Lextutor and Vocabulary Study Through Reading
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Through the use of word analysis software such as Lextutor, educators are able to quickly test and analyze text for word frequency by simply copy/pasting any text into the Lextutor dialogue box. Here I use text from O. Henry's The Gift of the Magi. For example, the profile at left indicates that 75% of the words in the Magi text appear in the first 1000 words of the General Service List, roughly 5% in the next 1000 and 3% in the Academic Word List. Additionally, nearly 16% of the words in the sample text do not appear on any of the three lists.
Relation to Guiding Principles
Principle One ~ Contextualized and Decontextualized Input ~ Lextutor helps connect to principle one by bridging decontextualized instruction with contextualized instruction. As indicated by the text at right above, student attention can be focused on the decontextualized words from both the GSL and AWL, even when they are presented in the contextualized landscape of a short story.
Principle Two ~ Encourage Communicative Output ~ Output activities allow students to use the target language to develop a personal voice, try out new words that they have met in input activities, and gain feedback from others about the correctness of their use. For example, Lextutor in the sample text above, could support a reading or listening activity with embedded and highlighted target lexis.
Principle Four ~ Fluency Activities ~ Lextutor develops fluency by helping students repeatedly meet known and partially known specific vocabulary in reading activities like the above or the cloze procedure below. Lextutor can quickly create cloze tasks based on any inserted text according to either Nth-word and rational deletion cloze or VocabProfile Clozes (frequency based) cloze, such as the one in the example below.
Principle Six ~ Develop Effective Strategy Use ~ With explicit teacher instruction and meta-cognitive student reflection, Lextutor generated cloze strategies like the example below, can support the instruction of strategies such as in context guessing.
Frequency Principle ~ Vocabulary instruction needs to be intentional and organized according to the frequency principle. Lextutor allows teachers to quickly select reading text to maximize frequent exposure to particular work lists.
Principle Two ~ Encourage Communicative Output ~ Output activities allow students to use the target language to develop a personal voice, try out new words that they have met in input activities, and gain feedback from others about the correctness of their use. For example, Lextutor in the sample text above, could support a reading or listening activity with embedded and highlighted target lexis.
Principle Four ~ Fluency Activities ~ Lextutor develops fluency by helping students repeatedly meet known and partially known specific vocabulary in reading activities like the above or the cloze procedure below. Lextutor can quickly create cloze tasks based on any inserted text according to either Nth-word and rational deletion cloze or VocabProfile Clozes (frequency based) cloze, such as the one in the example below.
Principle Six ~ Develop Effective Strategy Use ~ With explicit teacher instruction and meta-cognitive student reflection, Lextutor generated cloze strategies like the example below, can support the instruction of strategies such as in context guessing.
Frequency Principle ~ Vocabulary instruction needs to be intentional and organized according to the frequency principle. Lextutor allows teachers to quickly select reading text to maximize frequent exposure to particular work lists.