Learners frequently encounter challenges in accurately utilizing near-synonyms in the English language. This investigation explored the similarities and differences among four near-synonymous verbs: "attempt, endeavor, strive," and "try." The analysis encompassed their prevalence across diverse genres, formality levels,…

Collocations, no matter where to use them, are an important linguistic issue if it is native fluency that is longed for in academic writing. In line with that, the present study aimed at increasing the awareness towards the importance of collocations in order to have native fluency in academic writing; making some suggestions regarding involvement…

Corpora are well-known for the affordance to make linguistic regularities salient. Since the coinage of the term 'data-driven learning' (DDL) in the 1990s, much has been done to investigate the effects of DDL on learning vocabulary, most notably lexico-grammatical patterns. However, less researched is how learners construct vocabulary knowledge…

This article outlines criteria to define a figurative idiom, and then compares the frequent figurative idioms identified in two sources of spoken American English (academic and contemporary) to their frequency in spoken British English. This is done by searching the spoken part of the British National Corpus (BNC), to see whether they are frequent…

It is proposed that etymological information, usually provided in native speaker's dictionaries but eliminated from learners' references, can serve several important functions such as disambiguate, relate words that are alphabetically far apart, illuminate by providing an image or reference, and motivate with interesting information. (Author/MSE)

Proposes a new type of English-as-a-Second-Language dictionary--in electronic form--that presents typical phraseology rather than words in isolation. Online, without the constraints of space and linear organization, the dictionary can treat the multiword lexical units and common collocational patterns that cohere around a node word and illustrate…

Discusses the active contribution a learner/user must make in using a dictionary and breaks the look-up process into seven main steps. (EKN)

A discussion of English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) teaching focuses on the relationship of lexical items to the syntactic situations in which they may occur, and the importance of teaching this relationship to language learners. First, common errors made by ESL students that are attributable to lack of syntactic context knowledge are identified.…

This publication presents four suggested language arts curriculum units. They represent a cross-section of materials that have been developed to deal with the learning problems of students with special language difficulties. Originally developed for grades 7-12, these units may be adapted for use in adult education or at other grade levels. They…

Most teaching and reference materials on English idioms are primarily intuition based. As such, they often include seldom-used idioms and incorrect descriptions of the meaning and use of some idioms, hence limiting their usefulness to ESOL students. This article demonstrates how this problem can be addressed through a corpus-based study of the…

This publication presents three suggested language arts curriculum units. They represent a cross-section of materials that have been developed to deal with the learning problems of students with special language difficulties. Originally developed for grades 7-12, these units may be adapted for use in adult education or at other grade levels. They…

A collection of articles on dictionaries for advanced second language learners includes essays on the past, present, and future of learners' dictionaries; alternative dictionaries; dictionary construction; and dictionaries and their users. Titles include: "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow; or Vaticinations on the Learners' Dictionary"…

Could corpus analysis be used to solve some of the problems surrounding non-native speakers' understanding of seemingly synonymous words? This research is needed because there is no single universal unified lexical theory that can be applied to the study of semantics or of language as a whole. Instead, there are a variety of views than can be…