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Every word signifies multiple senses. Many studies using comprehension-based measures suggest that polysemes' senses (e.g., "paper" as in "printer paper" or "term paper") share lexical representations, whereas homophones' meanings (e.g., "pen" as in "ballpoint pen" or "pig pen") correspond to distinct lexical representations. Less is known about the lexical representations of polysemes compared to homophones in language production. In this study, speakers named pictures after reading sentence fragments that primed polysemes and homophones either as direct competitors to pictures (i.e., semantic-competitors), or as indirect-competitors to pictures (e.g., polysemous senses of semantic competitors, or homophonous meanings of semantic competitors). Polysemes (e.g., "paper") elicited equal numbers of intrusions to picture names (e.g., "cardboard") compared to in control conditions whether primed as direct competitors ("printer paper") or as indirect-competitors ("term paper"). This contrasted with the finding that homophones (e.g., "pen") elicited more intrusions to picture names (e.g., crayon) compared to in control conditions when primed as direct competitors ("ballpoint pen") than when primed as indirect-competitors ("pig pen"). These results suggest that polysemes, unlike homophones, are stored and retrieved as unified lexical representations.

Idioms are a colourful and fascinating aspect of English which are commonly used in all types of language, formal and informal, spoken and written. Despite the emerging theoretical accounts of idioms up to now, little attention has been paid to teaching and learning idiomatic expressions in English as a Foreign Language, English for Specific Purposes or English for Academic Purposes classroom. Developing idiomatic competence among English language learners in Slovakia remains a formidable challenge. Secondyear undergraduates of the study programmes 'Teacher Training of English Language and Literature' (single major study) and 'Teacher Training of English Language and Literature (double major study) need to master different types of idioms within one-term course in 'English Lexicology and Phraseology'. Their language skills will increase rapidly if they can understand and use them confidently and correctly. The communication role of idiomatic comparisons is often neglected, as well. The aim of the paper is to find out their level of knowledge of standard idiomatic comparisons at the beginning and the end of the course. The paper intends to reveal how students of different nationalities -- Slovak, Hungarian, Russian and Ukrainian -- are able to explain the meaning of similes used in example sentences in English or their mother tongue. Altogether 51 students are tested twice via tests focused on similes, and their results are compared via a statistical t-Test. The results from the initial test show that their knowledge of idiomatic comparisons was not very wide. However, the results from the final test prove that they were motivated to learn idioms, and thus they extended their knowledge of idiomatic comparisons significantly. In addition, the paper suggests some implications for teaching and learning similes and phraseological units in general.

A particular status of the English language as the language of international communication and connections between the nearly related English and German languages resulted in the emergence of many interlingual borrowings in the Modern English and German language vocabularies. The paper aims to consider the functioning of borrowings (loanwords) in the English and German languages. To reach the aim of the research and to carry out the tasks assigned, the following methods were used: a descriptive method, the method of correlation, componential analysis and, comparative semantic analysis. The paper focuses on linguistic and extralinguistic factors of the German and English interaction. Special attention is paid to clarifying the notion of borrowing in modern linguistic science. The word-formative calques and half-calques (hybrids), which differ from ordinary lexical borrowings by using partially borrowed lexical material, are identified in addition to direct lexical borrowings in the language subsystem under study. The paper demonstrates the significant influence of English borrowings on the structural-semantic qualities of German words, on various semantic changes, as well as on the participation of loanwords in the lexico-semantic variation: synonymy, polysemy, homonymy, and antonymy. The results of the research can also be used in the teaching and learning of both languages, in the course of lexicology or linguistics.

This paper addresses a problem of lexical choice that arises for ESL/EFL learners in the writing of research papers, critiques, interview reports, or any other sort of discourse that requires source attribution. The problem falls naturally into two parts. One part concerns the general lack of linguistic resources typically available (for various reasons) to ESL/EFL learners at the high intermediate to advanced level--an issue of variety. The other concerns the misuse of whatever resources are available--an issue of accuracy. In this paper I hope to sketch a clear conceptual framework for teaching the semantics of attribution expressions at a convenient point in any writing classroom in which reported speech plays a key role.

Student opinions for a course are important to educators and administrators, regardless of the type of the course or the institution. Reading and manually analyzing open-ended feedback becomes infeasible for massive volumes of comments at institution level or online forums. In this paper, we collected and pre-processed a large number of course reviews publicly available online. We applied machine learning techniques with the goal to gain insight into student sentiments and topics. Specifically, we utilized current Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques, such as word embeddings and deep neural networks, and state-of-the-art BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers), RoBERTa (Robustly optimized BERT approach) and XLNet (Generalized Auto-regression Pre-training). We performed extensive experimentation to compare these techniques versus traditional approaches. This comparative study demonstrates how to apply modern machine learning approaches for sentiment polarity extraction and topic-based classification utilizing course feedback. For sentiment polarity, the top model was RoBERTa with 95.5% accuracy and 84.7% F1-macro, while for topic classification, an SVM (Support Vector Machine) was the top classifier with 79.8% accuracy and 80.6% F1-macro. We also provided an in-depth exploration of the effect of certain hyperparameters on the model performance and discussed our observations. These findings can be used by institutions and course providers as a guide for analyzing their own course feedback using NLP models towards self-evaluation and improvement.

This project takes up the intersection of medium and content as a place where they can radically reconfigure one another. The entire process is a sort of unlearning; the habitual use of paper is disrupted. Physicality and meaning merge and emerge. Readers' doings interact and transform both the meaning and background - the content (meaning) that traditionally would be simply re-presented via sheets of paper (background). Troubling just a small, habitual action leads to remarkably different modes of knowing and being. Action, object, meaning, reader and author (re)form tentative self-altering assemblages. These assemblages spiral out in new directions, moving beyond the confines of authorial intent. (Re)new(ed) configurations of self, meaning and object spring forth, opening themselves to different vectors. In order to explore these possibilities, I ask that you print out this article double-sided and cut/fold/etc. as instructed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to shed light on recent research concerning translating English-Arabic lexical collocations. It begins with a brief overview of English and Arabic lexical collocations with reference to specialized dictionaries. Research views on translating lexical collocations are presented, with the focus on English-Arabic collocations. These views have supported the notion that translating English-Arabic lexical collocations by second language learners is a problematic matter that needs attention. Then, highlighting second language learners' errors when translating English lexical collocations is due to inaccessible collocation dictionaries, semantic, syntactic differences between the L1 and L2. This paper concludes with an overview of how teacher instruction can facilitate collocation translation through dictionaries, and a scaffolding method.

For the past few decades, stylistics has emerged as a discipline that encompasses both literary criticism and linguistics. The integration of both disciplines opened many opportunities for English literature and language teachers to get creative in their teaching--by introducing the stylistic approach in their classrooms. However, in a typical Southeast Asian classroom (Sadiman, 2004), several problems such as the lack of resources, scarcity of quality teaching strategies, time defciency, as well as the unfamiliarity of authentic assessment seem to impede the utilization of the mentioned approach or other learner-centered approaches. Moreover, only limited literature on the analysis, let alone the teaching, of the ballad adopting the stylistic method are evident. This paper could be described as an attempt to address these problems. It provides a fresh perspective in analyzing a well-known 18th century British ballad, "The Charge of the Light Brigade," in the syntactical/structural, lexical, and phonological aspects of stylistics. It also attempts to explain the evident theme of warfare based on textual evidences in the aforementioned aspects. In addition, it contributes to the existing literature advocating the stylistic approach in both the teaching of language and literature. Furthermore, it provides several potential comprehensive activities that take into account the challenging setting and situation of Southeast Asian English as a Second Language (ESL) or English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms, especially at the tertiary level. This paper also has implications on classrooms that experience the same aforementioned challenges, and is not only limited to the Southeast Asian context.

For the past few decades, stylistics has emerged as a discipline that encompasses both literary criticism and linguistics. The integration of both disciplines opened many opportunities for English literature and language teachers to get creative in their teaching--by introducing the stylistic approach in their classrooms. However, in a typical Southeast Asian classroom (Sadiman, 2004), several problems such as the lack of resources, scarcity of quality teaching strategies, time deficiency, as well as the unfamiliarity of authentic assessment seem to impede the utilization of the mentioned approach or other learner-centered approaches. Moreover, only limited literature on the analysis, let alone the teaching, of the ballad adopting the stylistic method are evident. This paper could be described as an attempt to address these problems. It provides a fresh perspective in analyzing a well-known 18th century British ballad, "The Charge of the Light Brigade," in the syntactical/structural, lexical, and phonological aspects of stylistics. It also attempts to explain the evident theme of warfare based on textual evidences in the aforementioned aspects. In addition, it contributes to the existing literature advocating the stylistic approach in both the teaching of language and literature. Furthermore, it provides several potential comprehensive activities that take into account the challenging setting and situation of Southeast Asian English as a Second Language (ESL) or English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms, especially at the tertiary level. This paper also has implications on classrooms that experience the same aforementioned challenges, and is not only limited to the Southeast Asian context.

The research presented in this paper aimed to serve two purposes. First, the objective was to understand the relationship between lexical and grammatical spelling. In this way, we studied how the frequency and consistency of verb interacted with the application of grammatical rules. Second, we investigated the dynamics of spelling during the writing of simple sentences to evaluate the impact of spelling one word on another; that is, to determine anticipatory and delayed spelling treatments in a sentence. Second- to fifth-grade students from primary schools completed a spelling-to-dictation task using sentences of the following type: Subject noun + Verb conjugated in the perfect tense + Object noun (e.g. "Mon frère a habité cette ville" [My brother lived in this city]). Verbs have been selected according to their lemma frequency and spelling consistency, while subject and object nouns were both frequent and consistent. Analyses of the proportions of errors on past participle inflections (N), subject nouns (N-1), and object nouns (N+1) showed an evolution of the impact of verb frequency or consistency during primary school. Depending on the position of the three types of words in the sentence and the grade of the writer, we noted classical or reversed effects of frequency or consistency. We discuss the results in light of statistical learning and Van Galen's cascading model of writing (Human Movement Sci 10(2-3):165-191, 1991).

This article focuses on two main issues. On the one hand, it deals with early prevention of literacy difficulties. On the other hand, it deals with the same issue once pupils already present serious difficulties in reading and writing. Consequently, this paper has two main aims. Firstly, it aims to show teachers that, in order to carry out appropriate pedagogical intervention, it is essential to design educational intervention programmes based on thorough theoretical bases. These will aid the teaching of literacy skills while improving the learning process of pupils who require special treatment. Secondly, it intends to provide teachers with a series of activities that can be used with pupils who already present significant difficulties in this particular area of primary learning, i.e. reading and writing, and whose assessment reports already reflect these difficulties. The educational intervention presented in this paper focuses on a particular child whose mother tongue is Spanish. Thus, all the activities proposed as well as the texts they are based upon are in Spanish.

This state-of-the art paper focuses on the poorly explored issue of foreign language aptitude, attempting to present the latest developments in this field and reconceptualizations of the construct from the perspective of neuroscience. In accordance with this goal, it first discusses general directions in neurolinguistic research on foreign language aptitude, starting with the earliest attempts to define the neurological substrate for talent, sources of difficulties in the neurolinguistic research on foreign language aptitude and modern research methods. This is followed by the discussion of the research on the phonology of foreign language aptitude with emphasis on functional and structural studies as well as their consequences for the knowledge of the concept. The subsequent section presents the studies which focus on lexical and morphosyntactic aspects of foreign language aptitude. The paper ends with a discussion of the limitations of contemporary research, the future directions of such research and selected methodological issues.

This paper examines whether and to what extent data-driven learning (DDL) activities can improve the lexico-grammatical use of abstract nouns in L2 writing. A topic-based corpus was compiled to develop concordance learning activities, and 40 Chinese students majoring in English were randomly assigned to a control group or an experimental group. At the prewriting stage, both groups were given a list of five abstract nouns: the experimental group was provided with paper-based concordance lines to study the collocations of the words, while the control group was allowed to consult dictionaries for the usage of the words. The written texts of the pre-test, immediate post-test, and delayed post-test were analysed and compared between and within groups. The results showed that the written output by the experimental group, as compared with the control group, contained a higher variety of collocational and colligational patterns and had fewer linguistic errors in using the target abstract nouns. The post-experiment learning journals and questionnaires administered to the experimental group further confirmed that concordance activities encouraged usage-based learning, helped students notice the lexical collocations and prepositional colligations of the target words, and thus improved accuracy and complexity in their productive language. Despite these positive findings, potential problems of using concordance activities for independent learning were also reflected in the students’ written output and reported in the learning journals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Religious poetry is, a heightened and impregnated form of expression. There is a marriage of form and sense. Linguistically speaking, religious poetry has a conceptual interface between syntax and semantics; a strong relationship between language and thought; universality and cultural specificity; the discourse context and the psychological environment of linguistic performance. This papers, tries to investigate how this unique genre of religious poetry be used to teach and understand the mode of conceptualization? Which language items can be taught? How does language synergize itself to open its door to create such innumerous possibilities? An attempt to answer these aforesaid questions is done by structuring this paper into three sections viz. Language and Conceptualization, The Domain of Conceptualization, Teaching English Language Items.

One of the linguistic outcomes of the sustained contact of a target language (L2) with a source language (L1) in the course of history is the adaptation and integration of loanwords from the former into the lexicon of the latter. This paper discusses the phonological strategies and parameters for the adaptation of English consonants (which mainly affect nouns) into Efik. The paper discusses the factors that are responsible for borrowing and convergence as well as the linguistic consequences of loanwords in the Efik expanded vocabulary. We submit that though the pattern of borrowing is tailored to agree with the phonological system of the source language, some of the changes are however, as a result of indigenous innovations or prosodic patterns. We argue in this paper that target-source language contact phenomenon is an important source of lexical enrichment of the target language, which has expanded its functional domains to cope with modern challenges. The paper considers the implication of the study for the English language teaching and learning classroom in the Efik non-native environment.

This study compared how distinct lexical competences, including lexical knowledge as well as processing skills at both word/lexical and sublexical/morphological levels, collectively and relatively predict reading comprehension in adult learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). The participants were 220 Arabic-speaking EFL learners in a Saudi university. A battery of paper- and computer-based tests was administered to measure the participants' lexical competences, reading comprehension ability, and working memory. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that over and above working memory, both lexical and sublexical knowledge were significant and unique predictors of reading comprehension, and sublexical processing efficiency, as opposed to lexical processing efficiency, predicted reading comprehension significantly. In addition, among the measured lexical competences, lexical knowledge was the strongest predictor, and the two knowledge variables collectively had a far greater influence on reading comprehension than did the two processing efficiency variables. These findings are discussed in light of the lexical basis of text comprehension.

There is an increasing sensitivity to the challenges posed by the language of examination papers and of instruction in scientific subjects, especially for non-native speakers of English. It has been observed that in addition to technical subject-specific vocabulary, non-technical words such as instructional verbs have been sources of difficulty, and there are indications that other ‘ordinary’ English words cause problems. For many years the aerospace industry has striven to make its manuals understandable and unambiguous to non-native speakers, a goal shared by writers of examination papers. To achieve this, the industry uses Simplified English, a controlled language with limited vocabulary and restricted grammatical rules. While recognising the limitations of this approach, the authors considered that by testing examination papers against the rules of Simplified English, it might be possible to identify areas of potential difficulty for non-native speakers. This paper describes the results of a study which tests past examination questions using software based on AECMA Simplified English, the controlled language in established use in the British aerospace industry. The results identified many lexical items which were not in the original list of ‘Approved words’. Some of these were technical words and others were non-technical terms which are in common use in an engineering context. However, some were potential problem sources, including implicit instructions and vague or ambiguous words. Software alerts that related to sentence structure, in particular those related to sentence complexity, indicated that some sentences had additional problems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Borrowed words are the products of language development and cultural contact. This paper probes into the brief study of borrowed words in both English and Chinese vocabulary. At the very beginning it generally introduces issues being covered, and the following two parts center on the study of borrowed words on the basis of dictionary research. Later, this paper figures out the significance of borrowed words study for EFL (English as Foreign Language) learners, particularly those Chinese ones, and gives some advice for borrowed words learning.

In L2 reading, words and the concepts they denote frequently constitute an important vehicle or obstacle in the comprehension process. However, this has been rarely explored from a language awareness perspective. The current research therefore tailors the constructs of lexical awareness and conceptual awareness to L2 reading contexts by using a video-based approach within text-based cooperative learning environments. The corpus comprises data from 156 EFL learners in 9th grade at German schools who engaged in collaborative strategic reading tasks. The results of the qualitative content analysis demonstrate the multidimensionality of the two major constructs and provide insight into L2 learners' degree of awareness as well as their need for further support. In particular, not only target-lexical and target-conceptual aspects need to be borne in mind, but also the cross-linguistic and cross-cultural dimensions arising from learners' knowledge of other languages and from their prior life experience within specific sociocultural environments. The findings have been incorporated into a revised iceberg model of L2 lexical and conceptual awareness, which illustrates the potentially deceptive nature of the lexical surface as well as the continua of lexical and conceptual similarities and discrepancies across languages and cultures. [This paper was presented at the 13th International Conference of the Association for Language Awareness, Vienna, July 2016.]

Purpose: This paper aims to report the findings of a study into the automated text analysis of student feedback comments to assist in investigating a high volume of qualitative information at various levels in an Australian university. It includes the drawbacks and advantages of using selected applications and established lexicons. There has been an emphasis on the analysis of the statistical data collected using student surveys of learning and teaching, while the qualitative comments provided by students are often not systematically scrutinised. Student comments are important, as they provide a level of detail and insight that are imperative to quality assurance practices. Design/methodology/approach: The paper outlines the process by which the institution researched, developed and implemented the automated analysis of student qualitative comments in surveys of units and teaching. Findings: The findings indicated that there are great benefits in implementing this automated process, particularly in the analysis of evaluation data for units with large enrolments. The analysis improved efficiency in the interpretation of student comments. However, a degree of human intervention is still required in creating reports that are meaningful and relevant to the context. Originality/value: This paper is unique in its examination of one institution's journey in developing a process to support academics staff in interpreting and understanding student comments provided in surveys of units and teaching.

Suggests that careless use of technical terms has resulted in misunderstandings and less precise communication. Defines position, job, occupation, career, and vocation, providing illustrations of each, to help professionals communicate more effectively with their clients and with each other. (JAC)

The purpose of this study was to uncover sets of co-occurring, lexico-grammatical features to help to characterise successful student writing. The writing was captured by the Michigan Corpus of Upper-level Student Papers (MICUSP, 2009) and was taken from sixteen disciplines. MICUSP is a corpus of A-graded, upper-level student papers of different disciplines and paper types (O'Donnell and Römer, 2012; and Römer and O'Donnell, 2011). Following Biber (1988), we used a multi-dimensional analysis to identify dimensions of frequently co-occurring features that best account for cross-disciplinary variation in MICUSP. The four functional dimensions of MICUSP appear to distinguish between: ( 1) Involved, Academic Narrative versus Descriptive, Informational Discourse; ( 2) Expression of Opinions and Mental Processes; ( 3) Situation-Dependent, Non-Procedural Evaluation versus Procedural Discourse; and ( 4) Production of Possibility Statement and Argumentation. Along with a description of the methodology, this paper defines the features that constitute the factors, which have been labelled based on their communicative functions. Similarities and differences at the disciplinary and genre-specific levels are discussed as are the implications for discipline-specific and register-based pedagogies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]