Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Item

Supporting collocation learning with a digital library

Abstract
Extensive knowledge of collocations is a key factor that distinguishes learners from fluent native speakers. Such knowledge is difficult to acquire simply because there is so much of it. This paper describes a system that exploits the facilities offered by digital libraries to provide a rich collocation-learning environment. The design is based on three processes that have been identified as leading to lexical acquisition: noticing, retrieval and generation. Collocations are automatically identified in input documents using natural language processing techniques and used to enhance the presentation of the documents and also as the basis of exercises, produced under teacher control, that amplify students' collocation knowledge. The system uses a corpus of 1.3 B short phrases drawn from the web, from which 29 M collocations have been automatically identified. It also connects to examples garnered from the live web and the British National Corpus.
Type
Journal Article
Type of thesis
Series
Citation
Wu, S., Franken, M. & Witten, I. H. (2010). Supporting collocation learning with a digital library. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 23(1), 87-110.
Date
2010
Publisher
Taylor & Francis Group
Degree
Supervisors
Rights
This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Computer Assisted Language Learning, 23(1), 87-110. © 2010 Taylor & Francis.