Sketchengine part II

Salam everyone, 

                                                                        (Salam: Peace in Arabic, used for greetings)

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                                              Do you like using games in your class?  

I mean who doesn't? but we need to make it beneficial so I'm here for the rescue :)

This week I'm back with another activity/game based on corpus data, but it's more fun than last week's 😈

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        note: this activity was part of an assignment I wrote, If you plan to create something similar please share it with me :)

Activity #2: Synonyms bingo

How to create a synonyms bingo? 

1. go to Sketchengine and choose the "thesaurus" button where you'll find synonyms of any word you choose. (for the corpus I choose BAWE)

                                                                

thesaurus button in sketchengine 

2. type the word you want to find a synonym for, just bare in mind that this option will also give you words that are related to your word so you need to double check with a dictionary for your synonyms.

3. pick 5 words of the list for 5 different words you want to teach the synonyms of for your students.

4. go to a bingo maker website and here's what I used make your own bingo cards, and press the following 

                                    

5. then this because we will have our own list of items

6. then this 

7. then fill each box of these with your 5 synonyms 

8. and finally press submit  

9. you'll then have your 10 generated bingo cards which you can use with 10 students or play it in pairs (of 20 students). 

                                    

                                                        An example of a bingo card that I created 

                                

10. create your own list of how'll you say each item in class, but for me I choose 5 random synonyms and told students whoever scratch off a horizontal or vertical line, wins.

Relevance to teaching and learning English 

1. using games in class can make dry classes more fun.

2. depends on how you approach it, but if played in pairs which goes under "collaborative learning" which is an important skill to learn as we don't work alone most of the time.

3. learning synonyms can help students better express themselves as their wording will be more precise. 

4. if played individually, it can help students learn to focus as they need to be fast in finding the words they need which won't happen if they are not focused.

limitations:

1. It takes a lot of time to find synonyms in Sketchengine as the button "thesaurus" offers not only synonyms.

2. It can get chiatoc if not planned correctly.

3. Some students might not memorize the synonyms from the activity so as a teacher a good pre-teaching should come before it to help with memorizing the synonyms.

                        So, will you play synonyms bingo in your next class ? 😇

This is my last blog for this term, thank you for reading all my 8 blogs, let me know what you liked best :)

meet your new helper

Salam everyone, 

                                                                        (Salam: Peace in Arabic, used for greetings)

                                          👾💥👾💥👾💥👾💥👾💥👾💥👾💥

This week I'll post two different blogs about activities you can implement using Sketchengine, in other words, Corpus driven data. link to Sketchengine

**note: 1. I wrote about these activities for one of my assignments, if you plan to implement it please let me know :)

2. the quality of my screenshots is not good and I tried everything to fix it, apologies. 

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Activity 1:   Fill in the gap with the right linking word. 

Rationale: This activity can be used for your students learning about linking words,  but for my activity I assumed that they are of grade 12 so I used BAWE corpus because it would suit their level.

How to create the activity ? 

1. After you picked your linking words from any website of reference, go to concordance button in Sketch engine as shown here: 

             

2. Type the word you are doing the activity about, and this button will show you how the word appears in its real context.

                                                

                          

                                                    Example of concordance for the word "moreover"

3. For my activity, since it's fill in the gap, I picked only one of these concordances and repeated the same process for each word I had.

4. After collecting let's say 8 concordances of 8 different linking words, I press on it as shown below and go to a blank word document where I clean unnecessary information so my students don't get confused.

                                                

The word "moreover" in its real context 

5. After cleaning the concordance and removing things like "</s><s> " in blue, I start creating the activity by putting the concordance and leaving a blank where the linking word suppose to be as shown below.

    Fill in the gap with a linking word (as, because, furthermore, moreover, not only but only)

    1. studia humanitatis stressed text-based studies, thereby aiming to gain powerful and valuable insights of Christian religion brought back to a purer interpretation of the biblical text. Their slogan ad fontes signified, most importantly, an attempt to get closer to the true intention of the scriptures. ________ , the via moderna, as this new interpretation of religion came to be called, also challenged the minutely derived rationalist viewpoints of medieval theologians (known as the via antiqua) by stressing the value of human experience and interpretation. For example, the German philologist and

6. I didn't give a lot of structure for the activity because you can design it the way you want, for me I picked linking words because it's an important point I wanted to teach my students, you can also use it for other things.

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Relevance to teaching and learning English

1. Using corpus driven data encourages discovery and active learning, that is if you will be teaching your students how to use the website but other than that those types of learning will be there on a lower level.

2. Using corpus driven data is useful for students because students are able to see the word they are learning about in its real context.

3. For teachers, doing such an activity you get the best of both worlds of traditional and modern learning, traditional as in fill in the gap and modern from using Sketch engine.

4. As a teacher you can create plenty of activities similar to this one and you will rest assure that it will be relevant for a while and it's supported by essays and textbooks.

5. learning about linking words for both students and teachers teaches the importance of cohesive and coherent ideas to accurately represent what you want to say 

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Limitations:

1. Your school/university needs to have access to Sketchengine to create this activity.

2. The concordance can still be confusing even after cleaning it from irrelevant parts.

3.  It takes a lot of time to create a good activity that is relevant to your context.

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                       So, do you like your new assistant for all your activities ?