9 An Academic Collocation List l 11/04/11 Methodology 10 An Academic Collocation List l 11/04/11 5
- 6. Overview Step One – Douglas Biber’s quantitative analysis of PICAE Result: list of c.130,000 collocations and extended phrases Step Two – Manual vetting of initial collocation list Result: list of c.3,500 collocations Step Three – Expert judgment Result: list of c.3,000 pedagogically relevant collocations 11 An Academic Collocation List l 11/04/11 Stage One: Quantitative analysis of the corpus data Target output Initial academic collocation list With ‘collocation’ defined as: •A single word that tends to co-occur in the span of ±3 words from the target word • ≥1 per million words • In ≥5 different texts • Mutual Information score ≥3 • T-score ≥2 12 An Academic Collocation List l 11/04/11 6
- 7. Stage One: Quantitative analysis of the corpus data Computational method A) Complete reference list • Words appearing more than 12 times in the corpus B) Reference list of content words • Content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) • Frequency of ≥5 per million words • Distribution in ≥5 different texts • Excluding General Service List headwords • Using ‘stop list’ to exclude frequent function words with purely grammatical meaning 13 An Academic Collocation List l 11/04/11 Stage One: Quantitative analysis of the corpus data Computational method C) Initial list of c.130,000 academic collocations Information for each collocate includes: • Location relative to the target word (-3, -2, -1, +1, +2, +3) • Normed overall frequency (per million words) • Normed frequency (per million words) in each academic discipline • Number of texts it occurs in • Mutual Information score • T-score 14 An Academic Collocation List l 11/04/11 7
- 8. Most Normed Pre‐ Academic Post‐ Freq Freq per MI # of collocate Word collocate Position million score t‐score texts PAS HM SS NFS services provided ‐1 8.12 6.39 13.29 45 16.56 0.21 8.67 3.22 rationale for 1 8.12 5.93 13.23 79 11.14 7.34 8.31 4.42 cultural xxx political 2 8.08 4.82 12.94 55 5.00 5.66 16.44 5.43 gender identity 1 8.08 7.17 13.32 32 1.71 7.76 18.79 5.43 other xxx including ‐2 8.08 3.72 12.40 102 9.56 5.45 8.67 7.84 provides information ‐1 8.08 5.52 13.12 67 6.85 3.35 9.39 12.87 to interact ‐1 8.08 3.21 11.97 69 8.57 5.45 10.48 7.24 whole range ‐1 8.08 6.52 13.27 64 8.85 6.29 12.46 3.82 european community ‐1 8.03 6.00 13.17 42 17.56 1.89 5.42 3.42 experimental data 1 8.03 6.87 13.27 23 3.43 1.47 0.72 28.96 social issues ‐1 8.03 3.99 12.54 59 6.28 2.31 19.51 3.22 can xxx measured ‐2 8.03 4.96 12.95 71 5.42 4.40 4.70 18.91 remote sensing 1 8.03 14.45 13.38 10 0.14 0.00 0.00 35.80 may affect ‐1 7.99 5.45 13.04 71 12.28 4.19 5.96 7.84 information society 1 7.99 4.61 12.79 12 21.70 0.00 3.79 1.01 15 An Academic Collocation List l 11/04/11 Step Two: Manual vetting of initial collocation list 1. Preparation • Tagging initial collocation list with OpenNLP using a simplified set of tags • Converting tagged output into specified format Pre-collocate Pre-C tag Academic word AW tag Post-collocate Post-C tag key adj concepts n from xxx prep xxx region n different adj areas n culture n xxx society xxx n community n based vpp social adj organization n future adj research n slightly adv more adv at xxx prep xxx disposal n order xxx n xxx obtain v cultural adj diversity n independent adj variables n 16 An Academic Collocation List l 11/04/11 8
- 9. Step Two: Manual vetting of initial collocation list 2. Cleaning based on quantitative parameters • Normed frequency ≥1 • MI score ≥3 • T-score ≥4 • Dispersion ≥.2 3. POS-analysis of the cleaned list • Filtering by POS tags to include only target combinations • N+V N+Vpp • Adj+N Adv+Adj • Adv+V • Re-tagging if applicable 17 An Academic Collocation List l 11/04/11 Step Two: Manual vetting 4. Qualitative analysis • Judging each collocation whether to • include • discuss • exclude in the academic collocation list. 18 An Academic Collocation List l 11/04/11 9
- 10. Step Three: Expert judgment 1. Each collocation is to be judged by an expert committee on its pedagogical value. 2. A decision is to be made independently by each expert whether or not to include the collocation in the final list. 3. The list will be finalised in panel discussion. 19 An Academic Collocation List l 11/04/11 Result: An Academic Collocation List The Academic Collocation List is a list of the most frequent and pedagogically relevant collocations in academic written English that: • Can help students from all academic disciplines to increase their collocational competence and thus their language proficiency • Can assist EAP teachers in their lesson planning • Will inform test development, i.e. item writing, item type, item analysis • Will provide a research tool for investigating the development of academic language proficiency 20 An Academic Collocation List l 11/04/11 10
- 11. The Academic Collocation List A sample 21 An Academic Collocation List l 11/04/11 Pre‐collocate Pre‐C tag Academic word AW tag Post‐collocate Post‐C tag Status Sample I: social adj policy n v Frequency popular local adj adj culture authority n n f v wide adj range n v cultural adj studies n s previous adj chapter n d local adj authorities n v free adj movement n v social adj security n s private adj sector n v public adj policy n v indigenous adj peoples n s political adj economy n s widely adv used vpp v ethnic adj groups n s general adj assembly n v local adj government n s academic adj writing n s productivity nn growth n v academic adj writing n s public adj sphere n s human adj genome n f/s low adj income n c individual adj differences n c resources n available adj c 22 An Academic Collocation List l 11/04/11 11
- 12. Sample II: Collocation family ‘development’ Academic Academic Post- Academic Post- Pre-collocate Pre-collocate word word collocate Word collocate v subsequent development v developmental processes ? affect xxx development v further v stage ? contribute xxx v professional v develop strategies ? ensure xxx s emotional v physical development ? facilitate xxx s physical v professional ? promote xxx s human v subsequent ? develop xxx theory s economic v technological ? developed xxx theory s social v subsequent developments ? developing xxx strategies s historical v technological ? developing xxx theory s agricultural v fully developed s spiritual v highly s industrial v originally s urban s technological s regional c significant c normal c future 23 An Academic Collocation List l 11/04/11 Sample III: Collocation family ‘research’ Pre-collocate AW AW Post-collocate Pre-collocate AW adj considerable research n research efforts adj traditional research adj initial n effort adj comparative adj earlier n purposes adj educational adj past n methodology adj experimental adj original n evidence adj economic adj primary vpp/adj published adj historical adj extensive vpp/adj undertaken adj national adj little vpp/adj conducted adj medical adj major adj academic adj basic adj quantitative adj current adj qualitative adj empirical adj previous adj future adj scientific adj further adj recent p/adj existing p/adj published n field v undertake v conducting 24 An Academic Collocation List l 11/04/11 12
- 13. Discussion 25 An Academic Collocation List l 11/04/11 Discussion • What about the collocations under discussion? • Is there a preferred way of presenting the collocations? • Are there any additional usages for the list? • What to do with extended phrases? 1. Some included, others rejected 2. If POS is not a target combination 3. Not a linguistically complete unit 4. Degree of fixedness 5. Transparent but useful discourse organisers/referential expressions 6. Common adjectives as headwords 7. Subject specific 8. Implication/connotation 26 An Academic Collocation List l 11/04/11 13