Word-net exercises linking lexical knowledge to grammatical awareness¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

Word-net exercises have learners build networks of private psychological associations around antonym pairs such as plentiful and scarce, attaching central adjectives to generic superordinate nouns. At a secondary stage symbols are added to make overt relations of dependency, both structural-semantic (superordinate to hyponym) and grammatical (parts of speech), which then feed written sentence production. This makes overt the grammatical information Allwright observed learners acquiring covertly by asking questions about words.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Nets are structured by superordinate generic nouns; structural principles are made overt only at a secondary stage, after learners have added words

Constraints¶

• At early stages the aim is simply to encourage the learner to add words, not to focus on structure

Target Learners¶

• second language learners building semantic competence in the L2

Target Learning Goals¶

• sense relations such as synonymy and antonymy
• grammatical awareness via lexis
• written production

Related Strategies¶

• Paraphrase exercises using general basic words to assimilate meaning
• Word-set exercises for contextualising vocabulary via imagined possible worlds
• Word Maps

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Robinson, Peter J. (1988). Procedural and Declarative Knowledge in Vocabulary Learning: Communication and the Language Learner's Lexicon. Paper presented at the 22nd Annual TESOL Convention, Chicago. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED296585