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Sunday, 29 June 2014
Case Study Of Tertiary Learners’ Capability In Lexical Knowledge Naginder Kaur naginder.kaur@gmail.com Universiti Teknologi MARA Malaysia
ABSTRACT
Lexical competence is crucial in ensuring academic success at all levels. At tertiary level, sufficient word knowledge and lexical comprehension ensure sufficient literacy of language skills as learners need to cope with challenging academic tasks in their respective field of study. This paper reports findings of a case study of pre-degree Malaysian learners enrolled at Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) Perlis. The study was undertaken to find out if these learners have sufficient lexical ability before they embark on a degree programme. Nine learners of varying proficiency levels of high, average and low language proficiency were selected for this study. The data were collected in sequential two-phased procedure. The first phase involved diagnostic stage of probing learners’ level of word knowledge with online Vocabulary Levels Test by Laufer and Nation. Subsequently, learners’ capability within the scope of word form, spelling and pronunciation was explored through the Academic Word List Test and in-depth interviews with the participants. The findings revealed that the learners’ word mastery level is only between 1,000 and 3,000 words, which is far below the minimum level required for tertiary education. These insights thus inform the researcher that urgent measures must be taken in order to redeem the situation. Hence, a structured vocabulary learning programme is deemed necessary in the Malaysian English language curriculum to help learners acquire sufficient lexis before embarking on tertiary education. This would also provide our tertiary learners with the avenue to make them employable and marketable graduates with firm language proficiency in general and lexical competence in particular.
Keywords: lexical; vocabulary; capability; Academic Word List; Malaysian tertiary learners.
INTRODUCTION
Vocabulary or lexis or lexical item refers to the semantics of the language. Vocabulary also appears as the headword in a dictionary entry (Jackson, 1998). It relates to knowledge of words as well as word meanings and thus, forms the basic building blocks of language learning experience. As the cornerstone of language proficiency, lexical knowledge is the key element as it enables one to respond to the four language skills effectively. With adequate lexical knowledge, a learner has sufficient input to partake in productive skills, namely, daily oral communication and written work. It is estimated that about 3,000 spoken word families are required to cover about 96% of one’s daily communication lexicon use or about 2,000 words to maintain conversations (Schmitt, 2000). Similarly, lexical competence also ensures ability to cope with various types of reading (Nation, 2001). Possessing good knowledge of how the various systems inherent in a language may not necessarily enable one to communicate but it is usually possible to communicate if one has the vocabulary. Vocabulary is thus, perceived to occupy a key position in second language (L2) learning.
In essence, vocabulary learning far transcends form-meaning correlation and is not the mere piling up of individual words (Nation, 2001). It encompasses two dimensions which are word knowledge dimension and word skill dimension. Word knowledge involves knowledge of word form, its meaning and its contextual use, both receptively (passive or recognised) and productively (active vocabulary). Word skill dimension on the other hand, refers to the ability to use the word in a wide range of contexts. It requires the understanding of appropriate grammatical functions, common collocations, appropriacy in different contexts and frequency of use. To sum up, it can be seen that knowledge dimension strategies include remembering form-meaning pairs (for example, mnemonic devices) while skill-oriented strategies relate to the meaningful use of words in different contexts as well as the automaticity in retrieving and producing those words. Both these dimensions are complementary and of equal importance, and should develop integratively. Hence, in order to know a word completely, it is essential for one to know key aspects of the word, namely its pronunciation, spelling, derivations and its range of meanings.
A FACT is a statement that can be proven true.
It can also be a statement that is common knowledge from life experience.
An OPINION is a statement that is based on someone’s beliefs or feelings.
Why is Fact and Opinion an important reading strategy? It is important to be able to identify facts from opinions so that we are able to understand what is real
from what is someone’s point of view or thought.
How do we identify Facts and Opinions to help us understand what we are reading? Facts are true statements that give us information about the topic or main idea.
Opinions will have clue words or phrases that will tell us that the statement is someone’s feeling or
belief.
More explanations…
To sum up, facts
can be verified in reference books, official records, and so forth.
are expressed in concrete language or specific numbers.
once verified, are generally agreed upon by people.
Determining An Opinion
Opinions are based on subjective judgment and personal values rather
than on information that can be verified. An opinion is a belief that
someone holds without complete proof or positive knowledge that it is
correct. Even experts who have studied the same issue carefully often
have very different opinions about that issue.
Opinions are often disputed, and
many times involve abstract concepts and complex moral issues such as
right or wrong, fairness and loyalty.
Look for opinion words such as “think” or “thought”
Look for words that describe a feeling or belief such as
pretty, difficult, confusing, exciting, the best, and the worst
Look for opinion comparison words such as better than, smarter than…
Opinions are often introduced by verbs and adverbs that suggest some doubt in the writer’s mind:
It appears she was confused.
She seems to have the qualifications for the position.
They probably used dirty tricks to win.
Become an alert and critical reader.
Understand the differences between facts and opinions, and interpret and
apply both into your critical thinking.
You heart’s pumping fast, you’ve got sweaty palms and your mind is racing. All of these are symptoms of problems associated with public speaking.
Today, I want to talk about six problems associated with public speaking: These are serious mental problems; these are serious issues and should be taken seriously, if you do have them.
Let’s talk about the symptoms and you can see if you have any of these problems yourself and you can seek out how to fix your specific problem. One problem is not the same as the other and the methods of improving your public speaking ability and removing fear are going to be different for every single person.
PROBLEM 1: FEAR
Fear, stress and nervousness. This is the problem the most of us have when it comes to public speaking.This is not severe anxiety, this is not severe stress. This is just a natural nervousness that we get and natural fear that we have when we are going to speak in public.
Symptoms like sweaty palms, a racing mind, your heart beating little bit faster or sometimes your legs get a little bit shaky. These are natural signs of you being nervous before a big presentation.It is not bad to be nervous to give a presentation, especially if it is going to be an important one.
When I was a rep for a pharmaceutical company and I knew I had to role play with the MD of a company I was naturally very nervous. Who wouldn’t be as a young sales rep role playing with the MD of a multi-billion dollar corporation? I had sweaty palms, I had a racing mind and I was very stressed leading up it. But when it happened I flew into it and it went fine.The stress went away when it was done obviously and things were fine. It was not stress or nervousness that I could not deal with. It was just uncomfortable so that is number one.
PROBLEM 2: ANXIETY
This is more severe than that natural stress and nervousness and you know it is anxiety when you got symptoms like hot and cold flushes, tightening of the chest or sometimes even you feel a tightening around the throat area. Also your mind does not just race, it snowballs the worries, things get worse and worse in your mind and you get this obsessive thinking that this is going on. That is a sign of anxiety about public speaking.
Anxiety when it comes to public speaking is very common. Anxiety is very different to that natural nervousness and stress. With nervousness and stress sometimes we can just do some breathing techniques or some relaxation techniques. However, anxiety is more serious so we need to treat it differently.
PROBLEM 3: PANIC ATTACKS
This I believe is more worse that anxiety. They say that anywhere from 15-35% of people will experience a panic attack sometime in life. A panic attack is like intense anxiety – shortness of breath and nausea are common symptoms.You have probably heard about people vomiting before they need to give a speech, that can be from a panic attack.
A panic attack is sometimes described as anxiety with immense fear. Sometimes with panic attacks people become afraid of their anxiety and so they have these panic attacks about the anxiety that they are going to be having in the future, or the anxiety that they are having in the moment.Panic attacks can be very debilitating and so the people will avoid situations where they are afraid they are going to have a panic attack or afraid they are going to have anxiety. This is why some people who have panic attacks never leave their house.
They are scared to be put in a situation where they are going to have an attack so this is something that’s very serious.Again, it is very common when it comes to public speaking but we are obviously looking at this very differently that we would look at the natural stress or just the fluttering of the heart caused by nervousness.
PROBLEM 4: INSOMNIA
Generally, it’s the night before you need to give a presentation and what happens is your mind is racing thinking about you speech. Thinking about what might happen what might go wrong because your mind is going 1,000,000 miles an hour, you can’t get a sleep. This is very common problem associated with public speaking.
PROBLEM 5: POST TRAUMATIC STRESS
This happens when you have has a past experience (probably related to public speaking) where it went terrible and for some reason you have these horrible feelings associated with public speaking.So whenever you think a public speaking maybe can be doing it or just thinking about it in the future, you keep going back to this moment in time where it was traumatic for you.You need to deal with that differently to anxiety and the other problems associated with public speaking because we are not dealing with stress in the moment, we are dealing with a past experience.
PROBLEM 6: DEPRESSION
This is not as common but still does happen with public speaking.
This happens when you get so stressed that it actually leads to depression and you start feeling very down and you don’t want to get out the bed. You don’t want to talk to anyone you obviously don’t give your presentation.
I haven’t had depression around public speaking specifically but I know what depression is. I know what it feels like. It’s very hard to get out of that mental downward spiral.There you have six problems associated with public speaking.Did any of those resonate with you? Do you have any of those problems that are associated with public speaking?
I believe that it’s very important to put a name to your problem. Being able to understand your problem better and understand the issues you have allows you to look at solutions to your problems.But if you are having anxiety and you are treating it like a small amount of nervousness, or you having panic attacks and you are just treating it like you are a little bit stressed you probably aren’t going to overcome that situation.
If you are just dealing with a panic attack in the way that I deal with a little bit nervousness when I get up to speak then it’s probably not going to work for you.It is very important to understand your problem, what’s going on with you so that you can then begin to learn more about it and begin to overcome it.
Manglish...Weird English? Listen and give your opinion...
