Auditory Perception, Suprasegmental Speech Processing, and Vocabulary Development in Chinese Preschoolers.

PubMed

Wang, Hsiao-Lan S; Chen, I-Chen; Chiang, Chun-Han; Lai, Ying-Hui; Tsao, Yu

2016-10-01

The current study examined the associations between basic auditory perception, speech prosodic processing, and vocabulary development in Chinese kindergartners, specifically, whether early basic auditory perception may be related to linguistic prosodic processing in Chinese Mandarin vocabulary acquisition. A series of language, auditory, and linguistic prosodic tests were given to 100 preschool children who had not yet learned how to read Chinese characters. The results suggested that lexical tone sensitivity and intonation production were significantly correlated with children's general vocabulary abilities. In particular, tone awareness was associated with comprehensive language development, whereas intonation production was associated with both comprehensive and expressive language development. Regression analyses revealed that tone sensitivity accounted for 36% of the unique variance in vocabulary development, whereas intonation production accounted for 6% of the variance in vocabulary development. Moreover, auditory frequency discrimination was significantly correlated with lexical tone sensitivity, syllable duration discrimination, and intonation production in Mandarin Chinese. Also it provided significant contributions to tone sensitivity and intonation production. Auditory frequency discrimination may indirectly affect early vocabulary development through Chinese speech prosody. © The Author(s) 2016.

A Computerized Interactive Vocabulary Development System for Advanced Learners.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kukulska-Hulme, Agnes

1988-01-01

Argues that the process of recording newly encountered vocabulary items in a typical language learning situation can be improved through a computerized system of vocabulary storage based on database management software that improves the discovery and recording of meaning, subsequent retrieval of items for productive use, and memory retention.…

Children's early reading vocabulary: description and word frequency lists.

PubMed

Stuart, Morag; Dixon, Maureen; Masterson, Jackie; Gray, Bob

2003-12-01

When constructing stimuli for experimental investigations of cognitive processes in early reading development, researchers have to rely on adult or American children's word frequency counts, as no such counts exist for English children. The present paper introduces a database of children's early reading vocabulary, for use by researchers and teachers. Texts from 685 books from reading schemes and story books read by 5-7 year-old children were used in the construction of the database. All words from the 685 books were typed or scanned into an Oracle database. The resulting up-to-date word frequency list of early print exposure in the UK is available in two forms from a website address given in this paper. This allows access to one list of the words ordered alphabetically and one list of the words ordered by frequency. We also briefly address some fundamental issues underlying early reading vocabulary (e.g., that it is heavily skewed towards low frequencies). Other characteristics of the vocabulary are then discussed. We hope the word frequency lists will be of use to researchers seeking to control word frequency, and to teachers interested in the vocabulary to which young children are exposed in their reading material.

A Mis-recognized Medical Vocabulary Correction System for Speech-based Electronic Medical Record

PubMed Central

Seo, Hwa Jeong; Kim, Ju Han; Sakabe, Nagamasa

2002-01-01

Speech recognition as an input tool for electronic medical record (EMR) enables efficient data entry at the point of care. However, the recognition accuracy for medical vocabulary is much poorer than that for doctor-patient dialogue. We developed a mis-recognized medical vocabulary correction system based on syllable-by-syllable comparison of speech text against medical vocabulary database. Using specialty medical vocabulary, the algorithm detects and corrects mis-recognized medical vocabularies in narrative text. Our preliminary evaluation showed 94% of accuracy in mis-recognized medical vocabulary correction.

The Preconstructed Vocabulary: A Procrustean Bed

PubMed Central

Jablonski, Stanley

1973-01-01

The mechanization of bibliographic services has imposed a change from the retrospective to the prospective approach to vocabulary development. This results in vocabularies rigidly structured to serve a variety of purposes which are not always mutually compatible. The user suffers from the inflexibility of the basic framework, the dearth of cross-references, and the overspecificity of many subject headings. Computer technology and our knowledge of its application have advanced to the point that we should begin to reclaim some of the bibliographic conveniences which no longer have to be sacrificed. PMID:4691331

Using Mixed-Modality Learning Strategies via e-Learning for Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yang, Fang-Chuan Ou; Wu, Wen-Chi Vivian

2015-01-01

This study demonstrated an e-learning system, MyEVA, based on a mixed-modality vocabulary strategy in assisting learners of English as a second language (L2 learners) to improve their vocabulary. To explore the learning effectiveness of MyEVA, the study compared four vocabulary-learning techniques, MyEVA in preference mode, MyEVA in basic mode, an…

A Basic Vocabulary of Federal Social Program Applications and Forms.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Afflerbach, Peter P.; And Others

A study of the application forms for Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, public assistance, food stamps, Medicaid, and Medicare was conducted to examine the frequently occurring unfamiliar, specialized vocabulary words. It was found that 76 such words occurred at least ten times in the documents studied. A large number of other…

Personalised Context-Aware Ubiquitous Learning System for Supporting Effective English Vocabulary Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chen, Chih-Ming; Li, Yi-Lun

2010-01-01

Because learning English is extremely popular in non-native English speaking countries, developing modern assisted-learning schemes that facilitate effective English learning is a critical issue in English-language education. Vocabulary learning is vital within English learning because vocabulary comprises the basic building blocks of English…

New concepts for building vocabulary for cell image ontologies.

PubMed

Plant, Anne L; Elliott, John T; Bhat, Talapady N

2011-12-21

There are significant challenges associated with the building of ontologies for cell biology experiments including the large numbers of terms and their synonyms. These challenges make it difficult to simultaneously query data from multiple experiments or ontologies. If vocabulary terms were consistently used and reused across and within ontologies, queries would be possible through shared terms. One approach to achieving this is to strictly control the terms used in ontologies in the form of a pre-defined schema, but this approach limits the individual researcher's ability to create new terms when needed to describe new experiments. Here, we propose the use of a limited number of highly reusable common root terms, and rules for an experimentalist to locally expand terms by adding more specific terms under more general root terms to form specific new vocabulary hierarchies that can be used to build ontologies. We illustrate the application of the method to build vocabularies and a prototype database for cell images that uses a visual data-tree of terms to facilitate sophisticated queries based on a experimental parameters. We demonstrate how the terminology might be extended by adding new vocabulary terms into the hierarchy of terms in an evolving process. In this approach, image data and metadata are handled separately, so we also describe a robust file-naming scheme to unambiguously identify image and other files associated with each metadata value. The prototype database http://sbd.nist.gov/ consists of more than 2000 images of cells and benchmark materials, and 163 metadata terms that describe experimental details, including many details about cell culture and handling. Image files of interest can be retrieved, and their data can be compared, by choosing one or more relevant metadata values as search terms. Metadata values for any dataset can be compared with corresponding values of another dataset through logical operations. Organizing metadata for cell imaging

New concepts for building vocabulary for cell image ontologies

PubMed Central

2011-01-01

Background There are significant challenges associated with the building of ontologies for cell biology experiments including the large numbers of terms and their synonyms. These challenges make it difficult to simultaneously query data from multiple experiments or ontologies. If vocabulary terms were consistently used and reused across and within ontologies, queries would be possible through shared terms. One approach to achieving this is to strictly control the terms used in ontologies in the form of a pre-defined schema, but this approach limits the individual researcher's ability to create new terms when needed to describe new experiments. Results Here, we propose the use of a limited number of highly reusable common root terms, and rules for an experimentalist to locally expand terms by adding more specific terms under more general root terms to form specific new vocabulary hierarchies that can be used to build ontologies. We illustrate the application of the method to build vocabularies and a prototype database for cell images that uses a visual data-tree of terms to facilitate sophisticated queries based on a experimental parameters. We demonstrate how the terminology might be extended by adding new vocabulary terms into the hierarchy of terms in an evolving process. In this approach, image data and metadata are handled separately, so we also describe a robust file-naming scheme to unambiguously identify image and other files associated with each metadata value. The prototype database http://sbd.nist.gov/ consists of more than 2000 images of cells and benchmark materials, and 163 metadata terms that describe experimental details, including many details about cell culture and handling. Image files of interest can be retrieved, and their data can be compared, by choosing one or more relevant metadata values as search terms. Metadata values for any dataset can be compared with corresponding values of another dataset through logical operations. Conclusions

Universal and adapted vocabularies for generic visual categorization.

PubMed

Perronnin, Florent

2008-07-01

Generic Visual Categorization (GVC) is the pattern classification problem which consists in assigning labels to an image based on its semantic content. This is a challenging task as one has to deal with inherent object/scene variations as well as changes in viewpoint, lighting and occlusion. Several state-of-the-art GVC systems use a vocabulary of visual terms to characterize images with a histogram of visual word counts. We propose a novel practical approach to GVC based on a universal vocabulary, which describes the content of all the considered classes of images, and class vocabularies obtained through the adaptation of the universal vocabulary using class-specific data. The main novelty is that an image is characterized by a set of histograms - one per class - where each histogram describes whether the image content is best modeled by the universal vocabulary or the corresponding class vocabulary. This framework is applied to two types of local image features: low-level descriptors such as the popular SIFT and high-level histograms of word co-occurrences in a spatial neighborhood. It is shown experimentally on two challenging datasets (an in-house database of 19 categories and the PASCAL VOC 2006 dataset) that the proposed approach exhibits state-of-the-art performance at a modest computational cost.

Fundamental Vocabulary Selection Based on Word Familiarity

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sato, Hiroshi; Kasahara, Kaname; Kanasugi, Tomoko; Amano, Shigeaki

This paper proposes a new method for selecting fundamental vocabulary. We are presently constructing the Fundamental Vocabulary Knowledge-base of Japanese that contains integrated information on syntax, semantics and pragmatics, for the purposes of advanced natural language processing. This database mainly consists of a lexicon and a treebank: Lexeed (a Japanese Semantic Lexicon) and the Hinoki Treebank. Fundamental vocabulary selection is the first step in the construction of Lexeed. The vocabulary should include sufficient words to describe general concepts for self-expandability, and should not be prohibitively large to construct and maintain. There are two conventional methods for selecting fundamental vocabulary. The first is intuition-based selection by experts. This is the traditional method for making dictionaries. A weak point of this method is that the selection strongly depends on personal intuition. The second is corpus-based selection. This method is superior in objectivity to intuition-based selection, however, it is difficult to compile a sufficiently balanced corpora. We propose a psychologically-motivated selection method that adopts word familiarity as the selection criterion. Word familiarity is a rating that represents the familiarity of a word as a real number ranging from 1 (least familiar) to 7 (most familiar). We determined the word familiarity ratings statistically based on psychological experiments over 32 subjects. We selected about 30,000 words as the fundamental vocabulary, based on a minimum word familiarity threshold of 5. We also evaluated the vocabulary by comparing its word coverage with conventional intuition-based and corpus-based selection over dictionary definition sentences and novels, and demonstrated the superior coverage of our lexicon. Based on this, we conclude that the proposed method is superior to conventional methods for fundamental vocabulary selection.

Effects of Hierarchy Vocabulary Exercises on English Vocabulary Acquisition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lin, Ching-Ying; Hsu, Wei Shu

2013-01-01

The purpose of the study was to compare the effectiveness of hierarchy vocabulary exercises and copying vocabulary exercises on EFL students' vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension. Two specific factors were probed: (a) vocabulary gains and retention from different exercises; (b) reading comprehension performance through different…

Developing a Cross-Platform Web Application for Online EFL Vocabulary Learning Courses

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Enokida, Kazumichi; Sakaue, Tatsuya; Morita, Mitsuhiro; Kida, Shusaku; Ohnishi, Akio

2017-01-01

In this paper, the development of a web application for self-access English vocabulary courses at a national university in Japan will be reported upon. Whilst the basic concepts are inherited from an old Flash-based online vocabulary learning system that had been long used at the university, the new HTML5-based app comes with several new features…

Databases: Beyond the Basics.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Whittaker, Robert

This presented paper offers an elementary description of database characteristics and then provides a survey of databases that may be useful to the teacher and researcher in Slavic and East European languages and literatures. The survey focuses on commercial databases that are available, usable, and needed. Individual databases discussed include:…

Two Different Communication Genres and Implications for Vocabulary Development and Learning to Read

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Massaro, Dominic W.

2015-01-01

This study examined potential differences in vocabulary found in picture books and adult's speech to children and to other adults. Using a small sample of various sources of speech and print, Hayes observed that print had a more extensive vocabulary than speech. The current analyses of two different spoken language databases and an assembled…

Coherent Image Layout using an Adaptive Visual Vocabulary

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Dillard, Scott E.; Henry, Michael J.; Bohn, Shawn J.

When querying a huge image database containing millions of images, the result of the query may still contain many thousands of images that need to be presented to the user. We consider the problem of arranging such a large set of images into a visually coherent layout, one that places similar images next to each other. Image similarity is determined using a bag-of-features model, and the layout is constructed from a hierarchical clustering of the image set by mapping an in-order traversal of the hierarchy tree into a space-filling curve. This layout method provides strong locality guarantees so we aremore » able to quantitatively evaluate performance using standard image retrieval benchmarks. Performance of the bag-of-features method is best when the vocabulary is learned on the image set being clustered. Because learning a large, discriminative vocabulary is a computationally demanding task, we present a novel method for efficiently adapting a generic visual vocabulary to a particular dataset. We evaluate our clustering and vocabulary adaptation methods on a variety of image datasets and show that adapting a generic vocabulary to a particular set of images improves performance on both hierarchical clustering and image retrieval tasks.« less

Using Vocabulary Notebooks for Vocabulary Acquisition and Teaching

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dubiner, Deborah

2017-01-01

Vocabulary knowledge is recognized as an essential element for second language acquisition and reading comprehension. One known way to encourage and support vocabulary development amongst second language learners is keeping a vocabulary notebook. The primary purpose of the present study was to document two aspects of student teachers' own…

Korean Basic Course. Volume Two.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Park, B. Nam

Volume Two of the Korean Basic Course contains Units 29 through 47. Most units consist of (1) a basic dialog, (2) notes on the basic dialog, (3) additional vocabulary and phrases, (4) grammar notes, (5) drills, (6) a supplementary dialog for comprehension, (7) a narrative for comprehension and reading, and (8) exercises. Two of the last units…

Vocabulary Control and the Humanities: A Case Study of the "MLA International Bibliography."

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stebelman, Scott

1994-01-01

Discussion of research in the humanities focuses on the "MLA International Bibliography," the primary database for literary research. Highlights include comparisons to research in the sciences; humanities vocabulary; database search techniques; contextual indexing; examples of searches; thesauri; and software. (43 references) (LRW)

E-READING II: words database for reading by students from Basic Education II.

PubMed

Oliveira, Adriana Marques de; Capellini, Simone Aparecida

2016-01-01

To develop a database of words of high, medium and low frequency in reading for Basic Education II. The words were taken from the teaching material for Portuguese Language, used by the teaching network of the State of São Paulo in the 6th to the 9th year of Basic Education. Only nouns were selected. The frequency with which each word occurred was recorded and a single database was created. In order to classify the words as of high, medium and low frequency, the decision was taken to work with the distribution terciles, mean frequency and the cutoff point of the terciles. In order to ascertain whether the words of high, medium and low frequency corresponded to this classification, 224 students were assessed: G1 (6th year, n= 61); G2 (7th year, n= 44); G3 (8th year, n= 65); and G4 (9th year, n= 54). The lists of words were presented to the students for reading out loud, in two sessions: 1st) words of high and medium frequency and 2nd) words of low-frequency. Words which encompassed the exclusion criteria, or which caused discomfort or joking on the part of the students, were excluded. The word database was made up of 1659 words and was titled 'E - LEITURA II' ('E-READING II', in English). The E-LEITURA II database is a useful resource for the professionals, as it provides a database which can be used for research, educational and clinical purposes among students of Basic Education II. The professional can choose the words according to her objectives and criteria for elaborating evaluation or intervention procedures involving reading.

French Basic Course. Units 13-24 Revised.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cossard, Monique; Salazar, Robert

This self-instructional course is the second volume of the basic course in French. The material is divided into 12 chapters. Each of the first 11 chapters contains a dialogue, followed by notes concerning the dialogue, a list of useful expressions and vocabulary, vocabulary exercises, and questions on the dialogue. The subjects of the dialogues…

Explicit Vocabulary Instruction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Young-Davy, Belinda

2014-01-01

One of the questions facing language instructors is how direct vocabulary instruction should be. Much recent research into vocabulary acquisition and studies of learning strategies strongly indicates that the explicit vocabulary learning vs. implicit vocabulary learning issue is not a dichotomy, but rather a continuum (Hunt and Belgar, 2005; Lee…

Effective Strategies for Turning Receptive Vocabulary into Productive Vocabulary in EFL Context

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Faraj, Avan Kamal Aziz

2015-01-01

Vocabulary acquisition has been a main concern of EFL English teachers and learners. There have been tons of research to examine the student's level of receptive vocabulary and productive vocabulary, but no research has conducted on how turning receptive vocabulary into productive vocabulary. This study has reported the impact of the teaching…

Visualizing Vocabulary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Skophammer, Karen

2012-01-01

Vocabulary can become tedious and a chore if it is approached as such. By making art terms and vocabulary meaningful, students will remember and use them for years to come. In this article, the author describes two vocabulary review projects that work wonderfully and create great works of art: (1) cursive creature rubbings; and (2) bubbling bodies…

Conceptually based vocabulary intervention: second graders' development of vocabulary words.

PubMed

Dimling, Lisa M

2010-01-01

An instructional strategy was investigated that addressed the needs of deaf and hard of hearing students through a conceptually based sign language vocabulary intervention. A single-subject multiple-baseline design was used to determine the effects of the vocabulary intervention on word recognition, production, and comprehension. Six students took part in the 30-minute intervention over 6-8 weeks, learning 12 new vocabulary words each week by means of the three intervention components: (a) word introduction, (b) word activity (semantic mapping), and (c) practice. Results indicated that the vocabulary intervention successfully improved all students' recognition, production, and comprehension of the vocabulary words and phrases.

Vocabulary Knowledge and Vocabulary Use in Second Language Writing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Johnson, Mark D.; Acevedo, Anthony; Mercado, Leonardo

2016-01-01

Research has consistently shown diversity of vocabulary to be an important indicator of second language (L2) writing development as well as L2 writing performance. These studies underscore the importance of vocabulary to L2 writing. However, they provide little to indicate what kind of vocabulary learners of English may need to know in order to…

Vocabulary Learning Strategies and Arabic Vocabulary Size among Pre-University Students in Malaysia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Baharudin, Harun; Ismail, Zawawi

2014-01-01

Vocabulary learning strategies and vocabulary size are among the main factors that help determine how students learn second language vocabulary. The present study was an attempt to exploring the relationship between vocabulary learning strategies and Arabic vocabulary size of 742 pre-university in "Religious High School" (SMKA) and…

Extracting business vocabularies from business process models: SBVR and BPMN standards-based approach

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Skersys, Tomas; Butleris, Rimantas; Kapocius, Kestutis

2013-10-01

Approaches for the analysis and specification of business vocabularies and rules are very relevant topics in both Business Process Management and Information Systems Development disciplines. However, in common practice of Information Systems Development, the Business modeling activities still are of mostly empiric nature. In this paper, basic aspects of the approach for business vocabularies' semi-automated extraction from business process models are presented. The approach is based on novel business modeling-level OMG standards "Business Process Model and Notation" (BPMN) and "Semantics for Business Vocabularies and Business Rules" (SBVR), thus contributing to OMG's vision about Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) and to model-driven development in general.

Predicting growth in English and French vocabulary: The facilitating effects of morphological and cognate awareness.

PubMed

D'Angelo, Nadia; Hipfner-Boucher, Kathleen; Chen, Xi

2017-07-01

The present study investigated the contribution of morphological and cognate awareness to the development of English and French vocabulary knowledge among young minority and majority language children who were enrolled in a French immersion program. Participating children (n = 75) were assessed in English and French on measures of morphological awareness, cognate awareness, and vocabulary knowledge from Grades 1 to 3. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to investigate linear trends in English and French vocabulary growth for minority and majority language children and to identify metalinguistic contributions to Grade 1 and Grade 3 English and French vocabulary performance and rate of growth. Results demonstrated a similar pattern of prediction for both groups of children. English and French morphological awareness and French-English cognate awareness significantly predicted concurrent and longitudinal vocabulary development after controlling for nonverbal reasoning, phonological awareness, and word identification. The contributions of morphological awareness to English vocabulary and cognate awareness to French vocabulary strengthened between Grades 1 and 2. These findings highlight the emerging importance of morphological and cognate awareness in children's vocabulary development and suggest that these metalinguistic factors can serve to broaden the vocabulary repertoire of children who enter school with limited language proficiency. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Swahili Basic Course.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Defense Language Inst., Washington, DC.

This basic audiolingual course in standard Swahili appears in six volumes, Lesson Units 1-56. Units consist of a "blueprint" prefatory page outlining the phonological, morphological, and syntactic structures and new vocabulary to be presented; perception drills; Swahili dialog with cartoon guides and English translation; pattern and recombination…

Building English Vocabulary through Roots, Prefixes and Suffixes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yurtbasi, Metin

2015-01-01

Semantics, the study of the meaning of words, is the sum of the basic elements of four skills, namely, reading, writing, speaking and listening effectively. The knowledge of vocabulary words in lexico-semantics, on the other hand, is essential in every grade level, subject area and assessment for every student. In order to improve students'…

Rote Memorization of Vocabulary and Vocabulary Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yang, Weidong; Dai, Weiping

2011-01-01

Rote memorization of vocabulary has long been a common way for Chinese students to learn lexical items. Cultural, educational background and traditional teaching practice in China are identified to be the factors that contribute to many students' heavy reliance on memorization as their sole approach to vocabulary learning. In addition to rote…

The Relationship of Vocabulary Learning Strategies and Self-Efficacy with Medical English and Terminology.

PubMed

Wang, Ya-Huei; Kao, Pan-Fu; Liao, Hung-Chang

2016-02-01

This study examined the relationship between the use of vocabulary learning strategies and self-efficacy in medical English learning, and whether after an initial six-week course to master the basics of medical terminology, those with higher use of vocabulary learning strategies and those with a higher degree of self-efficacy would have significant score improvements in the medical English proficiency. Second-year medical students (N = 115; M age = 19.6, SD = 0.5; 82 men, 33 women) participated in the study. A one-group pretest-posttest design was used. Measures included medical English tests, the English Vocabulary Learning Strategies Survey (EVLSS), and the English Learning Self-Efficacy Scale (ELSES). Results showed that there was no significant correlation between vocabulary learning strategies and English learning self-efficacy. In addition, as a whole, vocabulary learning strategies and self-efficacy significantly predicted students' score improvements in medical English proficiency. © The Author(s) 2016.

German Vocabulary.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Coombs, Virginia M.

This article discusses in general terms derivational aspects of English vocabulary. Citing examples of Anglo-Saxon origin, the author provides a glimpse into the nature of the interrelatedness of English, German, and French vocabulary. (RL)

Stanwix House Vocabulary Study: Plurals. Investigative Report Number 7227.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wood, Penelope; Bond, Jack H.

Research analyzed: 1) the treatment of plurals in the Functional Basic Word List for Special Pupils (Stanwix House List), and 2) plural recognition by educable mentally handicapped (EMH) students. Review of the Stanwix House List revealed that plurals were treated as discrete vocabulary items. Using a small sample of EMH subjects, the researchers…

The Relationship between Vocabulary Learning Strategies and Breadth and Depth of Vocabulary Knowledge

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhang, Xian; Lu, Xiaofei

2015-01-01

This study investigated the relationship between vocabulary learning strategies and vocabulary breadth and depth knowledge. One hundred and fifty first-year university students in China took the Vocabulary Levels Test, a meaning recall task, and the Depth of Vocabulary Knowledge Test. The first two tests were used to elicit two types of vocabulary…

Assessing the Relationship between Vocabulary Learning Strategy Use and Vocabulary Knowledge

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Teng, Feng

2015-01-01

This study is an attempt to explore the correlation between direct and indirect vocabulary learning strategies along with the depth and breadth of vocabulary knowledge. To this end, a sample of 145 low proficiency students who learn English as a Foreign Language (EFL) completed a questionnaire concerning vocabulary learning strategy use.…

Vocabularies in the VO

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gray, A. J. G.; Gray, N.; Ounis, I.

2009-09-01

There are multiple vocabularies and thesauri within astronomy, of which the best known are the 1993 IAU Thesaurus and the keyword list maintained by A&A, ApJ and MNRAS. The IVOA has agreed on a standard for publishing vocabularies, based on the W3C skos standard, to allow greater automated interaction with them, in particular on the Web. This allows links with the Semantic Web and looks forward to richer applications using the technologies of that domain. Vocabulary-aware applications can benefit from improvements in both precision and recall when searching for bibliographic or science data, and lightweight intelligent filtering for services such as VOEvent streams. In this paper we present two applications, the Vocabulary Explorer and its companion the Mapping Editor, which have been developed to support the use of vocabularies in the Virtual Observatory. These combine Semantic Web and Information Retrieval technologies to illustrate the way in which formal vocabularies might be used in a practical application, provide an online service which will allow astronomers to explore and relate existing vocabularies, and provide a service which translates free text user queries into vocabulary terms.

Teaching Vocabulary: An Annotated Bibliography.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Weinrib, Alice

1994-01-01

Discusses seven books on vocabulary instruction in second language classrooms: (1) "Working With Words" (Gairns and Redman); (2) "Crossword Puzzles for Beginners" (Mollica); (3) "Vocabulary Posters" (Mollica); (4) "Vocabulary" (Morgan and Rinvolucri); (5) "Teaching and Learning Vocabulary"…

[Design of computerised database for clinical and basic management of uveal melanoma].

PubMed

Bande Rodríguez, M F; Santiago Varela, M; Blanco Teijeiro, M J; Mera Yañez, P; Pardo Perez, M; Capeans Tome, C; Piñeiro Ces, A

2012-09-01

The uveal melanoma is the most common primary intraocular tumour in adults. The objective of this work is to show how a computerised database has been formed with specific applications, for clinical and research use, to an extensive group of patients diagnosed with uveal melanoma. For the design of the database a selection of categories, attributes and values was created based on the classifications and parameters given by various authors of articles which have had great relevance in the field of uveal melanoma in recent years. The database has over 250 patient entries with specific information on their clinical history, diagnosis, treatment and progress. It enables us to search any parameter of the entry and make quick and simple statistical studies of them. The database models have been transformed into a basic tool for clinical practice, as they are an efficient way of storing, compiling and selective searching of information. When creating a database it is very important to define a common strategy and the use of a standard language. Copyright © 2011 Sociedad Española de Oftalmología. Published by Elsevier Espana. All rights reserved.

The 'robustness' of vocabulary intervention in the public schools: targets and techniques employed in speech-language therapy.

PubMed

Justice, Laura M; Schmitt, Mary Beth; Murphy, Kimberly A; Pratt, Amy; Biancone, Tricia

2014-01-01

This study examined vocabulary intervention-in terms of targets and techniques-for children with language impairment receiving speech-language therapy in public schools (i.e., non-fee-paying schools) in the United States. Vocabulary treatments and targets were examined with respect to their alignment with the empirically validated practice of rich vocabulary intervention. Participants were forty-eight 5-7-year-old children participating in kindergarten or the first-grade year of school, all of whom had vocabulary-specific goals on their individualized education programmes. Two therapy sessions per child were coded to determine what vocabulary words were being directly targeted and what techniques were used for each. Study findings showed that the majority of words directly targeted during therapy were lower-level basic vocabulary words (87%) and very few (1%) were academically relevant. On average, three techniques were used per word to promote deep understanding. Interpreting findings against empirical descriptions of rich vocabulary intervention indicates that children were exposed to some but not all aspects of this empirically supported practice. © 2013 Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.

Patterns of similarity and difference between the vocabularies of psychology and other subjects.

PubMed

Benjafield, John G

2014-02-01

The vocabulary of Anglophone psychology is shared with many other subjects. Previous research using the Oxford English Dictionary has shown that the subjects having the most words in common with psychology are biology, chemistry, computing, electricity, law, linguistics, mathematics, medicine, music, pathology, philosophy, and physics. The present study presents a database of the vocabularies of these 12 subjects that is similar to one previously constructed for psychology, enabling the histories of the vocabularies of these subjects to be compared with each other as well as with psychology. All subjects have a majority of word senses that are metaphorical. However, psychology is not among the most metaphorical of subjects, a distinction belonging to computing, linguistics, and mathematics. Indeed, the history of other subjects shows an increasing tendency to recycle old words and give them new, metaphorical meanings. The history of psychology shows an increasing tendency to invent new words rather than metaphorical senses of existing words. These results were discussed in terms of the degree to which psychology's vocabulary remains unsettled in comparison with other subjects. The possibility was raised that the vocabulary of psychology is in a state similar to that of chemistry prior to Lavoisier.

Breadth and Depth of Vocabulary Knowledge and Their Effects on L2 Vocabulary Profiles

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bardakçi, Mehmet

2016-01-01

Breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge have been studied from many different perspectives, but the related literature lacks serious studies dealing with their effects on vocabulary profiles of EFL learners. In this paper, with an aim to fill this gap, the relative effects of breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge on L2 vocabulary profiles…

Vocabulary Level; One Variable Affecting Learning from Audiovisual Media.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lewis, Richard F.

Vocabulary level of 10 special students was determined and compared to their supposed level of proficiency on the Functional Basic Word List for Special Pupils (Tudyman and Groelle, 1958). Ss were five educable mentally retarded (EMR) students (CA 9-6 to 12-0, IQ 64-77, MA 6-6 to 9-7) and five matched emotionally disturbed students. Word sampling…

Project MAPP. The Vocabulary Booklet # 1. Implementing the Instructional Program: A Competency-Based Adult Education Learning System.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Maryland State Dept. of Education, Baltimore.

This booklet is intended to help adults master the basic and life skill vocabulary needed to meet the simple communication demands of daily life. It is designed to assist adult basic education (ABE) teachers in the implementation of a competency-based learning system that emphasizes the integration of basic and life skills learning. The booklet…

Cueing Strategies and Basic Skills in Early Reading.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Beebe, Mona J.; Bulcock, Jeffrey W.

The extent to which cuing strategies and basic skills explanations of early reading constitute complementary approaches was examined in a study involving 94 fourth grade students. Basic skills--a unidimensional component based on measures of vocabulary development, language skills, and work-study skills--proved to be a powerful variable mediating…

Vocabulary Visits: Virtual Field Trips for Content Vocabulary Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Blachowicz, Camille L. Z.; Obrochta, Connie

2005-01-01

A significant body of research suggests that wide differences in concept and vocabulary knowledge exacerbate the achievement gap among students, especially in schools with large numbers of children of poverty. Educators sometimes attribute this difference to the Matthew effect: the sad reality that having a well-developed vocabulary allows a…

The role of primary caregiver vocabulary knowledge in the development of bilingual children’s vocabulary skills

PubMed Central

Buac, Milijana; Gross, Megan; Kaushanskaya, Margarita

2015-01-01

Purpose The current study examined the impact of environmental factors (SES, the percent of language exposure to English and to Spanish, and primary caregivers’ vocabulary knowledge) on bilingual children’s vocabulary skills. Method We measured vocabulary skills of 58 bilingual children between the ages of 5 and 7 who spoke Spanish as their native language and English as their second language. Data related to language environment in the home, specifically the percent of language exposure to each language and SES, were obtained from primary caregiver interviews. Primary caregivers’ vocabulary knowledge was measured directly using expressive and receptive vocabulary assessments in both languages. Results Multiple regression analyses indicated that primary caregivers’ vocabulary knowledge, the child’s percent exposure to each language, and SES were robust predictors of children’s English, but not Spanish, vocabulary skills. Conclusions These findings indicate that in the early school age, primary caregiver vocabulary skills have a stronger impact on bilingual children’s second-language than native-language vocabulary. PMID:24824882

Czech Basic Course: Folklore.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Defense Language Inst., Washington, DC.

This booklet is designed for use in the advanced phase of the Defense Language Institute's "Basic Course" in Czech. It is used in the advanced phase as a part of cultural background information. Reading selections, with vocabulary lists, include: (1) ethnography; (2) incantations and spells; (3) proverbs, sayings, and weather lore; (4) fairy tales…

Automated Database Mediation Using Ontological Metadata Mappings

PubMed Central

Marenco, Luis; Wang, Rixin; Nadkarni, Prakash

2009-01-01

Objective To devise an automated approach for integrating federated database information using database ontologies constructed from their extended metadata. Background One challenge of database federation is that the granularity of representation of equivalent data varies across systems. Dealing effectively with this problem is analogous to dealing with precoordinated vs. postcoordinated concepts in biomedical ontologies. Model Description The authors describe an approach based on ontological metadata mapping rules defined with elements of a global vocabulary, which allows a query specified at one granularity level to fetch data, where possible, from databases within the federation that use different granularities. This is implemented in OntoMediator, a newly developed production component of our previously described Query Integrator System. OntoMediator's operation is illustrated with a query that accesses three geographically separate, interoperating databases. An example based on SNOMED also illustrates the applicability of high-level rules to support the enforcement of constraints that can prevent inappropriate curator or power-user actions. Summary A rule-based framework simplifies the design and maintenance of systems where categories of data must be mapped to each other, for the purpose of either cross-database query or for curation of the contents of compositional controlled vocabularies. PMID:19567801

Food and Feed Commodity Vocabulary

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Food and Feed Vocabulary was developed to consolidate all the major OPP Commodity Vocabularies into one standardized vocabulary. The EPA-preferred term is the only term that can be used in setting tolerances.

Conceptually Based Vocabulary Intervention: Second Graders' Development of Vocabulary Words

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dimling, Lisa M.

2010-01-01

An instructional strategy was investigated that addressed the needs of deaf and hard of hearing students through a conceptually based sign language vocabulary intervention. A single-subject multiple-baseline design was used to determine the effects of the vocabulary intervention on word recognition, production, and comprehension. Six students took…

Improving Vocabulary of English Language Learners through Direct Vocabulary Instruction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hunt, Meghan; Feng, Jay

2016-01-01

This is a report of a professional development project. The purpose of the project was to provide professional development to teachers in vocabulary instructional strategies and to examine vocabulary acquisition of English language learners. The participants were 8 second grade ELL students and 6 second grade teachers. The eight second grade…

Helping Children Develop Skills in Phonic Analysis, Sight Vocabulary and Handwriting.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rinder, Susan

A study tested the effectiveness of precision teaching through a summer pilot project involving four male students between the ages of 6 and 7, all of whom had demonstrated some difficulty with basic reading skills. The 6-week program concentrated on those skills most important to emergent readers, namely, phonic analysis, sight vocabulary and…

Vocabulary Teaching Strategies: Effects on Vocabulary Recognition and Comprehension at the First Grade Level.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Peitz, Patricia; Vena, Patricia

A study examined teaching methods for vocabulary at the first grade level. The study compared teaching vocabulary in context and teaching vocabulary in isolation. Subjects were 32 culturally diverse first-grade students from varying socio-economic backgrounds. The sample consisted of 14 boys and 18 girls, heterogeneously grouped. Two teacher-made…

For ELLs: Vocabulary beyond the Definitions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Roberts, Nancy S.; Truxaw, Mary P.

2013-01-01

In this article, a classroom teacher discusses ambiguities in mathematics vocabulary and strategies for ELL students in building understanding. The authors note that mathematics vocabulary may be more difficult to learn than other academic vocabulary for several reasons: (1) definitions are filled with technical vocabulary, symbols, and diagrams;…

Vocabulary Theatre: A Peer-Teaching Approach for Academic Vocabulary Acquisition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Robb, Elizabeth; Sinatra, Richard; Eschenauer, Robert

2014-01-01

This mixed methods counterbalanced study compared the gain score means of two different approaches to vocabulary acquisition--Vocabulary Theater (VT) and Teacher Directed Instruction (TDI) for 8th grade students from three schools in New York. The purpose of the study was to explore the effects of a peer teaching approach on students' vocabulary…

Foundations of RDF Databases

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Arenas, Marcelo; Gutierrez, Claudio; Pérez, Jorge

The goal of this paper is to give an overview of the basics of the theory of RDF databases. We provide a formal definition of RDF that includes the features that distinguish this model from other graph data models. We then move into the fundamental issue of querying RDF data. We start by considering the RDF query language SPARQL, which is a W3C Recommendation since January 2008. We provide an algebraic syntax and a compositional semantics for this language, study the complexity of the evaluation problem for different fragments of SPARQL, and consider the problem of optimizing the evaluation of SPARQL queries, showing that a natural fragment of this language has some good properties in this respect. We furthermore study the expressive power of SPARQL, by comparing it with some well-known query languages such as relational algebra. We conclude by considering the issue of querying RDF data in the presence of RDFS vocabulary. In particular, we present a recently proposed extension of SPARQL with navigational capabilities.

Second Language Reading and Vocabulary Learning.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Huckin, Thomas, Ed.; And Others

This book contains 14 essays on reading and vocabulary learning in second language acquisition. Chapters include: "Research on ESL/EFL Vocabulary Acquisition: Putting It in Context" (James Coady); "Implications for L2 Vocabulary Acquisition and Instruction From L1 Vocabulary Research" (Fredricka Stoller and William Grabe); "Patterns and Perils of…

Word Frequency and Trends in the Development of French Vocabulary in Lower-Intermediate Students during Year 12 in English Schools

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Richards, Brian; Malvern, David; Graham, Suzanne

2008-01-01

This article reports research into the development of vocabulary in lower-intermediate level learners of French as a foreign language in Year 12 in 20 schools in the south of England. The focus of attention is the role of less common, or non-basic, vocabulary at a stage in students' learning when they have just moved to a much more advanced…

Portability issues for a structured clinical vocabulary: mapping from Yale to the Columbia medical entities dictionary.

PubMed Central

Kannry, J L; Wright, L; Shifman, M; Silverstein, S; Miller, P L

1996-01-01

OBJECTIVE: To examine the issues involved in mapping an existing structured controlled vocabulary, the Medical Entities Dictionary (MED) developed at Columbia University, to an institutional vocabulary, the laboratory and pharmacy vocabularies of the Yale New Haven Medical Center. DESIGN: 200 Yale pharmacy terms and 200 Yale laboratory terms were randomly selected from database files containing all of the Yale laboratory and pharmacy terms. These 400 terms were then mapped to the MED in three phases: mapping terms, mapping relationships between terms, and mapping attributes that modify terms. RESULTS: 73% of the Yale pharmacy terms mapped to MED terms. 49% of the Yale laboratory terms mapped to MED terms. After certain obsolete and otherwise inappropriate laboratory terms were eliminated, the latter rate improved to 59%. 23% of the unmatched Yale laboratory terms failed to match because of differences in granularity with MED terms. The Yale and MED pharmacy terms share 12 of 30 distinct attributes. The Yale and MED laboratory terms share 14 of 23 distinct attributes. CONCLUSION: The mapping of an institutional vocabulary to a structured controlled vocabulary requires that the mapping be performed at the level of terms, relationships, and attributes. The mapping process revealed the importance of standardization of local vocabulary subsets, standardization of attribute representation, and term granularity. PMID:8750391

Analyzing the Effectiveness of Vocabulary Knowledge Scale on Learning and Enhancing Vocabulary through Extensive Reading

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Iqbal, Syeda Asima; Komal, Syeda Anila

2017-01-01

This research is about the effectiveness of Vocabulary Knowledge Scale after extensive reading which helps in the enhancement of global language skills especially their vocabulary. This research is an endeavor to create an awareness of its significance in language acquisition through extensive reading especially focusing on vocabulary. The…

Sources of the Medical Vocabulary.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Butler, Roy F.

1980-01-01

In an attempt to determine as precisely as possible just how much of medical vocabulary is derived from every source, the vocabulary defined in the 24th edition of "Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary" was analyzed. Results indicate that medical vocabulary is relying increasingly upon the Greek and Latin languages as the sources of…

Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition from Language Input and from Form-Focused Activities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Laufer, Batia

2009-01-01

Interest in L2 vocabulary learning and teaching started long before the nineteen-eighties (for references to earlier studies, see Rob Waring's database http://www1.harenet.ne.jp/~waring/vocab/vocrefs/vocref.html) but it declined with the advent of generative linguistics to the point of discrimination and neglect (Meara 1980). In 1986, I argued…

NASA thesaurus aeronautics vocabulary

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1991-01-01

The controlled vocabulary used by the NASA Scientific and Technical Information effort to index documents in the area of aeronautics is presented. The terms comprise a subset of the 1988 edition of the NASA Thesaurus and its supplements issued through the end of 1990. The Aeronautics Vocabulary contains over 4700 terms presented in a hierarchical display format. In addition to aeronautics per se, the vocabulary covers supporting terminology from areas such as fluid dynamics, propulsion engineering, and test facilities and instrumentation.

Invited Commentary: Vocabulary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Martinez, Ron; Schmitt, Norbert

2010-01-01

While formal research into the effect various technologies have on vocabulary acquisition is still in its infancy, it is clear that--intentionally or incidentally--students have used various electronic media to learn new words for some time now. Moreover, although it is still far from clear exactly how one acquires vocabulary in a second language…

Basic Auditory Processing Skills and Phonological Awareness in Low-IQ Readers and Typically Developing Controls

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kuppen, Sarah; Huss, Martina; Fosker, Tim; Fegan, Natasha; Goswami, Usha

2011-01-01

We explore the relationships between basic auditory processing, phonological awareness, vocabulary, and word reading in a sample of 95 children, 55 typically developing children, and 40 children with low IQ. All children received nonspeech auditory processing tasks, phonological processing and literacy measures, and a receptive vocabulary task.…

Technical Vocabulary in Specialised Texts.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chung, Teresa Mihwa; Nation, Paul

2003-01-01

Describes two studies of technical vocabulary, one using an anatomy text and the other an applied linguistics text. Technical vocabulary was found by rating words in the texts on a four-step scale. Found that technical vocabulary made up a very substantial proportion of both the different words and the running words in texts. (Author/VWL)

Mapping Opthalmic Terms to a Standardized Vocabulary.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Patrick, Timothy B.; Reid, John C.; Sievert, MaryEllen; Popescu, Mihail; Gigantelli, James W.; Shelton, Mark E.; Schiffman, Jade S.

2000-01-01

Describes work by the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) to expand the standardized vocabulary, Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine (SNOMED), to accommodate a definitive ophthalmic standardized vocabulary. Mapped a practice-based clinical ophthalmic vocabulary to SNOMED and other vocabularies in the Metathesaurus of the Unified Medical…

Vocabulary services to support scientific data interoperability

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cox, Simon; Mills, Katie; Tan, Florence

2013-04-01

Shared vocabularies are a core element in interoperable systems. Vocabularies need to be available at run-time, and where the vocabularies are shared by a distributed community this implies the use of web technology to provide vocabulary services. Given the ubiquity of vocabularies or classifiers in systems, vocabulary services are effectively the base of the interoperability stack. In contemporary knowledge organization systems, a vocabulary item is considered a concept, with the "terms" denoting it appearing as labels. The Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) formalizes this as an RDF Schema (RDFS) application, with a bridge to formal logic in Web Ontology Language (OWL). For maximum utility, a vocabulary should be made available through the following interfaces: * the vocabulary as a whole - at an ontology URI corresponding to a vocabulary document * each item in the vocabulary - at the item URI * summaries, subsets, and resources derived by transformation * through the standard RDF web API - i.e. a SPARQL endpoint * through a query form for human users. However, the vocabulary data model may be leveraged directly in a standard vocabulary API that uses the semantics provided by SKOS. SISSvoc3 [1] accomplishes this as a standard set of URI templates for a vocabulary. Any URI comforming to the template selects a vocabulary subset based on the SKOS properties, including labels (skos:prefLabel, skos:altLabel, rdfs:label) and a subset of the semantic relations (skos:broader, skos:narrower, etc). SISSvoc3 thus provides a RESTFul SKOS API to query a vocabulary, but hiding the complexity of SPARQL. It has been implemented using the Linked Data API (LDA) [2], which connects to a SPARQL endpoint. By using LDA, we also get content-negotiation, alternative views, paging, metadata and other functionality provided in a standard way. A number of vocabularies have been formalized in SKOS and deployed by CSIRO, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) and their

Basic Language Skills and Young Children's Understanding of Causal Connections during Storytelling

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brown, Danielle D.; Lile, Jacquelyn; Burns, Barbara M.

2011-01-01

The current study examined the role of basic language skills for individual differences in preschoolers' understanding of causal connections. Assessments of basic language skills, expressive vocabulary, phonological processing, and receptive language comprehension were examined in relation to the production of causal connections in a storytelling…

A TEACHER'S GUIDE FOR ADULT BASIC EDUCATION.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

BROWN, ANTRONETTE

COMPILED AS AN IDEA AND INFORMATION GUIDE FOR TEACHERS OF ADULT BASIC EDUCATION, THIS DOCUMENT INCLUDES DETAILED TEACHING OBJECTIVES, METHODS, AND MATERIALS (FILMS, FILMSTRIPS, BOOKS, TRANSPARENCIES). THE COURSE INCLUDES (1) READING AND COMMUNICATION SKILLS--PHONICS, VOCABULARY, REFERENCE, AND SO ON, (2) SOCIAL STUDIES--GOVERNMENT, GEOGRAPHY,…

EFL Learners' Vocabulary Consolidation Strategy Use and Corresponding Performance on Vocabulary Tests

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lai, Ying-Chun

2016-01-01

This study describes English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners' use of vocabulary consolidation strategies and explores the connection between strategy use and vocabulary learning outcomes. This study included 218 participants who were students from five freshman English classes at a university in Taiwan. Students' self-reports on their use of…

International cooperation between Japanese IUGONET and EU ESPAS projects on development of the metadata database for upper atmospheric study

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yatagai, Akiyo; Ritschel, Bernd; Iyemori, Tomohiko; Koyama, Yukinobu; Hori, Tomoaki; Abe, Shuji; Tanaka, Yoshimasa; Shinbori, Atsuki; UeNo, Satoru; Sato, Yuka; Yagi, Manabu

2013-04-01

The upper atmospheric observational study is the area which an international collaboration is crucially important. The Japanese Inter-university Upper atmosphere Global Observation NETwork project (2009-2014), IUGONET, is an inter-university program by the National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR), Tohoku University, Nagoya University, Kyoto University, and Kyushu University to build a database of metadata for ground-based observations of the upper atmosphere. In order to investigate the mechanism of long-term variations in the upper atmosphere, we need to combine various types of in-situ observations and to accelerate data exchange. The IUGONET institutions have been archiving observed data by radars, magnetometers, photometers, radio telescopes, helioscopes, etc. in various altitude layers from the Earth's surface to the Sun. The IUGONET has been developing systems for searching metadata of these observational data, and the metadata database (MDB) has already been operating since 2011. It adopts DSPACE system for registering metadata, and it uses an extension of the SPASE data model of describing metadata, which is widely used format in the upper atmospheric society including that in USA. The European Union project ESPAS (2011-2015) has the same scientific objects with IUGONET, namely it aims to provide an e-science infrastructure for the retrieval and access to space weather relevant data, information and value added services. It integrates 22 partners in European countries. The ESPAS also plans to adopt SPASE model for defining their metadata, but search system is different. Namely, in spite of the similarity of the data model, basic system ideas and techniques of the system and web portal are different between IUGONET and ESPAS. In order to connect the two systems/databases, we are planning to take an ontological method. The SPASE keyword vocabulary, derived from the SPASE data model shall be used as standard for the description of near-earth and space data

Normative adjustments to the D-KEFS trail making test: corrections for education and vocabulary level.

PubMed

Fine, Eric M; Delis, Dean C; Holdnack, James

2011-11-01

The Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System (D-KEFS) Trail Making Test (TMT), a modification of the original TMT, was created to isolate set-shifting (Letter-Number Switching) from other component skills. This was accomplished by including four baseline conditions (Visual Scanning, Number Sequencing, Letter Sequencing, and Motor Speed) and by placing equal numbers of stimuli in the three sequencing conditions. Given that some studies with the original TMT demonstrated a significant effect of education and intellectual functioning on performance, we utilized the D-KEFS national standardization sample to examine the effects of education and vocabulary level-i.e., Vocabulary subtest from the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI)-on the D-KEFS TMT. The results indicate a significant effect of these variables on each D-KEFS TMT condition. Normative tables for education- and vocabulary-adjusted scaled scores based on the database from the D-KEFS national normative study were generated.

Briefkasten oder Brieftaube? Zur Auswahl der Lexik in amerikanischen Deutschlehrwerken fuer die Grundstufe. ("Mailbox" or "Carrier Pigeon"? Selecting Vocabulary for American College-Level Elementary German Textbooks).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bolton, Sibylle

A comparison of four college-level elementary German textbooks reveals significant differences in the numbers of vocabulary entries in each textbook. Further comparison of three of the textbooks with the basic German vocabulary lists provided in "Kontaktschwelle Deutsch als Fremdsprache" and in "Das Zertificat Deutsch als Fremdsprache" reveal in…

A Reassessment of Frequency and Vocabulary Size in L2 Vocabulary Teaching

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schmitt, Norbert; Schmitt, Diane

2014-01-01

The high-frequency vocabulary of English has traditionally been thought to consist of the 2,000 most frequent word families, and low-frequency vocabulary as that beyond the 10,000 frequency level. This paper argues that these boundaries should be reassessed on pedagogic grounds. Based on a number of perspectives (including frequency and…

Second Language Vocabulary Growth at Advanced Level

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ozturk, Meral

2016-01-01

This study investigated the receptive vocabulary growth of advanced EFL learners in an English-medium degree programme. The study used the Vocabulary Size Test in a cross-sectional design to measure the vocabulary size of learners at various stages of study. The effect of word frequency on vocabulary development and the presence of an…

Using Visuals To Develop Reading Vocabulary.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bazeli, Marilyn J.; Olle, Ruth E.

This paper discusses research findings regarding vocabulary instruction and reading comprehension and suggests methods to develop vocabulary using visual aids. As indicated by the research, vocabulary instruction is necessary and can lead to improved comprehension; there also appears to be a strong need to relate concrete visual experiences to…

Listening Vocabulary: Embracing Forgotten Aural Features

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Siegel, Joseph

2016-01-01

This article describes an innovation in the teaching and learning of vocabulary in English as a Foreign Language classes. Whereas vocabulary coverage in classrooms and textbooks traditionally focuses on lists of target words in printed form, this article promotes the notion of "aural vocabulary" as an important part of…

Ten-year longitudinal trajectories of older adults' basic and everyday cognitive abilities.

PubMed

Yam, Anna; Gross, Alden L; Prindle, John J; Marsiske, Michael

2014-11-01

To examine the longitudinal trajectories of everyday cognition and longitudinal associations with basic (i.e., laboratory and experimentally measured) cognitive abilities, including verbal memory, inductive reasoning, visual processing speed, and vocabulary. Participants were healthy older adults drawn from the no-treatment control group (N = 698) of the Advanced Cognitive Training for the Independent and Vital Elderly (Willis et al., 2006) randomized trial and were assessed at baseline and 1, 2, 3, 5, and 10 years later. Analyses were conducted using latent growth models. Modeling revealed an overall inverted-U shape (quadratic) trajectory across cognitive domains. Among basic cognitive predictors, level and slope in reasoning demonstrated the closest association to level and slope of everyday cognition, and accounted for most of the individual differences in linear gain in everyday cognition. Everyday cognition is not buffered against decline, and is most closely related to inductive reasoning in healthy older adults. To establish the clinical utility of everyday cognitive measures, future research should examine these associations in samples with more cognitive impairment. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

The Effects of Techniques of Vocabulary Portfolio on L2 Vocabulary Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zarei, Abbas Ali; Baftani, Fahimeh Nasiri

2014-01-01

To investigate the effects of different techniques of vocabulary portfolio including word map, word wizard, concept wheel, visual thesaurus, and word rose on L2 vocabulary comprehension and production, a sample of 75 female EFL learners of Kish Day Language Institute in Karaj, Iran were selected. They were in five groups and each group received…

Online Vocabulary Games as a Tool for Teaching and Learning English Vocabulary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yip, Florence W. M.; Kwan, Alvin C. M.

2006-01-01

Vocabulary learning is often perceived as boring by learners, especially for those who grew up in the digital age. This paper reports a study of the usefulness of online games in vocabulary learning for some undergraduate students. Three teachers and 100 engineering students participated in a quasi-experimental study for approximately nine weeks.…

IEDA Thesaurus: A Controlled Vocabulary for IEDA Systems to Advance Integration

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ji, P.; Lehnert, K. A.; Arko, R. A.; Song, L.; Hsu, L.; Carter, M. R.; Ferrini, V. L.; Ash, J.

2014-12-01

Integrated Earth Data Applications (IEDA) is a community-based facility that serves to support, sustain, and advance the geosciences by providing data services for observational geoscience data from the Ocean, Earth, and Polar Sciences. Many dedicated systems such as the Petrological Database (PetDB), Marine Geoscience Data System (MGDS), System for Earth Sample Registration (SESAR), Data Coordination Center for the U.S. Antarctic Program (USAP-DCC), etc., under the umbrella of the IEDA framework, were developed to support the preservation, discovery, retrieval, and analysis of a wide range of observational field and analytical data types from diverse communities. However, it is currently difficult to maintain consistency of indexing content within IEDA schema, and perform unified or precise searching of the data in these diverse systems as each system maintains separate vocabularies, hierarchies, authority files, or sub taxonomies. We present here the IEDA Thesaurus, a system, which combines existing separate controlled vocabularies from the different systems under the IEDA schema into a single master controlled vocabulary, also introducing some new top facets for future long-term use. The IEDA thesaurus contains structured terminology for petrology, geochemistry, sedimentology, oceanography, geochronology, and volcanology, and other general metadata fields. 18 top facets (also called 'top categories') are defined, including equipment, geographic gazetteer, geologic ages, geologic units, materials, etc. The terms of the thesaurus are cross validated with others popular geoscience vocabularies such as GeoRef Thesaurus, U.S. Geological Survey Library Classification System, Global Change Master Directory (GCMD), and Semantic Web for Earth and Environmental Terminology (SWEET) ontologies. The thesaurus is organized along with the ANSI/NISO Z39.19-2005 Guidelines for the Construction, Format, and Management of Monolingual Controlled Vocabularies, and is published using

Reading Development in European Portuguese: Relationships between Oral Reading Fluency, Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fernandes, Sandra; Querido, Luís; Verhaeghe, Arlette; Marques, Catarina; Araújo, Luísa

2017-01-01

This study investigated direct and indirect effects between oral reading fluency, vocabulary and reading comprehension across reading development in European Portuguese. Participants were 329 children attending basic education, from grade 1 to grade 6. The results of path analyses showed that text reading fluency is much more dependent on the…

Assessing Vocabulary Learning in Early Childhood

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hoffman, Jessica L.; Teale, William H.; Paciga, Kathleen A.

2014-01-01

There is widespread agreement with in the field of early childhood education that vocabulary is important to literacy achievement and that reading aloud can support vocabulary growth. However, there are unexplored and significant problems with the ways we assess young children's vocabulary learning from read-alouds. This paper critically reviews…

KURDISH BASIC COURSE, DIALECT OF SULAIMANIA, IRAQ.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

ABDULLA, JAMAL JALAL; MCCARUS, ERNEST N.

THIS BEGINNING COURSE, DESIGNED FOR THE STUDENT WITH SOME KNOWLEDGE OF LINGUISTICS, FOLLOWS THE AUDIOLINGUAL APPROACH IN TEACHING THE PHONOLOGY, BASIC STRUCTURE, AND VOCABULARY OF THE EDUCATED KURDISH DIALECT OF SULAIMANIA, IRAQ. THE CULTURAL CONTENT OF THE MATERIAL PROVIDES THE STUDENT WITH A GENERAL BACKGROUND OF SULAIMANIAN CULTURE. PART I,…

Perfecting Language: Experimenting with Vocabulary Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Absalom, Matthew

2014-01-01

One of the thorniest aspects of teaching languages is developing students' vocabulary, yet it is impossible to be "an accurate and highly communicative language user with a very small vocabulary" (Milton, 2009, p. 3). Nation (2006) indicates that more vocabulary than previously thought is required to function well both at spoken and…

The Role of Primary Caregiver Vocabulary Knowledge in the Development of Bilingual Children's Vocabulary Skills

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Buac, Milijana; Gross, Megan; Kaushanskaya, Margarita

2014-01-01

Purpose: The present study examined the impact of environmental factors (socioeconomic status [SES], the percent of language exposure to English and to Spanish, and primary caregivers' vocabulary knowledge) on bilingual children's vocabulary skills. Method: Vocabulary skills were measured in 58 bilingual children between the ages of 5…

Teachers' Technology Use in Vocabulary Teaching

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kilickaya, Ferit; Krajka, Jaroslaw

2010-01-01

It cannot be denied that vocabulary learning is central to learning a language, be it a mother tongue or the second/foreign language. According to Nunan (1991), learning vocabulary in the very early stages is more fundamental than grammar, since without vocabulary one would not be able to use the structures and functions for effective…

Elasticizing Language - Techniques in Vocabulary Development.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shepherd, Richard C.

Noting that a rich vocabulary comes from experiences and from the organizing and reorganizing of these experiences, this paper suggests ways that students may be helped to improve their vocabulary at an accelerated pace. The paper first argues that vocabulary development must be a planned program beginning in the early grades and explores some of…

Some Vocabulary Activities Worth Teaching About.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brand, Helena S.

1982-01-01

The 12 activities presented in this pamphlet are intended to help make vocabulary study a stimulating experience for both teacher and student. The activities are as follows: (1) a commercially prepared list of suggestions for vocabulary development, (2) an exercise designed to relate vocabulary study to every day reading, (3) a variation of the…

EXPLORATORY STUDIES IN THE USE OF PICTURES AND SOUND FOR TEACHING FOREIGN LANGUAGE VOCABULARY.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

GROSSLIGHT, J.H.; KALE, S.V.

THE EFFECTS OF A NUMBER OF VARIABLES BASIC TO THE LEARNING OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE VOCABULARY WERE REPORTED. THE LANGUAGE SELECTED FOR LEARNING WAS RUSSIAN. SUBJECTS IN THE FIRST EXPERIMENT WERE 409 STUDENTS FROM AN INTRODUCTORY PSYCHOLOGY COURSE. FROM AN ENGLISH-RUSSIAN DICTIONARY, A PRELIMINARY LIST OF COMMON VERBS WAS SELECTED WHICH REPRESENTED AN…

Building Interoperable FHIR-Based Vocabulary Mapping Services: A Case Study of OHDSI Vocabularies and Mappings.

PubMed

Jiang, Guoqian; Kiefer, Richard; Prud'hommeaux, Eric; Solbrig, Harold R

2017-01-01

The OHDSI Common Data Model (CDM) is a deep information model, in which its vocabulary component plays a critical role in enabling consistent coding and query of clinical data. The objective of the study is to create methods and tools to expose the OHDSI vocabularies and mappings as the vocabulary mapping services using two HL7 FHIR core terminology resources ConceptMap and ValueSet. We discuss the benefits and challenges in building the FHIR-based terminology services.

Improving Online Reading and Vocabulary Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Loucky, John Paul

2007-01-01

The aim of this study was to find ways to improve online reading and vocabulary learning. Various new types of online reading comprehension and vocabulary development programs and tests were compared in this study to consider how useful they may be for guiding individual or classroom L2 vocabulary instruction. It explored how these programs seek…

Swimming in New Vocabulary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Donohue, Kerri; Buck, Gayle

2017-01-01

This article describes an informal program in one school where grade K-1 students learn a variety of new science vocabulary words relating to animal characteristics. The students are introduced to a new group of animals and their characteristics through storytelling, games, discussion, and crafts (see Table 1, p. 34). The new vocabulary words are…

Improving Vocabulary Acquisition through Direct and Indirect Teaching.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Glowacki, Deborah; Lanucha, Cheryl; Pietrus, Debra

Students who lag behind in vocabulary commonly experience academic failure. A student's vocabulary knowledge directly impacts reading comprehension. To improve comprehension, students need exposure to a variety of literature and opportunities for meaningful practice of vocabulary they encounter daily. Vocabulary is developed through a variety of…

Vocabulary Knowledge of Deaf and Hearing Postsecondary Students

PubMed Central

Sarchet, Thomastine; Marschark, Marc; Borgna, Georgianna; Convertino, Carol; Sapere, Patricia; Dirmyer, Richard

2014-01-01

Deaf children generally are found to have smaller English vocabularies than hearing peers, although studies involving children with cochlear implants have suggested that the gap may decrease or disappear with age. Less is known about the vocabularies of deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) postsecondary students or how their vocabulary knowledge relates to other aspects of academic achievement. This study used the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test to examine the vocabulary knowledge of DHH and hearing postsecondary students as well as their awareness (predictions) of that knowledge. Relationships between vocabulary knowledge and print exposure, communication backgrounds, and reading and verbal abilities also were examined. Consistent with studies of children, hearing college students demonstrated significantly larger vocabularies than DHH students both with and without cochlear implants. DHH students were more likely to overestimate their vocabulary knowledge. Vocabulary scores were positively related to reading and verbal abilities but negatively related to sign language abilities. Among DHH students they also were positively related to measures of spoken language ability. Results are discussed in terms of related cognitive abilities, language fluency, and academic achievement of DHH students and implications for postsecondary education. PMID:25558473

Breadth of Productive Vocabulary Knowledge of Pre-Service Teachers: Basis for the Proposed Intervention Strategies in Vocabulary Enhancement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Calub, Cecilia L.; Calub, Francelle L.

2017-01-01

This research sought to determine the level of productive vocabulary knowledge of the students grouped according to type of school and curriculum year level; performance of the students in the vocabulary test categorized according to frequency levels; their breadth of productive vocabulary knowledge related to type of school enrolled in,…

Homophily of Vocabulary Usage: Beneficial Effects of Vocabulary Similarity on Online Health Communities Participation

PubMed Central

Park, Albert; Hartzler, Andrea L.; Huh, Jina; McDonald, David W.; Pratt, Wanda

2015-01-01

Online health communities provide popular platforms for individuals to exchange psychosocial support and form ties. Although regular active participation (i.e., posting to interact with other members) in online health communities can provide important benefits, sustained active participation remains challenging for these communities. Leveraging previous literature on homophily (i.e., “love of those who are like themselves”), we examined the relationship between vocabulary similarity (i.e., homophily of word usage) of thread posts and members’ future interaction in online health communities. We quantitatively measured vocabulary similarity by calculating, in a vector space model, cosine similarity between the original post and the first reply in 20,499 threads. Our findings across five online health communities suggest that vocabulary similarity is a significant predictor of members’ future interaction in online health communities. These findings carry practical implications for facilitating and sustaining online community participation through beneficial effects of homophily in the vocabulary of essential peer support. PMID:26958240

Evaluation of Controlled Vocabulary Resources for Development of a Consumer Entry Vocabulary for Diabetes

PubMed Central

Monga, Harpreet K; Sievert, MaryEllen C; Hall, Joan Houston; Longo, Daniel R

2001-01-01

Background Digital information technology can facilitate informed decision making by individuals regarding their personal health care. The digital divide separates those who do and those who do not have access to or otherwise make use of digital information. To close the digital divide, health care communications research must address a fundamental issue, the consumer vocabulary problem: consumers of health care, at least those who are laypersons, are not always familiar with the professional vocabulary and concepts used by providers of health care and by providers of health care information, and, conversely, health care and health care information providers are not always familiar with the vocabulary and concepts used by consumers. One way to address this problem is to develop a consumer entry vocabulary for health care communications. Objectives To evaluate the potential of controlled vocabulary resources for supporting the development of consumer entry vocabulary for diabetes. Methods We used folk medical terms from the Dictionary of American Regional English project to create exended versions of 3 controlled vocabulary resources: the Unified Medical Language System Metathesaurus, the Eurodicautom of the European Commission's Translation Service, and the European Commission Glossary of popular and technical medical terms. We extracted consumer terms from consumer-authored materials, and physician terms from physician-authored materials. We used our extended versions of the vocabulary resources to link diabetes-related terms used by health care consumers to synonymous, nearly-synonymous, or closely-related terms used by family physicians. We also examined whether retrieval of diabetes-related World Wide Web information sites maintained by nonprofit health care professional organizations, academic organizations, or governmental organizations can be improved by substituting a physician term for its related consumer term in the query. Results The Dictionary of

Children with Developmental Language Impairment Have Vocabulary Deficits Characterized by Limited Breadth and Depth

PubMed Central

McGregor, Karla K.; Oleson, Jacob; Bahnsen, Alison; Duff, Dawna

2012-01-01

Background Deficient vocabulary is a frequently reported symptom of developmental language impairment but the nature of the deficit and its developmental course are not well documented. Aims We aimed to describe the nature of the deficit in terms of breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge and to determine whether the nature and the extent of the deficit change over the school years. Methods A total of 25,681 oral definitions produced by 177 children with developmental language impairment (LI) and 325 grade-mates with normally developing language (ND) in grades 2, 4, 8, and 10 were taken from an existing longitudinal database. We analyzed these for breadth by counting the number of words defined correctly and for depth by determining the amount of information in each correct definition. Via a linear mixed model, we determined whether breadth and depth varied with language diagnosis independent of nonverbal IQ, mothers’ education level, race, gender, income and (for depth only) word. Results Children with LI scored significantly lower than children with ND on breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge in all grades. The extent of the deficit did not vary significantly across grades. Language diagnosis was an independent predictor of breadth and depth and as strong a predictor as maternal education. For the LI group, growth in depth relative to breadth was slower than for the ND group. Conclusions Compared to their grade-mates, children with LI have fewer words in their vocabularies and they have shallower knowledge of the words that are in their vocabularies. This deficit persists over developmental time. PMID:23650887

Bridging the Vocabulary Gap for EFL Medical Undergraduates: The Establishment of a Medical Word List

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hsu, Wenhua

2013-01-01

This study created a medical word list (MWL) to bridge the gap between non-technical and technical vocabulary. The researcher compiled a corpus containing 155 textbooks across 31 medical subject areas from e-book databases (totaling 15 million running words) and examined the range and frequency of words outside the most frequent 3,000-word…

Vocabulary Learning Strategies and Vocabulary Size of ELT Students at EMU in Northern Cyprus

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kalajahi, Seyed Ali Rezvani; Pourshahian, Bahar

2012-01-01

This research study aimed at exploring the relationship between vocabulary learning strategies and vocabulary size of 125 undergraduate English Language Teaching students at Eastern Mediterranean University. This research study was a correlational survey study of descriptive nature. The major findings of this study were as follows. First, the…

Using the Vocabulary Self-Collection Strategy plus to Develop University EFL Students' Vocabulary Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Khodary, Manal Mohamed

2017-01-01

This study was carried out to examine the effectiveness of using the Vocabulary Self-Collection Strategy Plus (VSSPlus) on developing university EFL students' vocabulary learning. It adopted the quasi experimental design which included two groups design. The participants were first level students at Languages and Translation Department, Arar…

Safeguarding Databases Basic Concepts Revisited.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cardinali, Richard

1995-01-01

Discusses issues of database security and integrity, including computer crime and vandalism, human error, computer viruses, employee and user access, and personnel policies. Suggests some precautions to minimize system vulnerability such as careful personnel screening, audit systems, passwords, and building and software security systems. (JKP)

Vocabulary Levels and Size of Malaysian Undergraduates

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Harji, Madhubala Bava; Balakrishnan, Kavitha; Bhar, Sareen Kaur; Letchumanan, Krishnaveni

2015-01-01

Vocabulary is a fundamental requirement of language acquisition, and its competence enables independent reading and effective language acquisition. Effective language use requires adequate level of vocabulary knowledge; therefore, efforts must be made to identify students' vocabulary base for greater efficiency and competency in the language.…

The Effect of Authentic Problem-Based Vocabulary Tasks on Vocabulary Learning of EFL Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mohammadi, Fateme Shir

2017-01-01

Language learners' cognitive engagement with the content in language classes has been advocated in the last few decades (Laufer & Hulstjin, 2001). To this end, the researcher designed authentic problem-based tasks which make use of learners' cognitive and metacognitive skills to solve real-life vocabulary tasks. Nelson vocabulary test was…

Controlled Vocabulary Service Application for Environmental Data Store

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ji, P.; Piasecki, M.; Lovell, R.

2013-12-01

In this paper we present a controlled vocabulary service application for Environmental Data Store (EDS). The purpose for such application is to help researchers and investigators to archive, manage, share, search, and retrieve data efficiently in EDS. The Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) is used in the application for the representation of the controlled vocabularies coming from EDS. The controlled vocabularies of EDS are created by collecting, comparing, choosing and merging controlled vocabularies, taxonomies and ontologies widely used and recognized in geoscience/environmental informatics community, such as Environment ontology (EnvO), Semantic Web for Earth and Environmental Terminology (SWEET) ontology, CUAHSI Hydrologic Ontology and ODM Controlled Vocabulary, National Environmental Methods Index (NEMI), National Water Information System (NWIS) codes, EPSG Geodetic Parameter Data Set, WQX domain value etc. TemaTres, an open-source, web -based thesaurus management package is employed and extended to create and manage controlled vocabularies of EDS in the application. TemaTresView and VisualVocabulary that work well with TemaTres, are also integrated in the application to provide tree view and graphical view of the structure of vocabularies. The Open Source Edition of Virtuoso Universal Server is set up to provide a Web interface to make SPARQL queries against controlled vocabularies hosted on the Environmental Data Store. The replicas of some of the key vocabularies commonly used in the community, are also maintained as part of the application, such as General Multilingual Environmental Thesaurus (GEMET), NetCDF Climate and Forecast (CF) Standard Names, etc.. The application has now been deployed as an elementary and experimental prototype that provides management, search and download controlled vocabularies of EDS under SKOS framework.

The Impact of Vocabulary Enhancement Activities on Vocabulary Acquisition and Retention among Male and Female EFL Learners in Iran

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sharafi-Nejad, Maryam; Raftari, Shohreh; Bijami, Maryam; Khavari, Zahra; Ismail, Shaik Abdul Malik Mohamed; Eng, Lin Siew

2014-01-01

In general, incidental vocabulary acquisition is represented as the "picking up" of new vocabularies when students are engaged in a variety of reading, listening, speaking, or writing activities. Research has shown when learners read extensively incidental vocabulary acquisition happens. Many EFL students cannot be involved in reading…

DSpace and customized controlled vocabularies

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Skourlas, C.; Tsolakidis, A.; Kakoulidis, P.; Giannakopoulos, G.

2015-02-01

The open source platform of DSpace could be defined as a repository application used to provide access to digital resources. DSpace is installed and used by more than 1000 organizations worldwide. A predefined taxonomy of keyword, called the Controlled Vocabulary, can be used for describing and accessing the information items stored in the repository. In this paper, we describe how the users can create, and customize their own vocabularies. Various heterogeneous items, such as research papers, videos, articles and educational material of the repository, can be indexed in order to provide advanced search functionality using new controlled vocabularies.

Relationships of Teachers' Language and Explicit Vocabulary Instruction to Students' Vocabulary Growth in Kindergarten

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bowne, Jocelyn Bonnes; Yoshikawa, Hirokazu; Snow, Catherine E.

2017-01-01

This study evaluates the relationships between aspects of Chilean teachers' explicit vocabulary instruction and students' vocabulary development in kindergarten. Classroom videotapes of whole-class instruction gathered during a randomized experimental evaluation of a coaching-based professional development program were analyzed. The amount of…

A Dual Coding View of Vocabulary Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sadoski, Mark

2005-01-01

A theoretical perspective on acquiring sight vocabulary and developing meaningful vocabulary is presented. Dual Coding Theory assumes that cognition occurs in two independent but connected codes: a verbal code for language and a nonverbal code for mental imagery. The mixed research literature on using pictures in teaching sight vocabulary is…

The Effect of Vocabulary Self-Selection Strategy and Input Enhancement Strategy on the Vocabulary Knowledge of Iranian EFL Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Masoudi, Golfam

2017-01-01

The present study was designed to investigate empirically the effect of Vocabulary Self-Selection strategy and Input Enhancement strategy on the vocabulary knowledge of Iranian EFL Learners. After taking a diagnostic pretest, both experimental groups enrolled in two classes. Learners who practiced Vocabulary Self-Selection were allowed to…

The MAR databases: development and implementation of databases specific for marine metagenomics

PubMed Central

Klemetsen, Terje; Raknes, Inge A; Fu, Juan; Agafonov, Alexander; Balasundaram, Sudhagar V; Tartari, Giacomo; Robertsen, Espen

2018-01-01

Abstract We introduce the marine databases; MarRef, MarDB and MarCat (https://mmp.sfb.uit.no/databases/), which are publicly available resources that promote marine research and innovation. These data resources, which have been implemented in the Marine Metagenomics Portal (MMP) (https://mmp.sfb.uit.no/), are collections of richly annotated and manually curated contextual (metadata) and sequence databases representing three tiers of accuracy. While MarRef is a database for completely sequenced marine prokaryotic genomes, which represent a marine prokaryote reference genome database, MarDB includes all incomplete sequenced prokaryotic genomes regardless level of completeness. The last database, MarCat, represents a gene (protein) catalog of uncultivable (and cultivable) marine genes and proteins derived from marine metagenomics samples. The first versions of MarRef and MarDB contain 612 and 3726 records, respectively. Each record is built up of 106 metadata fields including attributes for sampling, sequencing, assembly and annotation in addition to the organism and taxonomic information. Currently, MarCat contains 1227 records with 55 metadata fields. Ontologies and controlled vocabularies are used in the contextual databases to enhance consistency. The user-friendly web interface lets the visitors browse, filter and search in the contextual databases and perform BLAST searches against the corresponding sequence databases. All contextual and sequence databases are freely accessible and downloadable from https://s1.sfb.uit.no/public/mar/. PMID:29106641

Classroom L2 Vocabulary Acquisition: Investigating the Role of Pedagogical Tasks and Form-Focused Instruction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

de la Fuente, Maria J.

2006-01-01

Framed under a cognitive approach to task-based L2 learning, this study used a pedagogical approach to investigate the effects of three vocabulary lessons (one traditional and two task-based) on acquisition of basic meanings, forms and morphological aspects of Spanish words. Quantitative analysis performed on the data suggests that the type of…

Use of standard vocabulary services in validation of water resources data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yu, Jonathan; Cox, Simon; Ratcliffe, David

2010-05-01

must be commensurate with the observed property type Validation of data submitted in WDTF uses a two-pass approach. First, syntax and structural validation is performed by standard XML Schema validation tools. Second, validation of contextual constraints and code list checking is performed using a hybrid method combining context-sensitive rule-based validation (allowing the rules to be expressed within a given context) and semantic vocabulary services. Schematron allows rules to incorporate assertions of XPath expressions to access and constrain element content, therefore enabling contextual constraints. Schematron is also used to perform element cardinality checking. The vocabularies or code lists are formalized in SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System), an RDF-based language. SKOS provides mechanisms to define concepts, associate them with (multi-lingual) labels or terms, and record thesaurus-like relationships between them. The vocabularies are managed in a RDF database or semantic triple store. Querying is implemented as a semantic vocabulary service, with an http-based API that allows queries to be issued from rules written in Schematron. WDTF has required development and deployment of some ontologies whose scope is much more general than this application, in particular covering 'observed properties' and 'units of measure', which also have to be related to each other and consistent with the dimensional analysis. Separation of the two validation passes reflects the separate governance and stability of the structural and content rules, and allows an organisation's business rules to be moved out of the XML schema definition and the XML schema to be reused by other businesses with their own specific rules. With the general approach proven, harmonization opportunities with more generic services are being explored, such as the GEMET API for SKOS, developed by the European Environment Agency. Acknowledgements: The authors would like to thank the AUSCOPE team for

Water Quality Vocabulary Development and Deployment

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Simons, B. A.; Yu, J.; Cox, S. J.

2013-12-01

Semantic descriptions of observed properties and associated units of measure are fundamental to understanding of environmental observations, including groundwater, surface water and marine water quality. Semantic descriptions can be captured in machine-readable ontologies and vocabularies, thus providing support for the annotation of observation values from the disparate data sources with appropriate and accurate metadata, which is critical for achieving semantic interoperability. However, current stand-alone water quality vocabularies provide limited support for cross-system comparisons or data fusion. To enhance semantic interoperability, the alignment of water-quality properties with definitions of chemical entities and units of measure in existing widely-used vocabularies is required. Modern ontologies and vocabularies are expressed, organized and deployed using Semantic Web technologies. We developed an ontology for observed properties (i.e. a model for expressing appropriate controlled vocabularies) which extends the NASA/TopQuadrant QUDT ontology for Unit and QuantityKind with two additional classes and two properties (see accompanying paper by Cox, Simons and Yu). We use our ontology to populate the Water Quality vocabulary with a set of individuals of each of the four key classes (and their subclasses), and add appropriate relationships between these individuals. This ontology is aligned with other relevant stand-alone Water Quality vocabularies and domain ontologies. Developing the Water Quality vocabulary involved two main steps. First, the Water Quality vocabulary was populated with individuals of the ObservedProperty class, which was determined from a census of existing datasets and services. Each ObservedProperty individual relates to other individuals of Unit and QuantityKind (taken from QUDT where possible), and to IdentifiedObject individuals. As a large fraction of observed water quality data are classified by the chemical substance involved, the

Components for Maintaining and Publishing Earth Science Vocabularies

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cox, S. J. D.; Yu, J.

2014-12-01

Shared vocabularies are an important aid to geoscience data interoperability. Many organizations maintain useful vocabularies, with Geologic Surveys having a particularly long history of vocabulary and lexicon development. However, the mode of publication is heterogeneous, ranging from PDFs and HTML web pages, spreadsheets and CSV, through various user-interfaces and APIs. Update and maintenance ranges from tightly-governed and externally opaque, through various community processes, all the way to crowd-sourcing ('folksonomies'). A general expectation, however, is for greater harmonization and vocabulary re-use. In order to be successful this requires (a) standardized content formalization and APIs (b) transparent content maintenance and versioning. We have been trialling a combination of software dealing with registration, search and linking. SKOS is designed for formalizing multi-lingual, hierarchical vocabularies, and has been widely adopted in earth and environmental sciences. SKOS is an RDF vocabulary, for which SPARQL is the standard low-level API. However, for interoperability between SKOS vocabulary sources, a SKOS-based API (i.e. based on the SKOS predicates prefLabel, broader, narrower, etc) is required. We have developed SISSvoc for this purpose, and used it to deploy a number of vocabularies on behalf of the IUGS, ICS, NERC, OGC, the Australian Government, and CSIRO projects. SISSvoc Search provides simple search UI on top of one or more SISSvoc sources. Content maintenance is composed of many elements, including content-formalization, definition-update, and mappings to related vocabularies. Typically there is a degree of expert judgement required. In order to provide confidence in users, two requirements are paramount: (i) once published, a URI that denotes a vocabulary item must remain dereferenceable; (ii) the history and status of the content denoted by a URI must be available. These requirements match the standard 'registration' paradigm which is

Effects of Individualized Word Retrieval in Kindergarten Vocabulary Intervention

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Damhuis, Carmen M. P.; Segers, Eliane; Scheltinga, Femke; Verhoeven, Ludo

2016-01-01

We examined the effects of adaptive word retrieval intervention on a classroom vocabulary program on children's vocabulary acquisition in kindergarten. In the experimental condition, word retrieval was provided in a classroom vocabulary program, combining implicit and explicit vocabulary instructions. Children performed extra word retrieval…

Vocabulary Instruction: Software Flashcards vs. Word Clouds

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mansouri, Vahid

2015-01-01

When it comes to language learning, vocabulary learning is the main activity focused on. Vocabulary learning is the main problem and also the goal of new language learners. It is one of the major problems that language learners encounter during learning a new language. Krashen (1989) (cited in Tokac, 2005) points out the role of vocabulary in a…

Mobile Learning to Enrich Vocabulary in English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Singaravelu, G.

2009-01-01

The study enlightens the impact of Mobile learning in enriching the vocabulary in English at standard VIII. Objectives of the study: 1. To find out the problems in enriching vocabulary in English at standard VIII. 2. To find out the impact of Mobile learning in enriching vocabulary in English. Hypothesis: There is no significant difference in…

Vocabulary of Toddlers Who Are Late Talkers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

MacRoy-Higgins, Michelle; Shafer, Valerie L.; Fahey, Katlin J.; Kaden, Elyssa R.

2016-01-01

The purpose of this study was to understand vocabulary characteristics in toddlers who are late talkers (LT) as compared with age-matched (AM) and vocabulary-matched (VM) peers. The semantic categories (e.g., animals, foods, toys) and the percentage of nouns, verbs, and closed-class words in the vocabularies of 36 toddlers (12 LT, 12 AM, 12 VM)…

Vocabulary Demands of Television Programs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Webb, Stuart; Rodgers, Michael P. H.

2009-01-01

This study investigated vocabulary coverage and the number of encounters of low-frequency vocabulary in television programs. Eighty-eight television programs consisting of 264,384 running words were categorized according to genre. Television shows were classified as either British or American and then put into the following genres: news, drama,…

Mobile English Vocabulary Learning Based on Concept-Mapping Strategy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Liu, Pei-Lin

2016-01-01

Numerous researchers in education recognize that vocabulary is essential in foreign language learning. However, students often encounter vocabulary that is difficult to remember. Providing effective vocabulary learning strategies is therefore more valuable than teaching students a large amount of vocabulary. The purpose of this study was to…

Image Engine: an object-oriented multimedia database for storing, retrieving and sharing medical images and text.

PubMed Central

Lowe, H. J.

1993-01-01

This paper describes Image Engine, an object-oriented, microcomputer-based, multimedia database designed to facilitate the storage and retrieval of digitized biomedical still images, video, and text using inexpensive desktop computers. The current prototype runs on Apple Macintosh computers and allows network database access via peer to peer file sharing protocols. Image Engine supports both free text and controlled vocabulary indexing of multimedia objects. The latter is implemented using the TView thesaurus model developed by the author. The current prototype of Image Engine uses the National Library of Medicine's Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) vocabulary (with UMLS Meta-1 extensions) as its indexing thesaurus. PMID:8130596

Effects of Basic Learning Skill Training on Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test Scores of Severely Disruptive, Low Skill Children.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tryon, Warren W.; Jacobs, Ruth S.

Eighteen mentally retarded children were selected for study because they exhibited low levels of skills in sitting, eye contact on command, and following other commands. Ten other children were selected because they showed high levels of those skills. High skill Ss were found to have higher scores on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. Training…

The Effect of Teaching Vocabulary through Semantic Mapping on EFL Learners' Awareness of the Affective Dimensions of Deep Vocabulary Knowledge

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nilforoushan, Somayeh

2012-01-01

This study focused on the effect of teaching vocabulary through semantic mapping on the awareness of two affective dimensions, evaluation and potency dimensions of deep vocabulary knowledge as well as the general vocabulary knowledge of EFL students. Sixty intermediate EFL female adult learners participated in this study; they were chosen among 90…

The Effectiveness of a Programme-Based Vocabulary Learning Strategies for Developing English Vocabulary for EFL Female Students at Taif University

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ismaiel, Nasrah Mahmoud; Al Asmari, AbdulRahman Awadh

2017-01-01

The study of vocabulary can be considered a chief issue which the second language students encounter within the learning of another language especially, for non-English major students. This study aims at assessing the influence of a suggested program for enhancing EFL students` vocabulary and vocabulary learning strategies use. The sample of this…

Measuring Second Language Vocabulary Knowledge Using a Temporal Method

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tanabe, Masayuki

2016-01-01

The present study addressed the role of speed as a factor in tests of second language (L2) vocabulary knowledge, presupposing that speed of performance is important in actual language use. Research questions were: (a) Do learners with a larger vocabulary size answer faster on an L2 vocabulary breadth test than smaller vocabulary sized learners?;…

Prediction and selection of vocabulary for two leisure activities.

PubMed

Dark, Leigha; Balandin, Susan

2007-01-01

People who use augmentative or alternative communication (AAC) need access to a relevant, socially valid vocabulary if they are to communicate successfully in a variety of contexts. Many people with complex communication needs who utilize some form of high technology or low technology AAC rely on others to predict and select vocabulary for them. In this study the ability of one speech pathologist, nine leisure support workers, and six people with cerebral palsy to accurately predict context-specific vocabulary was explored. Participants predicted vocabulary for two leisure activities - sailing session and Internet café - using the blank page method of vocabulary selection to identify the vocabulary items they considered important for each activity. This predicted vocabulary was then compared with the actual vocabulary used in each of the activities. A total of 187 (68%) of the words predicted for the sailing session were used during recorded conversations, with 88 words (32%) not appearing in the recorded samples. During the visit to the Internet café only 104 (47%) of the words predicted occurred in the recorded samples, with 117 words (53%) not occurring at all. These results support the need to socially validate any vocabulary in order to ensure that it is relevant and useful for the person using the AAC system.

The MAR databases: development and implementation of databases specific for marine metagenomics.

PubMed

Klemetsen, Terje; Raknes, Inge A; Fu, Juan; Agafonov, Alexander; Balasundaram, Sudhagar V; Tartari, Giacomo; Robertsen, Espen; Willassen, Nils P

2018-01-04

We introduce the marine databases; MarRef, MarDB and MarCat (https://mmp.sfb.uit.no/databases/), which are publicly available resources that promote marine research and innovation. These data resources, which have been implemented in the Marine Metagenomics Portal (MMP) (https://mmp.sfb.uit.no/), are collections of richly annotated and manually curated contextual (metadata) and sequence databases representing three tiers of accuracy. While MarRef is a database for completely sequenced marine prokaryotic genomes, which represent a marine prokaryote reference genome database, MarDB includes all incomplete sequenced prokaryotic genomes regardless level of completeness. The last database, MarCat, represents a gene (protein) catalog of uncultivable (and cultivable) marine genes and proteins derived from marine metagenomics samples. The first versions of MarRef and MarDB contain 612 and 3726 records, respectively. Each record is built up of 106 metadata fields including attributes for sampling, sequencing, assembly and annotation in addition to the organism and taxonomic information. Currently, MarCat contains 1227 records with 55 metadata fields. Ontologies and controlled vocabularies are used in the contextual databases to enhance consistency. The user-friendly web interface lets the visitors browse, filter and search in the contextual databases and perform BLAST searches against the corresponding sequence databases. All contextual and sequence databases are freely accessible and downloadable from https://s1.sfb.uit.no/public/mar/. © The Author(s) 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research.

Using Purposefully Created Stories to Teach Academic Vocabulary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Changnam; Roberts, Carly; Coffey, Debra

2017-01-01

Students' knowledge of vocabulary affects their reading comprehension. Despite abundant research findings in vocabulary learning, practical instructional methods for use in schools are typically underdeveloped. This article proposes a research-based method for teaching the meanings of base academic vocabulary (i.e., Tier 2) words. The method…

Using PDA for Undergraduate Student Incidental Vocabulary Testing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Song, Yanjie; Fox, Robert

2008-01-01

Recent studies have explored English vocabulary learning in environments where students used mobile technologies for prescribed vocabulary learning tasks, or tested designed personalized learning systems to enhance student vocabulary learning for short periods of time in language related courses. Dictionary use via mobile devices has mostly been…

Ontology Based Vocabulary Matching for Oceanographic Instruments

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chen, Yu; Shepherd, Adam; Chandler, Cyndy; Arko, Robert; Leadbetter, Adam

2014-05-01

Data integration act as the preliminary entry point as we enter the era of big data in many scientific domains. However the reusefulness of various dataset has met the hurdle due to different initial of interests of different parties, therefore different vocabularies in describing similar or semantically related concepts. In this scenario it is vital to devise an automatic or semi-supervised algorithm to facilitate the convergence of different vocabularies. The Ocean Data Interoperability Platform (ODIP) seeks to increase data sharing across scientific domains and international boundaries by providing a forum to harmonize diverse regional data systems. ODIP participants from the US include the Rolling Deck to Repository (R2R) program, whose mission is to capture, catalog, and describe the underway/environmental sensor data from US oceanographic research vessels and submit the data to public long-term archives. In an attempt to harmonize these regional data systems, especially vocabularies, R2R recognizes the value of the SeaDataNet vocabularies served by the NERC Vocabulary Server (NVS) hosted at the British Oceanographic Data Centre as a trusted, authoritative source for describing many oceanographic research concepts such as instrumentation. In this work, we make use of the semantic relations in the vocabularies served by NVS to build a Bayesian network and take advantage of the idea of entropy in evaluating the correlation between different concepts and keywords. The performance of the model is evaluated against matching instruments from R2R against the SeaDataNet instrument vocabularies based on calculated confidence scores in the instrument pairings. These pairings with their scores can then be analyzed for assertion growing the interoperability of the R2R vocabulary through its links to the SeaDataNet entities.

The Gene Ontology (GO) project: structured vocabularies for molecular biology and their application to genome and expression analysis.

PubMed

Blake, Judith A; Harris, Midori A

2008-09-01

Scientists wishing to utilize genomic data have quickly come to realize the benefit of standardizing descriptions of experimental procedures and results for computer-driven information retrieval systems. The focus of the Gene Ontology project is three-fold. First, the project goal is to compile the Gene Ontologies: structured vocabularies describing domains of molecular biology. Second, the project supports the use of these structured vocabularies in the annotation of gene products. Third, the gene product-to-GO annotation sets are provided by participating groups to the public through open access to the GO database and Web resource. This unit describes the current ontologies and what is beyond the scope of the Gene Ontology project. It addresses the issue of how GO vocabularies are constructed and related to genes and gene products. It concludes with a discussion of how researchers can access, browse, and utilize the GO project in the course of their own research. Copyright 2008 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

The Contributions of Phonological and Morphological Awareness to Literacy Skills In the Adult Basic Education Population

PubMed Central

Fracasso, Lucille E.; Bangs, Kathryn; Binder, Katherine S.

2014-01-01

The Adult Basic Education (ABE) population consists of a wide range of abilities with needs that may be unique to this set of learners. The purpose of this study was to better understand the relative contributions of phonological decoding and morphological awareness to spelling, vocabulary, and comprehension across a sample of ABE students. In this study, phonological decoding was a unique predictor of spelling ability, listening comprehension and reading comprehension. We also found that morphological awareness was a unique predictor of spelling ability, vocabulary, and listening comprehension. Morphological awareness indirectly contributed to reading comprehension through vocabulary. These findings suggest the need for morphological interventions for this group of learners. PMID:24935886

The Role of Perception, Language, and Preference in the Developmental Acquisition of Basic Color Terms

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pitchford, N. J.; Mullen, K. T.

2005-01-01

When learning basic color vocabulary, young children show a selective delay in the acquisition of brown and gray relative to other basic color terms. In this study, we first establish the robustness of this finding and then investigate the extent to which perception, language, and color preference may influence color conceptualization.…

Teaching Vocabulary through Poetry in an EFL Classroom

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ozen, Baki; Mohammadzadeh, Behbood

2012-01-01

This study has been conducted to investigate the effectiveness of using poetry to teach vocabulary in a foreign language classroom. It aims to find answers to two research questions (1) "Do the learners enhance more extensive vocabulary knowledge by means of poetry-based vocabulary teaching activities than the traditional coursebook…

Education for All. INNOV Data Base. Making It Work. Innovative Basic Education Projects in Developing Countries Database 1994.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, Paris (France).

The INNOV database was created as part of a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) program to collect, analyze and promote successful basic education projects in the developing world, and this report lists innovations in the field. It is divided into sections of project reports in three major geographical…

Vocabulary Knowledge of Deaf and Hearing Postsecondary Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sarchet, Thomastine; Marschark, Marc; Borgna, Georgianna; Convertino, Carol; Sapere, Patricia; Dirmyer, Richard

2014-01-01

Deaf children generally are found to have smaller English vocabularies than hearing peers, although studies involving children with cochlear implants have suggested that the gap may decrease or disappear with age. Less is known about the vocabularies of deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) postsecondary students or how their vocabulary knowledge relates…

Comparing Multidimensional and Continuum Models of Vocabulary Acquisition: An Empirical Examination of the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stewart, Jeffrey; Batty, Aaron Olaf; Bovee, Nicholas

2012-01-01

Second language vocabulary acquisition has been modeled both as multidimensional in nature and as a continuum wherein the learner's knowledge of a word develops along a cline from recognition through production. In order to empirically examine and compare these models, the authors assess the degree to which the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS;…

Vocabulary Notebook: A Digital Solution to General and Specific Vocabulary Learning Problems in a CLIL Context

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bazo, Plácido; Rodríguez, Romén; Fumero, Dácil

2016-01-01

In this paper, we will introduce an innovative software platform that can be especially useful in a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) context. This tool is called Vocabulary Notebook, and has been developed to solve all the problems that traditional (paper) vocabulary notebooks have. This tool keeps focus on the personalisation of…

Using New Vocabulary in Writing: Exploring How Word and Learner Characteristics Relate to the Likelihood That Writers Use Newly Taught Vocabulary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dobbs, Christina L.; Kearns, Devin

2016-01-01

Understanding academic vocabulary is essential to student success in school. Use of academic vocabulary words in writing is considered one of the strongest measures of how well a reader understands a given word. In theory, willingness to use academic vocabulary in writing indicates the complexity of acquiring representations of the word's…

Elementary Preservice Teachers' Science Vocabulary: Knowledge and Application

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Carrier, Sarah J.

2013-01-01

Science vocabulary knowledge plays a role in understanding science concepts, and science knowledge is measured in part by correct use of science vocabulary (Lee et al. in "J Res Sci Teach" 32(8):797-816, 1995). Elementary school students have growing vocabularies and many are learning English as a secondary language or depend on schools to learn…

Manual Gene Ontology annotation workflow at the Mouse Genome Informatics Database

PubMed Central

Drabkin, Harold J.; Blake, Judith A.

2012-01-01

The Mouse Genome Database, the Gene Expression Database and the Mouse Tumor Biology database are integrated components of the Mouse Genome Informatics (MGI) resource (http://www.informatics.jax.org). The MGI system presents both a consensus view and an experimental view of the knowledge concerning the genetics and genomics of the laboratory mouse. From genotype to phenotype, this information resource integrates information about genes, sequences, maps, expression analyses, alleles, strains and mutant phenotypes. Comparative mammalian data are also presented particularly in regards to the use of the mouse as a model for the investigation of molecular and genetic components of human diseases. These data are collected from literature curation as well as downloads of large datasets (SwissProt, LocusLink, etc.). MGI is one of the founding members of the Gene Ontology (GO) and uses the GO for functional annotation of genes. Here, we discuss the workflow associated with manual GO annotation at MGI, from literature collection to display of the annotations. Peer-reviewed literature is collected mostly from a set of journals available electronically. Selected articles are entered into a master bibliography and indexed to one of eight areas of interest such as ‘GO’ or ‘homology’ or ‘phenotype’. Each article is then either indexed to a gene already contained in the database or funneled through a separate nomenclature database to add genes. The master bibliography and associated indexing provide information for various curator-reports such as ‘papers selected for GO that refer to genes with NO GO annotation’. Once indexed, curators who have expertise in appropriate disciplines enter pertinent information. MGI makes use of several controlled vocabularies that ensure uniform data encoding, enable robust analysis and support the construction of complex queries. These vocabularies range from pick-lists to structured vocabularies such as the GO. All data associations

Manual Gene Ontology annotation workflow at the Mouse Genome Informatics Database.

PubMed

Drabkin, Harold J; Blake, Judith A

2012-01-01

The Mouse Genome Database, the Gene Expression Database and the Mouse Tumor Biology database are integrated components of the Mouse Genome Informatics (MGI) resource (http://www.informatics.jax.org). The MGI system presents both a consensus view and an experimental view of the knowledge concerning the genetics and genomics of the laboratory mouse. From genotype to phenotype, this information resource integrates information about genes, sequences, maps, expression analyses, alleles, strains and mutant phenotypes. Comparative mammalian data are also presented particularly in regards to the use of the mouse as a model for the investigation of molecular and genetic components of human diseases. These data are collected from literature curation as well as downloads of large datasets (SwissProt, LocusLink, etc.). MGI is one of the founding members of the Gene Ontology (GO) and uses the GO for functional annotation of genes. Here, we discuss the workflow associated with manual GO annotation at MGI, from literature collection to display of the annotations. Peer-reviewed literature is collected mostly from a set of journals available electronically. Selected articles are entered into a master bibliography and indexed to one of eight areas of interest such as 'GO' or 'homology' or 'phenotype'. Each article is then either indexed to a gene already contained in the database or funneled through a separate nomenclature database to add genes. The master bibliography and associated indexing provide information for various curator-reports such as 'papers selected for GO that refer to genes with NO GO annotation'. Once indexed, curators who have expertise in appropriate disciplines enter pertinent information. MGI makes use of several controlled vocabularies that ensure uniform data encoding, enable robust analysis and support the construction of complex queries. These vocabularies range from pick-lists to structured vocabularies such as the GO. All data associations are supported

Implementing an Online Vocabulary Training Program

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Robertson, Charles E.

2015-01-01

Although vocabulary acquisition research has shed much light on practical methods for increasing lexical knowledge (Nation, 1994), many foreign language teachers hesitate to implement focused vocabulary-training programs in their classrooms. The reasons most often cited for this hesitation are associated with the difficult tasks of creating,…

A Practical Approach to Vocabulary Reinforcement.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stieglitz, Ezra L.

1983-01-01

Techniques of semantic feature analysis are applied to exploration and reinforcement of vocabulary. Students are presented with categories of familiar items and asked to describe their characteristics. The method can be used to elicit sentences, reinforce existing vocabulary, and begin discussion. Sample exercises for several difficulty levels are…

Vocabulary Acquisition: Implications for Reading Comprehension

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wagner, Richard K., Ed.; Muse, Andrea E., Ed.; Tannenbaum, Kendra R., Ed.

2006-01-01

Understanding a text requires more than the ability to read individual words: it depends greatly on vocabulary knowledge. This important book brings together leading literacy scholars to synthesize cutting-edge research on vocabulary development and its connections to reading comprehension. The volume also reviews an array of approaches to…

Vocabulary: The Key to Teaching English Language Learners to Read

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wallace, Christopher

2008-01-01

The greatest challenge inhibiting the ability of English-language learners (ELLs) to read at the appropriate grade level is perhaps a lack of sufficient vocabulary development. While extensive reading is beneficial, these students must acquire the necessary vocabulary in order to read extensively. Both vocabulary breadth and vocabulary depth are…

Oregon & Federal Basic Income Tax Return Preparation. Student's Manual 1981.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Young, Donna, Ed.

This student manual contains materials for a 20-session course in basic income tax preparation. Each session may include some or all of these components: a reading assignment, a vocabulary list, interview questions pertinent to that session's subject matter, informative/reference materials, problems to work out in class or at home, exercises, and…

Vocabulary Is Important for Some, but Not All Reading Skills

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ricketts, Jessie; Nation, Kate; Bishop, Dorothy V. M.

2007-01-01

Although there is evidence for a close link between the development of oral vocabulary and reading comprehension, less clear is whether oral vocabulary skills relate to the development of word-level reading skills. This study investigated vocabulary and literacy in 81 children aged 8 to 10 years. In regression analyses, vocabulary accounted for…

Fostering Academic Vocabulary Use in Writing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brun-Mercer, Nicole; Zimmerman, Cheryl Boyd

2015-01-01

Though research has established a relationship between vocabulary knowledge and academic success and identified features to guide the L2 word learner through academic tasks (see Nation, 2013), less is known regarding student perceptions of academic vocabulary and the conscious decision-making process of these learners while they are writing. In…

Predicting Contextual Informativeness for Vocabulary Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kapelner, Adam; Soterwood, Jeanine; Nessaiver, Shalev; Adlof, Suzanne

2018-01-01

Vocabulary knowledge is essential to educational progress. High quality vocabulary instruction requires supportive contextual examples to teach word meaning and proper usage. Identifying such contexts by hand for a large number of words can be difficult. In this work, we take a statistical learning approach to engineer a system that predicts…

Improving Vocabulary Development Through Balanced Literacy.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mlakar-Hillig, Mary Ellen; Malvin, Pam; Troy, Leonora

This report describes a program for improving vocabulary development thorough balanced literacy. The targeted population consisted of three elementary classrooms in a community located in a southern suburb of Chicago. A lack of vocabulary knowledge that interfered with student academic success was documented in state and standardized test results,…

The Contributions of Phonological and Morphological Awareness to Literacy Skills in the Adult Basic Education Population.

PubMed

Fracasso, Lucille E; Bangs, Kathryn; Binder, Katherine S

2016-01-01

The Adult Basic Education (ABE) population consists of a wide range of abilities with needs that may be unique to this set of learners. The purpose of this study was to better understand the relative contributions of phonological decoding and morphological awareness to spelling, vocabulary, and comprehension across a sample of ABE students. In this study, phonological decoding was a unique predictor of spelling ability, listening comprehension, and reading comprehension. We also found that morphological awareness was a unique predictor of spelling ability, vocabulary, and listening comprehension. Morphological awareness indirectly contributed to reading comprehension through vocabulary. These findings suggest the need for morphological interventions for this group of learners. © Hammill Institute on Disabilities 2014.

The Impact of Teacher Study Groups in Vocabulary on Teaching Practice, Teacher Knowledge, and Student Vocabulary Knowledge: A Large-Scale Replication Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jayanthi, Madhavi; Dimino, Joseph; Gersten, Russell; Taylor, Mary Jo; Haymond, Kelly; Smolkowski, Keith; Newman-Gonchar, Rebecca

2018-01-01

The purpose of this replication study was to examine the impact of the Teacher Study Group (TSG) professional development in vocabulary on first-grade teachers' knowledge of vocabulary instruction and observed teaching practice, and on students' vocabulary knowledge. Sixty-two schools from 16 districts in four states were randomly assigned to…

An Affirmative Approach to Vocabulary Development.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shioji, Jean

Methods for second language vocabulary development in the intermediate and advanced level English classroom are described. Rather than require students to memorize lists of words, the teacher should give students a better understanding of the process of vocabulary development by showing them how to refine their use of new lexical items and implant…

Intentional Vocabulary Learning Using Digital Flashcards

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hung, Hsiu-Ting

2015-01-01

As an attempt to follow through on the claims made by proponents of intentional vocabulary learning, the present study set out to examine whether and how digital flashcards can be incorporated into a university course to promote the vocabulary learning of English language learners. The overall research findings underscore the value of learning…

Benefiting from Listening in Vocabulary Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bulut, Berker; Karasakaloglu, Nuri

2017-01-01

In this research, the effect of active listening training given to fourth grade students on their vocabulary was examined. Pre-test--post-test control group trial model, which is one of the semi-experimental trial models, was used. Besides, "Vocabulary Test" developed by the researcher was applied to experimental and control groups…

Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vance, H. Robert; Stone, J. E.

1990-01-01

The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised assesses standard American English receptive vocabulary in individuals, both handicapped and nonhandicapped, ages 2 to 40. This paper describes the test's administration, summation of data, standardization, reliability, and validity. (JDD)

Enhancing Long-Term Retention of New Vocabulary Using Visual Images.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Igelsrud, Karen

A practicum used a new learning tool to enhance long-term retention of new vocabulary. Sixteen seventh-graders in Language Arts, who had a long-term retention mean score of approximately 40% of newly learned vocabulary, increased their long-term retention of new vocabulary by 25% (a new mean of 65% of new vocabulary). Additional objectives…

Reading English as a Second Language with Vocabulary Definitions: Cognitive Load Effects on Comprehension and Vocabulary Learning.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yeung, Alexander Seeshing

Two experiments were conducted to examine the effects of cognitive load management using vocabulary definitions in reading passages for readers of English as a second language (ESL) with different levels of expertise who were attending school in Hong Kong. Experiment 1 found that vocabulary definitions integrated within a passage (integrated…

Investigating an Intelligent System for Vocabulary Learning through Reading

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stockwell, Glenn

2013-01-01

While learners can acquire vocabulary through extensive reading (Pigada & Schmitt, 2006), research suggests that acquisition can be more effective when supplemented with targeted vocabulary activities (e.g., Paribakht & Wesche, 1997). Problems arise, however, in determining what vocabulary learners have acquired, and what items should be…

Cross-Language Associations in the Development of Preschoolers' Receptive and Expressive Vocabulary.

PubMed

Maier, Michelle F; Bohlmann, Natalie L; Palacios, Natalia A

The increasing population of dual language learners (DLLs) entering preschool classrooms highlights a continued need for research on the development of dual language acquisition, and specifically vocabulary skills, in this age group. This study describes young DLL children's ( N = 177) vocabulary development in both English and Spanish simultaneously, and how vocabulary skills in each language relate to one another, during a contextual shift that places greater emphasis on the acquisition of academic English language skills. Findings demonstrated that DLL preschoolers made gains in vocabulary in both languages with more change evidenced in receptive, in comparison to expressive, vocabulary as well as in English in comparison to Spanish. When examining whether children's vocabulary scores in one language at the beginning of preschool interact with their vocabulary scores in the other language to predict vocabulary growth, no significant associations were found for receptive vocabulary. In contrast, the interaction between initial English and Spanish expressive vocabulary scores was negatively related to growth in English expressive vocabulary. This cross-language association suggests that children who have low expressive vocabulary skills in both languages tend to grow faster in their English expressive vocabulary. The study extends previous work on dual language development by examining growth in expressive and receptive vocabulary in both English and Spanish. It also provides suggestions for future work to inform a more comprehensive understanding of DLL children's development in both languages.

Yurok Vocabulary.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bennett, Ruth, Ed.; And Others

An illustrated vocabulary presents approximately 275 Yurok words organized topically from the Indian perspective to demonstrate the relationship between Yurok Indians and their social and natural worlds. English terms arranged alphabetically within each topic have two accompanying Yurok entries--one a Unifon spelling, the other having syllable…

Basic Wiring. Module 2 of the Vocational Education Readiness Test (VERT).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thomas, Edward L., Comp.

Focusing on basic welding, this module is one of eight included in the Vocational Education Readiness Test (VERT). The module begins by listing the objectives of the module and describing tools and equipment needed. The remainder of the module contains sections on manipulative skills, trade vocabulary, tool identification, trade computation…

Crossword Puzzles as a Learning Tool for Vocabulary Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Orawiwatnakul, Wiwat

2013-01-01

Introduction: Since vocabulary is a key basis on which reading achievement depends, various vocabulary acquisition techniques have become pivotal. Among the many teaching approaches, traditional or otherwise, the use of crossword puzzles seems to offer potential and a solution for the problem of learning vocabulary. Method: This study was…

Enhancing Access to Situational Vocabulary by Leveraging Geographic Context

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Patel, Rupal; Radhakrishnan, Rajiv

2007-01-01

Users of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) aids could benefit from novel methods for accelerating access to contextually relevant vocabulary. This paper describes our initial efforts toward improving access to situational vocabulary through the use of geographic context to predict vocabulary. A corpus of spoken data produced by one…

Implicit and Explicit Cognitive Processes in Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ender, Andrea

2016-01-01

Studies on vocabulary acquisition in second language learning have revealed that a large amount of vocabulary is learned without an overt intention, in other words, incidentally. This article investigates the relevance of different lexical processing strategies for vocabulary acquisition when reading a text for comprehension among 24 advanced…

Genetic and Environmental Influences on Vocabulary and Reading Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Olson, Richard K.; Keenan, Janice M.; Byrne, Brian; Samuelsson, Stefan; Coventry, William L.; Corley, Robin; Wadsworth, Sally J.; Willcutt, Erik G.; DeFries, John C.; Pennington, Bruce F.; Hulslander, Jacqueline

2011-01-01

Genetic and environmental relations between vocabulary and reading skills were explored longitudinally from preschool through Grades 2 and 4. At preschool there were strong shared-environment and weak genetic influences on both vocabulary and print knowledge but substantial differences in their source. Separation of etiology for vocabulary and…

Cross-Language Associations in the Development of Preschoolers’ Receptive and Expressive Vocabulary

PubMed Central

Maier, Michelle F.; Bohlmann, Natalie L.; Palacios, Natalia A.

2016-01-01

The increasing population of dual language learners (DLLs) entering preschool classrooms highlights a continued need for research on the development of dual language acquisition, and specifically vocabulary skills, in this age group. This study describes young DLL children's (N = 177) vocabulary development in both English and Spanish simultaneously, and how vocabulary skills in each language relate to one another, during a contextual shift that places greater emphasis on the acquisition of academic English language skills. Findings demonstrated that DLL preschoolers made gains in vocabulary in both languages with more change evidenced in receptive, in comparison to expressive, vocabulary as well as in English in comparison to Spanish. When examining whether children's vocabulary scores in one language at the beginning of preschool interact with their vocabulary scores in the other language to predict vocabulary growth, no significant associations were found for receptive vocabulary. In contrast, the interaction between initial English and Spanish expressive vocabulary scores was negatively related to growth in English expressive vocabulary. This cross-language association suggests that children who have low expressive vocabulary skills in both languages tend to grow faster in their English expressive vocabulary. The study extends previous work on dual language development by examining growth in expressive and receptive vocabulary in both English and Spanish. It also provides suggestions for future work to inform a more comprehensive understanding of DLL children's development in both languages. PMID:26807002

The Exploring Nature of Vocabulary Acquisition and Common Main Gaps in the Current Studies of Vocabulary Acquisition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fazeli, Seyed Hossein

2012-01-01

Vocabulary can be a key factor for success, central to a language, and paramount to a language learner. In such situation, the lexicon may be the most important component for learners (Grass and Selinker, 1994), and mastering of vocabulary is an essential component of second/foreign language teaching and learning that has been repeatedly…

Growing Capacity with the Vocabulary of English Language Arts Programs: Vocabulary Megaclusters. Reading Research Report. #11.02

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hiebert, Elfrieda H.

2011-01-01

The typical approach to teaching vocabulary in English/Language Arts programs has been to focus on six to eight words per text. Even though these words may add meaning to a particular story, the target words are often rare and their generalizability is limited. The Vocabulary Megaclusters provides a framework for selecting and teaching words…

The Effect of Data-Driven Approach to Teaching Vocabulary on Iranian Students' Learning of English Vocabulary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Barabadi, Elyas; Khajavi, Yaser

2017-01-01

Corpus-based data-driven learning (DDL) is an innovation in teaching and learning new vocabulary for EFL students. Using teacher-prepared materials obtained from COCA corpus, the goal of the present study is to compare DDL and traditional methods of teaching vocabulary like consultation of dictionary or a grammar book. As such, two intact classes…

Memory Strategy Instruction, Contextual Learning and ESP Vocabulary Recall

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Atay, Derin; Ozbulgan, Cengiz

2007-01-01

In the last decades there has been an increasing interest in vocabulary learning strategies given that they are found to facilitate second/foreign language vocabulary learning and recall. As many learners do not develop sufficient mastery of the strategy repertoire, explicit instruction on vocabulary learning strategies may help them to become…

The Influence of Electronic Dictionaries on Vocabulary Knowledge Extension

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rezaei, Mojtaba; Davoudi, Mohammad

2016-01-01

Vocabulary learning needs special strategies in language learning process. The use of dictionaries is a great help in vocabulary learning and nowadays the emergence of electronic dictionaries has added a new and valuable resource for vocabulary learning. The present study aims to explore the influence of Electronic Dictionaries (ED) Vs. Paper…

Computer-Assisted Second Language Vocabulary Instruction: A Meta-Analysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chiu, Yi-Hui

2013-01-01

There is growing attention to incorporating computer-mediated instruction for language learning and teaching. Specifically, vocabulary is arguably the foundation of mastering a language, as the mastery of vocabulary is the fundamental step of learning a language. Second language (L2) vocabulary is important in the development of cognitive systems…

Core vocabulary of young children with Down syndrome.

PubMed

Deckers, Stijn R J M; Van Zaalen, Yvonne; Van Balkom, Hans; Verhoeven, Ludo

2017-06-01

The aim of this study was to develop a core vocabulary list for young children with intellectual disabilities between 2 and 7 years of age because data from this population are lacking in core vocabulary literature. Children with Down syndrome are considered one of the most valid reference groups for researching developmental patterns in children with intellectual disabilities; therefore, spontaneous language samples of 30 Dutch children with Down syndrome were collected during three different activities with multiple communication partners (free play with parents, lunch- or snack-time at home or at school, and speech therapy sessions). Of these children, 19 used multimodal communication, primarily manual signs and speech. Functional word use in both modalities was transcribed. The 50 most frequently used core words accounted for 67.2% of total word use; 16 words comprised core vocabulary, based on commonality. These data are consistent with similar studies related to the core vocabularies of preschoolers and toddlers with typical development, although the number of nouns present on the core vocabulary list was higher for the children in the present study. This finding can be explained by manual sign use of the children with Down syndrome and is reflective of their expressive vocabulary ages.

The Effectiveness of a Supplemental Pre-Kindergarten Vocabulary Intervention

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kong, Na Young

2013-01-01

Oral vocabulary is a strong predictor of young children's later reading development. Many children enter kindergarten with weak vocabulary knowledge and could benefit from an extra level or higher tier of intentional instruction in vocabulary that supplements the Tier 1 core curriculum in language. Recent findings from research developing a…

Receptive Vocabulary in Boys with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Cross-Sectional Developmental Trajectories

PubMed Central

McDuffie, Andrea S.; Hagerman, Randi J.; Abbeduto, Leonard

2013-01-01

In light of evidence that receptive language may be a relative weakness for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), this study characterized receptive vocabulary profiles in boys with ASD using cross-sectional developmental trajectories relative to age, nonverbal cognition, and expressive vocabulary. Participants were 49 boys with ASD (4–11 years) and 80 typically developing boys (2–11 years). Receptive vocabulary, assessed with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, was a weakness for boys with ASD relative to age and nonverbal cognition. Relative to expressive vocabulary, assessed with the Expressive Vocabulary Test, receptive vocabulary increased at a lower rate for boys with ASD. Vocabulary trajectories in ASD are distinguished from typical development; however, nonverbal cognition largely accounts for the patterns observed. PMID:23588510

Rhyming and Vocabulary: Effects of Lexical Restructuring

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stadler, Marie A.; Watson, Maggie; Skahan, Sarah

2007-01-01

The purpose of this investigation was to determine the effect of lexical restructuring on children's phonological awareness. Thirty-three preschool children were assessed for vocabulary skills and ability to detect rhyme. Results supported the lexical restructuring theory because expressive vocabulary abilities were correlated with rhyming…

Managing an Uncontrolled Vocabulary Ex Post Factor

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lefever, Maureen; And Others

1972-01-01

The operational retrospective retrieval service offered by BIOSIS exploits a file created essentially without vocabulary control. A pragmatic program of file building criteria has been persued which has provided improved retrieval and an annual summary of the vocabulary of the literature. (11 references) (Author/KE)

Processing Academic Language through Four Corners Vocabulary Chart Applications

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Smith, Sarah; Sanchez, Claudia; Betty, Sharon; Davis, Shiloh

2016-01-01

4 Corners Vocabulary Charts (FCVCs) are explored as a multipurpose vehicle for processing academic language in a 5th-grade classroom. FCVCs typically display a vocabulary word, an illustration of the word, synonyms associated with the word, a sentence using a given vocabulary word, and a definition of the term in students' words. The use of…

Vocabulary Instruction: Research to Practice. Second Edition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kame'enui, Edward J., Ed.; Baumann, James F., Ed.

2012-01-01

This highly regarded work brings together prominent authorities on vocabulary teaching and learning to provide a comprehensive yet concise guide to effective instruction. The book showcases practical ways to teach specific vocabulary words and word-learning strategies and create engaging, word-rich classrooms. Instructional activities and games…

NASA thesaurus. Volume 2: Access vocabulary

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1985-01-01

The Access Vocabulary, which is essentially a permuted index, provides access to any word or number in authorized postable and nonpostable terms. Additional entries include postable and nonpostable terms, other word entries, and pseudo-multiword terms that are permutations of words that contain words within words. The Access Vocabulary contains 40,738 entries that give increased access to the hierarchies in Volume 1 - Hierarchical Listing.

NASA Thesaurus. Volume 2: Access vocabulary

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1982-01-01

The Access Vocabulary, which is essentially a permuted index, provides access to any word or number in authorized postable and nonpostable terms. Additional entries include postable and nonpostable terms, other word entries, and pseudo-multiword terms that are permutations of words that contain words within words. The Access Vocabulary contains, 40,661 entries that give increased access to he hierarchies in Volume 1 - Hierarchical Listing.

NASA thesaurus. Volume 2: Access vocabulary

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1988-01-01

The access vocabulary, which is essentially a permuted index, provides access to any word or number in authorized postable and nonpostable terms. Additional entries include postable and nonpostable terms, other word entries and pseudo-multiword terms that are permutations of words that contain words within words. The access vocabulary contains almost 42,000 entries that give increased access to the hierarchies in Volume 1 - Hierarchical Listing.

Do infant vocabulary skills predict school-age language and literacy outcomes?

PubMed

Duff, Fiona J; Reen, Gurpreet; Plunkett, Kim; Nation, Kate

2015-08-01

Strong associations between infant vocabulary and school-age language and literacy skills would have important practical and theoretical implications: Preschool assessment of vocabulary skills could be used to identify children at risk of reading and language difficulties, and vocabulary could be viewed as a cognitive foundation for reading. However, evidence to date suggests predictive ability from infant vocabulary to later language and literacy is low. This study provides an investigation into, and interpretation of, the magnitude of such infant to school-age relationships. Three hundred British infants whose vocabularies were assessed by parent report in the 2nd year of life (between 16 and 24 months) were followed up on average 5 years later (ages ranged from 4 to 9 years), when their vocabulary, phonological and reading skills were measured. Structural equation modelling of age-regressed scores was used to assess the strength of longitudinal relationships. Infant vocabulary (a latent factor of receptive and expressive vocabulary) was a statistically significant predictor of later vocabulary, phonological awareness, reading accuracy and reading comprehension (accounting for between 4% and 18% of variance). Family risk for language or literacy difficulties explained additional variance in reading (approximately 10%) but not language outcomes. Significant longitudinal relationships between preliteracy vocabulary knowledge and subsequent reading support the theory that vocabulary is a cognitive foundation of both reading accuracy and reading comprehension. Importantly however, the stability of vocabulary skills from infancy to later childhood is too low to be sufficiently predictive of language outcomes at an individual level - a finding that fits well with the observation that the majority of 'late talkers' resolve their early language difficulties. For reading outcomes, prediction of future difficulties is likely to be improved when considering family

Enhancing Adolescents' Comprehension of Text by Building Vocabulary Knowledge

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Swanson, Elizabeth; Vaughn, Sharon; Wexler, Jade

2017-01-01

This article describes the importance of vocabulary knowledge in adolescents' reading comprehension, particularly for students with disabilities. Students with stronger vocabularies tend to have better background knowledge and improved understanding of content-area texts. We describe evidence-based vocabulary instructional practices that…

Mnemonic versus Nonmnemonic Vocabulary-learning Strategies for Children.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Levin, Joel R.; And Others

1982-01-01

Fourth-grade students learned a list of relatively complex English vocabulary words in two experiments. In both experiments, a keyword contextual method proved effective for enhancing children's acquisition of new vocabulary words. (Author/BW)

Productive Vocabulary among Three Groups of Bilingual American Children: Comparison and Prediction

PubMed Central

Cote, Linda R.; Bornstein, Marc H.

2015-01-01

The importance of input factors for bilingual children’s vocabulary development was investigated. Forty-seven Argentine, 42 South Korean, 51 European American, 29 Latino immigrant, 26 Japanese immigrant, and 35 Korean immigrant mothers completed checklists of their 20-month-old children’s productive vocabularies. Bilingual children’s vocabulary sizes in each language separately were consistently smaller than their monolingual peers but only Latino bilingual children had smaller total vocabularies than monolingual children. Bilingual children’s vocabulary sizes were similar to each other. Maternal acculturation predicted the amount of input in each language, which then predicted children’s vocabulary size in each language. Maternal acculturation also predicted children’s English-language vocabulary size directly. PMID:25620820

Vocabulary Intervention for Adolescents with Language Disorder: A Systematic Review

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lowe, Hilary; Henry, Lucy; Müller, Lisa-Maria; Joffe, Victoria L.

2018-01-01

Background: Language disorder and associated vocabulary difficulties can persist into adolescence, and can impact on long-term life outcomes. Previous reviews have shown that a variety of intervention techniques can successfully enhance students' vocabulary skills; however, none has investigated vocabulary intervention specifically for adolescents…

The Role of Comprehension Monitoring, Theory of Mind, and Vocabulary Depth in Predicting Story Comprehension and Recall of Kindergarten Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Strasser, Katherine; del Río, Francisca

2014-01-01

Recent studies have revealed that preschoolers' story comprehension is influenced by several basic as well as complex cognitive and linguistic processes. Among the abilities known to be relevant for young children's understanding of stories are the size of their vocabulary, their inference-making ability, and their working memory. In this study,…

Hypermedia and Vocabulary Acquisition for Second Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Meli, Rocio

2009-01-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of multimedia as a delivery tool for enhancing vocabulary in second-language classrooms. The mixed method design focused on specific techniques to help students acquire Spanish vocabulary and communication skills. The theoretical framework for this study consisted of second language theories…

Efficacy of Using Vocabulary Flashcards in Braille

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Savaiano, Mackenzie E.; Lloyd, Blair P.; Hatton, Deborah D.

2017-01-01

This article reports on a study that examined whether vocabulary flashcards facilitate spelling acquisition. The study was designed to evaluate whether students who are blind can learn to spell words accurately and incidentally when academic vocabulary instruction is used. Auditory information was provided prior to the introduction of a flashcard,…

Vocabulary Memorizing Strategies by Chinese University Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yang, Wei-dong; Dai, Wei-ping

2012-01-01

The findings of the study indicate that students prefer to engage in the vocabulary learning strategies that would be most appealing to them and that would entail less manipulation of the language. Of the four vocabulary memorizing strategies cited in the study (rote repetition, structural associations, semantic strategies, and mnemonic keyword…

Modification of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Faizunisa, Ali; Costello, Joan

This study reports an attempt to improve the administration of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) by identifying and modifying aspects of the test which adversely affect disadvantaged preschoolers' performance. The resultant test was called the Modified Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (M-PPVT). Two samples from the same lower class…

Developing Vocabularies to Improve Understanding and Use of NOAA Observing Systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Austin, M.

2014-12-01

The NOAA Observing System Integrated Analysis project (NOSIA II), is an attempt to capture and tell the story of how valuable observing systems are in producing products and services that are required to fulfill the NOAA's diverse mission. NOAA's goals and mission areas cover a broad range of environmental data; a complexity exists in terms and vocabulary as applied to the creation of observing system derived products. The NOSIA data collection focused first on decomposing NOAA's goals in the creation and acceptance of Mission Service Areas (MSAs) by NOAA senior leadership. Products and services that supported the MSAs were then identified through the process of interviewing product producers across NOAA organization. Product Data inputs including models, databases and observing system were also identified. The NOSIA model contains over 20,000 nodes each representing levels in a network connecting products, datasources, users and desired outcomes. An immediate need became apparent that the complexity and variety of the data collected required data management to mature the quality and the content of the NOSIA model. The NOSIA Analysis Database (ADB) was developed initially to improve consistency of terms and data types to allow for the linkage of observing systems, products and NOAA's Goals and mission. The ADB also allowed for the prototyping of reports and product generation in an easily accessible and comprehensive format for the first time. Web based visualization of relationships between products, datasources, users, producers were generated to make the information easily understood This includes developing ontologies/vocabularies that are used for the development of users type specific products for NOAA leadership, Observing System Portfolio mangers and the users of NOAA data.

Exploring Tactile Perceptual Dimensions Using Materials Associated with Sensory Vocabulary.

PubMed

Sakamoto, Maki; Watanabe, Junji

2017-01-01

Considering tactile sensation when designing products is important because the decision to purchase often depends on how products feel. Numerous psychophysical studies have attempted to identify important factors that describe tactile perceptions. However, the numbers and types of major tactile dimensions reported in previous studies have varied because of differences in materials used across experiments. To obtain a more complete picture of perceptual space with regard to touch, our study focuses on using vocabulary that expresses tactile sensations as a guiding principle for collecting material samples because these types of words are expected to cover all the basic categories within tactile perceptual space. We collected 120 materials based on a variety of Japanese sound-symbolic words for tactile sensations, and used the materials to examine tactile perceptual dimensions and their associations with affective evaluations. Analysis revealed six major dimensions: "Affective evaluation and Friction," "Compliance," "Surface," "Volume," "Temperature," and "Naturalness." These dimensions include four factors that previous studies have regarded as fundamental, as well as two new factors: "Volume" and "Naturalness." Additionally, we showed that "Affective evaluation" is more closely related to the "Friction" component (slipperiness and dryness) than to other tactile perceptual features. Our study demonstrates that using vocabulary could be an effective method for selecting material samples to explore tactile perceptual space.

Word Families and Frequency Bands in Vocabulary Tests: Challenging Conventions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kremmel, Benjamin

2016-01-01

Vocabulary test development often appears to be based on the design principles of previous tests, without questioning or empirically examining the assumptions underlying those principles. Given the current proliferation of vocabulary tests, it seems timely for the field of vocabulary testing to problematize some of those traditionalised…

Vocabulary and Health Care Information Technology: State of the Art.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cimino, James J.

1995-01-01

Reviews the controlled medical vocabularies available today and some of the reasons why they have failed to meet the needs of application developers. Topics include standard vocabularies, including International Classification of Diseases and Medical Subject Headings; uses of vocabularies in medical computing; current research; and remaining…

A Context-Based Strategy for Teaching Vocabulary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nelson, Deanna L.

2008-01-01

Students in Deanna L. Nelson's high school classroom study vocabulary gradually over a period of time. Students begin by collecting words from readings and listing them on a designated whiteboard. They prepare practice quizzes to exchange with peers and engage in frequent vocabulary discussions that emphasize recognition of context clues and other…

Tuning in to Vocabulary Frequency in Coursebooks

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

O'Loughlin, Richard

2012-01-01

For second language learners vocabulary growth is of major importance, and for many learners commercially published coursebooks will be the source of this vocabulary learning. In this preliminary study, input from three levels of the coursebook series "New English File" (Oxenden and Latham-Koenig, 2006; Oxenden, Latham-Koenig, and Seligson, 2004,…

Mobile-Assisted Vocabulary Learning: A Review Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Afzali, Parichehr; Shabani, Somayeh; Basir, Zohreh; Ramazani, Mohammad

2017-01-01

Mobile phones are becoming more acceptable toolkits to learn languages. One aspect of English language which has been subject to investigation in mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) is vocabulary. This study reviewed some of the studies conducted in various contexts on the effect of MALL on vocabulary learning. We investigated some of the…

Towards a Deeper Assessment of Vocabulary Knowledge.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Read, John

While interest in second language vocabulary knowledge has increased, vocabulary testing remains largely confined to the quantitative measurement of discrete items. More qualitative measures are needed to assess how well particular words are known. Research has characterized word knowledge in two ways: as a set of components or aspects, and as an…

The Effects of Morphemic Vocabulary Instruction on Prefix Vocabulary and Sentence Comprehension for Middle School Students with Learning Disabilities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brown, Shannon Harris; Lignugaris-Kraft, Benjamin; Forbush, David E.

2016-01-01

A limited vocabulary is a substantial obstacle to success in reading comprehension (Graves, 2004). A morphemic approach to vocabulary instruction may be an effective method for increasing student outcomes in both word knowledge and reading comprehension (Kuo & Anderson, 2006; Reed, 2008). The purpose of this research was to examine the effects…

The Use of Vocabulary Learning Strategies in Teaching Turkish as a Second Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Baskin, Sami; Iscan, Adem; Karagoz, Beytullah; Birol, Gülnur

2017-01-01

Vocabulary learning is the basis of the language learning process in teaching Turkish as a second language. Vocabulary learning strategies need to be used in order for vocabulary learning to take place effectively. The use of vocabulary learning strategies facilitates vocabulary learning and increases student achievement. Each student uses a…

The Effects of Vocabulary Knowledge and Dictionary Use on EFL Reading Performance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shen, Zhifa

2013-01-01

The present study mainly investigated the effects of vocabulary knowledge and dictionary use on EFL reading performance. The results show that scores on vocabulary size, specific vocabulary knowledge, and reading comprehension are highly and positively correlated. Scores on specific vocabulary knowledge are more closely correlated with reading…

Elementary Students' Acquisition of Academic Vocabulary Through Engineering Design

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kugelmass, Rachel

This study examines how STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) inquiry-based learning through a hands-on engineering design can be beneficial in helping students acquire academic vocabulary. This research took place in a second grade dual- language classroom in a public, suburban elementary school. English language learners, students who speak Spanish at home, and native English speakers were evaluated in this study. Each day, students were presented with a general academic vocabulary focus word during an engineering design challenge. Vocabulary pre-tests and post-tests as well as observation field notes were used to evaluate the student's growth in reading and defining the focus academic vocabulary words. A quiz and KSB (knowledge and skill builder) packet were used to evaluate students' knowledge of science and math content and engineering design. The results of this study indicate that engineering design is an effective means for teaching academic vocabulary to students with varying levels of English proficiency.

Vocabulary Learning through Picture-Viewing and Picture-Drawing on Tablets

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ou, Kuo-Liang; Tarng, Wernhuar; Chen, Yi-Ru

2018-01-01

Beginning learners of English frequently use flashcards as a tool for learning vocabulary. However, because of the consciousness difference between the picture-readers and picture-drawers on vocabularies, errors may be involved in the learners' comprehension of the vocabulary terms on the flashcards. This article develops and evaluates an English…

The Impact of Attrition on Vocabulary Knowledge among Saudi Teachers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alharthi, Thamer

2014-01-01

This two-year longitudinal study tracks the extent of vocabulary attrition among Arabic-speaking English graduate teachers. Data were collected through pre-post tests of receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge. The results showed drastic attrition in vocabulary knowledge soon after the end of formal instruction followed by slight gain,…

Embedding Vocabulary Instruction into the Art Experience

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

LaBrocca, RoseAnn; Morrow, Lesley Mandel

2016-01-01

The purpose of this article is to describe how an elementary art specialist scaffolded learning of specific academic vocabulary during a unit on how to create hollow clay ceramic sculptures. Although much has been written recently on how elementary teachers might better teach academic vocabulary in reading and language arts contexts as well as in…

Vocabulary Growth of the Advanced EFL Learner

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ozturk, Meral

2015-01-01

This article reports the results of two studies on the vocabulary growth of advanced learners of English as a foreign language in an English-medium degree programme. Growth in learners' written receptive and productive vocabularies was investigated in one cross-sectional and one longitudinal study over three years. The effect of word frequency on…

Lexical Threshold Revisited: Lexical Text Coverage, Learners' Vocabulary Size and Reading Comprehension

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Laufer, Batia; Ravenhorst-Kalovski, Geke C.

2010-01-01

We explore the relationship between second language (L2) learners' vocabulary size, lexical text coverage that their vocabulary provides and their reading comprehension. We also conceptualize "adequate reading comprehension" and look for the lexical threshold for such reading in terms of coverage and vocabulary size. Vocabulary size was…

Facilitating Vocabulary Acquisition of Young English Language Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lugo-Neris, Mirza J.; Jackson, Carla Wood; Goldstein, Howard

2010-01-01

Purpose: This study examined whether English-only vocabulary instruction or English vocabulary instruction enhanced with Spanish bridging produced greater word learning in young Spanish-speaking children learning English during a storybook reading intervention while considering individual language characteristics. Method: Twenty-two…

Online Independent Vocabulary Learning Experience of Hong Kong University Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tang, Eunice; Chung, Edsoulla; Li, Eddy; Yeung, Steven

2016-01-01

In response to the limited vocabulary size of its undergraduates, an independent vocabulary learning platform, VLearn was designed and launched in a university in Hong Kong. As an e-learning environment that supports self-directed vocabulary learning of Chinese learners, the primary aim of VLearn is to equip users with appropriate knowledge and…

Using Lemony Snicket to Bring Smiles to Your Vocabulary Lessons

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Arter, Lisa Maxwell; Nilsen, Alleen Pace

2009-01-01

Vocabulary instruction is addressed on two levels in this article: 1) the importance of direct teaching and 2) using the books of a popular children's series as examples to support these vocabulary lessons. Also addressed are specific methods of turning classrooms into places where vocabulary instruction is effective and enjoyable. Elements of…

A System for English Vocabulary Acquisition Based on Code-Switching

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mazur, Michal; Karolczak, Krzysztof; Rzepka, Rafal; Araki, Kenji

2016-01-01

Vocabulary plays an important part in second language learning and there are many existing techniques to facilitate word acquisition. One of these methods is code-switching, or mixing the vocabulary of two languages in one sentence. In this paper the authors propose an experimental system for computer-assisted English vocabulary learning in…

XHTML Vocabulary

Science.gov Websites

content of resource. contentinfo contains meta information about the content on the page or the page as a Applications Vocabulary alert A message with important, and usually time-sensitive, information. Also see : true, false, or mixed. columnheader A cell containing header information for a column. combobox A

Aspects of Vocabulary Knowledge in German Textbooks

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Neary-Sundquist, Colleen A.

2015-01-01

Previous research on second language vocabulary acquisition has shown that learning to use a new word is not a simple matter of making a form-meaning connection. Knowing a word instead requires mastery of as many as nine different aspects of vocabulary knowledge (Nation, 2001). The current study uses data from five beginning-level textbooks of…

Word Writing vs. Meaning Inferencing in Contextualized L2 Vocabulary Learning: Assessing the Effect of Different Vocabulary Learning Strategies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Candry, Sarah; Elgort, Irina; Deconinck, Julie; Eyckmans, June

2017-01-01

The majority of L2 vocabulary studies concentrate on learning word meaning and provide learners with opportunities for semantic elaboration (i.e., focus on word meaning). However, in initial vocabulary learning, engaging in structural elaboration (i.e., focus on word form) with a view to acquiring L2 word form is equally important. The present…

A structured vocabulary for indexing dietary supplements in databases in the United States

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Food composition databases are critical to assess and plan dietary intakes. Dietary supplement databases are also needed because dietary supplements make significant contributions to total nutrient intakes. However, no uniform system exists for classifying dietary supplement products and indexing ...

Examining the Classification Accuracy of a Vocabulary Screening Measure with Preschool Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Marcotte, Amanda M.; Clemens, Nathan H.; Parker, Christopher; Whitcomb, Sara A.

2016-01-01

This study investigated the classification accuracy of the "Dynamic Indicators of Vocabulary Skills" (DIVS) as a preschool vocabulary screening measure. With a sample of 240 preschoolers, fall and winter DIVS scores were used to predict year-end vocabulary risk using the 25th percentile on the "Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test--Third…

Vocabulary Knowledge of Children With Cochlear Implants: A Meta-Analysis

PubMed Central

2016-01-01

This article employs meta-analysis procedures to evaluate whether children with cochlear implants demonstrate lower spoken-language vocabulary knowledge than peers with normal hearing. Of the 754 articles screened and 52 articles coded, 12 articles met predetermined inclusion criteria (with an additional 5 included for one analysis). Effect sizes were calculated for relevant studies and forest plots were used to compare differences between groups of children with normal hearing and children with cochlear implants. Weighted effect size averages for expressive vocabulary measures (g = −11.99; p < .001) and for receptive vocabulary measures (g = −20.33; p < .001) indicated that children with cochlear implants demonstrate lower vocabulary knowledge than children with normal hearing. Additional analyses confirmed the value of comparing vocabulary knowledge of children with hearing loss to a tightly matched (e.g., socioeconomic status-matched) sample. Age of implantation, duration of implantation, and chronological age at testing were not significantly related to magnitude of weighted effect size. Findings from this analysis represent a first step toward resolving discrepancies in the vocabulary knowledge literature. PMID:26712811

Chinese EFL teachers' knowledge of basic language constructs and their self-perceived teaching abilities.

PubMed

Zhao, Jing; Joshi, R Malatesha; Dixon, L Quentin; Huang, Liyan

2016-04-01

The present study examined the knowledge and skills of basic language constructs among elementary school teachers who were teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in China. Six hundred and thirty in-service teachers completed the adapted Reading Teacher Knowledge Survey. Survey results showed that English teachers' self-perceived ability to teach vocabulary was the highest and self-perceived ability to teach reading to struggling readers was the lowest. Morphological knowledge was positively correlated with teachers' self-perceived teaching abilities, and it contributed unique variance even after controlling for the effects of ultimate educational attainment and years of teaching. Findings suggest that elementary school EFL teachers in China, on average, were able to display implicit skills related to certain basic language constructs, but less able to demonstrate explicit knowledge of other skills, especially sub-lexical units (e.g., phonemic awareness and morphemes). The high self-perceived ability of teaching vocabulary and high scores on syllable counting reflected the focus on larger units in the English reading curriculum.

Early Vocabulary in Relation to Gender, Bilingualism, Type, and Duration of Childcare

PubMed Central

Stolarova, M.; Brielmann, A. A.; Wolf, C.; Rinker, T.; Burke, T; Baayen, H.

2016-01-01

This study investigates the predictive value of child-related and environmental characteristics for early lexical development. The German productive vocabulary of 51 2-year-olds (27 girls), assessed via parental report, was analyzed taking children’s gender, the type of early care they experienced, and their mono- versus bilingual language composition into consideration. The children were from an educationally homogeneous group of families and state-regulated daycare facilities with high structural quality. All investigated subgroups exhibited German vocabulary size within the expected normative range. Gender differences in vocabulary composition, but not in size, were observed. There were no general differences in vocabulary size or composition between the 2 care groups. An interaction between the predictors gender and care arrangement showed that girls without regular daycare experience before the age of 2 years had a somewhat larger vocabulary than all other investigated subgroups of children. The vocabulary size of the 2-year-old children in daycare correlated positively with the duration of their daycare experience prior to testing. The small subgroup of bilingual children investigated exhibited slightly lower but still normative German expressive vocabulary size and a different vocabulary composition compared to the monolingual children. This study expands current knowledge about relevant predictors of early vocabulary. It shows that in the absence of educational disadvantages the duration of early daycare experience of high structural quality is positively associated with vocabulary size but also points to the fact that environmental characteristics, such as type of care, might affect boys’ and girls’ early vocabulary in different ways. PMID:28127412

Building a Database for a Quantitative Model

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Kahn, C. Joseph; Kleinhammer, Roger

2014-01-01

A database can greatly benefit a quantitative analysis. The defining characteristic of a quantitative risk, or reliability, model is the use of failure estimate data. Models can easily contain a thousand Basic Events, relying on hundreds of individual data sources. Obviously, entering so much data by hand will eventually lead to errors. Not so obviously entering data this way does not aid linking the Basic Events to the data sources. The best way to organize large amounts of data on a computer is with a database. But a model does not require a large, enterprise-level database with dedicated developers and administrators. A database built in Excel can be quite sufficient. A simple spreadsheet database can link every Basic Event to the individual data source selected for them. This database can also contain the manipulations appropriate for how the data is used in the model. These manipulations include stressing factors based on use and maintenance cycles, dormancy, unique failure modes, the modeling of multiple items as a single "Super component" Basic Event, and Bayesian Updating based on flight and testing experience. A simple, unique metadata field in both the model and database provides a link from any Basic Event in the model to its data source and all relevant calculations. The credibility for the entire model often rests on the credibility and traceability of the data.

Using Mobile-Assisted Exercises to Support Students' Vocabulary Skill Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Suwantarathip, Ornprapat; Orawiwatnakul, Wiwat

2015-01-01

The use of mobile phones for learning has become well-known and is widely adopted in many language classes. The use of SMS for transmitting short messages is a fast way of helping students to learn vocabulary. To address this issue, this study was conducted to examine the effects of mobile-assisted vocabulary exercises on vocabulary acquisition of…

Re-use of standard ontologies in a water quality vocabulary (Invited)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cox, S. J.; Simons, B.; Yu, J.

2013-12-01

Observations provide the key constraints on environmental and earth science investigations. Where an investigation uses data sourced from multiple providers, data fusion depends on the observation classifications being comparable. Standard models for observation metadata are available (ISO 19156) which provide slots for key classifiers, in particular, the observed property and observation procedure. While universal use of common vocabularies might be desirable in achieving interoperability, this is unlikely in practice. However, semantic web vocabularies provide the means for asserting proximity and other relationships between items in different vocabularies, thus enabling mediation as an interoperability solution. Here we report on the development of a vocabulary for water quality observations in which recording relationships with existing vocabularies was a core strategy. The vocabulary is required to enable combination of a number of groundwater, surface water and marine water quality datasets on an ongoing basis. Our vocabulary model is based on the principle that observations generally report values of specific parameters which are defined by combining a number of facets. We start from Quantities, Units, Dimensions and Data Types (QUDT), which is an OWL ontology developed by NASA and TopQuadrant. We extend this with two additional classes, for Observed Property and Identified Object, and two linking properties, which enable us to create an observed property vocabulary for water quality applications. This ontology is comparable with models for observed properties developed as part of OGC's Observations and Measurements v1.0 standard, the INSPIRE Generic Conceptual Model, and may also be compared with the W3C SSN Ontology, which is based on the DOLCE Ultralite upper-ontology. Water quality observations commonly report concentrations of chemicals, both natural and contaminant, so we tie many of the Identified Objects to items from Chemical Entities of Biological

Receptive Vocabulary, Expressive Vocabulary, and Speech Production of Boys with Fragile X Syndrome in Comparison to Boys with Down Syndrome

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Roberts, Joanne; Price, Johanna; Barnes, Elizabeth; Nelson, Lauren; Burchinal, Margaret; Hennon, Elizabeth A.; Moskowitz, Lauren; Edwards, Anne; Malkin, Cheryl; Anderson, Kathleen; Misenheimer, Jan; Hooper, Stephen R.

2007-01-01

Boys with fragile X syndrome with (n = 49) and without (n = 33) characteristics of autism spectrum disorder, boys with Down syndrome (39), and typically developing boys (n = 41) were compared on standardized measures of receptive vocabulary, expressive vocabulary, and speech administered annually over 4 years. Three major findings emerged. Boys…

A data analysis expert system for large established distributed databases

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Gnacek, Anne-Marie; An, Y. Kim; Ryan, J. Patrick

1987-01-01

A design for a natural language database interface system, called the Deductively Augmented NASA Management Decision support System (DANMDS), is presented. The DANMDS system components have been chosen on the basis of the following considerations: maximal employment of the existing NASA IBM-PC computers and supporting software; local structuring and storing of external data via the entity-relationship model; a natural easy-to-use error-free database query language; user ability to alter query language vocabulary and data analysis heuristic; and significant artificial intelligence data analysis heuristic techniques that allow the system to become progressively and automatically more useful.

Semantic representation of CDC-PHIN vocabulary using Simple Knowledge Organization System.

PubMed

Zhu, Min; Mirhaji, Parsa

2008-11-06

PHIN Vocabulary Access and Distribution System (VADS) promotes the use of standards based vocabulary within CDC information systems. However, the current PHIN vocabulary representation hinders its wide adoption. Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) is a W3C draft specification to support the formal representation of Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS) within the framework of the Semantic Web. We present a method of adopting SKOS to represent PHIN vocabulary in order to enable automated information sharing and integration.

Using E-Books to Acquire Foundational Academic Vocabulary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Love, Matthew L.; Spies, Tracy G.; Morgan, Joseph J.

2017-01-01

Secondary students identified as English language learners or with learning disabilities present diverse vocabulary and academic challenges related to their exceptional language needs. Limited academic vocabulary may hinder students in accessing academic content and serve as a barrier to achievement. The literature has documented the use of…

Using Knowledge Networks to Develop Preschoolers' Content Vocabulary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pollard-Durodola, Sharolyn D.; Gonzalez, Jorge E.; Simmons, Deborah C.; Davis, Matthew J.; Simmons, Leslie; Nava-Walichowski, Miranda

2012-01-01

Research shows that children accrue vocabulary knowledge by understanding relationships between new words and their connected concepts. This article describes three research-based principles that preschool teachers can use to design shared book reading lessons that accelerate content vocabulary knowledge by helping young children to talk about…

Vocabulary and Content Learning in Grade 9 Earth Science: Effects of Vocabulary Preteaching, Rational Cloze Task, and Reading Comprehension Task

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Siok H.

2010-01-01

This study examines strategies for supporting vocabulary and content learning in 5 grade 9 Earth Science classes that are part of a SDAIE program (Specially Designed Academic Instruction in English) in an urban California high school. Students received vocabulary and content instruction during a unit on Earthquakes. One group of students performed…

The Influence of Reading on Vocabulary Growth: A Case for a Matthew Effect.

PubMed

Duff, Dawna; Tomblin, J Bruce; Catts, Hugh

2015-06-01

Individual differences in vocabulary development may affect academic or social opportunities. It has been proposed that individual differences in word reading could affect the rate of vocabulary growth, mediated by the amount of reading experience, a process referred to as a Matthew effect (Stanovich, 1986). In the current study, assessments of written word-reading skills in the 4th grade and oral vocabulary knowledge collected in kindergarten and in the 4th, 8th, and 10th grades from a large epidemiologically based sample (n = 485) allowed a test of the relationship of early word-reading skills and the subsequent rate of vocabulary growth. Consistent with the hypothesis, multilevel modeling revealed the rate of vocabulary growth after the 4th grade to be significantly related to 4th-grade word reading after controlling for kindergarten vocabulary level, that is, above average readers experienced a higher rate of vocabulary growth than did average readers. Vocabulary growth rate differences accumulated over time such that the effect on vocabulary size was large.

The Influence of Reading on Vocabulary Growth: A Case for a Matthew Effect

PubMed Central

Tomblin, J. Bruce; Catts, Hugh

2015-01-01

Purpose Individual differences in vocabulary development may affect academic or social opportunities. It has been proposed that individual differences in word reading could affect the rate of vocabulary growth, mediated by the amount of reading experience, a process referred to as a Matthew effect (Stanovich, 1986). Method In the current study, assessments of written word–reading skills in the 4th grade and oral vocabulary knowledge collected in kindergarten and in the 4th, 8th, and 10th grades from a large epidemiologically based sample (n = 485) allowed a test of the relationship of early word-reading skills and the subsequent rate of vocabulary growth. Results Consistent with the hypothesis, multilevel modeling revealed the rate of vocabulary growth after the 4th grade to be significantly related to 4th-grade word reading after controlling for kindergarten vocabulary level, that is, above average readers experienced a higher rate of vocabulary growth than did average readers. Conclusions Vocabulary growth rate differences accumulated over time such that the effect on vocabulary size was large. PMID:25812175

Vocabulary Learning Strategies for Specialized Vocabulary Acquisition: A Case Study.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lessard-Clouston, Michael

A study investigated and compared the vocabulary learning strategies (VLSs) of five non-native English-speaking and six native English-speaking (NES) graduate students of theology in a core course. The students of English as a Second Language (ESL) were all native speakers of Cantonese or Mandarin Chinese. Specifically, the research explored (1)…

The Pace of Vocabulary Growth Helps Predict Later Vocabulary Skill

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rowe, Meredith L.; Raudenbush, Stephen W.; Goldin-Meadow, Susan

2012-01-01

Children vary widely in the rate at which they acquire words--some start slow and speed up, others start fast and continue at a steady pace. Do early developmental variations of this sort help predict vocabulary skill just prior to kindergarten entry? This longitudinal study starts by examining important predictors (socioeconomic status [SES],…

NASA Thesaurus. Volume 1: Hierarchical listing. Volume 2: Access vocabulary. Volume 3: Definitions

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1994-01-01

There are over 17,500 postable terms and some 4,000 nonpostable terms approved for use in the NASA Scientific and Technical Information Database in the Hierarchical Listing of the NASA Thesaurus. The generic structure is presented for many terms. The broader term and narrower term relationships are shown in an indented fashion that illustrates the generic structure better than the more widely used BT and NT listings. Related terms are generously applied, thus enhancing the usefulness of the Hierarchical Listing. Greater access to the Hierarchical Listing may be achieved with the collateral use of Volume 2 - Access Vocabulary and Volume 3 - Definitions.

Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition as Student Performance Determinant in Undergraduate Research Modules

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

West, Joyce

2017-01-01

Vocabulary knowledge plays an important role in determining a person's language proficiency level. This study investigates the role vocabulary plays in determining students' performance within research modules at private higher education institutions (HEIs). The discipline-specific vocabulary in this study includes target words, sampled from an…

Native Health Research Database

MedlinePlus

... Indian Health Board) Welcome to the Native Health Database. Please enter your search terms. Basic Search Advanced ... To learn more about searching the Native Health Database, click here. Tutorial Video The NHD has made ...

Dual Meaning Vocabulary (DMV) Words in Learning Chemistry

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Song, Youngjin; Carheden, Shannon

2014-01-01

Learning chemistry vocabulary that has both scientific and everyday meanings, which we call dual meaning vocabulary (DMV), can be challenging for many students. This qualitative study investigated how college students understand 11 selected DMV words before and after traditional chemistry instruction and to what extent they retain the scientific…

Measuring Teachers' Knowledge of Vocabulary Development and Instruction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Duguay, Annie; Kenyon, Dorry; Haynes, Erin; August, Diane; Yanosky, Tiffany

2016-01-01

This article describes the development of an instrument to measure teachers' knowledge of vocabulary development and instruction, the Teacher Knowledge of Vocabulary Survey (TKVS). This type of knowledge has become increasingly important as all classroom teachers are expected to help students meet language and literacy standards that include…

The Role of Experience in Learning Science Vocabulary.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lloyd, Carol V.; Contreras, Norma J.

Comparing traditional to experiential instruction, a study investigated whether teaching content area vocabulary using hands-on experiences and teacher/student interaction would result in greater vocabulary knowledge and better comprehension of a related text than conventional dictionary work. Subjects, 45 fourth grade students from a chapter 1…

Moving Controlled Vocabularies into the Semantic Web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Thomas, R.; Lowry, R. K.; Kokkinaki, A.

2015-12-01

One of the issues with legacy oceanographic data formats is that the only tool available for describing what a measurement is and how it was made is a single metadata tag known as the parameter code. The British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) has been supporting the international oceanographic community gain maximum benefit from this through a controlled vocabulary known as the BODC Parameter Usage Vocabulary (PUV). Over time this has grown to over 34,000 entries some of which have preferred labels with over 400 bytes of descriptive information detailing what was measured and how. A decade ago the BODC pioneered making this information available in a more useful form with the implementation of a prototype vocabulary server (NVS) that referenced each 'parameter code' as a URL. This developed into the current server (NVS V2) in which the parameter URL resolves into an RDF document based on the SKOS data model which includes a list of resource URLs mapped to the 'parameter'. For example the parameter code for a contaminant in biota, such as 'cadmium in Mytilus edulis', carries RDF triples leading to the entry for Mytilus edulis in the WoRMS and for cadmium in the ChEBI ontologies. By providing links into these external ontologies the information captured in a 1980s parameter code now conforms to the Linked Data paradigm of the Semantic Web, vastly increasing the descriptive information accessible to a user. This presentation will describe the next steps along the road to the Semantic Web with the development of a SPARQL end point1 to expose the PUV plus the 190 other controlled vocabularies held in NVS. Whilst this is ideal for those fluent in SPARQL, most users require something a little more user-friendly and so the NVS browser2 was developed over the end point to allow less technical users to query the vocabularies and navigate the NVS ontology. This tool integrates into an editor that allows vocabulary content to be manipulated by authorised users outside BODC

Shyness and Chinese and English Vocabulary Skills in Hong Kong Kindergartners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tong, Xiuli; Ting, Ka-Tsun; McBride-Chang, Catherine

2011-01-01

Research Findings: This study examined relations between parent-rated shyness and children's vocabulary skills in 54 Hong Kong Chinese kindergartners who learned English as a foreign language at school. Receptive vocabulary and expressive vocabulary were assessed both in Chinese and in English. Parent-rated shyness was uniquely associated with…

Influence of Three Teaching Strategies on Korean EFL Students' Vocabulary Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chin, Cheongsook

2009-01-01

This research examined the effectiveness of three different learning strategies on Korean EFL students' vocabulary comprehension and retention: context, semantic mapping, and word lists. 116 college freshmen were placed into one of the three treatments of vocabulary instruction. Subjects were tested on varying levels of vocabulary knowledge using…

Building Vocabulary Knowledge in Preschoolers through Shared Book Reading and Gameplay

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hassinger-Das, Brenna; Ridge, Katherine; Parker, Amira; Golinkoff, Roberta Michnick; Hirsh-Pasek, Kathy; Dickinson, David K.

2016-01-01

This study moves beyond previous investigations to examine whether an educational intervention combining shared book reading with a vocabulary game increases children's vocabulary knowledge. Four-year-olds (N = 44) were randomly assigned to dyads in either an intervention (shared book reading plus vocabulary review game) or comparison condition…

Do Infant Vocabulary Skills Predict School-Age Language and Literacy Outcomes?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Duff, Fiona J.; Reen, Gurpreet; Plunkett, Kim; Nation, Kate

2015-01-01

Background: Strong associations between infant vocabulary and school-age language and literacy skills would have important practical and theoretical implications: Preschool assessment of vocabulary skills could be used to identify children at risk of reading and language difficulties, and vocabulary could be viewed as a cognitive foundation for…

A Review of Effect of Different Tasks on Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Liu, Chen L.

2015-01-01

Studies of incidental vocabulary acquisition in second language learning have got more and more attention both at home and abroad. By first introducing the definition and theoretical foundations of incidental vocabulary acquisition, this paper reviews empirical studies of effect of different tasks on incidental vocabulary acquisition and points…

Lexical Characteristics of Expressive Vocabulary in Toddlers with Autism Spectrum Disorder

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kover, Sara T.; Weismer, Susan Ellis

2014-01-01

Purpose: Vocabulary is a domain of particular challenge for many children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Recent research has drawn attention to ways in which lexical characteristics relate to vocabulary acquisition. The current study tested the hypothesis that lexical characteristics account for variability in vocabulary size of young…

Development and transfer of vocabulary knowledge in Spanish-speaking language minority preschool children.

PubMed

Goodrich, J Marc; Lonigan, Christopher J; Kleuver, Cherie G; Farver, Joann M

2016-09-01

In this study we evaluated the predictive validity of conceptual scoring. Two independent samples of Spanish-speaking language minority preschoolers (Sample 1: N = 96, mean age = 54·51 months, 54·3% male; Sample 2: N = 116, mean age = 60·70 months, 56·0% male) completed measures of receptive, expressive, and definitional vocabulary in their first (L1) and second (L2) languages at two time points approximately 9-12 months apart. We examined whether unique L1 and L2 vocabulary at time 1 predicted later L2 and L1 vocabulary, respectively. Results indicated that unique L1 vocabulary did not predict later L2 vocabulary after controlling for initial L2 vocabulary. An identical pattern of results emerged for L1 vocabulary outcomes. We also examined whether children acquired translational equivalents for words known in one language but not the other. Results indicated that children acquired translational equivalents, providing partial support for the transfer of vocabulary knowledge across languages.

Planned NLM/AHCPR large-scale vocabulary test: using UMLS technology to determine the extent to which controlled vocabularies cover terminology needed for health care and public health.

PubMed Central

Humphreys, B L; Hole, W T; McCray, A T; Fitzmaurice, J M

1996-01-01

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR) are sponsoring a test to determine the extent to which a combination of existing health-related terminologies covers vocabulary needed in health information systems. The test vocabularies are the 30 that are fully or partially represented in the 1996 edition of the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) Metathesaurus, plus three planned additions: the portions of SNOMED International not in the 1996 Metathesaurus Read Clinical Classification, and the Logical Observations Identifiers, Names, and Codes (LOINC) system. These vocabularies are available to testers through a special interface to the Internet-based UMLS Knowledge Source Server. The test will determine the ability of the test vocabularies to serve as a source of controlled vocabulary for health data systems and applications. It should provide the basis for realistic resource estimates for developing and maintaining a comprehensive "standard" health vocabulary that is based on existing terminologies. PMID:8816351

Vocabulary by Gamification

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kingsley, Tara L.; Grabner-Hagen, Melissa M.

2018-01-01

Gamification uses game elements such as quests, challenges, levels, and rewards to motivate and engage students in the classroom. Given the engagement that students feel during gameplay, it is sensible to include elements of game design to motivate students and create a space for comprehensive vocabulary instruction. Designing a gamified…

The Effects of Content-Enriched Shared Book Reading versus Vocabulary-Only Discussions on the Vocabulary Outcomes of Preschool Dual Language Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pollard-Durodola, Sharolyn D.; Gonzalez, Jorge E.; Saenz, Laura; Resendez, Nora; Kwok, Oiman; Zhu, Leina; Davis, Heather

2018-01-01

Research Findings: This study compared the effects of content-based shared book-reading instruction versus an explicit vocabulary-only condition on the vocabulary development of preschool dual language learners (DLLs). Using shared book reading as the mode of instruction, we randomly assigned 48 bilingual preschool teachers and 281…

Vocabulary Instruction in Ratio and Proportion for Seventh Graders.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jackson, Michael B.; Phillips, E. Ray

1983-01-01

One group of 111 seventh-grade students completed vocabulary-oriented activities for four weeks, while 102 students received similar instruction with no vocabulary-oriented activities. The activities appeared to enhance achievement by improving students' comprehension. (MNS)

The Semantization of Vocabulary in Foreign Language Learning.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Beheydt, Ludo

1987-01-01

What is notably missing in the teaching of foreign language vocabulary is a systematically elaborated strategy for vocabulary acquisition that is based on the findings of linguistics and learning psychology. The practical implications of such a double anchorage in linguistics and psychology are outlined in a proposed model of a semantization…

Teaching Academic Vocabulary to Adolescents with Learning Disabilities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Beach, Kristen D.; Sanchez, Victoria; Flynn, Lindsay J.; O'Connor, Rollanda E.

2015-01-01

This article describes the efforts of a U.S. History teacher to directly teach word meanings using the "robust vocabulary instruction" (RVI) approach, because research supports this method as a way to improve vocabulary knowledge for a range of students, including adolescents reading below grade level (i.e., struggling readers) and…

The Effect of Vocabulary on Introductory Microbiology Instruction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Richter, Emily

2011-01-01

This study examines the effect of the translation of traditional scientific vocabulary into plain English, a process referred to as Anglicization, on student learning in the context of introductory microbiology instruction. Data from Anglicized and Classical-vocabulary lab sections were collected. Data included exam scores as well as pre and…

Vocabulary Acquisition through Direct and Indirect Learning Strategies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Naeimi, Maki; Foo, Thomas Chow Voon

2015-01-01

Vocabulary learning has long been considered as one of the essential components for developing language learning. However, language learners are required to not just concern about memorizing definitions but also integrating vocabulary meaning into their present knowledge. Many strategies such as direct or indirect ones may be integrated to enhance…

eVoc Strategies: 10 Ways to Use Technology to Build Vocabulary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dalton, Bridget; Grisham, Dana L.

2011-01-01

Vocabulary knowledge is key to comprehension and expression. For students in the intermediate grades, the need for breadth and depth of vocabulary accelerates as they encounter more challenging academic texts in print and on the Internet. Drawing on research-based principles of vocabulary instruction and multimedia learning, this article presents…

The Development of a Bilingual Vocabulary Measure for Armenian-English Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hovsepian, Alice

2017-01-01

The purpose of this study was to develop a parallel bilingual vocabulary measure for the comparative study of receptive and expressive vocabulary growth in young Armenian-English bilinguals. The measure was comprised of four independent vocabulary lists equivalent on age of acquisition ratings. The lists were counterbalanced across four tasks,…

The Role of Receptive Vocabulary Knowledge in Advanced EFL Listening Comprehension

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Atas, Ufuk

2018-01-01

This paper presents an empirical study that investigates the role of vocabulary knowledge in listening comprehension with 33 advanced Turkish learners of English as a foreign language. The Vocabulary Levels Test (Schmitt, Schmitt & Clapham, 2001) is used to measure the vocabulary knowledge of the participants and a standardized listening test…

Vocabulary Learning through an Online Computerized Flashcard Site

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McLean, Stuart; Hogg, Nicholas; Rush, Thomas W.

2013-01-01

Recent research has shown that paired-associate learning is an effective way to acquire second language vocabulary. However, much research in the field has measured small-scale vocabulary learning. This is due to the methods which learners used to conduct paired-associate learning: paper flash cards. This project sought to measure vocabulary…

A New Receptive Vocabulary Size Test for French

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Batista, Roselene; Horst, Marlise

2016-01-01

Researchers have developed several tests of receptive vocabulary knowledge suitable for use with learners of English, but options are few for learners of French. This situation motivated the authors to create a new vocabulary size measure for French, the "Test de la taille du vocabulaire" (TTV). The measure is closely modelled on…

Improving Vocabulary Skills through Assistive Technology: Rick's Story

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lindsey-Glenn, Pam F.; Gentry, James E.

2008-01-01

This case study examines the use of two assistive technologies, the Franklin Language Master 6000b and Microsoft PowerPoint 2003, as visual support systems to aid in the vocabulary acquisition skills of a student with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The intervention used children's literature and best practices in teaching vocabulary skills in…

Integrating Vocabulary Learning Strategy Instruction into EFL Classrooms

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lai, Ying-Chun

2013-01-01

In the current study, explicit vocabulary learning strategy instruction was integrated into an EFL curriculum to investigate its effects on learners' vocabulary acquisition. A total of 180 EFL learners enrolled in the freshmen English program at a university in Taiwan participated in the study. The participants were guided to explore and practice…

Fragmentation and Consolidation: Recent Articles on Vocabulary Acquisition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Broady, Elspeth

2008-01-01

Vocabulary can no longer be said to be "a Cinderella topic", at least so far as its representation in other journals is concerned. Research articles on vocabulary learning and teaching now occur frequently and have been particularly well represented in recent issues of the North American research journal "Language Learning". While studies of…

The Electric Vocabulary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sheils, James

2012-01-01

Since the 1600s, the developments in the understanding of electrical phenomena have frequently altered the models and metaphors used by physicists to describe and explain their experiments. However, to this day, certain relics of past theories still drench the vocabulary of the subject, serving as distracting fog for future students. This article…

Lexical Testing and the Reliability of the Modified Vocabulary Knowledge Scale

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tan, Debbita; Pandian, Ambigapathy; Jaganathan, Paramaswari

2016-01-01

This paper highlights some of the vocabulary tests available, and reports the reliability of the modified Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS) (Rosszell, 2007). Although there is no consensus as to what actually constitutes vocabulary knowledge, the notion that it is made up of receptive knowledge (words recognised or known when seen or heard) and…

Proximal Effects of Robust Vocabulary Instruction in Primary and Intermediate Grades

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Apthorp, Helen; McKeown, Margaret; Igel, Charles; Clemons, Trudy; Randel, Bruce; Clark, Tedra

2011-01-01

Educational practices are needed to promote strong vocabulary growth so that vocabulary can be both the cause and result of successful reading. Vocabulary interventions need to begin early and continue for a sustained period of time (Beck & McKeown, 2007a; Biemiller, 2003; Foorman, Seals, Anthony & Pollard-Durodola, 2003). According to theoretical…

Efficacy of Rich Vocabulary Instruction in Fourth- and Fifth-Grade Classrooms

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vadasy, Patricia F.; Sanders, Elizabeth A.; Logan Herrera, Becky

2015-01-01

A multi-cohort cluster randomized trial was conducted to estimate effects of rich vocabulary classroom instruction on vocabulary and reading comprehension. A total of 1,232 fourth- and fifth-grade students from 61 classrooms in 24 schools completed the study. Students received instruction in 140 Tier Two vocabulary words featured in two…

Modelling vocabulary development among multilingual children prior to and following the transition to school entry

PubMed Central

MacLeod, Andrea A. N.; Castellanos-Ryan, Natalie; Parent, Sophie; Jacques, Sophie; Séguin, Jean R.

2017-01-01

Differences between monolingual and multilingual vocabulary development have been observed but few studies provide a longitudinal perspective on vocabulary development before and following school entry. This study compares vocabulary growth profiles of 106 multilingual children to 211 monolingual peers before and after school entry to examine whether: (1) school entry coincides with different rates of vocabulary growth compared to prior to school entry, (2) compared to monolingual peers, multilingual children show different vocabulary sizes or rates of vocabulary growth, (3) the age of onset of second-language acquisition for multilingual children is associated with vocabulary size or rate of vocabulary growth, and (4) the sociolinguistic context of the languages spoken by multilingual children is associated with vocabulary size or rate of vocabulary growth. Results showed increases in vocabulary size across time for all children, with a steeper increase prior to school entry. A significant difference between monolingual and multilingual children who speak a minority language was observed with regards to vocabulary size at school entry and vocabulary growth prior to school entry, but growth rate differences were no longer present following school entry. Taken together, results suggest that which languages children speak may matter more than being multilingual per se. PMID:29354017

Modelling vocabulary development among multilingual children prior to and following the transition to school entry.

PubMed

MacLeod, Andrea A N; Castellanos-Ryan, Natalie; Parent, Sophie; Jacques, Sophie; Séguin, Jean R

2018-01-01

Differences between monolingual and multilingual vocabulary development have been observed but few studies provide a longitudinal perspective on vocabulary development before and following school entry. This study compares vocabulary growth profiles of 106 multilingual children to 211 monolingual peers before and after school entry to examine whether: (1) school entry coincides with different rates of vocabulary growth compared to prior to school entry, (2) compared to monolingual peers, multilingual children show different vocabulary sizes or rates of vocabulary growth, (3) the age of onset of second-language acquisition for multilingual children is associated with vocabulary size or rate of vocabulary growth, and (4) the sociolinguistic context of the languages spoken by multilingual children is associated with vocabulary size or rate of vocabulary growth. Results showed increases in vocabulary size across time for all children, with a steeper increase prior to school entry. A significant difference between monolingual and multilingual children who speak a minority language was observed with regards to vocabulary size at school entry and vocabulary growth prior to school entry, but growth rate differences were no longer present following school entry. Taken together, results suggest that which languages children speak may matter more than being multilingual per se.

Effects of Vocabulary Size on Online Lexical Processing by Preschoolers.

PubMed

Law, Franzo; Edwards, Jan R

This study was designed to investigate the relationship between vocabulary size and the speed and accuracy of lexical processing in preschoolers between the ages of 30-46 months using an automatic eye tracking task based on the looking-while-listening paradigm (Fernald, Zangl, Portillo, & Marchman, 2008) and mispronunciation paradigm (White & Morgan, 2008). Children's eye gaze patterns were tracked while they looked at two pictures (one familiar object, one unfamiliar object) on a computer screen and simultaneously heard one of three kinds of auditory stimuli: correct pronunciations of the familiar object's name, one-feature mispronunciations of the familiar object's name, or a nonword. The results showed that children with larger expressive vocabularies, relative to children with smaller expressive vocabularies, were more likely to look to a familiar object upon hearing a correct pronunciation and to an unfamiliar object upon hearing a novel word. Results also showed that children with larger expressive vocabularies were more sensitive to mispronunciations; they were more likely to look toward the unfamiliar object rather than the familiar object upon hearing a one-feature mispronunciation of a familiar object-name. These results suggest that children with smaller vocabularies, relative to their larger-vocabulary age peers, are at a disadvantage for learning new words, as well as for processing familiar words.

Developmental Dyscalculia and Basic Numerical Capacities: A Study of 8--9-Year-Old Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Landerl, Karin; Bevan, Anna; Butterworth, Brian

2004-01-01

Thirty-one 8- and 9-year-old children selected for dyscalculia, reading difficulties or both, were compared to controls on a range of basic number processing tasks. Children with dyscalculia only had impaired performance on the tasks despite high-average performance on tests of IQ, vocabulary and working memory tasks. Children with reading…

Paucity and Disparity in Kindergarten Oral Vocabulary Instruction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wright, Tanya S.; Neuman, Susan B.

2014-01-01

The purpose of this study was to examine how oral vocabulary instruction was enacted in kindergarten. Four days (12 hours) of instruction were observed in 55 classrooms in a range of socio-economic status schools. All instruction was coded for evidence of vocabulary instruction for a total of 660 hours of observation. Results revealed that…

An Investigation of Two Ways of Presenting Vocabulary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Papathanasiou, Evagelia

2009-01-01

The use of semantic links or networks in L2 vocabulary acquisition has been a popular subject for numerous studies. On one hand, there is a strong theoretical background stating that presenting words in related fashion facilitates the learning of L2 vocabulary. On the other hand, research evidence indicates that semantically related vocabulary…

The Role of Writing Pedagogy in Vocabulary Improvement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mirhassani, Seyyed Akbar; Samar, Reza Ghafar; Fattahipoor, Majid

2006-01-01

To improve and activate the vocabulary of EFL learners, an alternative to common advice in trying to use them in speech can be invited. As two quite different methodologies in writing pedagogy are process and product writing, it is of concern to find which holds more promise for the vocabulary improvement. Product writing pedagogy encompasses…

Video Games Promote Saudi Children's English Vocabulary Retention

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

AlShaiji, Ohoud Abdullatif

2015-01-01

The objective of this study was to investigate the impact of Video Games and their role on promoting Saudi Kids' English vocabulary retention. The study attempted to answer whether there was a statistically significant difference (a = 0.05) between the Saudi children's subjects' mean score on the English vocabulary test due to using Video Games…

"The Most Annoying Assignment Ever": Helping Composition Students Navigate New Vocabulary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McKnight, Heal

2010-01-01

Almost all of the author's community college students feel self-conscious about their vocabulary. She thinks that their resistance to expanding their vocabulary has many tangled roots: sometimes the students seem nervous about what they leave behind as they notch their vocabulary up to a more formal, college level. This article discusses how the…

The development of a vocabulary for PEEPS-SE-profiles of early expressive phonological skills for Swedish.

PubMed

Marklund, Ulrika; Lacerda, Francisco; Persson, Anna; Lohmander, Anette

2018-04-10

This paper describes the development of a vocabulary for Profiles of Early Expressive Phonological Skills for Swedish (PEEPS-SE), a tool for assessment of expressive phonology in Swedish-learning children in the age range of 18-36 months. PEEPS-SE is the Swedish version of the original PEEPS, Profiles of Early Expressive Phonological Skills, which uses two age-adequate word lists-a basic word list (BWL) for the assessment of 18-24-month-old children, to which an expanded word list (EWL) is added for assessment of 24-36-month-old children, or children with more than 250 words in their expressive vocabulary. The selection of words in PEEPS-SE is based on two types of criteria: age of acquisition and phonological complexity. The words also need to be easy to elicit in a natural way in test situations. Vocabulary data previously collected with the Swedish Early Communicative Development Inventory are used for selection of age-adequate words, where the BWL contains words acquired earlier compared to the additional words in the EWL. The latter also contains words that are more phonologically complex compared to those in the BWL. Word complexity was determined by the Swedish version of word complexity measure. PEEPS-SE has made an attempt to match the original version of PEEPS in terms of both assessment method and word selection.

Feasibility and utility of applications of the common data model to multiple, disparate observational health databases

PubMed Central

Makadia, Rupa; Matcho, Amy; Ma, Qianli; Knoll, Chris; Schuemie, Martijn; DeFalco, Frank J; Londhe, Ajit; Zhu, Vivienne; Ryan, Patrick B

2015-01-01

Objectives To evaluate the utility of applying the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP) Common Data Model (CDM) across multiple observational databases within an organization and to apply standardized analytics tools for conducting observational research. Materials and methods Six deidentified patient-level datasets were transformed to the OMOP CDM. We evaluated the extent of information loss that occurred through the standardization process. We developed a standardized analytic tool to replicate the cohort construction process from a published epidemiology protocol and applied the analysis to all 6 databases to assess time-to-execution and comparability of results. Results Transformation to the CDM resulted in minimal information loss across all 6 databases. Patients and observations excluded were due to identified data quality issues in the source system, 96% to 99% of condition records and 90% to 99% of drug records were successfully mapped into the CDM using the standard vocabulary. The full cohort replication and descriptive baseline summary was executed for 2 cohorts in 6 databases in less than 1 hour. Discussion The standardization process improved data quality, increased efficiency, and facilitated cross-database comparisons to support a more systematic approach to observational research. Comparisons across data sources showed consistency in the impact of inclusion criteria, using the protocol and identified differences in patient characteristics and coding practices across databases. Conclusion Standardizing data structure (through a CDM), content (through a standard vocabulary with source code mappings), and analytics can enable an institution to apply a network-based approach to observational research across multiple, disparate observational health databases. PMID:25670757

The Magic of Words: Teaching Vocabulary in the Early Childhood Classroom

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Neuman, Susan B.; Wright, Tanya S.

2014-01-01

Developing a large and rich vocabulary is central to learning to read. Children must know the words that make up written texts in order to understand them, especially as the vocabulary demands of content-related materials increase in the upper grades. Studies have documented that the size of a person's vocabulary is strongly related to how…

The Effects of Marzano's Six Step Vocabulary Process, on Fourth Grade Students' Vocabulary Knowledge, Fluency, and Sentence Complexity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Suing, Janet S.

2012-01-01

This exploratory study examined the ways in which fourth grade students, in an urban setting, responded to a nine-week implementation of Marzano's Six Step Vocabulary Process. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between the direct instruction of vocabulary and the effects on student achievement as measured by Vocabulary…

Early Home Language Use and Later Vocabulary Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mancilla-Martinez, Jeannette; Lesaux, Nonie K.

2011-01-01

This longitudinal study examined the association between early patterns of home language use (age 4.5 years) and vocabulary growth (ages 4.5 to 12 years) in English and Spanish for 180 Spanish-speaking language minority learners followed from ages 4.5 to 12 years. Standardized measures of vocabulary were administered to children from ages 4.5 to…

Comparative Usefulness of Online and Traditional Vocabulary Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kilickaya, Ferit; Krajka, Jaroslaw

2010-01-01

Acquiring vocabulary in L2 is rather a difficult and demanding process and most of the language learners wish to know which vocabulary learning method and/or activity is more beneficial or even the best one; however, the responses to this question vary and there is no clear-cut answer though there are some various suggestions and conclusions drawn…

Shyness and Vocabulary: The Roles of Executive Functioning and Home Environmental Stimulation

PubMed Central

Nayena Blankson, A.; O’Brien, Marion; Leerkes, Esther M.; Marcovitch, Stuart; Calkins, Susan D.

2010-01-01

Although shyness has often been found to be negatively related to vocabulary, few studies have examined the processes that produce or modify this relation. The present study examined executive functioning skills and home environmental stimulation as potential mediating and moderating mechanisms. A sample of 3.5-year-old children (N=254) were administered executive functioning tasks and a vocabulary test during a laboratory visit. Mothers completed questionnaires assessing child shyness and home environmental stimulation. Our primary hypothesis was that executive functioning mediates the association between shyness and vocabulary, and home environmental stimulation moderates the relation between executive functioning and vocabulary. Alternative hypotheses were also tested. Results indicated that children with better executive functioning skills developed stronger vocabularies when reared in more, versus less, stimulating environments. Implications of these results are discussed in terms of the role of shyness, executive functioning, and home environmental stimulation in early vocabulary development. PMID:22096267

A Vocabulary Learning Tool for L2 Undergraduates Reading Science and Technology Textbooks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hsu, Chihcheng; Yang, Fang-Chuan Ou

2013-05-01

Students of English as a second language who major in science and technology use English-language textbooks to ensure that they can read English materials upon graduation. Research indicates that teachers spend little time helping these students on the linguistic complexity of such textbooks. Vocabulary, grammar, and article structure are elements of this complexity, but to many students, these elements can be akin to locked doors. This study presents MyVLS-Reader, which focuses on unlocking the first of these doors-vocabulary-while assisting in reading. With explicit vocabulary learning, students learn and memorize individual vocabulary, but the context is lost if the depth of learning discards context. In implicit vocabulary learning, students acquire vocabulary through repeated exposure to contexts, but repeated encounters with new words are required. Few e-learning systems combine both vocabulary-learning approaches. MyVLS-Reader achieves such synergy by (1) using a keyword setting to provide context-matched vocabulary explanation while reading and (2) embedding multiple learning choices, such as keyword setting, the review and memorization of explicit vocabulary, and the option to ask instructors. This study includes two rounds of evaluations: (1) an evaluation of the learning achievements of control and treatment groups and (2) a quantitative and qualitative investigation of perceptions regarding the use of MyVLS-Reader. The evaluation results indicate that the treatment group developed a better vocabulary than the control group in significantly less time. The use of MyVLS-Reader also slightly improved higher-order thinking skills. This result suggests that MyVLS-Reader can effective assist students in building their vocabulary while reading.

The Impact of Individual Differences on a Bilingual Vocabulary Approach for Latino Preschoolers.

PubMed

Méndez, Lucía I; Crais, Elizabeth R; Kainz, Kirsten

2018-04-17

The purpose of this study was twofold: First, we replicated in a new sample our previous findings that a culturally and linguistically responsive (CLR) bilingual approach for English vocabulary instruction for preschool Latino dual language learners was effective. Subsequently, we investigated whether the positive effect of CLR instruction varies as a function of individual child characteristics, including baseline vocabulary levels and gender. Using a randomized pretest-posttest follow-up group design, we first replicated our previous study (N = 42) with a new sample by randomly assigning 35 Spanish-speaking Latino preschoolers to a CLR bilingual group or an English-only group. The preschoolers received small-group evidence-informed shared readings targeting 30 English words 3 times a week for 5 weeks in their preschools. Vocabulary outcomes were measured using both standardized and researcher-developed measures. We subsequently conducted further studies with the combined sample size of 77 children to examine the variability in intervention effects related to child gender and baseline vocabulary levels. The direct replication study confirmed findings of our earlier work suggesting that the CLR bilingual approach promoted greater gains in L1 and L2 vocabulary than in an English-only approach. The extension studies revealed that the effect of the CLR bilingual vocabulary approach on English and Spanish vocabulary outcomes was not impacted by gender or vocabulary status at baseline. This study provides additional evidence of the benefits of strategically combining L1 and L2 for vocabulary instruction over an English-only approach. Our findings also suggest that preschool Latino dual language learners can benefit from a bilingual vocabulary instructional approach regardless of gender or baseline vocabulary levels in L1.

Contribution of Morphological Awareness and Lexical Inferencing Ability to L2 Vocabulary Knowledge and Reading Comprehension among Advanced EFL Learners: Testing Direct and Indirect Effects

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhang, Dongbo; Koda, Keiko

2012-01-01

Within the Structural Equation Modeling framework, this study tested the direct and indirect effects of morphological awareness and lexical inferencing ability on L2 vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension among advanced Chinese EFL readers in a university in China. Using both regular z-test and the bootstrapping (data-based resampling)…

Vocabulary Explanations in CLIL Classrooms: A Conversation Analysis Perspective

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Morton, Tom

2015-01-01

This article uses a conversation analysis methodology to examine how lexical Focus on Form is interactionally accomplished in teachers' vocabulary explanations in secondary Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) classrooms. Recent conversation-analytic work has focused on the interactional organisation of vocabulary explanations in…

Unhappy with internal corporate search? : learn tips and tricks for building a controlled vocabulary ontology.

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Arpin, Bettina Karin Schimanski; Jones, Brian S.; Bemesderfer, Joy

2010-06-01

Are your employees unhappy with internal corporate search? Frequent complaints include: too many results to sift through; results are unrelated/outdated; employees aren't sure which terms to search for. One way to improve intranet search is to implement a controlled vocabulary ontology. Employing this takes the guess work out of searching, makes search efficient and precise, educates employees about the lingo used within the corporation, and allows employees to contribute to the corpus of terms. It promotes internal corporate search to rival its superior sibling, internet search. We will cover our experiences, lessons learned, and conclusions from implementing a controlled vocabularymore » ontology at Sandia National Laboratories. The work focuses on construction of this ontology from the content perspective and the technical perspective. We'll discuss the following: (1) The tool we used to build a polyhierarchical taxonomy; (2) Examples of two methods of indexing the content: traditional 'back of the book' and folksonomy word-mapping; (3) Tips on how to build future search capabilities while building the basic controlled vocabulary; (4) How to implement the controlled vocabulary as an ontology that mimics Google's search suggestions; (5) Making the user experience more interactive and intuitive; and (6) Sorting suggestions based on preferred, alternate and related terms using SPARQL queries. In summary, future improvements will be presented, including permitting end-users to add, edit and remove terms, and filtering on different subject domains.« less

Computer Databases as an Educational Tool in the Basic Sciences.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Friedman, Charles P.; And Others

1990-01-01

The University of North Carolina School of Medicine developed a computer database, INQUIRER, containing scientific information in bacteriology, and then integrated the database into routine educational activities for first-year medical students in their microbiology course. (Author/MLW)

Effects of multimedia vocabulary instruction on adolescents with learning disabilities.

PubMed

Kennedy, Michael J; Deshler, Donald D; Lloyd, John Wills

2015-01-01

The purpose of this experimental study is to investigate the effects of using content acquisition podcasts (CAPs), an example of instructional technology, to provide vocabulary instruction to adolescents with and without learning disabilities (LD). A total of 279 urban high school students, including 30 with LD in an area related to reading, were randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions with instruction occurring at individual computer terminals over a 3-week period. Each of the four conditions contained different configurations of multimedia-based instruction and evidence-based vocabulary instruction. Dependent measures of vocabulary knowledge indicated that students with LD who received vocabulary instruction using CAPs through an explicit instructional methodology and the keyword mnemonic strategy significantly outperformed other students with LD who were taught using the same content, but with multimedia instruction that did not adhere to a specific theoretical design framework. Results for general education students mirrored those for students with LD. Students also completed a satisfaction measure following instruction with multimedia and expressed overall agreement that CAPs are useful for learning vocabulary terms. © Hammill Institute on Disabilities 2013.

Exploring Expressive Vocabulary Variability in Two-Year-Olds: The Role of Working Memory.

PubMed

Newbury, Jayne; Klee, Thomas; Stokes, Stephanie F; Moran, Catherine

2015-12-01

This study explored whether measures of working memory ability contribute to the wide variation in 2-year-olds' expressive vocabulary skills. Seventy-nine children (aged 24-30 months) were assessed by using standardized tests of vocabulary and visual cognition, a processing speed measure, and behavioral measures of verbal working memory and phonological short-term memory. Strong correlations were observed between phonological short-term memory, verbal working memory, and expressive vocabulary. Speed of spoken word recognition showed a moderate significant correlation with expressive vocabulary. In a multivariate regression model for expressive vocabulary, the most powerful predictor was a measure of phonological short-term memory (accounting for 66% unique variance), followed by verbal working memory (6%), sex (2%), and age (1%). Processing speed did not add significant unique variance. These findings confirm previous research positing a strong role for phonological short-term memory in early expressive vocabulary acquisition. They also extend previous research in two ways. First, a unique association between verbal working memory and expressive vocabulary in 2-year-olds was observed. Second, processing speed was not a unique predictor of variance in expressive vocabulary when included alongside measures of working memory.

Core vocabulary in the narratives of bilingual children with and without language impairment.

PubMed

Shivabasappa, Prarthana; Peña, Elizabeth D; Bedore, Lisa M

2017-09-22

Children with primary language impairment (PLI) demonstrate deficits in morphosyntax and vocabulary. We studied how these deficits may manifest in the core vocabulary use of bilingual children with PLI. Thirty bilingual children with and without PLI who were matched pairwise (experimental group) narrated two Spanish and two English stories in kindergarten and first grade. Core vocabulary was derived from the 30 most frequently used words in the stories of 65 and 37 typically developing (TD) first graders (normative group) for Spanish and English, respectively. The number of words each child in the experimental group produced out of the 30 identified core vocabulary words and frequency of each of the core words produced each year were analysed. Children with PLI produced fewer core vocabulary words compared to their TD peers after controlling for total words produced. This difference was more pronounced in first grade. They produced core vocabulary words less frequently in kindergarten than their TD peers. Both groups produced core vocabulary words more frequently in English than Spanish. Bilingual children with PLI demonstrate a less productive core vocabulary use compared to their TD peers in both their languages illustrating the nature of their grammatical and lexical-semantic deficits.

Linking vocabulary to imagery: Improving science knowledge through multimedia design

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Adler, Tracy R.

This qualitative study looked at the vocabulary development of four urban sixth-grade students as they used laser disk and computer technologies to view images and then connect those images to textual definitions through multimedia design. Focusing on three science content areas (the water cycle, the rock cycle, and the web of life), students worked in pairs to create their own multimedia stacks that focused on the prescribed vocabulary. Using a combination of text, images, and audio, students demonstrated their understanding of content vocabulary words and how these words are interconnects within a science topic. Further, the study examined the impact that linking images to vocabulary and textual definitions has on helping students memorize definitions of the science content words. It was found that the use of imagery had a positive affect on the students' ability to identify textual definitions and vocabulary words, though it did not have a great impact on their later recall of word/definition connections. In addition, by designing their own multimedia artifacts, students were able to connect the vocabulary and images within a specific content area and explain their function within a broader science concept. The results of this study were inconclusive as to the impact this activity had on the students' ability to transfer their knowledge to correctly answering questions similar to the ones they see on their state proficiency exam.

Teaching Vocabulary in Colour.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gnoinska, Anna

1998-01-01

Describes one teacher's use of color to make classroom instruction more interesting. Techniques included using colored paper for handouts, conducting an experiment to see whether the use of colors could enhance students' memory power, and using colored flashcards to teach vocabulary. (Author/VWL)

Expressive Vocabulary in Young Children with Down Syndrome: From Research to Treatment.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kumin, Libby; Councill, Cheryl; Goodman, Mina

1999-01-01

Expressive vocabulary was studied in 130 children (ages 1 to 5 years) with Down syndrome. Although there was continuous growth in expressive referential vocabulary from birth through 5 years, age 5 was found to be an important developmental marker for multiword combinations and grammatical vocabulary. (Author/CR)

Strategies and Performance in Intentional L2 Vocabulary Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Barcroft, Joe

2009-01-01

This study was designed to identify strategies used during intentional vocabulary learning and to assess the relationship between strategy use and vocabulary learning performance. English-speaking students of Spanish studied new Spanish words while viewing word-picture pairs. The participants then completed posttests and answered questions about…

Random Drift versus Selection in Academic Vocabulary: An Evolutionary Analysis of Published Keywords

PubMed Central

Bentley, R. Alexander

2008-01-01

The evolution of vocabulary in academic publishing is characterized via keyword frequencies recorded in the ISI Web of Science citations database. In four distinct case-studies, evolutionary analysis of keyword frequency change through time is compared to a model of random copying used as the null hypothesis, such that selection may be identified against it. The case studies from the physical sciences indicate greater selection in keyword choice than in the social sciences. Similar evolutionary analyses can be applied to a wide range of phenomena; wherever the popularity of multiple items through time has been recorded, as with web searches, or sales of popular music and books, for example. PMID:18728786

Random drift versus selection in academic vocabulary: an evolutionary analysis of published keywords.

PubMed

Bentley, R Alexander

2008-08-27

The evolution of vocabulary in academic publishing is characterized via keyword frequencies recorded in the ISI Web of Science citations database. In four distinct case-studies, evolutionary analysis of keyword frequency change through time is compared to a model of random copying used as the null hypothesis, such that selection may be identified against it. The case studies from the physical sciences indicate greater selection in keyword choice than in the social sciences. Similar evolutionary analyses can be applied to a wide range of phenomena; wherever the popularity of multiple items through time has been recorded, as with web searches, or sales of popular music and books, for example.

The NIFSTD and BIRNLex Vocabularies: Building Comprehensive Ontologies for Neuroscience

PubMed Central

Bug, William J.; Ascoli, Giorgio A.; Grethe, Jeffrey S.; Gupta, Amarnath; Fennema-Notestine, Christine; Laird, Angela R.; Larson, Stephen D.; Rubin, Daniel; Shepherd, Gordon M.; Turner, Jessica A.; Martone, Maryann E.

2009-01-01

A critical component of the Neuroscience Information Framework (NIF) project is a consistent, flexible terminology for describing and retrieving neuroscience-relevant resources. Although the original NIF specification called for a loosely structured controlled vocabulary for describing neuroscience resources, as the NIF system evolved, the requirement for a formally structured ontology for neuroscience with sufficient granularity to describe and access a diverse collection of information became obvious. This requirement led to the NIF standardized (NIFSTD) ontology, a comprehensive collection of common neuroscience domain terminologies woven into an ontologically consistent, unified representation of the biomedical domains typically used to describe neuroscience data (e.g., anatomy, cell types, techniques), as well as digital resources (tools, databases) being created throughout the neuroscience community. NIFSTD builds upon a structure established by the BIRNLex, a lexicon of concepts covering clinical neuroimaging research developed by the Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN) project. Each distinct domain module is represented using the Web Ontology Language (OWL). As much as has been practical, NIFSTD reuses existing community ontologies that cover the required biomedical domains, building the more specific concepts required to annotate NIF resources. By following this principle, an extensive vocabulary was assembled in a relatively short period of time for NIF information annotation, organization, and retrieval, in a form that promotes easy extension and modification. We report here on the structure of the NIFSTD, and its predecessor BIRNLex, the principles followed in its construction and provide examples of its use within NIF. PMID:18975148

The NIFSTD and BIRNLex vocabularies: building comprehensive ontologies for neuroscience.

PubMed

Bug, William J; Ascoli, Giorgio A; Grethe, Jeffrey S; Gupta, Amarnath; Fennema-Notestine, Christine; Laird, Angela R; Larson, Stephen D; Rubin, Daniel; Shepherd, Gordon M; Turner, Jessica A; Martone, Maryann E

2008-09-01

A critical component of the Neuroscience Information Framework (NIF) project is a consistent, flexible terminology for describing and retrieving neuroscience-relevant resources. Although the original NIF specification called for a loosely structured controlled vocabulary for describing neuroscience resources, as the NIF system evolved, the requirement for a formally structured ontology for neuroscience with sufficient granularity to describe and access a diverse collection of information became obvious. This requirement led to the NIF standardized (NIFSTD) ontology, a comprehensive collection of common neuroscience domain terminologies woven into an ontologically consistent, unified representation of the biomedical domains typically used to describe neuroscience data (e.g., anatomy, cell types, techniques), as well as digital resources (tools, databases) being created throughout the neuroscience community. NIFSTD builds upon a structure established by the BIRNLex, a lexicon of concepts covering clinical neuroimaging research developed by the Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN) project. Each distinct domain module is represented using the Web Ontology Language (OWL). As much as has been practical, NIFSTD reuses existing community ontologies that cover the required biomedical domains, building the more specific concepts required to annotate NIF resources. By following this principle, an extensive vocabulary was assembled in a relatively short period of time for NIF information annotation, organization, and retrieval, in a form that promotes easy extension and modification. We report here on the structure of the NIFSTD, and its predecessor BIRNLex, the principles followed in its construction and provide examples of its use within NIF.

Development of Vocabulary in Spanish-Speaking and Cantonese-Speaking English Language Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Uchikoshi, Yuuko

2014-01-01

This study examines vocabulary growth rates in first and second languages for Spanish-speaking and Cantonese-speaking English language learners from kindergarten through second grade. Growth-modeling results show a within-language effect of concepts about print on vocabulary. Language exposure also had an effect on English vocabulary: earlier…

Inquiring into Familiar Objects: An Inquiry-Based Approach to Introduce Scientific Vocabulary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hicks Pries, Caitlin; Hughes, Julie

2012-01-01

Learning science vocabulary is an often tedious but important component of many curricula. Frequently, students are expected to learn science vocabulary indirectly, but this method can hinder the success of lower-performing students (Carlisle, Fleming, and Gudbrandsen 2000). We have developed an inquiry-based vocabulary activity wherein students…

Learning Vocabulary in a Foreign Language: A Computer Software Based Model Attempt

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yelbay Yilmaz, Yasemin

2015-01-01

This study aimed at devising a vocabulary learning software that would help learners learn and retain vocabulary items effectively. Foundation linguistics and learning theories have been adapted to the foreign language vocabulary learning context using a computer software named Parole that was designed exclusively for this study. Experimental…

Software Application for Computer Aided Vocabulary Learning in a Blended Learning Environment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Essam, Rasha

2010-01-01

This study focuses on the effect of computer-aided vocabulary learning software called "ArabCAVL" on students' vocabulary acquisition. It was hypothesized that students who use the ArabCAVL software in blended learning environment will surpass students who use traditional vocabulary learning strategies in face-to-face learning…

Non-Agricultural Databases and Thesauri: Retrieval of Subject Headings and Non-Controlled Terms in Relation to Agriculture

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bartol, Tomaz

2012-01-01

Purpose: The paper aims to assess the utility of non-agriculture-specific information systems, databases, and respective controlled vocabularies (thesauri) in organising and retrieving agricultural information. The purpose is to identify thesaurus-linked tree structures, controlled subject headings/terms (heading words, descriptors), and principal…

Total and Conceptual Vocabulary in Spanish–English Bilinguals From 22 to 30 Months: Implications for Assessment

PubMed Central

Core, Cynthia; Hoff, Erika; Rumiche, Rosario; Señor, Melissa

2015-01-01

Purpose Vocabulary assessment holds promise as a way to identify young bilingual children at risk for language delay. This study compares 2 measures of vocabulary in a group of young Spanish–English bilingual children to a single-language measure used with monolingual children. Method Total vocabulary and conceptual vocabulary were used to measure mean vocabulary size and growth in 47 Spanish–English bilingually developing children from 22 to 30 months of age based on results from the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI; Fenson et al., 1993) and the Inventario del Desarrollo de Habilidades Comunicativas (Jackson-Maldonado et al., 2003). Bilingual children’s scores of total vocabulary and conceptual vocabulary were compared with CDI scores for a control group of 56 monolingual children. Results The total vocabulary measure resulted in mean vocabulary scores and average rate of growth similar to monolingual growth, whereas conceptual vocabulary scores were significantly smaller and grew at a slower rate than total vocabulary scores. Total vocabulary identified the same proportion of bilingual children below the 25th percentile on monolingual norms as the CDI did for monolingual children. Conclusion These results support the use of total vocabulary as a means of assessing early language development in young bilingual Spanish–English speaking children. PMID:24023382

Total and conceptual vocabulary in Spanish-English bilinguals from 22 to 30 months: implications for assessment.

PubMed

Core, Cynthia; Hoff, Erika; Rumiche, Rosario; Señor, Melissa

2013-10-01

Vocabulary assessment holds promise as a way to identify young bilingual children at risk for language delay. This study compares 2 measures of vocabulary in a group of young Spanish-English bilingual children to a single-language measure used with monolingual children. Total vocabulary and conceptual vocabulary were used to measure mean vocabulary size and growth in 47 Spanish-English bilingually developing children from 22 to 30 months of age based on results from the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI; Fenson et al., 1993) and the Inventario del Desarrollo de Habilidades Comunicativas ( Jackson-Maldonado et al., 2003). Bilingual children's scores of total vocabulary and conceptual vocabulary were compared with CDI scores for a control group of 56 monolingual children. The total vocabulary measure resulted in mean vocabulary scores and average rate of growth similar to monolingual growth, whereas conceptual vocabulary scores were significantly smaller and grew at a slower rate than total vocabulary scores. Total vocabulary identified the same proportion of bilingual children below the 25th percentile on monolingual norms as the CDI did for monolingual children. These results support the use of total vocabulary as a means of assessing early language development in young bilingual Spanish-English speaking children.

Semantic and Thematic List Learning of Second Language Vocabulary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gholami, Javad; Khezrlou, Sima

2014-01-01

This article overviews research on second language vocabulary instruction with a specific focus on semantic and thematic vocabulary-clustering types. The theoretical benefits associated with both the semantic and thematic approaches, as well as the potential problems associated with them, are discussed. The conclusion drawn is that reinforcing the…

Designing Distance Learning Tasks to Help Maximize Vocabulary Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Loucky, John Paul

2012-01-01

Task-based language learning using the benefits of online computer-assisted language learning (CALL) can be effective for rapid vocabulary expansion, especially when target vocabulary has been pre-arranged into bilingual categories under simpler, common Semantic Field Keywords. Results and satisfaction levels for both Chinese English majors and…

Indexing Learning Objects: Vocabularies and Empirical Investigation of Consistency

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kabel, Suzanne; De Hoog, Robert; Wielinga, Bob; Anjewierden, Anjo

2004-01-01

In addition to the LOM standard and instructional design specifications, as well as domain specific indexing vocabularies, a structured indexing vocabulary for the more elementary learning objects is advisable in order to support retrieval tasks of developers. Furthermore, because semantic indexing is seen as a difficult task, three issues…

Memorization versus Semantic Mapping in L2 Vocabulary Acquisition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Khoii, Roya; Sharififar, Samira

2013-01-01

This study investigated the effects of two cognitive strategies, rote memorization and semantic mapping, on L2 vocabulary acquisition. Thirty-eight intermediate female EFL learners divided into two experimental groups participated in this study. Each experimental group used one of the strategies for vocabulary acquisition. After the four-month…

Cognitive Correlates of Vocabulary Growth in English Language Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Farnia, Fataneh; Geva, Esther

2011-01-01

This study modeled vocabulary trajectories in 91 English language learners (ELLs) with Punjabi, Tamil, or Portuguese home languages, and 50 English monolinguals (EL1) from Grades 1 to 6. The concurrent and longitudinal relationships between phonological awareness and phonological short-term memory and vocabulary were examined. ELLs underperformed…

Bridging the Gap between Receptive and Productive Vocabulary Size through Extensive Reading

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yamamoto, Yuka

2011-01-01

It is well established that extensive reading promotes the incidental learning of L1 and L2 receptive vocabulary; however, little is known about its effectiveness on productive gains in vocabulary knowledge. This paper investigates the extent to which extensive reading combined with writing tasks promotes productive vocabulary growth of Japanese…

Effects of a Supplemental Vocabulary Program on Word Knowledge and Passage Comprehension

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Apthorp, Helen; Randel, Bruce; Cherasaro, Trudy; Clark, Tedra; McKeown, Margaret; Beck, Isabel

2012-01-01

A cluster randomized trial estimated the effects of a supplemental vocabulary program, Elements of Reading[R]: vocabulary on student vocabulary and passage comprehension in moderate- to high-poverty elementary schools. Forty-four schools participated over a period spanning 2 consecutive school years. At baseline, 1,057 teachers and 16,471 students…

Effects of Vocabulary and Phonotactic Probability on 2-Year-Olds' Nonword Repetition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Verhagen, Josje; de Bree, Elise; Mulder, Hanna; Leseman, Paul

2017-01-01

This study investigates the relationship between nonword repetition (NWR) and vocabulary in 2-year-olds. Questions addressed are whether (1) NWR and vocabulary are associated, (2) phonotactic probability affects NWR, and (3) there is an interaction effect between phonotactic probability and vocabulary on NWR performance. The general aim of the…

The Keyword Method and Children's Vocabulary Learning: An Interaction with Vocabulary Knowledge.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McGivern, Julie E.; Levin, Joel R.

A study explored a potential aptitude-by-treatment interaction associated with the keyword method of vocabulary acquisition. This method is a two-stage mnemonic process whereby an unfamiliar term is first transformed into a familiar concrete stimulus and then a thematic relationship is created between the transformed stimulus and the information…

BioWarehouse: a bioinformatics database warehouse toolkit.

PubMed

Lee, Thomas J; Pouliot, Yannick; Wagner, Valerie; Gupta, Priyanka; Stringer-Calvert, David W J; Tenenbaum, Jessica D; Karp, Peter D

2006-03-23

This article addresses the problem of interoperation of heterogeneous bioinformatics databases. We introduce BioWarehouse, an open source toolkit for constructing bioinformatics database warehouses using the MySQL and Oracle relational database managers. BioWarehouse integrates its component databases into a common representational framework within a single database management system, thus enabling multi-database queries using the Structured Query Language (SQL) but also facilitating a variety of database integration tasks such as comparative analysis and data mining. BioWarehouse currently supports the integration of a pathway-centric set of databases including ENZYME, KEGG, and BioCyc, and in addition the UniProt, GenBank, NCBI Taxonomy, and CMR databases, and the Gene Ontology. Loader tools, written in the C and JAVA languages, parse and load these databases into a relational database schema. The loaders also apply a degree of semantic normalization to their respective source data, decreasing semantic heterogeneity. The schema supports the following bioinformatics datatypes: chemical compounds, biochemical reactions, metabolic pathways, proteins, genes, nucleic acid sequences, features on protein and nucleic-acid sequences, organisms, organism taxonomies, and controlled vocabularies. As an application example, we applied BioWarehouse to determine the fraction of biochemically characterized enzyme activities for which no sequences exist in the public sequence databases. The answer is that no sequence exists for 36% of enzyme activities for which EC numbers have been assigned. These gaps in sequence data significantly limit the accuracy of genome annotation and metabolic pathway prediction, and are a barrier for metabolic engineering. Complex queries of this type provide examples of the value of the data warehousing approach to bioinformatics research. BioWarehouse embodies significant progress on the database integration problem for bioinformatics.

Predicting Receptive-Expressive Vocabulary Discrepancies in Preschool Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder.

PubMed

McDaniel, Jena; Yoder, Paul; Woynaroski, Tiffany; Watson, Linda R

2018-05-15

Correlates of receptive-expressive vocabulary size discrepancies may provide insights into why language development in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) deviates from typical language development and ultimately improve intervention outcomes. We indexed receptive-expressive vocabulary size discrepancies of 65 initially preverbal children with ASD (20-48 months) to a comparison sample from the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories Wordbank (Frank, Braginsky, Yurovsky, & Marchman, 2017) to quantify typicality. We then tested whether attention toward a speaker and oral motor performance predict typicality of the discrepancy 8 months later. Attention toward a speaker correlated positively with receptive-expressive vocabulary size discrepancy typicality. Imitative and nonimitative oral motor performance were not significant predictors of vocabulary size discrepancy typicality. Secondary analyses indicated that midpoint receptive vocabulary size mediated the association between initial attention toward a speaker and end point receptive-expressive vocabulary size discrepancy typicality. Findings support the hypothesis that variation in attention toward a speaker might partially explain receptive-expressive vocabulary size discrepancy magnitude in children with ASD. Results are consistent with an input-processing deficit explanation of language impairment in this clinical population. Future studies should test whether attention toward a speaker is malleable and causally related to receptive-expressive discrepancies in children with ASD.

Shared etiology of phonological memory and vocabulary deficits in school-age children.

PubMed

Peterson, Robin L; Pennington, Bruce F; Samuelsson, Stefan; Byrne, Brian; Olson, Richard K

2013-08-01

The goal of this study was to investigate the etiologic basis for the association between deficits in phonological memory (PM) and vocabulary in school-age children. Children with deficits in PM or vocabulary were identified within the International Longitudinal Twin Study (ILTS; Samuelsson et al., 2005). The ILTS includes 1,045 twin pairs (between the ages of 5 and 8 years) from the United States, Australia, and Scandinavia. The authors applied the DeFries-Fulker ( DeFries & Fulker, 1985, 1988) regression method to determine whether problems in PM and vocabulary tend to co-occur because of overlapping genes, overlapping environmental risk factors, or both. Among children with isolated PM deficits, the authors found significant bivariate heritability of PM and vocabulary weaknesses both within and across time. However, when probands were selected for a vocabulary deficit, there was no evidence for bivariate heritability. In this case, it appears that the PM-vocabulary relationship is caused by common shared environmental experiences. The findings are consistent with previous research on the heritability of specific language impairment and suggest that there are etiologic subgroups of children with low vocabulary for different reasons, 1 being more influenced by genes and another being more influenced by environment.

Longitudinal analysis of receptive vocabulary growth in young Spanish English-speaking children from migrant families.

PubMed

Jackson, Carla Wood; Schatschneider, Christopher; Leacox, Lindsey

2014-01-01

The authors of this study described developmental trajectories and predicted kindergarten performance of Spanish and English receptive vocabulary acquisition of young Latino/a English language learners (ELLs) from socioeconomically disadvantaged migrant families. In addition, the authors examined the extent to which gender and individual initial performance in Spanish predict receptive vocabulary performance and growth rate. The authors used hierarchical linear modeling of 64 children's receptive vocabulary performance to generate growth trajectories, predict performance at school entry, and examine potential predictors of rate of growth. The timing of testing varied across children. The ELLs (prekindergarten to 2nd grade) participated in 2-5 testing sessions, each 6-12 months apart. The ELLs' average predicted standard score on an English receptive vocabulary at kindergarten was nearly 2 SDs below the mean for monolingual peers. Significant growth in the ELLs' receptive vocabulary was observed between preschool and 2nd grade, indicating that the ELLs were slowly closing the receptive vocabulary gap, although their average score remained below the standard score mean for age-matched monolingual peers. The ELLs demonstrated a significant decrease in Spanish receptive vocabulary standard scores over time. Initial Spanish receptive vocabulary was a significant predictor of growth in English receptive vocabulary. High initial Spanish receptive vocabulary was associated with greater growth in English receptive vocabulary and decelerated growth in Spanish receptive vocabulary. Gender was not a significant predictor of growth in either English or Spanish receptive vocabulary. ELLs from low socioeconomic backgrounds may be expected to perform lower in English compared with their monolingual English peers in kindergarten. Performance in Spanish at school entry may be useful in identifying children who require more intensive instructional support for English vocabulary

Pictures and Words: Spanish and English Vocabulary in Classrooms

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Branum-Martin, Lee; Mehta, Paras D.; Francis, David J.; Foorman, Barbara R.; Cirino, Paul T.; Miller, Jon F.; Iglesias, Aquiles

2009-01-01

The current study evaluated the relation between Spanish and English vocabulary. Whereas previously reported correlations have revealed strong differences among types of vocabulary measures used and the ages of the students tested, no prior study had used a multilevel model to control for classroom-level differences. The current study used…

Contextual Clues Vocabulary Strategies Choice among Business Management Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ahmad, Siti Nurshafezan; Muhammad, Ahmad Mazli; Kasim, Aini Mohd

2018-01-01

New trends in vocabulary learning focus on strategic vocabulary learning to create more active and independent language learners. Utilising suitable contextual clues strategies is seen as vital in enabling and equipping language learners with the skill to guess word meaning accurately, moving away from dependency on a dictionary to improve their…

The Effects of English Vocabulary Mastery on Geometry Achievement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rockhold, Jonas

2013-01-01

This study examines socioeconomic status (SES), English language proficiency (ELP), vocabulary proficiency (VP), and math proficiency (MP) of students to determine if SES, as determined by the Free and Reduced Lunch Program (FRL), as well as English language proficiency (ELP) and vocabulary proficiency (VP), as measured by CELLA scale scores and…

Impacts of Vocabulary Acquisition Techniques Instruction on Students' Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Orawiwatnakul, Wiwat

2011-01-01

The objectives of this study were to determine how the selected vocabulary acquisition techniques affected the vocabulary ability of 35 students who took EN 111 and investigate their attitudes towards the techniques instruction. The research study was one-group pretest and post-test design. The instruments employed were in-class exercises…

Vocabulary Development during Read-Alouds: Examining the Instructional Sequence

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kindle, Karen J.

2010-01-01

Reading aloud to children is a recommended practice in early childhood and primary-grade classrooms that is purported to enhance vocabulary growth. General guidelines can be found in the literature, but practitioners often rely on conventional wisdom and their own instincts to embed vocabulary instruction into their read-alouds. This paper…

Lexical Coverage of TED Talks: Implications for Vocabulary Instruction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nurmukhamedov, Ulugbek

2017-01-01

Teachers of English are often in search of authentic audio and video materials that promote learners' listening comprehension and vocabulary development. TED Talks, a set of freely available web presentations, could be a useful resource to promote vocabulary instruction. The present replication study examines the lexical coverage of TED Talks by…

A culturally and linguistically responsive vocabulary approach for young Latino dual language learners.

PubMed

Méndez, Lucía I; Crais, Elizabeth R; Castro, Dina C; Kainz, Kirsten

2015-02-01

This study examined the role of the language of vocabulary instruction in promoting English vocabulary in preschool Latino dual language learners (DLLs). The authors compared the effectiveness of delivering a single evidence-informed vocabulary approach using English as the language of vocabulary instruction (English culturally responsive [ECR]) versus using a bilingual modality that strategically combined Spanish and English (culturally and linguistically responsive [CLR]). Forty-two DLL Spanish-speaking preschoolers were randomly assigned to the ECR group (n=22) or CLR group (n=20). Thirty English words were presented during small-group shared readings in their preschools 3 times a week for 5 weeks. Multilevel models were used to examine group differences in postinstruction scores on 2 Spanish and 2 English vocabulary assessments at instruction end and follow-up. Children receiving instruction in the CLR bilingual modality had significantly higher posttest scores (than those receiving the ECR English-only instruction) on Spanish and English vocabulary assessments at instruction end and on the Spanish vocabulary assessment at follow-up, even after controlling for preinstruction scores. The results provide additional evidence of the benefits of strategically combining the first and second language to promote English and Spanish vocabulary development in this population. Future directions for research and clinical applications are discussed.

RARGE II: an integrated phenotype database of Arabidopsis mutant traits using a controlled vocabulary.

PubMed

Akiyama, Kenji; Kurotani, Atsushi; Iida, Kei; Kuromori, Takashi; Shinozaki, Kazuo; Sakurai, Tetsuya

2014-01-01

Arabidopsis thaliana is one of the most popular experimental plants. However, only 40% of its genes have at least one experimental Gene Ontology (GO) annotation assigned. Systematic observation of mutant phenotypes is an important technique for elucidating gene functions. Indeed, several large-scale phenotypic analyses have been performed and have generated phenotypic data sets from many Arabidopsis mutant lines and overexpressing lines, which are freely available online. Since each Arabidopsis mutant line database uses individual phenotype expression, the differences in the structured term sets used by each database make it difficult to compare data sets and make it impossible to search across databases. Therefore, we obtained publicly available information for a total of 66,209 Arabidopsis mutant lines, including loss-of-function (RATM and TARAPPER) and gain-of-function (AtFOX and OsFOX) lines, and integrated the phenotype data by mapping the descriptions onto Plant Ontology (PO) and Phenotypic Quality Ontology (PATO) terms. This approach made it possible to manage the four different phenotype databases as one large data set. Here, we report a publicly accessible web-based database, the RIKEN Arabidopsis Genome Encyclopedia II (RARGE II; http://rarge-v2.psc.riken.jp/), in which all of the data described in this study are included. Using the database, we demonstrated consistency (in terms of protein function) with a previous study and identified the presumed function of an unknown gene. We provide examples of AT1G21600, which is a subunit in the plastid-encoded RNA polymerase complex, and AT5G56980, which is related to the jasmonic acid signaling pathway.

Vocabulary Facilitates Speech Perception in Children With Hearing Aids

PubMed Central

Walker, Elizabeth A.; Kirby, Benjamin; McCreery, Ryan W.

2017-01-01

Purpose We examined the effects of vocabulary, lexical characteristics (age of acquisition and phonotactic probability), and auditory access (aided audibility and daily hearing aid [HA] use) on speech perception skills in children with HAs. Method Participants included 24 children with HAs and 25 children with normal hearing (NH), ages 5–12 years. Groups were matched on age, expressive and receptive vocabulary, articulation, and nonverbal working memory. Participants repeated monosyllabic words and nonwords in noise. Stimuli varied on age of acquisition, lexical frequency, and phonotactic probability. Performance in each condition was measured by the signal-to-noise ratio at which the child could accurately repeat 50% of the stimuli. Results Children from both groups with larger vocabularies showed better performance than children with smaller vocabularies on nonwords and late-acquired words but not early-acquired words. Overall, children with HAs showed poorer performance than children with NH. Auditory access was not associated with speech perception for the children with HAs. Conclusions Children with HAs show deficits in sensitivity to phonological structure but appear to take advantage of vocabulary skills to support speech perception in the same way as children with NH. Further investigation is needed to understand the causes of the gap that exists between the overall speech perception abilities of children with HAs and children with NH. PMID:28738138

Vocabulary for Healthcare Personnel.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Falagrady, Teresa

Developed by educators from the Emily Griffith Opportunity School, this teacher's guide presents a course in health care vocabulary for secretaries, medical records personnel, laboratory assistants, shipping personnel, and patient relations personnel in health care facilities. The course, which should require 10-14 hours of instruction, contains…

Effects of bilingualism on vocabulary, executive functions, age of dementia onset, and regional brain structure.

PubMed

Gasquoine, Philip Gerard

2016-11-01

To review the current literature on the effects of bilingualism on vocabulary, executive functions, age of dementia onset, and regional brain structure. PubMed and PsycINFO databases were searched (from January 1999 to present) for relevant original research and review articles on bilingualism (but not multilingualism) paired with each target neuropsychological variable published in English. A qualitative review of these articles was conducted. It has long been known that mean scores of bilinguals fall below those of monolinguals on vocabulary and other language, but not visual-perceptual, format cognitive tests. Contemporary studies that have reported higher mean scores for bilinguals than monolinguals on executive function task-switching or inhibition tasks have not always been replicated, leading to concerns of publication bias, statistical flaws, and failures to match groups on potentially confounding variables. Studies suggesting the onset of Alzheimer's disease occurred about 4 years later for bilinguals versus monolinguals have not been confirmed in longitudinal, cohort, community-based, incidence studies that have used neuropsychological testing and diagnostic criteria to establish an age of dementia diagnosis. Neuroimaging studies of regional gray and white matter volume in bilinguals versus monolinguals show inconsistencies in terms of both the regions of difference and the nature of the difference. Resolving inconsistencies in the behavioral data is necessary before searching in the brain for neuroanatomical correlation. Comparisons of balanced versus language-dominant groups within the same ethnoculture combined with objective measurement of bilingualism could better match groups on potentially confounding variables. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Morphological Awareness Intervention: Improving Spelling, Vocabulary, and Reading Comprehension for Adult Learners.

PubMed

Bangs, Kathryn E; Binder, Katherine S

2016-01-01

Adult Basic Education programs are under pressure to develop and deliver instruction that promotes rapid and sustained literacy development. We describe a novel approach to a literacy intervention that focuses on morphemes, which are the smallest meaningful units contained in words. We argue that if you teach learners that big words are comprised of smaller components (i.e., morphemes), you will provide those students with the skills to figure out the meanings of new words. Research with children has demonstrated that teaching them about morphemes improves word recognition, spelling, vocabulary, and comprehension (Bowers & Kirby, 2009; Kirk & Gillon, 2009; Nunes, Bryant, & Olsson, 2003). Our hope is that this type of intervention will be successful with adult learners, too.

Spelling Ability in College Students Predicted by Decoding, Print Exposure, and Vocabulary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ocal, Turkan; Ehri, Linnea

2017-01-01

This study examines students' exposure to print, vocabulary and decoding as predictors of spelling skills. Participants were 42 college students (Mean age 22.5, SD = 7.87; 31 females and 11 males). Hierarchical regression analyses showed that most of the variance in spelling was explained by vocabulary knowledge. When vocabulary was entered first…

The Effect of Group Work on English Vocabulary Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lin, Su-Fei

2018-01-01

This study investigated the effectiveness of group work (GW) in EFL vocabulary learning by second year, non-English major, university students in Taiwan, in comparison with working individually (IW). The students (N = 44) worked in mixed ability groups of 3-4 or in IW to complete vocabulary exercises following reading activities. The classroom…

Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition. The Cambridge Applied Linguistics Series.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Coady, James, Ed.; Huckin, Thomas, Ed.

A collection of essays on second language vocabulary learning includes: "Historical Trends in Second Language Vocabulary Instruction" (Cheryl Boyd Zimmerman); "The Lexical Plight in Second Language Reading: Words You Don't Know, Words You Think You Know, and Words You Can't Guess" (Batia Laufer); "Orthographic Knowledge in L2 Lexical Processing: A…

Exploring Vocabulary Learning Strategies Used by UPM TESL Undergraduates

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Safian, Nur Hanisah; Malakar, Sharmila; Kalajahi, Seyed Ali Rezvani

2014-01-01

Vocabulary learning is one of the most challenging factors that learners will face during the process of second language learning. The main pursuit of the present study was to investigate the vocabulary language strategies among Malaysian ESL students majoring in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) at University Putra Malaysia. There are…

Service Learning: Flooding Students with Vocabulary through Read Alouds

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Holmes, Kerry; Thompson, Judith

2014-01-01

In the spirit of the Steven Stahl 600 Book Kid Challenge, 90 preservice teachers engaged children in 36 read-aloud sessions for a vocabulary improvement service learning project. This article describes how the preservice teachers used narrative and informational books as a vehicle for rare-word vocabulary exposure for children ages 8-12.

Transformation of Traditional Vocabulary Exercises into Collaborative Writing Activity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zheng, Jian-feng

2010-01-01

In the reading course, especially the so-called intensive reading course or integrative English reading course, there are some vocabulary exercises which intend to consolidate the active vocabulary emerging in the reading passages. Mostly, these exercises are in the form of blank-filling or rewriting sentences with the words given. The problem…

Vocabulary Knowledge Predicts Lexical Processing: Evidence from a Group of Participants with Diverse Educational Backgrounds

PubMed Central

Mainz, Nina; Shao, Zeshu; Brysbaert, Marc; Meyer, Antje S.

2017-01-01

Vocabulary knowledge is central to a speaker's command of their language. In previous research, greater vocabulary knowledge has been associated with advantages in language processing. In this study, we examined the relationship between individual differences in vocabulary and language processing performance more closely by (i) using a battery of vocabulary tests instead of just one test, and (ii) testing not only university students (Experiment 1) but young adults from a broader range of educational backgrounds (Experiment 2). Five vocabulary tests were developed, including multiple-choice and open antonym and synonym tests and a definition test, and administered together with two established measures of vocabulary. Language processing performance was measured using a lexical decision task. In Experiment 1, vocabulary and word frequency were found to predict word recognition speed while we did not observe an interaction between the effects. In Experiment 2, word recognition performance was predicted by word frequency and the interaction between word frequency and vocabulary, with high-vocabulary individuals showing smaller frequency effects. While overall the individual vocabulary tests were correlated and showed similar relationships with language processing as compared to a composite measure of all tests, they appeared to share less variance in Experiment 2 than in Experiment 1. Implications of our findings concerning the assessment of vocabulary size in individual differences studies and the investigation of individuals from more varied backgrounds are discussed. PMID:28751871

Feasibility and utility of applications of the common data model to multiple, disparate observational health databases.

PubMed

Voss, Erica A; Makadia, Rupa; Matcho, Amy; Ma, Qianli; Knoll, Chris; Schuemie, Martijn; DeFalco, Frank J; Londhe, Ajit; Zhu, Vivienne; Ryan, Patrick B

2015-05-01

To evaluate the utility of applying the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP) Common Data Model (CDM) across multiple observational databases within an organization and to apply standardized analytics tools for conducting observational research. Six deidentified patient-level datasets were transformed to the OMOP CDM. We evaluated the extent of information loss that occurred through the standardization process. We developed a standardized analytic tool to replicate the cohort construction process from a published epidemiology protocol and applied the analysis to all 6 databases to assess time-to-execution and comparability of results. Transformation to the CDM resulted in minimal information loss across all 6 databases. Patients and observations excluded were due to identified data quality issues in the source system, 96% to 99% of condition records and 90% to 99% of drug records were successfully mapped into the CDM using the standard vocabulary. The full cohort replication and descriptive baseline summary was executed for 2 cohorts in 6 databases in less than 1 hour. The standardization process improved data quality, increased efficiency, and facilitated cross-database comparisons to support a more systematic approach to observational research. Comparisons across data sources showed consistency in the impact of inclusion criteria, using the protocol and identified differences in patient characteristics and coding practices across databases. Standardizing data structure (through a CDM), content (through a standard vocabulary with source code mappings), and analytics can enable an institution to apply a network-based approach to observational research across multiple, disparate observational health databases. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association.

Effects of coaching on educators' vocabulary-teaching strategies during shared reading.

PubMed

Namasivayam, Ashwini M; Hipfner-Boucher, Kathy; Milburn, Trelani; Weitzman, Elaine; Greenberg, Janice; Pelletier, Janette; Girolametto, Luigi

2015-01-01

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether an emergent literacy professional development program enhanced educators' use of vocabulary-teaching strategies during shared reading with small groups of pre-schoolers. Thirty-two pre-school educators and small groups of pre-schoolers from their classrooms were randomly assigned to experimental or comparison groups. The 15 educators in the experimental group received four in-service workshops as well as five individualized classroom coaching sessions. The comparison group received only the workshops. Each educator was video-recorded reading a storybook to a small group of pre-schoolers at pre-test and post-test. The videos were transcribed and coded to yield measures of the vocabulary-teaching strategies and children's vocabulary-related talk. The findings revealed that the children in the experimental group engaged in significantly more vocabulary-related talk relative to the comparison group. A non-significant trend in the data indicated that educators in the experimental group used more vocabulary-teaching strategies at post-test. The educators' familiarity with children's authors and book titles at pre-test was a significant predictor of their outcomes. These findings suggest that an emergent literacy professional development program that includes coaching can enhance children's participation in vocabulary-related conversations with their educators.

Controlled Vocabularies and Ontologies for Oceanographic Data: The R2R Eventlogger Project

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Coburn, E.; Maffei, A. R.; Chandler, C. L.; Raymond, L. M.

2012-12-01

Research vessels coordinated by the United States University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System (US-UNOLS) collect data which is considered an important oceanographic resource. The NSF-funded Rolling Deck to Repository (R2R) project aims to improve access to this data and diminish the barriers to use. One aspect of the R2R project has been to develop a shipboard scientific event logging system, Eventlogger, that incorporates best practice guidelines, controlled vocabularies, a cruise metadata schema, and a scientific event log. This will facilitate the eventual ingestion of datasets into oceanographic data repositories for subsequent integration and synthesis by investigators. One important aspect of this system is the careful use of controlled vocabularies and ontologies. Existing ontologies, where available, will be used and others will be developed. The use of internationally-informed, consensus-driven controlled vocabularies will make datasets more interoperable, and discoverable. The R2R Eventlogger project is led by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), and the management of the controlled vocabularies and mapping of these vocabularies to authoritative community vocabularies are led by the Data Librarian in the Marine Biological Laboratory/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (MBLWHOI) Library. The first target vocabulary is oceanographic instruments. Management of this vocabulary has thus far consisted of reconciling local community terms with the more widely used SeaDataNet Device Vocabulary terms. Rather than adopt existing terms, often the local terms are mapped by data managers in the NSF-funded Biological and Chemical Oceanographic Data Management Office (BCO-DMO) to the existing terms as they are given by investigators and often provide important information and meaning. New terms (often custom, or modified instruments) are submitted for review to the SeaDataNet community listserv for discussion and eventual incorporation into the Device

Some Techniques for Teaching Vocabulary. ERIC Focus Reports on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, Number 27.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Michel, Joseph; Patin, Paul

Discussion of techniques for teaching vocabulary in language programs centers on five major areas: (1) "knowing" the word, (2) selection of vocabulary, (3) grading vocabulary for presentation, (4) teaching methods, and (5) vocabulary expansion in advanced levels. Theory of vocabulary instruction is largely supported by writings of Nelson Brooks,…

Multimedia explorer: image database, image proxy-server and search-engine.

PubMed

Frankewitsch, T; Prokosch, U

1999-01-01

Multimedia plays a major role in medicine. Databases containing images, movies or other types of multimedia objects are increasing in number, especially on the WWW. However, no good retrieval mechanism or search engine currently exists to efficiently track down such multimedia sources in the vast of information provided by the WWW. Secondly, the tools for searching databases are usually not adapted to the properties of images. HTML pages do not allow complex searches. Therefore establishing a more comfortable retrieval involves the use of a higher programming level like JAVA. With this platform independent language it is possible to create extensions to commonly used web browsers. These applets offer a graphical user interface for high level navigation. We implemented a database using JAVA objects as the primary storage container which are then stored by a JAVA controlled ORACLE8 database. Navigation depends on a structured vocabulary enhanced by a semantic network. With this approach multimedia objects can be encapsulated within a logical module for quick data retrieval.

Managing Vocabulary Mapping Services

PubMed Central

Che, Chengjian; Monson, Kent; Poon, Kasey B.; Shakib, Shaun C.; Lau, Lee Min

2005-01-01

The efficient management and maintenance of large-scale and high-quality vocabulary mapping is an operational challenge. The 3M Health Information Systems (HIS) Healthcare Data Dictionary (HDD) group developed an information management system to provide controlled mapping services, resulting in improved efficiency and quality maintenance. PMID:16779203

VOCABULARY GUIDE OF COGNATE WORDS IN SPANISH AND ENGLISH.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

KRIPPNER, STANLEY

A VOCABULARY GUIDE OF COGNATE WORDS IN ENGLISH AND SPANISH IS PRESENTED. THE VALUE OF THE GUIDE RESTS ON THE ASSUMPTIONS THAT THE LEARNING OF SIMILAR WORDS IN BOTH LANGUAGES COULD CHANGE SPANISH-SPEAKING AMERICAN PUPILS' NEGATIVE ATTITUDE ABOUT ENGLISH AS WELL AS INCREASE THEIR VOCABULARY. WORDS IN THE "VELAZQUEZ SPANISH AND ENGLISH DICTIONARY" OF…

Effect of Strategy Training on Vocabulary in EFL Contexts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ostovar-Namaghi, Seyd Ali; Rajaee, Mehdi

2013-01-01

Sixty Iranian high school EFL learners between 14 and 16 males participated in this study were randomly divided into two groups; experimental, and control. As the study aimed to know whether vocabulary strategy training effects on vocabulary learning of Iranian students, at first the control and experimental group were given a writing per-test…

An English Vocabulary Learning System Based on Fuzzy Theory and Memory Cycle

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, Tzone I.; Chiu, Ti Kai; Huang, Liang Jun; Fu, Ru Xuan; Hsieh, Tung-Cheng

This paper proposes an English Vocabulary Learning System based on the Fuzzy Theory and the Memory Cycle Theory to help a learner to memorize vocabularies easily. By using fuzzy inferences and personal memory cycles, it is possible to find an article that best suits a learner. After reading an article, a quiz is provided for the learner to improve his/her memory of the vocabulary in the article. Early researches use just explicit response (ex. quiz exam) to update memory cycles of newly learned vocabulary; apart from that approach, this paper proposes a methodology that also modify implicitly the memory cycles of learned word. By intensive reading of articles recommended by our approach, a learner learns new words quickly and reviews learned words implicitly as well, and by which the vocabulary ability of the learner improves efficiently.

A Systematic Review of the Research on Vocabulary Instruction That Impacts Text Comprehension

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wright, Tanya S.; Cervetti, Gina N.

2017-01-01

Although numerous studies have identified a correlational relationship between vocabulary and comprehension, we know less about vocabulary interventions that impact reading comprehension. Therefore, this study is a systematic review of vocabulary interventions with comprehension outcomes. Analyses of 36 studies that met criteria are organized…

RIDEing Vocabulary: Using Etienne Wenger's Community of Practice Theory to Master Word Use

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schiera, Rachel

2016-01-01

Students' success in vocabulary learning is best gauged by authentic use of the targeted vocabulary in conversation and writing tasks. A vocabulary teaching approach that emphasizes meaningful repetition, relationship building, and concrete experiences encourages language development. This article explores a multi-age, multi-grade learning…

Counting ability in Down syndrome: The comprehension of the one-to-one correspondence principle and the role of receptive vocabulary.

PubMed

Abreu-Mendoza, Roberto A; Arias-Trejo, Natalia

2017-10-01

The authors investigated whether children with Down's syndrome (DS) who have not started to produce number words understand the one-to-one correspondence principle (Experiment 1), and they looked at the relationship between number word knowledge and receptive vocabulary (Experiment 2). Sixteen children with DS who did not recite the count list participated in Experiment 1, along with 2 comparison groups: 1 of 16 children with DS who recited up to 10, paired by chronological age, and another of 16 typically developing children paired by their ability to recite the list. The understanding of the principle was evaluated by a preferential looking task. Children saw 1 of 2 conditions. In the number condition, they heard number words and in the beep condition they heard computerized beeps. In both conditions, children saw videos depicting counting events that were principle-consistent or principle-inconsistent. Experiment 2 evaluated 25 children with DS using the Give-a-Number task and the Receptive Vocabulary subtest of the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence-III. In Experiment 1, children in the number condition preferred principle-consistent videos, independent of their ability to recite the count list. Experiment 2 showed a strong correlation between number word knowledge and receptive vocabulary scores, independent of chronological age. The results suggest that the difficulty of children with DS in acquiring counting ability might not reflect a lack of understanding of the one-to-one correspondence principle, but might instead be related to vocabulary development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Validity of a parent vocabulary checklist for young Spanish speaking children of Mexican immigrants.

PubMed

Guiberson, Mark

2008-01-01

The primary objective of the current investigation was to examine the concurrent and predictive validity of a parent vocabulary checklist with young Spanish speaking children of Mexican immigrants. This study implemented a longitudinal approach. Nineteen families participated when children were 15-16 months of age, and then again at 30-32 months of age. The Spanish version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory (Inventarios del Desarrollo de Habilidades Communicativas, INV) and spontaneous language samples collected during naturalistic play were used to examine the relationship between observed and reported vocabulary. Vocabulary reported through the INV-II and vocabulary observed at 30-32 months were significantly correlated, suggesting that the INV-II captures a valid representation of vocabulary at this age. Comparatively, vocabulary reported on the INV-I, was not correlated with observed vocabulary at 15-16 months of age or reported or observed vocabulary at 30-32 months of age. These results suggest that the INV-I, when used with 14-16-month-olds, demonstrates limited concurrent and predictive validity. Implications for the clinical use of the INV-I and INV-II are presented.

Event-related potentials during word mapping to object shape predict toddlers' vocabulary size

PubMed Central

Borgström, Kristina; Torkildsen, Janne von Koss; Lindgren, Magnus

2015-01-01

What role does attention to different object properties play in early vocabulary development? This longitudinal study using event-related potentials in combination with behavioral measures investigated 20- and 24-month-olds' (n = 38; n = 34; overlapping n = 24) ability to use object shape and object part information in word-object mapping. The N400 component was used to measure semantic priming by images containing shape or detail information. At 20 months, the N400 to words primed by object shape varied in topography and amplitude depending on vocabulary size, and these differences predicted productive vocabulary size at 24 months. At 24 months, when most of the children had vocabularies of several hundred words, the relation between vocabulary size and the N400 effect in a shape context was weaker. Detached object parts did not function as word primes regardless of age or vocabulary size, although the part-objects were identified behaviorally. The behavioral measure, however, also showed relatively poor recognition of the part-objects compared to the shape-objects. These three findings provide new support for the link between shape recognition and early vocabulary development. PMID:25762957

Tracing children's vocabulary development from preschool through the school-age years: An 8-year longitudinal study

PubMed Central

Kang, Cuiping; Liu, Hongyun; Zhang, Yuping; McBride-Chang, Catherine; Tardif, Twila; Li, Hong; Liang, Weilan; Zhang, Zhixiang; Shu, Hua

2014-01-01

In this 8-year longitudinal study, we traced the vocabulary growth of Chinese children, explored potential precursors of vocabulary knowledge, and investigated how vocabulary growth predicted future reading skills. Two hundred sixty-four (264) native Chinese children from Beijing were measured on a variety of reading and language tasks over 8 years. Between the ages of 4 to 10 years, they were administered tasks of vocabulary and related cognitive skills. At age 11, comprehensive reading skills, including character recognition, reading fluency, and reading comprehension were examined. Individual differences in vocabulary developmental profiles were estimated using the intercept-slope cluster method. Vocabulary development was then examined in relation to later reading outcomes. Three subgroups of lexical growth were classified, namely high-high (with a large initial vocabulary size and a fast growth rate), low-high (with a small initial vocabulary size and a fast growth rate) and low-low (with a small initial vocabulary size and a slow growth rate) groups. Low-high and low-low groups were distinguishable mostly through phonological skills, morphological skills and other reading-related cognitive skills. Childhood vocabulary development (using intercept and slope) explained subsequent reading skills. Findings suggest that language-related and reading-related cognitive skills differ among groups with different developmental trajectories of vocabulary, and the initial size and growth rate of vocabulary may be two predictors for later reading development. PMID:24962559

In the Media: Expanding Students' Experience with Academic Vocabulary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McKeown, Margaret G.; Crosson, Amy C.; Artz, Nancy J.; Sandora, Cheryl; Beck, Isabel L.

2013-01-01

How can we supplement the limited time available for vocabulary instruction while motivating students to attend to the words they are learning? As a part of an academic word vocabulary intervention, we challenged sixth-grade students to find their words in the world around them. This activity, In the Media, garnered responses from 51 of the 61…

Shyness, Vocabulary and Children's Reticence in Saudi Arabian Preschools

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Crozier, W. Ray; Badawood, Asma

2009-01-01

The aims of the present study are to examine whether preschool children's scores on a standardized test of vocabulary mediate or moderate the relation between shyness and reticence and to test whether any influence of vocabulary would be found for both teacher and parent assessments of shyness. Participants were 108 children (50 males), mean age,…

Successful Techniques of Vocabulary. ERIC Topical Bibliography and Commentary.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Smith, Carl B., Ed.

Each teacher has a style of teaching that provides the most effective way to help students grasp the desired learning concepts. One point teachers agree on is that teaching vocabulary to children needs to be an active process that engages students in entertaining activities and helps them build a bridge between already known vocabulary and the new…

Reading for Pleasure and Progress in Vocabulary and Mathematics

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sullivan, Alice; Brown, Matt

2015-01-01

This paper examines inequalities in attainment in vocabulary and mathematics at age 16 for a nationally representative cohort of people born in Britain in 1970 (the 1970 British Cohort Study). Our analytical sample is n = 3,583 cohort members who completed vocabulary and mathematics tests at age 16. We explore whether inequalities as a result of…

The Keyword Method of Vocabulary Acquisition: An Experimental Evaluation.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Griffith, Douglas

The keyword method of vocabulary acquisition is a two-step mnemonic technique for learning vocabulary terms. The first step, the acoustic link, generates a keyword based on the sound of the foreign word. The second step, the imagery link, ties the keyword to the meaning of the item to be learned, via an interactive visual image or other…

Vocabulary Acquisition in L2: Does CALL Really Help?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Averianova, Irina

2015-01-01

Language competence in various communicative activities in L2 largely depends on the learners' size of vocabulary. The target vocabulary of adult L2 learners should be between 2,000 high frequency words (a critical threshold) and 10,000 word families (for comprehension of university texts). For a TOEIC test, the threshold is estimated to be…

Building Vocabulary for Language Learning: Approach for ESL Learners to Study New Vocabulary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alharbi, Adel M.

2015-01-01

This project investigated Vocabulary Learning Strategies (VLSs) English Language Learners used; and strategies they thought were effective to them in terms of language proficiency. Using an online survey, 121 participants responded to statements regarding their usage of VLSs. Participants have been divided into two groups: (1) learners with low…

Students' Perceptions of Vocabulary Knowledge and Learning in a Middle School Science Classroom

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brown, Patrick L.; Concannon, James P.

2016-01-01

This study investigated eighth-grade science students' (13-14-year-olds) perceptions of their vocabulary knowledge, learning, and content achievement. Data sources included pre- and posttest of students' perceptions of vocabulary knowledge, students' perceptions of vocabulary and reading strategies surveys, and a content achievement test.…

Examining Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition by Person-and Item-Level Factors in Secondary Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cooper, Jennifer LeeAnn

2016-01-01

Vocabulary knowledge is central to the process of reading comprehension (Cromely & Azevedo, 2007; Stahl & Nagy, 2005; Stanovich, 1986). The majority of our vocabulary knowledge is postulated to come from the process of incidental vocabulary acquisition (IVA) while reading (Nagy & Anderson, 1984). Prior studies have estimated an average…

What Can Errors Tell Us about Differences between Monolingual and Bilingual Vocabulary Learning?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kaushanskaya, Margarita

2018-01-01

Error patterns in vocabulary learning data were used as a window into the mechanisms that underlie vocabulary learning performance in bilinguals vs. monolinguals. English--Spanish bilinguals (n = 18) and English-speaking monolinguals (n = 18) were taught novel vocabulary items in association with English translations. At testing, participants…

Sibship size, sibling cognitive sensitivity, and children's receptive vocabulary.

PubMed

Prime, Heather; Pauker, Sharon; Plamondon, André; Perlman, Michal; Jenkins, Jennifer

2014-02-01

The aim of the current study was to examine the relationship between sibship size and children's vocabulary as a function of quality of sibling interactions. It was hypothesized that coming from a larger sibship (ie, 3+ children) would be related to lower receptive vocabulary in children. However, we expected this association to be moderated by the level of cognitive sensitivity shown by children's next-in-age older siblings. Data on 385 children (mean age = 3.15 years) and their next-in-age older siblings (mean age = 5.57 years) were collected and included demographic questionnaires, direct testing of children's receptive vocabulary, and videos of mother-child and sibling interactions. Sibling dyads were taped engaging in a cooperative building task and tapes were coded for the amount of cognitive sensitivity the older sibling exhibited toward the younger sibling. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted and showed an interaction between sibship size and sibling cognitive sensitivity in the prediction of children's receptive vocabulary; children exposed to large sibships whose next-in-age older sibling exhibited higher levels of cognitive sensitivity were less likely to show low vocabulary skills when compared with those children exposed to large sibships whose siblings showed lower levels of cognitive sensitivity. Children who show sensitivity to the cognitive needs of their younger siblings provide a rich environment for language development. The negative impact of large sibships on language development is moderated by the presence of an older sibling who shows high cognitive sensitivity.

Technology-Mediated Second Language Vocabulary Development: A Review of Trends in Research Methodology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Elgort, Irina

2018-01-01

Technology-mediated vocabulary development (TMVD) in a second language (L2) covers a wide range of instructional and learning treatments, contexts, and technologies and is situated in a broader field of second language vocabulary learning. Vocabulary knowledge is a complex, multidimensional construct that has been interpreted and categorized in…

Vocabulary Acquisition: Curricular and Instructional Implications for Diverse Learners. Technical Report No. 14.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Baker, Scott K.; And Others

A curricular and instructional framework for increasing the vocabulary skills of diverse learners is described. Areas of convergence in research literature on vocabulary learning and diverse learners are noted, and two recommendations based on these areas of convergence are offered: interventions to address the vocabulary delays of diverse…

Comparing productive vocabulary measures from the CDI and a systematic diary study.

PubMed

Robinson, B F; Mervis, C B

1999-02-01

Expressive vocabulary data gathered during a systematic diary study of one male child's early language development are compared to data that would have resulted from longitudinal administration of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories spoken vocabulary checklist (CDI). Comparisons are made for (1) the number of words at monthly intervals (9; 10.15 to 2; 0.15), (2) proportion of words by lexical class (i.e. noun, predicate, closed class, 'other'), (3) growth curves. The CDI underestimates the number of words in the diary study, with the underestimation increasing as vocabulary size increases. The proportion of diary study words appearing on the CDI differed as a function of lexical class. Finally, despite the differences in vocabulary size, logistic curves proved to be the best fitting model to characterize vocabulary development as measured by both the diary study and the CDI. Implications for the longitudinal use of the CDI are discussed.

BioWarehouse: a bioinformatics database warehouse toolkit

PubMed Central

Lee, Thomas J; Pouliot, Yannick; Wagner, Valerie; Gupta, Priyanka; Stringer-Calvert, David WJ; Tenenbaum, Jessica D; Karp, Peter D

2006-01-01

Background This article addresses the problem of interoperation of heterogeneous bioinformatics databases. Results We introduce BioWarehouse, an open source toolkit for constructing bioinformatics database warehouses using the MySQL and Oracle relational database managers. BioWarehouse integrates its component databases into a common representational framework within a single database management system, thus enabling multi-database queries using the Structured Query Language (SQL) but also facilitating a variety of database integration tasks such as comparative analysis and data mining. BioWarehouse currently supports the integration of a pathway-centric set of databases including ENZYME, KEGG, and BioCyc, and in addition the UniProt, GenBank, NCBI Taxonomy, and CMR databases, and the Gene Ontology. Loader tools, written in the C and JAVA languages, parse and load these databases into a relational database schema. The loaders also apply a degree of semantic normalization to their respective source data, decreasing semantic heterogeneity. The schema supports the following bioinformatics datatypes: chemical compounds, biochemical reactions, metabolic pathways, proteins, genes, nucleic acid sequences, features on protein and nucleic-acid sequences, organisms, organism taxonomies, and controlled vocabularies. As an application example, we applied BioWarehouse to determine the fraction of biochemically characterized enzyme activities for which no sequences exist in the public sequence databases. The answer is that no sequence exists for 36% of enzyme activities for which EC numbers have been assigned. These gaps in sequence data significantly limit the accuracy of genome annotation and metabolic pathway prediction, and are a barrier for metabolic engineering. Complex queries of this type provide examples of the value of the data warehousing approach to bioinformatics research. Conclusion BioWarehouse embodies significant progress on the database integration problem for

The Contributions of Phonological and Morphological Awareness to Literacy Skills in the Adult Basic Education Population

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fracasso, Lucille E.; Bangs, Kathryn; Binder, Katherine S.

2016-01-01

The Adult Basic Education (ABE) population consists of a wide range of abilities with needs that may be unique to this set of learners. The purpose of this study was to better understand the relative contributions of phonological decoding and morphological awareness to spelling, vocabulary, and comprehension across a sample of ABE students. In…

Analyses of Receptive and Productive Korean EFL Vocabulary: Computer-Based Vocabulary Learning Program

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kim, Scott Sungki

2013-01-01

The present research study investigated the effects of 8 versions of a computer-based vocabulary learning program on receptive and productive knowledge levels of college students. The participants were 106 male and 103 female Korean EFL students from Kyungsung University and Kwandong University in Korea. Students who participated in versions of…

Factors that Influence Vocabulary Development in Two-Year-Old Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stokes, Stephanie F.; Klee, Thomas

2009-01-01

Background: This research explored the relative impact of demographic, cognitive, behavioural, and psycholinguistic factors on vocabulary development in two-year-old children. Methods: Two hundred and thirty-two children (24-30 months) were tested on expressive and receptive vocabulary, cognitive development, word learning and working memory…

Learning Vocabulary from Television: Does Onscreen Print Have a Role?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Linebarger, Deborah L.; Moses, Annie; Garrity Liebeskind, Kara; McMenamin, Katie

2013-01-01

Vocabulary acquisition associated with watching high-quality educational television has been documented in a number of studies. One lingering question is whether adding strategically placed onscreen print to a program can enhance vocabulary acquisition beyond those effects attributable to viewing educational content alone. The present study was…

A Framework for Explicit Vocabulary Instruction with English Language Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nisbet, Deanna L.; Tindall, Evie R.

2015-01-01

Academic vocabulary development is critical to the success of all learners--particularly English language learners (ELLs). This article presents a framework for integrating explicit academic vocabulary instruction for ELLs into middle school classrooms. The framework embodies five research-based principles and serves as a vehicle for structuring…

Receptive Vocabulary Measures for EFL Costa Rican High School Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Castro-Garcia, Damaris

2017-01-01

The study offers a glimpse of the current situation of foreign language education in the Costa Rican context from the perspective of vocabulary knowledge, particularly passive vocabulary size. Students from two institutions participated: one school implements Content Based Teaching while the other follows traditional, Foreign Language Teaching…

Motivation, strategy, and English as a foreign language vocabulary learning: A structural equation modelling study.

PubMed

Zhang, Yining; Lin, Chin-Hsi; Zhang, Dongbo; Choi, Yunjeong

2017-03-01

In spite of considerable advancements in our understanding of the different factors involved in achieving vocabulary-learning success, the overall pattern and interrelationships of critical factors involved in L2 vocabulary learning - particularly, the mechanisms through which learners regulate their motivation and learning strategies - remain unclear. This study examined L2 vocabulary learning, focusing on the joint influence of different motivational factors and learning strategies on the vocabulary breadth of adolescent learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) in China. The participants were 107 tenth graders (68 females, 39 males) in China. The data were collected via two questionnaires, one assessing students' motivation towards English-vocabulary learning and the other their English vocabulary-learning strategies, along with a test measuring vocabulary breadth. Structural equation modelling (SEM) indicated that learning strategy partially mediated the relationship between motivation (i.e., a composite score of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation) and vocabulary learning. Separate SEM analyses for intrinsic (IM) and extrinsic motivation (EM) revealed that there were significant and positive direct and indirect effects of IM on vocabulary knowledge; and while EM's direct effect over and above that of learning strategies did not achieve significance, its indirect effect was significant and positive. The findings suggest that vocabulary-learning strategies mediate the relationship between motivation and vocabulary knowledge. In addition, IM may have a greater influence on vocabulary learning in foreign-language contexts. © 2016 The British Psychological Society.

Functional Annotation of the Arabidopsis Genome Using Controlled Vocabularies1

PubMed Central

Berardini, Tanya Z.; Mundodi, Suparna; Reiser, Leonore; Huala, Eva; Garcia-Hernandez, Margarita; Zhang, Peifen; Mueller, Lukas A.; Yoon, Jungwoon; Doyle, Aisling; Lander, Gabriel; Moseyko, Nick; Yoo, Danny; Xu, Iris; Zoeckler, Brandon; Montoya, Mary; Miller, Neil; Weems, Dan; Rhee, Seung Y.

2004-01-01

Controlled vocabularies are increasingly used by databases to describe genes and gene products because they facilitate identification of similar genes within an organism or among different organisms. One of The Arabidopsis Information Resource's goals is to associate all Arabidopsis genes with terms developed by the Gene Ontology Consortium that describe the molecular function, biological process, and subcellular location of a gene product. We have also developed terms describing Arabidopsis anatomy and developmental stages and use these to annotate published gene expression data. As of March 2004, we used computational and manual annotation methods to make 85,666 annotations representing 26,624 unique loci. We focus on associating genes to controlled vocabulary terms based on experimental data from the literature and use The Arabidopsis Information Resource-developed PubSearch software to facilitate this process. Each annotation is tagged with a combination of evidence codes, evidence descriptions, and references that provide a robust means to assess data quality. Annotation of all Arabidopsis genes will allow quantitative comparisons between sets of genes derived from sources such as microarray experiments. The Arabidopsis annotation data will also facilitate annotation of newly sequenced plant genomes by using sequence similarity to transfer annotations to homologous genes. In addition, complete and up-to-date annotations will make unknown genes easy to identify and target for experimentation. Here, we describe the process of Arabidopsis functional annotation using a variety of data sources and illustrate several ways in which this information can be accessed and used to infer knowledge about Arabidopsis and other plant species. PMID:15173566

The Effects of Topic Interest on the Vocabulary Retention in Third Grade Students with and without Learning Disabilities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Endo, Yasuko Amy

2010-01-01

This study examines the effects of topic interest on the vocabulary learning and retention in third grade students with and without learning disabilities. All students learned 12 unfamiliar vocabulary words in three different vocabulary learning conditions: High-interest topic vocabulary, low-interest topic vocabulary, and vocabulary words without…

Vocabulary development in Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants and its relationship with speech perception abilities.

PubMed

Chen, Yuan; Wong, Lena L N; Zhu, Shufeng; Xi, Xin

2017-01-01

China has the largest population of children with hearing impairments and cochlear implantation is gaining popularity there. However, the vocabulary development in this population is largely unexplored. This study examined early vocabulary outcomes, factors influencing early vocabulary development and the relationship between speech perception and vocabulary development in Mandarin-speaking children during the first year of cochlear implant use. A battery of vocabulary tests was administered to 80 children before implantation and 3, 6, and 12 months after implantation. Demographic information was obtained to evaluate their relationships with vocabulary outcomes. The Mandarin-speaking children, who received their cochlear implants before 3 years of age, developed vocabulary at a rate faster than that of their same-aged peers with normal hearing. Better pre-implant hearing levels, younger age at implantation, and higher maternal education level contributed to the early vocabulary development. The trajectories of speech perception development highly correlated with those of vocabulary development during 3 to 12 months of CI use. and Implications: These findings imply that the vocabulary development of children implanted before 3 years of age may catch up with that of their hearing peers. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Incidental L2 Vocabulary Acquisition "from" and "while" Reading: An Eye-Tracking Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pellicer-Sánchez, Ana

2016-01-01

Previous studies have shown that reading is an important source of incidental second language (L2) vocabulary acquisition. However, we still do not have a clear picture of what happens when readers encounter unknown words. Combining offline (vocabulary tests) and online (eye-tracking) measures, the incidental acquisition of vocabulary knowledge…

Beyond Breadth: The Contributions of Vocabulary Depth to Reading Comprehension among Skilled Readers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Binder, Katherine S.; Cote, Nicole Gilbert; Lee, Cheryl; Bessette, Emily; Vu, Huong

2017-01-01

This study investigated the relationships among vocabulary breadth, vocabulary depth, reading comprehension, and reading rate among college-aged students. While the relationships of some of these variables have been explored in previous research, the current study's focus on the role of vocabulary depth on the literacy measures within a sample of…

Methods for eliciting, annotating, and analyzing databases for child speech development.

PubMed

Beckman, Mary E; Plummer, Andrew R; Munson, Benjamin; Reidy, Patrick F

2017-09-01

Methods from automatic speech recognition (ASR), such as segmentation and forced alignment, have facilitated the rapid annotation and analysis of very large adult speech databases and databases of caregiver-infant interaction, enabling advances in speech science that were unimaginable just a few decades ago. This paper centers on two main problems that must be addressed in order to have analogous resources for developing and exploiting databases of young children's speech. The first problem is to understand and appreciate the differences between adult and child speech that cause ASR models developed for adult speech to fail when applied to child speech. These differences include the fact that children's vocal tracts are smaller than those of adult males and also changing rapidly in size and shape over the course of development, leading to between-talker variability across age groups that dwarfs the between-talker differences between adult men and women. Moreover, children do not achieve fully adult-like speech motor control until they are young adults, and their vocabularies and phonological proficiency are developing as well, leading to considerably more within-talker variability as well as more between-talker variability. The second problem then is to determine what annotation schemas and analysis techniques can most usefully capture relevant aspects of this variability. Indeed, standard acoustic characterizations applied to child speech reveal that adult-centered annotation schemas fail to capture phenomena such as the emergence of covert contrasts in children's developing phonological systems, while also revealing children's nonuniform progression toward community speech norms as they acquire the phonological systems of their native languages. Both problems point to the need for more basic research into the growth and development of the articulatory system (as well as of the lexicon and phonological system) that is oriented explicitly toward the construction of

Use of controlled vocabularies to improve biomedical information retrieval tasks.

PubMed

Pasche, Emilie; Gobeill, Julien; Vishnyakova, Dina; Ruch, Patrick; Lovis, Christian

2013-01-01

The high heterogeneity of biomedical vocabulary is a major obstacle for information retrieval in large biomedical collections. Therefore, using biomedical controlled vocabularies is crucial for managing these contents. We investigate the impact of query expansion based on controlled vocabularies to improve the effectiveness of two search engines. Our strategy relies on the enrichment of users' queries with additional terms, directly derived from such vocabularies applied to infectious diseases and chemical patents. We observed that query expansion based on pathogen names resulted in improvements of the top-precision of our first search engine, while the normalization of diseases degraded the top-precision. The expansion of chemical entities, which was performed on the second search engine, positively affected the mean average precision. We have shown that query expansion of some types of biomedical entities has a great potential to improve search effectiveness; therefore a fine-tuning of query expansion strategies could help improving the performances of search engines.

Effectiveness of E-TLM in Learning Vocabulary in English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Singaravelu, G.

2011-01-01

The study enlightens the effectiveness of e-TLM in Learning Vocabulary in English at standard VI. Objectives of the study: 1. To find out the problems of conventional TLM in learning vocabulary in English. 2. To find out the significant difference in achievement mean score between the pre test of control group and the post test of control group.…

Validating the Vocabulary Levels Test with Fourth and Fifth Graders to Identify Students At-Risk in Vocabulary Development Using a Quasiexperimental Single Group Design

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dunn, Suzanna

2012-01-01

This quasiexperimental single group design study investigated the validity of the Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) to identify fourth and fifth grade students who are at-risk in vocabulary development. The subjects of the study were 88 fourth and fifth grade students at one elementary school in Washington State. The Group Reading Assessment and…

Semantic Structure in Vocabulary Knowledge Interacts with Lexical and Sentence Processing in Infancy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Borovsky, Arielle; Ellis, Erica M.; Evans, Julia L.; Elman, Jeffrey L.

2016-01-01

Although the size of a child's vocabulary associates with language-processing skills, little is understood regarding how this relation emerges. This investigation asks whether and how the structure of vocabulary knowledge affects language processing in English-learning 24-month-old children (N = 32; 18 F, 14 M). Parental vocabulary report was used…

Effects of Referent Token Variability on L2 Vocabulary Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sommers, Mitchell S.; Barcroft, Joe

2013-01-01

Previous research has demonstrated substantially improved second language (L2) vocabulary learning when spoken word forms are varied using multiple talkers, speaking styles, or speaking rates. In contrast, the present study varied visual representations of referents for target vocabulary. English speakers learned Spanish words in formats of no…

Motivate Students to Engage in Word Study Using Vocabulary Games

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wells, Jenny C.; Narkon, Drue E.

2011-01-01

Vocabulary instruction across the content areas aids reading comprehension, making it time well spent in the classroom. Although students with learning disabilities (LD) need many practice opportunities to learn new words, engaging them in vocabulary instruction may prove challenging. Due to their past difficulties in acquiring reading skills,…

Examining the Underlying Dimensions of Morphological Awareness and Vocabulary Knowledge

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Spencer, Mercedes; Muse, Andrea; Wagner, Richard K.; Foorman, Barbara; Petscher, Yaacov; Schatschneider, Christopher; Tighe, Elizabeth L.; Bishop, M. Denise

2015-01-01

We report results from two studies on the underlying dimensions of morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge in elementary-aged children. In Study 1, 99 fourth-grade students were given multiple measures of morphological awareness and vocabulary. A single factor accounted for individual differences in all morphology and vocabulary…

Models of Vocabulary Acquisition: Direct Tests and Text-Derived Simulations of Vocabulary Growth

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Biemiller, Andrew; Rosenstein, Mark; Sparks, Randall; Landauer, Thomas K.; Foltz, Peter W.

2014-01-01

Determining word meanings that ought to be taught or introduced is important for educators. A sequence for vocabulary growth can be inferred from many sources, including testing children's knowledge of word meanings at various ages, predicting from print frequency, or adult-recalled Age of Acquisition. A new approach, Word Maturity, is based on…

Does the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills Next Assessment Take a "Simple View" of Reading?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Munger, Kristen A.; LoFaro, Stephen A.; Kawryga, Erin A.; Sovocool, Elizabeth A.; Medina, Siani Y.

2014-01-01

This study involved examination of the validity evidence of the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills-Next Edition (DIBELS Next) for a sample of 85 third-and fifth-grade students, in reference to the "simple view" of reading. Tests administered included DIBELS Next, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-IV (PPVT-IV), Group Reading…

Linking Research and Practice: Effective Strategies for Teaching Vocabulary in the ESL Classroom

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nam, Jihyun

2010-01-01

Vocabulary plays a pivotal role in the ESL classroom. Whereas a considerable amount of research has examined effective ESL vocabulary teaching and learning, missing are studies that provide examples of how to put various research findings into practice: that is, apply them to real texts including target vocabulary items. In order to close the gap…

Scoring Yes-No Vocabulary Tests: Reaction Time vs. Nonword Approaches

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pellicer-Sanchez, Ana; Schmitt, Norbert

2012-01-01

Despite a number of research studies investigating the Yes-No vocabulary test format, one main question remains unanswered: What is the best scoring procedure to adjust for testee overestimation of vocabulary knowledge? Different scoring methodologies have been proposed based on the inclusion and selection of nonwords in the test. However, there…

Neural Correlates of High Performance in Foreign Language Vocabulary Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Macedonia, Manuela; Muller, Karsten; Friederici, Angela D.

2010-01-01

Learning vocabulary in a foreign language is a laborious task which people perform with varying levels of success. Here, we investigated the neural underpinning of high performance on this task. In a within-subjects paradigm, participants learned 92 vocabulary items under two multimodal conditions: one condition paired novel words with iconic…

A Study: The Relationship of Personality Type to Vocabulary Development.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Covner, Thelma Crockin

To test the hypothesis that aspects of one's personality are associated with expansion of his or her vocabulary, a study focused on thirteen students of various ages who constituted a vocabulary development class. Students were taught techniques for discovering meaning through context or extracting meaning through word structure. Considerable time…

Time-Decayed User Profile for Second Language Vocabulary Learning System

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Li, Li; Wei, Xiao

2014-01-01

Vocabulary learning is the foundation of second language learning. Many E-learning systems have been developed to help learners to learn vocabulary efficiently. Most of these systems employ Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve to make the review schedule for learners. However, learners are different in learning ability and the review schedule based on…

Conceptualization of Depth of Vocabulary Knowledge with Academic Reading Comprehension

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hasan, Md. Kamrul; Shabdin, Ahmad Affendi

2016-01-01

The present study embodies a conceptual framework, and it studies the concept regarding the depth of vocabulary knowledge. Literature review is employed as a foundation for developing the conceptual framework for the present study. The current study suggests that different dimensions of depth of vocabulary knowledge, namely paradigmatic relations,…

Vocabulary Memorization Strategies among Arab Postgraduate English Foreign Language Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Al-Qaysi, Fouad Hussein; Shabdin, Ahmad Affendi

2016-01-01

Many studies have investigated vocabulary memorization strategies in the EFL context, but few researches have been conducted on the types of memorization strategies used by the Arab students in Malaysia. Thus, this study investigates the types of vocabulary memorization strategies employed by the Arab students in the Intensive English course at…

Implementing Controlled Composition to Improve Vocabulary Mastery of EFL Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Juriah

2015-01-01

The purposes of this study was to know how (1) Controlled composition teaching techniques implemented by the English teacher at SDN 027 Samarinda to improve vocabulary mastery, and (2) Controlled composition teaching techniques improves vocabulary mastery of the sixth grade students of SDN 027 Samarinda. This research used a Classroom Action…

The Effectiveness of Using Corpus-Based Materials in Vocabulary Teaching

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Paker, Turan; Özcan, Yeliz Ergül

2017-01-01

Our study aimed at finding out the effectiveness of corpus-based vocabulary teaching activities as well as students' attitudes towards concordance-based materials when corpus-based tasks in English vocabulary learning are used. The study was conducted in a preparatory school in a private university. The participants were 28 intermediate level…

Profiling Vocabulary in Psychology Journal Abstracts: A Comparison between Iranian and Anglo-American Journals

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Akbarian, Is'haaq; Ghanbarzadeh, Zahra; Shahri, Mohammad Afzali

2017-01-01

Lexical profiling has yielded fruitful results for language description and pedagogy (Liu, 2014), and particularly highlighted the significance of academic vocabulary for EFL learners in this process. This investigation, likewise, attempts to comparatively profile the vocabulary, more particularly the academic vocabulary, in the…

Lexical development in Korean: vocabulary size, lexical composition, and late talking.

PubMed

Rescorla, Leslie; Lee, Youn Mi Cathy; Lee, Youn Min Cathy; Oh, Kyung Ja; Kim, Young Ah

2013-04-01

In this study, the authors aimed to compare vocabulary size, lexical composition, and late talking in large samples of Korean and U.S. children ages 18-35 months. Data for 2,191 Korean children (211 children recruited "offline" through preschools, and 1,980 recruited "online" via the Internet) and 274 U.S. children were obtained using the Language Development Survey (LDS). Mean vocabulary size was slightly larger in the offline than the online group, but the groups were acquiring almost identical words. Mean vocabulary size did not differ by country; girls and older children had larger vocabularies in both countries. The Korean-U.S. Q correlations for percentage use of LDS words (.53 and .56) indicated considerable concordance across countries in lexical composition. Noun dominance was as large in Korean lexicons as in U.S. lexicons. About half of the most commonly reported words for the Korean and U.S. children were identical. Lexicons of late talkers resembled those of typically developing younger children in the same sample. Despite linguistic and discourse differences between Korean and English, LDS findings indicated considerable cross-linguistic similarity with respect to vocabulary size, lexical composition, and late talking.

Effective Strategies for Teaching Vocabulary: An Introduction to Engaging Cooperative Vocabulary Card Activities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sheridan, Robert; Markslag, Laura

2017-01-01

Despite the vast extent of the English vocabulary, it has been estimated that only around 2400 high frequency word families, which are found on Browne, Culligan, and Phillips' (2013) "New General Service List" (NGSL), make up over 92% of most general English texts. Several studies have shown that a word must be encountered anywhere from…

Vocabulary at the Center

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Benjamin, Amy; Crow, John T.

2009-01-01

In "Vocabulary at the Center," Amy Benjamin and John T. Crow identify the most effective methods for extending the use of new words--in every grade level and across all subjects. This book shows teachers how to use context-driven exercises to incorporate new words into other areas of study. This book contains information about the authors, an…

Coordinating Council. Tenth Meeting: Information retrieval: The role of controlled vocabularies

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1993-01-01

The theme of this NASA Scientific and Technical Information Program Coordinating Council meeting was the role of controlled vocabularies (thesauri) in information retrieval. Included are summaries of the presentations and the accompanying visuals. Dr. Raya Fidel addressed 'Retrieval: Free Text, Full Text, and Controlled Vocabularies.' Dr. Bella Hass Weinberg spoke on 'Controlled Vocabularies and Thesaurus Standards.' The presentations were followed by a panel discussion with participation from NASA, the National Library of Medicine, the Defense Technical Information Center, and the Department of Energy; this discussion, however, is not summarized in any detail in this document.

Vocabulary Input from School Textbooks as a Potential Contributor to the Small Vocabulary Uptake Gained by English as a Foreign Language Learners in Saudi Arabia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alsaif, Abdullah; Milton, James

2012-01-01

Research repeatedly reports very little vocabulary uptake by English as a foreign language (EFL) learners in public schools in Saudi Arabia. Factors such as the teaching methodology employed and learner motivation have been suggested to explain this but a further explanation, the vocabulary input these learners receive, remains uninvestigated. An…

Slushie World: An In-Class Access Database Tutorial

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wynn, Donald E., Jr.; Pratt, Renée M. E.

2015-01-01

The Slushie World case study is designed to teach the basics of Microsoft Access and database management over a series of three 75-minute class sessions. Students are asked to build a basic database to track sales and inventory for a small business. Skills to be learned include table creation, data entry and importing, form and report design,…

Technologies and practices for maintaining and publishing earth science vocabularies

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cox, Simon; Yu, Jonathan; Williams, Megan; Giabardo, Fabrizio; Lowe, Dominic

2015-04-01

Shared vocabularies are a key element in geoscience data interoperability. Many organizations curate vocabularies, with most Geologic Surveys having a long history of development of lexicons and authority tables. However, their mode of publication is heterogeneous, ranging from PDFs and HTML web pages, spreadsheets and CSV, through various user-interfaces, and public and private APIs. Content maintenance ranges from tightly-governed and externally opaque, through various community processes, all the way to crowd-sourcing ('folksonomies'). Meanwhile, there is an increasing expectation of greater harmonization and vocabulary re-use, which create requirements for standardized content formalization and APIs, along with transparent content maintenance and versioning. We have been trialling a combination of processes and software dealing with vocabulary formalization, registration, search and linking. We use the Simplified Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) to provide a generic interface to content. SKOS is an RDF technology for multi-lingual, hierarchical vocabularies, oriented around 'concepts' denoted by URIs, and thus consistent with Linked Open Data. SKOS may be mixed in with classes and properties from specialized ontologies which provide a more specific interface when required. We have developed a suite of practices and techniques for conversion of content from the source technologies and styles into SKOS, largely based on spreadsheet manipulation before RDF conversion, and SPARQL afterwards. The workflow for each vocabulary must be adapted to match the specific inputs. In linked data applications, two requirements are paramount for user confidence: (i) the URI that denotes a vocabulary item is persistent, and should be dereferenceable indefinitely; (ii) the history and status of the resource denoted by a URI must be available. This is implemented by the Linked Data Registry (LDR), originally developed for the World Meteorological Organization and the UK

Exposing SAMOS Data and Vocabularies within the Semantic Web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dockery, Nkemdirim; Elya, Jocelyn; Smith, Shawn

2014-05-01

As part of the Ocean Data Interoperability Platform (ODIP), we at the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies (COAPS) will present the development process for the exposure of quality-controlled data and core vocabularies managed by the Shipboard Automated Meteorological Oceanographic System (SAMOS) initiative using Semantic Web technologies. Participants in the SAMOS initiative collect continuous navigational (position, course, heading, speed), meteorological (winds, pressure, temperature, humidity, radiation), and near-surface oceanographic (sea temperature, salinity) parameters while at sea. One-minute interval observations are packaged and transmitted back to COAPS via daily emails, where they undergo standardized formatting and quality control. The authors will present methods used to expose these daily datasets. The Semantic Web, a vision of the World Wide Web Consortium, focuses on extending the principles of the web from connecting documents to connecting data. The creation of a web of Linked Data that can be used across different applications in a machine-readable way is the ultimate goal. The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is the standard language and format used in the Semantic Web. RDF pages may be queried using the SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language (SPARQL). The authors will showcase the development of RDF resources that map SAMOS vocabularies to internationally served vocabularies such as those found in the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Vocabulary Server. Each individual SAMOS vocabulary term (data parameter and quality control flag) will be described in an RDF resource page. These RDF resources will define each SAMOS vocabulary term and provide a link to the mapped vocabulary term (or multiple terms) served externally. Along with enhanced retrieval by parameter, time, and location, we will be able to add additional parameters with the confidence that they follow an international standard. The production of RDF

Semantic Similarities between a Keyword Database and a Controlled Vocabulary Database: An Investigation in the Antibiotic Resistance Literature.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Qin, Jian

2000-01-01

Explores similarities or dissimilarities between citation-semantic and analytic indexing based on a study of records in the Science Citation Index and MEDLINE databases on antibiotic resistance in pneumonia. Concludes that disparate indexing terms may be an advantage for better recall and precision in information retrieval. (Contains 42…

Predicting Expressive Vocabulary Acquisition in Children with Intellectual Disabilities: A 2-Year Longitudinal Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vandereet, Joke; Maes, Bea; Lembrechts, Dirk; Zink, Inge

2010-01-01

Purpose: This study's objectives were to describe expressive vocabulary acquisition in children with intellectual disabilities (ID) and to examine specific pre- and early linguistic behaviors used to request and comment, chronological age, cognitive skills, and vocabulary comprehension as predictors of expressive vocabulary. Method: This study…

French Vocabulary in "Encore Tricolore": Do Pupils Have a Chance?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tschichold, Cornelia

2012-01-01

British learners acquire very little vocabulary in their foreign languages, compared to pupils elsewhere in Europe, particularly learners of English as a foreign language. Could the materials used for teaching help explain this difference? An analysis of the vocabulary loading of a textbook for French as a foreign language commonly used in…

Teaching and Learning Morphology: A Reflection on Generative Vocabulary Instruction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Templeton, Shane

2012-01-01

Students' knowledge of morphology can play a critical role in vocabulary development, and by extension, reading comprehension and writing. This reflection describes the nature of this knowledge and how it may be developed through the examination of generative vocabulary knowledge and the role of the spelling system in developing this knowledge. In…

Graphical tool for navigation within the semantic network of the UMLS metathesaurus on a locally installed database.

PubMed

Frankewitsch, T; Prokosch, H U

2000-01-01

Knowledge in the environment of information technologies is bound to structured vocabularies. Medical data dictionaries are necessary for uniquely describing findings like diagnoses, procedures or functions. Therefore we decided to locally install a version of the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) of the U.S. National Library of Medicine as a repository for defining entries of a medical multimedia database. Because of the requirement to extend the vocabulary in concepts and relations between existing concepts a graphical tool for appending new items to the database has been developed: Although the database is an instance of a semantic network the focus on single entries offers the opportunity of reducing the net to a tree within this detail. Based on the graph theorem, there are definitions of nodes of concepts and nodes of knowledge. The UMLS additionally offers the specification of sub-relations, which can be represented, too. Using this view it is possible to manage these 1:n-Relations in a simple tree view. On this background an explorer like graphical user interface has been realised to add new concepts and define new relationships between those and existing entries for adapting the UMLS for specific purposes such as describing medical multimedia objects.

The relative contributions of speechreading and vocabulary to deaf and hearing children's reading ability.

PubMed

Kyle, Fiona Elizabeth; Campbell, Ruth; MacSweeney, Mairéad

2016-01-01

Vocabulary knowledge and speechreading are important for deaf children's reading development but it is unknown whether they are independent predictors of reading ability. This study investigated the relationships between reading, speechreading and vocabulary in a large cohort of deaf and hearing children aged 5 to 14 years. 86 severely and profoundly deaf children and 91 hearing children participated in this study. All children completed assessments of reading comprehension, word reading accuracy, speechreading and vocabulary. Regression analyses showed that vocabulary and speechreading accounted for unique variance in both reading accuracy and comprehension for deaf children. For hearing children, vocabulary was an independent predictor of both reading accuracy and comprehension skills but speechreading only accounted for unique variance in reading accuracy. Speechreading and vocabulary are important for reading development in deaf children. The results are interpreted within the Simple View of Reading framework and the theoretical implications for deaf children's reading are discussed. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Socioeconomic status, parental education, vocabulary and language skills of children who stutter.

PubMed

Richels, Corrin G; Johnson, Kia N; Walden, Tedra A; Conture, Edward G

2013-01-01

The purpose of this project was to investigate the possible relation between standardized measures of vocabulary/language, mother and father education, and a composite measure of socioeconomic status (SES) for children who do not stutter (CWNS) and children who stutter (CWS). Participants were 138 CWNS and 159 CWS between the ages of 2;6 and 6;3 and their families. The Hollingshead Four Factor Index of Social Position (i.e., Family SES) was used to calculate SES based on a composite score consisting of weighted values for paternal and maternal education and occupation. Statistical regression analyses were conducted to investigate the relation between parental education and language and vocabulary scores for both the CWNS and CWS. Correlations were calculated between parent education, Family SES, and stuttering severity (e.g., SSI-3 score, % words stuttered). Results indicated that maternal education contributed the greatest amount of variance in vocabulary and language scores for the CWNS and for participants from both groups whose Family SES was in the lowest quartile of the distribution. However, paternal education generally contributed the greatest amount of variance in vocabulary and language scores for the CWS. Higher levels of maternal education were associated with more severe stuttering in the CWS. Results are generally consistent with existing literature on normal language development that indicates maternal education is a robust predictor of the vocabulary and language skills of preschool children. Thus, both father and mothers' education may impact the association between vocabulary/language skills and childhood stuttering, leading investigators who empirically study this association to possibly re-assess their participant selection (e.g., a priori control of parental education) and/or data analyses (e.g., post hoc covariation of parental education). The reader will be able to: (a) describe the influence of socioeconomic status on the development of

Story Innovation: An Instructional Strategy for Developing Vocabulary and Fluency

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Griffith, Priscilla L.; Ruan, Jiening

2007-01-01

Story innovation is a form of scaffold writing in which the sentence and text patterns remain intact but the content is altered through the substitution of vocabulary to change the setting, characters, or action in a story. Story innovation is presented as a way to develop vocabulary knowledge through deep processing and to provide fluency…

Low-Income Immigrant Pupils Learning Vocabulary through Digital Picture Storybooks

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Verhallen, Marian J. A. J.; Bus, Adriana G.

2010-01-01

Children from immigrant, low-income families in the Netherlands start school with a limited vocabulary in the language of instruction; therefore, this places them at risk for developing reading difficulties. Exposure to books is assumed to reduce their 2nd language (L2) vocabulary disadvantage. In this experiment, we examined the effects of video…

Effect of Phonetic Association on Learning Vocabulary in Foreign Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bozavli, Ebubekir

2017-01-01

Word is one of the most important components of a natural language. Speech is meaningful because of the meanings of words. Vocabulary acquired in one's mother tongue is learned consciously in a foreign language in non-native settings. Learning vocabulary in a system based on grammar is generally neglected or learned in conventional ways. This…

Stimulating Multiple-Demand Cortex Enhances Vocabulary Learning

PubMed Central

Wise, Richard J.S.; Geranmayeh, Fatemeh; Hampshire, Adam

2017-01-01

It is well established that networks within multiple-demand cortex (MDC) become active when diverse skills and behaviors are being learnt. However, their causal role in learning remains to be established. In the present study, we first performed functional magnetic resonance imaging on healthy female and male human participants to confirm that MDC was most active in the initial stages of learning a novel vocabulary, consisting of pronounceable nonwords (pseudowords), each associated with a picture of a real object. We then examined, in healthy female and male human participants, whether repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation of a frontal midline node of the cingulo-opercular MDC affected learning rates specifically during the initial stages of learning. We report that stimulation of this node, but not a control brain region, substantially improved both accuracy and response times during the earliest stage of learning pseudoword–object associations. This stimulation had no effect on the processing of established vocabulary, tested by the accuracy and response times when participants decided whether a real word was accurately paired with a picture of an object. These results provide evidence that noninvasive stimulation to MDC nodes can enhance learning rates, thereby demonstrating their causal role in the learning process. We propose that this causal role makes MDC candidate target for experimental therapeutics; for example, in stroke patients with aphasia attempting to reacquire a vocabulary. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Learning a task involves the brain system within which that specific task becomes established. Therefore, successfully learning a new vocabulary establishes the novel words in the language system. However, there is evidence that in the early stages of learning, networks within multiple-demand cortex (MDC), which control higher cognitive functions, such as working memory, attention, and monitoring of performance, become active. This activity

What Research Says about Vocabulary Instruction for Students with Learning Disabilities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jitendra, Asha K.; Edwards, Lana L.; Sacks, Gabriell; Jacobson, Lisa A.

2004-01-01

This article summarizes published research on vocabulary instruction involving students with learning disabilities. Nineteen vocabulary studies that comprised 27 investigations were located. Study interventions gleaned from the review included keyword or mnemonic approaches, cognitive strategy instruction (e.g., semantic features analysis), direct…

Total and Conceptual Vocabulary in Spanish-English Bilinguals from 22 to 30 Months: Implications for Assessment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Core, Cynthia; Hoff, Erika; Rumiche, Rosario; Senor, Melissa

2013-01-01

Purpose: Vocabulary assessment holds promise as a way to identify young bilingual children at risk for language delay. This study compares 2 measures of vocabulary in a group of young Spanish-English bilingual children to a single-language measure used with monolingual children. Method: Total vocabulary and conceptual vocabulary were used to…

The Effect of Aural and Visual Storytelling on Vocabulary Retention of Iranian EFL Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Amin Afshar, Maryam; Mojavezi, Ahmad

2017-01-01

EFL learners at all ages and proficiency levels are usually confronted with various problems in vocabulary learning and retention. This study sought to introduce strategies for improvement of vocabulary learning and retention. Therefore, the effects of using aural/visual storytelling on Iranian EFL learners' vocabulary learning and retention were…

The Effects of Vocabulary Instructions on Students' Reading Comprehension across Cognitive Styles in ESP

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kusumawati, Eny; Widiati, Utami

2017-01-01

Many scholars in language learning and teaching agree that vocabulary plays a vital role in a language learning. However, the way the vocabulary is presented to language learners, whether explicitly or implicitly, becomes central discussion in language literature. This study investigated the effect of explicit and implicit vocabulary instructions…

Multi-Database Searching in the Behavioral Sciences--Part I: Basic Techniques and Core Databases.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Angier, Jennifer J.; Epstein, Barbara A.

1980-01-01

Outlines practical searching techniques in seven core behavioral science databases accessing psychological literature: Psychological Abstracts, Social Science Citation Index, Biosis, Medline, Excerpta Medica, Sociological Abstracts, ERIC. Use of individual files is discussed and their relative strengths/weaknesses are compared. Appended is a list…

Effects of Expanded Vocabulary Support on L2 Listening Comprehension

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pan, Yi-Chun; Tsai, Tzung-Hung; Huang, Yueh-Kuey; Liu, Dilin

2018-01-01

Various forms of pre-listening support, such as the provision of vocabulary and topic information, have been used to help second language (L2) learners better understand what they listen to. Results of studies on the effects of vocabulary support have been mixed. Furthermore, there has been little research on the effects of different quantities of…

Progress Report on the Development of a Laser/Maser Vocabulary.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lerner, Rita G.

The development of a laser/maser vocabulary follows the pattern established earlier in two similar projects--(1) Development of a Multi-Coordinate Vocabulary--Chemical Physics, and (2) Development of a Multi-Coordinate Index--Plasma Physics. A set of lists of terms judged to be important to a user of information was developed by a specialist in…

Building Vocabulary and Improving Writing While Developing a Tourist Brochure

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Johari, Siti Katijah

2008-01-01

Writing, and the vocabulary building that goes with it, is a more complex process than merely putting words on a page. In the process of acquiring vocabulary, for example, students need to understand not just what individual words mean but also which combinations of these words in sentences or paragraphs convey a meaningful message to the reader…

Core Vocabulary: Its Morphological Content and Presence in Exemplar Texts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hiebert, Elfrieda H.; Goodwin, Amanda P.; Cervetti, Gina N.

2018-01-01

This study addresses the distribution of words in texts at different points of schooling. The first aim was to identify a core vocabulary that accounts for the majority of the words in texts through the lens of morphological families. Results showed that 2,451 morphological families, averaging 4.61 members, make up the core vocabulary of school…

Gender Differences in Aural Vocabulary of Elementary Schoolchildren in Jordan.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Khammash, Salma B.

A sample of 1,500 students in grades K-3 were selected from 80 Jordanian schools in a study of aural vocabulary scores. This study followed a pilot study in 1980 of an Arabic translation of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test with Arabic-speaking children with limited English proficiency in the Dearborn, Michigan, public schools. The 1982…

Multimedia explorer: image database, image proxy-server and search-engine.

PubMed Central

Frankewitsch, T.; Prokosch, U.

1999-01-01

Multimedia plays a major role in medicine. Databases containing images, movies or other types of multimedia objects are increasing in number, especially on the WWW. However, no good retrieval mechanism or search engine currently exists to efficiently track down such multimedia sources in the vast of information provided by the WWW. Secondly, the tools for searching databases are usually not adapted to the properties of images. HTML pages do not allow complex searches. Therefore establishing a more comfortable retrieval involves the use of a higher programming level like JAVA. With this platform independent language it is possible to create extensions to commonly used web browsers. These applets offer a graphical user interface for high level navigation. We implemented a database using JAVA objects as the primary storage container which are then stored by a JAVA controlled ORACLE8 database. Navigation depends on a structured vocabulary enhanced by a semantic network. With this approach multimedia objects can be encapsulated within a logical module for quick data retrieval. PMID:10566463

The relevance of receptive vocabulary in reading comprehension.

PubMed

Nalom, Ana Flávia de Oliveira; Soares, Aparecido José Couto; Cárnio, Maria Silvia

2015-01-01

To characterize the performance of students from the 5th year of primary school, with and without indicatives of reading and writing disorders, in receptive vocabulary and reading comprehension of sentences and texts, and to verify possible correlations between both. This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the institution (no. 098/13). Fifty-two students in the 5th year from primary school, with and without indicatives of reading and writing disorders, and from two public schools participated in this study. After signing the informed consent and having a speech therapy assessment for the application of inclusion criteria, the students were submitted to a specific test for standardized evaluation of receptive vocabulary and reading comprehension. The data were studied using statistical analysis through the Kruskal-Wallis test, analysis of variance techniques, and Spearman's rank correlation coefficient with level of significance to be 0.05. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (was constructed in which reading comprehension was considered as gold standard. The students without indicatives of reading and writing disorders presented a better performance in all tests. No significant correlation was found between the tests that evaluated reading comprehension in either group. A correlation was found between reading comprehension of texts and receptive vocabulary in the group without indicatives. In the absence of indicatives of reading and writing disorders, the presence of a good range of vocabulary highly contributes to a proficient reading comprehension of texts.

Geoscientific Vocabularies and Linked Data at The British Geological Survey - progress and pragmatism

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

McCormick, T.; Heaven, R.

2013-12-01

The British Geological Survey makes extensive use of controlled vocabularies to promote standardisation and interoperability between its databases and other digital information systems. Many of our vocabularies are published and searchable at http://www.bgs.ac.uk/data/vocabularies/home.html/. There is a movement to ';open up' government data in both the US and UK. In the UK this is promoted by data.gov.uk. Some view linked data as the best way to share and connect disparate data, information and knowledge, in order to develop a ';Web of Data'. Linked data facilitate connections between data sets, and lower the barriers to accessing data that must otherwise be discovered and exploited using other methods. Recently there has been a rapid increase in the rate of publication of linked data, this increase currently being estimated at 300% per year. In the past 2 years we have undertaken a pilot study to publish some of our authoritative vocabularies as linked data. This study has focussed primarily on publishing BGS' 1:625 000 scale geologic map data for the UK, supported by development of linked data sets for: Earth materials - based on the BGS Rock Classification Scheme; lithostratigraphy - based on the BGS Lexicon of Named Rock Units; and geochronology - based on the International Commission on Stratigraphy. The BGS linked data sets are published at data.bgs.ac.uk. We have learned a number of lessons about the potential and limitations of linked data and associated technologies. We do not envisage SPARQL endpoints being the primary route for public access to linked data because the user would require technical knowledge of the data structure, and because it can be a security threat. Rather, SPARQL may lie behind a user-friendly API. Federated SPARQL queries that can interrogate distributed data sources are in reality too slow, and in practise the data sets would likely be combined in a single store. The data sets in our pilot study are all reasonably static and we

L2 Vocabulary Research and Instructional Practices: Where Are the Gaps?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rossiter, Marian J.; Abbott, Marilyn L.; Kushnir, Andrea

2016-01-01

This study investigates the vocabulary knowledge, beliefs, and practices of adult English as a second language (ESL) instructors. Thirty participants responded to an online survey designed to elicit information regarding their knowledge and beliefs; approaches to assessment; vocabulary teaching techniques and strategies; instructional practices…

Multisensory Strategies for Science Vocabulary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Husty, Sandra; Jackson, Julie

2008-01-01

Seeing, touching, smelling, hearing, and learning! The authors observed that their English Language Learner (ELL) students achieved a deeper understanding of the properties of matter, as well as enhanced vocabulary development, when they were guided through inquiry-based, multisensory explorations that repeatedly exposed them to words and…

Parent Reports of Young Spanish-English Bilingual Children's Productive Vocabulary: A Development and Validation Study.

PubMed

Mancilla-Martinez, Jeannette; Gámez, Perla B; Vagh, Shaher Banu; Lesaux, Nonie K

2016-01-01

This 2-phase study aims to extend research on parent report measures of children's productive vocabulary by investigating the development (n = 38) of the Spanish Vocabulary Extension and validity (n = 194) of the 100-item Spanish and English MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories Toddler Short Forms and Upward Extension (Fenson et al., 2000, 2007; Jackson-Maldonado, Marchman, & Fernald, 2013) and the Spanish Vocabulary Extension for use with parents from low-income homes and their 24- to 48-month-old Spanish-English bilingual children. Study participants were drawn from Early Head Start and Head Start collaborative programs in the Northeastern United States in which English was the primary language used in the classroom. All families reported Spanish or Spanish-English as their home language(s). The MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories as well as the researcher-designed Spanish Vocabulary Extension were used as measures of children's English and Spanish productive vocabularies. Findings revealed the forms' concurrent and discriminant validity, on the basis of standardized measures of vocabulary, as measures of productive vocabulary for this growing bilingual population. These findings suggest that parent reports, including our researcher-designed form, represent a valid, cost-effective mechanism for vocabulary monitoring purposes in early childhood education settings.

Aging-Resilient Associations between the Arcuate Fasciculus and Vocabulary Knowledge: Microstructure or Morphology?

PubMed Central

Vaden, Kenneth I.; Cute, Stephanie L.; Yeatman, Jason D.; Dougherty, Robert F.

2016-01-01

Vocabulary knowledge is one of the few cognitive functions that is relatively preserved in older adults, but the reasons for this relative preservation have not been well delineated. We tested the hypothesis that individual differences in vocabulary knowledge are influenced by arcuate fasciculus macrostructure (i.e., shape and volume) properties that remain stable during the aging process, rather than white matter microstructure that demonstrates age-related declines. Vocabulary was not associated with age compared to pronounced age-related declines in cognitive processing speed across 106 healthy adults (19.92–88.29 years) who participated in this neuroimaging experiment. Fractional anisotropy in the left arcuate fasciculus was significantly related to individual variability in vocabulary. This effect was present despite marked age-related differences in a T1-weighted/T2-weighted ratio (T1w/T2w) estimate of myelin that were observed throughout the left arcuate fasciculus and associated with age-related differences in cognitive processing speed. However, atypical patterns of arcuate fasciculus morphology or macrostructure were associated with decreased vocabulary knowledge. These results suggest that deterioration of tissue in the arcuate fasciculus occurs with normal aging, while having limited impact on tract organization that underlies individual differences in the acquisition and retrieval of lexical and semantic information. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Vocabulary knowledge is resilient to widespread age-related declines in brain structure that limit other cognitive functions. We tested the hypothesis that arcuate fasciculus morphology, which supports the development of reading skills that bolster vocabulary, could explain this relative preservation. We disentangled (1) the effects of age-related declines in arcuate microstructure (mean diffusivity; myelin content estimate) that predicted cognitive processing speed but not vocabulary, from (2) relatively stable

Vocabulary, Grammar, Sex, and Aging.

PubMed

Moscoso Del Prado Martín, Fermín

2017-05-01

Understanding the changes in our language abilities along the lifespan is a crucial step for understanding the aging process both in normal and in abnormal circumstances. Besides controlled experimental tasks, it is equally crucial to investigate language in unconstrained conversation. I present an information-theoretical analysis of a corpus of dyadic conversations investigating how the richness of the vocabulary, the word-internal structure (inflectional morphology), and the syntax of the utterances evolves as a function of the speaker's age and sex. Although vocabulary diversity increases throughout the lifetime, grammatical diversities follow a different pattern, which also differs between women and men. Women use increasingly diverse syntactic structures at least up to their late fifties, and they do not deteriorate in terms of fluency through their lifespan. However, from age 45 onward, men exhibit a decrease in the diversity of the syntactic structures they use, coupled with an increased number of speech disfluencies. Copyright © 2016 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Verbal short-term memory shows a specific association with receptive but not productive vocabulary measures in Down syndrome.

PubMed

Majerus, S; Barisnikov, K

2018-01-01

Verbal short-term memory (STM) capacity has been considered to support vocabulary learning in typical children and adults, but evidence for this link is inconsistent for studies in individuals with Down syndrome (DS). The aim of this study was explore the role of processing demands on the association between verbal STM and vocabulary measures in DS, by comparing receptive vocabulary measures with high STM processing demands to productive vocabulary measures with low STM processing demands. Forty-seven adults with Down syndrome were administered receptive vocabulary and productive vocabulary tasks, as well as measures of verbal STM abilities and intellectual efficiency. Bayesian regression analyses showed that verbal STM abilities were strongly and specifically associated with receptive vocabulary measures but not productive lexical abilities after controlling for intellectual efficiency, and this is despite the fact that vocabulary abilities as measured by receptive and productive vocabulary tasks were closely associated. In Down syndrome, verbal STM abilities may be predictive of specific task demands associated with receptive vocabulary tasks rather than of vocabulary development per se. © 2017 MENCAP and International Association of the Scientific Study of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Content Independence in Multimedia Databases.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

de Vries, Arjen P.

2001-01-01

Investigates the role of data management in multimedia digital libraries, and its implications for the design of database management systems. Introduces the notions of content abstraction and content independence. Proposes a blueprint of a new class of database technology, which supports the basic functionality for the management of both content…

Early Vocabulary, Parental Education, and the Frequency of Shared Reading as Predictors of Toddler's Vocabulary and Grammar at Age 2;7: A Slovenian Longitudinal CDI Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Marjanovic-Umek, Ljubica; Fekonja-Peklaj, Urška; Socan, Gregor

2017-01-01

The aim of this longitudinal study, carried out on a sample of Slovenian-speaking toddlers, was to analyze developmental changes and stability in early vocabulary development; to establish relations between toddler's vocabulary and grammar; and to analyze the effects of parental education and the frequency of shared reading on toddlers' vocabulary…

Is Vocabulary Growth Influenced by the Relations among Words in a Language Learner's Vocabulary?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sailor, Kevin M.

2013-01-01

Several recent studies have explored the applicability of the preferential attachment principle to account for vocabulary growth. According to this principle, network growth can be described by a process in which existing nodes recruit new nodes with a probability that is an increasing function of their connectivity within the existing network.…

The Use of Formative Testing in Diagnosing Place Vocabulary Capabilities: A Cross-Cultural Example.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Saveland, Robert N.

A cross-cultural educational research study involving 12,500 students in 13 countries is described, with particular emphasis on one aspect of geographic literacy--place vocabulary skills. Place vocabulary is defined as that component of vocabulary that is concerned with places which are proper nouns and capitalized to show their importance. The…

Investigating the Receptive-Expressive Vocabulary Profile in Children with Idiopathic ASD and Comorbid ASD and Fragile X Syndrome.

PubMed

Haebig, Eileen; Sterling, Audra

2017-02-01

Previous work has noted that some children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) display weaknesses in receptive vocabulary relative to expressive vocabulary abilities. The current study extended previous work by examining the receptive-expressive vocabulary profile in boys with idiopathic ASD and boys with concomitant ASD and fragile X syndrome (ASD + FXS). On average, boys with ASD + FXS did not display the same atypical receptive-expressive profile as boys with idiopathic ASD. Notably, there was variation in vocabulary abilities and profiles in both groups. Although we did not identify predictors of receptive-expressive differences, we demonstrated that nonverbal IQ and expressive vocabulary positively predicted concurrent receptive vocabulary knowledge and receptive vocabulary predicted expressive vocabulary. We discuss areas of overlap and divergence in subgroups of ASD.

Investigating the Receptive-Expressive Vocabulary Profile in Children with Idiopathic ASD and Comorbid ASD and Fragile X Syndrome

PubMed Central

Sterling, Audra

2016-01-01

Previous work has noted that some children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) display weaknesses in receptive vocabulary relative to expressive vocabulary abilities. The current study extended previous work by examining the receptive-expressive vocabulary profile in boys with idiopathic ASD and boys with concomitant ASD and fragile X syndrome (ASD + FXS). On average, boys with ASD + FXS did not display the same atypical receptive-expressive profile as boys with idiopathic ASD. Notably, there was variation in vocabulary abilities and profiles in both groups. Although we did not identify predictors of receptive-expressive differences, we demonstrated that nonverbal IQ and expressive vocabulary positively predicted concurrent receptive vocabulary knowledge and receptive vocabulary predicted expressive vocabulary. We discuss areas of overlap and divergence in subgroups of ASD. PMID:27796729

Using Multiple Intelligences To Improve Retention in Foreign Language Vocabulary Study.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Anderson, Virginia B.

The report describes an experiment for increasing retention of foreign language vocabulary by using multiple intelligence approaches and memory enhancement tools. The targeted population was approximately 100 seventh- and eighth-grade Latin students. Student difficulty with vocabulary retention had been ascribed to the teacher's emphasis on…

Defying Expectations: Vocabulary Growth Trajectories of High Performing Language Minority Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hwang, Jin Kyoung; Lawrence, Joshua Fahey; Snow, Catherine E.

2017-01-01

We investigated general vocabulary and academic vocabulary growth trajectories of adolescent language minority students using an individual growth modeling approach. Our analytical sample included 3161 sixth- to eighth-grade students from an urban school district in California. The language minority students in our sample were classified as…

The Effects of Pre-Learning Vocabulary on Reading Comprehension and Writing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Webb, Stuart A.

2009-01-01

This study investigates the effects of pre-learning vocabulary on reading comprehension and writing. Japanese students studying English as a foreign language (EFL) learned word pairs receptively and productively; four tests were used to measure reading comprehension, writing, and receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge. The findings suggest…

A Descriptive Study on the Use of Materials in Vocabulary Lessons

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Holmes, Kerry; Holmes, Stacy V.; Watts, Karley

2012-01-01

Vocabulary knowledge is important because it is highly correlated with content area learning. Strategies for vocabulary instruction recommend using new words in multiple contexts as key to learning. To date, the term "multiple contexts" emphasizes written contexts, not three-dimensional concrete material contexts. This article describes the…

An Investigation of the Mathematics-Vocabulary Knowledge of First-Grade Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Powell, Sarah R.; Nelson, Gena

2017-01-01

Competency with mathematics requires use of numerals and symbols as well as an understanding and use of mathematics vocabulary (e.g., "add," "more," "triangle"). Currently, no measures exist in which the primary function is to gauge mathematics-vocabulary understanding. We created a 64-item mathematics-vocabulary…

The Dictionary and Vocabulary Behavior: A Single Word or a Handful?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Baxter, James

1980-01-01

To provide a context for dictionary selection, the vocabulary behavior of students is examined. Distinguishing between written and spoken English, the relation between dictionary use, classroom vocabulary behavior, and students' success in meeting their communicative needs is discussed. The choice of a monolingual English learners' dictionary is…

Facilitating Vocabulary Acquisition of Children With Cochlear Implants Using Electronic Storybooks.

PubMed

Messier, Jane; Wood, Carla

2015-10-01

The present intervention study explored the word learning of 18 children with cochlear implants in response to E-book instruction. Capitalizing on the multimedia options available in electronic storybooks, the intervention incorporated videos and definitions to provide a vocabulary intervention that includes evidence-based teaching strategies. The extent of the children's word learning was assessed using three assessment tasks: receptive pointing, expressively labeling, and word defining. Children demonstrated greater immediate expressive labeling gains and definition generation gains for words taught in the treatment condition compared to those in the comparison condition. In addition, the children's performance on delayed posttest vocabulary assessments indicated better retention across the expressive vocabulary task for words taught within the treatment condition as compared to the comparison condition. Findings suggest that children with cochlear implants with functional speech perception can benefit from an oral-only multimedia-enhanced intensive vocabulary instruction. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Technique Feature Analysis or Involvement Load Hypothesis: Estimating Their Predictive Power in Vocabulary Learning.

PubMed

Gohar, Manoochehr Jafari; Rahmanian, Mahboubeh; Soleimani, Hassan

2018-02-05

Vocabulary learning has always been a great concern and has attracted the attention of many researchers. Among the vocabulary learning hypotheses, involvement load hypothesis and technique feature analysis have been proposed which attempt to bring some concepts like noticing, motivation, and generation into focus. In the current study, 90 high proficiency EFL students were assigned into three vocabulary tasks of sentence making, composition, and reading comprehension in order to examine the power of involvement load hypothesis and technique feature analysis frameworks in predicting vocabulary learning. It was unraveled that involvement load hypothesis cannot be a good predictor, and technique feature analysis was a good predictor in pretest to posttest score change and not in during-task activity. The implications of the results will be discussed in the light of preparing vocabulary tasks.

Developmental Relations Between Vocabulary Knowledge and Reading Comprehension: A Latent Change Score Modeling Study

PubMed Central

Quinn, Jamie M.; Wagner, Richard K.; Petscher, Yaacov; Lopez, Danielle

2014-01-01

The present study followed a sample of first grade students (N = 316, mean age = 7.05 at first test) through fourth grade to evaluate dynamic developmental relations between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension. Using latent change score modeling, competing models were fit to the repeated measurements of vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension to test for the presence of leading and lagging influences. Univariate models indicated growth in vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension was determined by two parts: constant yearly change and change proportional to the previous level of the variable. Bivariate models indicated previous levels of vocabulary knowledge acted as leading indicators of reading comprehension growth, but the reverse relation was not found. Implications for theories of developmental relations between vocabulary and reading comprehension are discussed. PMID:25201552

Developing a Specialized Vocabulary Word List in a Composition Culinary Course through Lecture Notes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

M.Nordin, N. R.; Stapa, S. H.; Darus, S.

2013-01-01

Learning to write in a composition culinary course is very challenging for L2 learners. The main barrier in writing proficiency within this discipline is the lack of vocabulary, specifically the lack of exposure towards specialized vocabulary. This study aims to provide a corpus of specialized vocabulary within a food writing course. By providing…

Parents’ Education, Mothers’ Vocabulary, and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood: Longitudinal Evidence From Ecuador

PubMed Central

2011-01-01

Objectives. I estimated the association between parents’ education, mothers’ vocabulary, and early child cognitive development in a sample of poor children in rural Ecuador. Methods. I used regression analysis to estimate the association between parents’ education, mothers’ vocabulary, and the vocabulary, memory, and visual integration skills of children at early ages, controlling for possible confounders. The study is based on a longitudinal cohort of children in rural Ecuador (n = 2118). Results. The schooling and vocabulary levels of mothers were strong predictors of the cognitive development of young children. Household wealth and child's height, weight, and hemoglobin levels explained only a modest fraction of the observed associations. The vocabulary levels of mothers and children were more strongly correlated among older children in the sample, suggesting that the effects of a richer maternal vocabulary are cumulative. Conclusions. Differences in children's cognitive outcomes start very early, which has important implications for the intergenerational transmission of poverty and inequality. Programs that seek to increase early stimulation for disadvantaged children, perhaps through parenting programs or high-quality center-based care, hold promise. PMID:22021308

Academic Vocabulary Learning in First Through Third Grade in Low-Income Schools: Effects of Automated Supplemental Instruction.

PubMed

Goldstein, Howard; Ziolkowski, Robyn A; Bojczyk, Kathryn E; Marty, Ana; Schneider, Naomi; Harpring, Jayme; Haring, Christa D

2017-11-09

This study investigated cumulative effects of language learning, specifically whether prior vocabulary knowledge or special education status moderated the effects of academic vocabulary instruction in high-poverty schools. Effects of a supplemental intervention targeting academic vocabulary in first through third grades were evaluated with 241 students (6-9 years old) from low-income families, 48% of whom were retained for the 3-year study duration. Students were randomly assigned to vocabulary instruction or comparison groups. Curriculum-based measures of word recognition, receptive identification, expressive labeling, and decontextualized definitions showed large effects for multiple levels of word learning. Hierarchical linear modeling revealed that students with higher initial Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Fourth Edition scores (Dunn & Dunn, 2007) demonstrated greater word learning, whereas students with special needs demonstrated less growth in vocabulary. This model of vocabulary instruction can be applied efficiently in high-poverty schools through an automated, easily implemented adjunct to reading instruction in the early grades and holds promise for reducing gaps in vocabulary development.

Using VocabularySpellingCity with Adult ESOL Students in Community College

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Krause, Tim

2018-01-01

Vocabulary acquisition is central to language learning, and many instructors believe that technology can facilitate this core activity. While numerous websites and apps offer language-learning activities and games, not all provide evidence that their content and techniques are effective. VocabularySpellingCity (VSC), however, commissioned a study…

Work Characteristics and Fathers' Vocabulary to Infants in African American Families

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pancsofar, Nadya; Vernon-Feagans, Lynne; Odom, Erika C.

2013-01-01

Fathers' vocabulary to infants has been linked in the literature to early child language development, however, little is known about the variability in fathers' language behavior. This study considered associations between fathers' work characteristics and fathers' vocabulary among a sample of employed African American fathers of 6-month-old…

Effect of Focused Vocabulary Instruction on 7th Graders' Reading Comprehension

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Horn, Mary; Feng, Jianhua

2012-01-01

This study reports an investigation on the effects of directed vocabulary and whole class instruction on improving students' vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension. Fifty-eight seventh grade students participated in the study, and a pre-test/post-test experimental design was employed. The results did not indicate any statistically…

Acquisition of Vocabulary by Dint of Unique Strategies: Indispensible for Fostering English Language Skills

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jose, G. Rexlin

2015-01-01

Vocabulary is the gateway to knowledge that unlocks the doors of sublime ideas to the readers. The competency on the lexical items of language plays a significant role in learning a new concept. Any learner who has excellent command over the use of vocabulary excels in his/her study of different subjects. Vocabulary learning is one of the…

Tourism through Travel Club: A Database Project

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pratt, Renée M. E.; Smatt, Cindi T.; Wynn, Donald E.

2017-01-01

This applied database exercise utilizes a scenario-based case study to teach the basics of Microsoft Access and database management in introduction to information systems and introduction to database course. The case includes background information on a start-up business (i.e., Carol's Travel Club), description of functional business requirements,…

Understanding disciplinary vocabularies using a full-text enabled domain-independent term extraction approach.

PubMed

Yan, Erjia; Williams, Jake; Chen, Zheng

2017-01-01

Publication metadata help deliver rich analyses of scholarly communication. However, research concepts and ideas are more effectively expressed through unstructured fields such as full texts. Thus, the goals of this paper are to employ a full-text enabled method to extract terms relevant to disciplinary vocabularies, and through them, to understand the relationships between disciplines. This paper uses an efficient, domain-independent term extraction method to extract disciplinary vocabularies from a large multidisciplinary corpus of PLoS ONE publications. It finds a power-law pattern in the frequency distributions of terms present in each discipline, indicating a semantic richness potentially sufficient for further study and advanced analysis. The salient relationships amongst these vocabularies become apparent in application of a principal component analysis. For example, Mathematics and Computer and Information Sciences were found to have similar vocabulary use patterns along with Engineering and Physics; while Chemistry and the Social Sciences were found to exhibit contrasting vocabulary use patterns along with the Earth Sciences and Chemistry. These results have implications to studies of scholarly communication as scholars attempt to identify the epistemological cultures of disciplines, and as a full text-based methodology could lead to machine learning applications in the automated classification of scholarly work according to disciplinary vocabularies.

Understanding disciplinary vocabularies using a full-text enabled domain-independent term extraction approach

PubMed Central

Williams, Jake; Chen, Zheng

2017-01-01

Publication metadata help deliver rich analyses of scholarly communication. However, research concepts and ideas are more effectively expressed through unstructured fields such as full texts. Thus, the goals of this paper are to employ a full-text enabled method to extract terms relevant to disciplinary vocabularies, and through them, to understand the relationships between disciplines. This paper uses an efficient, domain-independent term extraction method to extract disciplinary vocabularies from a large multidisciplinary corpus of PLoS ONE publications. It finds a power-law pattern in the frequency distributions of terms present in each discipline, indicating a semantic richness potentially sufficient for further study and advanced analysis. The salient relationships amongst these vocabularies become apparent in application of a principal component analysis. For example, Mathematics and Computer and Information Sciences were found to have similar vocabulary use patterns along with Engineering and Physics; while Chemistry and the Social Sciences were found to exhibit contrasting vocabulary use patterns along with the Earth Sciences and Chemistry. These results have implications to studies of scholarly communication as scholars attempt to identify the epistemological cultures of disciplines, and as a full text-based methodology could lead to machine learning applications in the automated classification of scholarly work according to disciplinary vocabularies. PMID:29186141

Ontological interpretation of biomedical database content.

PubMed

Santana da Silva, Filipe; Jansen, Ludger; Freitas, Fred; Schulz, Stefan

2017-06-26

Biological databases store data about laboratory experiments, together with semantic annotations, in order to support data aggregation and retrieval. The exact meaning of such annotations in the context of a database record is often ambiguous. We address this problem by grounding implicit and explicit database content in a formal-ontological framework. By using a typical extract from the databases UniProt and Ensembl, annotated with content from GO, PR, ChEBI and NCBI Taxonomy, we created four ontological models (in OWL), which generate explicit, distinct interpretations under the BioTopLite2 (BTL2) upper-level ontology. The first three models interpret database entries as individuals (IND), defined classes (SUBC), and classes with dispositions (DISP), respectively; the fourth model (HYBR) is a combination of SUBC and DISP. For the evaluation of these four models, we consider (i) database content retrieval, using ontologies as query vocabulary; (ii) information completeness; and, (iii) DL complexity and decidability. The models were tested under these criteria against four competency questions (CQs). IND does not raise any ontological claim, besides asserting the existence of sample individuals and relations among them. Modelling patterns have to be created for each type of annotation referent. SUBC is interpreted regarding maximally fine-grained defined subclasses under the classes referred to by the data. DISP attempts to extract truly ontological statements from the database records, claiming the existence of dispositions. HYBR is a hybrid of SUBC and DISP and is more parsimonious regarding expressiveness and query answering complexity. For each of the four models, the four CQs were submitted as DL queries. This shows the ability to retrieve individuals with IND, and classes in SUBC and HYBR. DISP does not retrieve anything because the axioms with disposition are embedded in General Class Inclusion (GCI) statements. Ambiguity of biological database content is

Teaching and Learning Vocabulary: What English Language Learners Perceive to Be Effective and Ineffective Strategies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sa'd, Seyyed Hatam Tamimi; Rajabi, Fereshte

2018-01-01

Vocabulary constitutes an essential part of every language-learning endeavour and deserves scholarly attention. The objective of the present study was three-fold: 1) exploring Iranian English language learners' Vocabulary Learning Strategies (VLSs), 2) examining language learners' perceptions of vocabulary learning, and 3) exploring Iranian…

Child shyness and peer likeability: The moderating role of pragmatics and vocabulary.

PubMed

Cheung, Hoi Shan; Elliott, John M

2017-11-01

The association between shyness and children's likeability by peers was examined, with pragmatic difficulty and receptive and expressive vocabularies as moderators. Participants were 164 preschoolers (72 boys, 92 girls) between 52 and 79 months old in Singapore. A cross-informant methodology was used, with peers and teachers contributing to separate peer likeability ratings. The findings highlighted a conceptual distinction between peer- and teacher-rated likeability by peers. For the latter only, a 3-way interaction involving shyness, vocabulary, and pragmatic difficulty was found, indicating that for shy children with low vocabulary scores, those who experienced less pragmatic difficulty tended to be seen by teachers as more well-liked by peers than those with more pragmatic difficulty. This suggests that pragmatic skills may serve a protective function especially for shy children with poor vocabulary skills. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Child shyness is related to poorer peer acceptance and social competence Expressive vocabulary and pragmatic competence each has a buffering effect for shy children What the present study adds? Shyness is related to poorer peer likeability as assessed by teachers Shyness is unrelated to peer likeability as assessed by same- or different-sex peers Pragmatic skills buffer the effects of teacher-rated shyness only for children with poor receptive and expressive vocabularies The buffering effect of language ability is shown in a multilingual educational context. © 2017 The British Psychological Society.

Talking to children matters: Early language experience strengthens processing and builds vocabulary

PubMed Central

Weisleder, Adriana; Fernald, Anne

2016-01-01

Infants differ substantially in their rates of language growth, and slower growth predicts later academic difficulties. This study explored how the amount of speech to infants in Spanish-speaking families low in socioeconomic status (SES) influenced the development of children's skill in real-time language processing and vocabulary learning. All-day recordings of parent-infant interactions at home revealed striking variability among families in how much speech caregivers addressed to their child. Infants who experienced more child-directed speech became more efficient in processing familiar words in real time and had larger expressive vocabularies by 24 months, although speech simply overheard by the child was unrelated to vocabulary outcomes. Mediation analyses showed that the effect of child-directed speech on expressive vocabulary was explained by infants’ language-processing efficiency, suggesting that richer language experience strengthens processing skills that facilitate language growth. PMID:24022649

Effects of Training Young Black Children in Vocabulary vs. Sentence Construction.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ammon, Paul R.; Ammon, Mary Sue

This experiment compared the effects of training young black children in vocabulary versus sentence construction to see which type of training would result in greater transfer to other areas of language performance. A total of 144 black children in preschool and kindergarten were randomly assigned to vocabulary training, sentence training, or…

Why and How EFL Students Learn Vocabulary in Parliamentary Debate Class

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Aclan, Eunice M.; Aziz, Noor Hashima Abdul

2015-01-01

Vocabulary, the backbone of any language including English, is foundational for listening, speaking, reading and writing. These four macro-skills are necessary not only in gaining knowledge as English is the language to access major information sources particularly the World Wide Web but also in the demanding globalized workplace. Vocabulary is…

Examining Continuity of Early Expressive Vocabulary Development: The Generation R Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Henrichs, Jens; Rescorla, Leslie; Schenk, Jacqueline J.; Schmidt, Henk G.; Jaddoe, Vincent W. V.; Hofman, Albert; Raat, Hein; Verhulst, Frank C.; Tiemeier, Henning

2011-01-01

Purpose: The authors investigated continuity and discontinuity of vocabulary skills in a population-based cohort in the Netherlands. Method: Mothers of 3,759 children completed the Dutch version of the MacArthur Short Form Vocabulary Checklist (Zink & Lejaegere, 2003) at 18 months and a Dutch translation of the Language Development Survey…