James
Language Towers Ltd
I have taught ESL and trained teachers in England, France, the Philippines and Japan. I have a background in theoretical linguistics. Currently, I'm working mostly on developing ESL language applications.
Sessions
Deep Vocabulary Study: Semantic Representations
Most contemporary vocabulary instruction in ESL centers around simple, shallow meanings or translations. For words with more abstract or complex meanings, these shallow representations can be insufficient. Using the internal semantic representation of words, a deeper meaning can be provided to address this. An exploratory study with 18 intermediate Japanese students showed that their usage of 20 English verbs improved with instruction using internal semantic representations. This result supports deep vocabulary study in ESL.