Investigating applied linguistics fora.

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Wed Nov 22, 2006 10:44 am

Anuradha Chepur wrote:Was it in this thread that we were discussing about call center outsourced to India?
I don't have time to verify it now.
OK, here is something not totally relevant to the discussion, nevertheless, interesting:
http://www.rediff.com/movies/2006/nov/22nalini.htm

Very informative. Thanks for that.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Fri Nov 24, 2006 7:05 am

lolwhites wrote:The trouble with the very recently coined words is that we don't know if they're going to catch on. If the students go on to remember and use them ten years later, when they've gone out of fashion, they'll sound very strange.

You guys are probably aware of things such as Oxford's selection of new words (from their OALD7):
http://www.oup.com/elt/catalogue/teache ... ?cc=global

How many words listed are you surprised weren't already included in earlier editions of their dictionary? How many of the comparatively newer words would you yourself have hesitated to include? And how many of the words aren't that familiar or totally foreign to the native speakers here on Dave's?

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Fri Nov 24, 2006 7:15 am

How many of the comparatively newer words would you yourself have hesitated to include?

Why on earth would you exclude such words?

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Fri Nov 24, 2006 7:47 am

You're concerned that teachers might possibly not account for (or not even know) all those 'Fashion' words, or things like 'fakie' (a snowboarding term), in their teaching?

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Fri Nov 24, 2006 8:25 am

fluffyhamster wrote:You're concerned that teachers might possibly not account for (or not even know) all those 'Fashion' words, or things like 'fakie' (a snowboarding term), in their teaching?

You talked about the OALD. I think there is no problem in adding new words to such dictionaries. Who is to decide which words a student will or will not find useful?

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Fri Nov 24, 2006 9:47 pm

Well, if a student who had learned in the 1970s that the term "ace" in the UK meant "excellent" used the word today it would certainly raise a few eyebrows.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Mon Nov 27, 2006 6:26 am

OK, I was asking about inclusion in (learner) dictionaries initially.

Theoretically speaking, I don't like there to be a strong division between "dictionary" and "encyclopedia" (because I don't like too strong a "linguistic" focus in my linguistics), but when it comes to teaching, I don't personally see the use in mentioning much less actually including e.g. snowboarding terms in any "wordlist" - it's not like 'fakie' has gained quite the currency of e.g. 'ace' (notwithstanding the now dated use of 'ace' to mean 'excellent', as lol points out).

I guess it's up to larger dictionaries such as the OED to be "exhaustive".

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Mon Nov 27, 2006 10:27 am

lolwhites wrote:Well, if a student who had learned in the 1970s that the term "ace" in the UK meant "excellent" used the word today it would certainly raise a few eyebrows.

That's where he/she probably would be better off changing his teacher for one who keeps him/her up-to-date.

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Mon Nov 27, 2006 10:30 am

I don't personally see the use in mentioning much less actually including e.g. snowboarding terms in any "wordlist"

How many of your students go snowboarding regularly?

I guess it's up to larger dictionaries such as the OED to be "exhaustive".

I guess the compilers of OALD feel that "snowboarding" is something which learners either do or may be interested in.

Many of my students have daily contact with speakers who use such coinage as "prebuttal". Should I avoid teaching the meaning and use of that word?

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Mon Nov 27, 2006 10:57 am

Rather than expect students, and expat teachers, to be totally up to date on new coinages and keep track of which terms are in fashion, isn't the best thing simply to err on the side of caution? When students try to sound cool by using the newest terms, it can sound rather incongruous.

Obviously, Metal, if your students come into contact wioth speakers who regularly use such terms as you describe, then it would be wise to teach them. You know your students and I don't, so it would be rather presumptuous of me (or anyone else) to say "teach this, don't teach that". Your "coinage check" idea sounds a really good one; how does it work in practice? It sounds like a task for the full time learner rather than the two or three hours a week part timer.

I'm more concerned about the students who self consciously use terms like "it's not my cup of tea" because they think people will be impressed, when actually 99 times out of 100 it sounds totally contrived and artificial.

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Mon Nov 27, 2006 8:58 pm

metal56 wrote:
lolwhites wrote:Well, if a student who had learned in the 1970s that the term "ace" in the UK meant "excellent" used the word today it would certainly raise a few eyebrows.
That's where he/she probably would be better off changing his teacher for one who keeps him/her up-to-date.

OK. Has 'ace' changed meaning since the seventies without the dictionaries being aware of it or has it simply gone out of fashion as an adjective?

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Mon Nov 27, 2006 9:20 pm

I'd say it's gone out of fashion. Either way, students would be well advised not to use it in the sense of "cool" as it would sound pretty incongruous. IIRC the last film I heard described as "ace" was Star Wars... when it first came out

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Mon Nov 27, 2006 10:30 pm

lolwhites wrote:Rather than expect students, and expat teachers, to be totally up to date on new coinages and keep track of which terms are in fashion, isn't the best thing simply to err on the side of caution? When students try to sound cool by using the newest terms, it can sound rather incongruous.

To whom? BTW, you've used the word incongruous a lot tonight. Is it in fashion?

Your "coinage check" idea sounds a really good one; how does it work in practice? It sounds like a task for the full time learner rather than the two or three hours a week part timer.

The three-hours-a-week part-timer has enough time to check out at least 3 new words a month. In practice, it's quite straightforward. You just pick a coinage from the dictionary and check it out on Google. You send emails to users. You note dates in publications and articles, etc. Nothing complicated.

I'm more concerned about the students who self consciously use terms like "it's not my cup of tea" because they think people will be impressed, when actually 99 times out of 100 it sounds totally contrived and artificial

.

I think that listeners are more forgiving than you make out when it comes to giving students a lot of leeway in their attempts at idiomatic English.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 6:52 pm

Actually, 'prepone' appears in the new (7th) paper edition of the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (but I'm pretty sure that I checked just the online version when I first mentioned the word in this thread, and it didn't appear there then); the fact that neither the Cambridge or Longman online (at the time of writing) mention it suggests that it is not general lexicographic practice to include it.

Maybe Oxford just wanted to "sex up" its product (in Widdowson's eyes at least)? (Incidentally, 'sex up' is only to be found at present in the OALD7 and the Macmillan Phrasal Verbs Plus).

But hey, before anyone makes a counterpost, please note that the entry for 'prepone' is a very short one, so its inclusion (or not) in MLDs isn't such a problem as far as constraints of space are concerned (the same could obviously not be said however if many terms from Indian English and other varieties of ESL were included; and the fact that there hasn't been a deluge surely suggests that ENL varieties were not lacking throughout their transmission i.e. that there was and still is more that is common than differs among ESL and ENL varieties, despite whatever additional ESL coinages over time).