Archive Copy.
Charles Browne, Professor of Applied Linguistics and TESOL at Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo, Japan, is a specialist in second language vocabulary acquisition, extensive reading, and online learning; co-author of the NGSL New General Service List, (www.newgeneralservicelist.org) and the NAWL New Academic Word List (www.newacademicwordlist.org), and has created a wide variety of research-based, language learning and analysis software such as the OGTE (Online Graded Text Editor), ER-Central, EnglishCentral, WordEngine, and V-Check. He is working hard to share this knowledge with teachers, researchers, and software developers through presentations, seminars, and hand-on workshops around the world.
Plenary Session
Change in the Classroom: Principled Pragmatism in Reading and Vocabulary
Teachers are often required to teach from either Ministry-approved textbooks or using materials assigned from above. Far too often, however, these materials do not match the needs, interests, or level of our students. This presentation will discuss an analysis of both reading materials and vocabulary that Japanese high school students are required to learn, identify some of the problems, and propose several informed solutions. It will also introduce several free on-line analytical tools that can be used to do a similar analysis on materials used in the Korean classroom.
See a preview of this plenary at http://koreatesol.org/content/browne-nc2014-preview-video
Second Presentation
A New General Service List: Words for EFL Success
The New General Service List (NGSL) is a list of core vocabulary words for EFL learners and is a major update of West's (1953) GSL. Based on a carefully selected 273-million-word sample from the Cambridge English Corpus, the 2800+ words of the NGSL offer an amazing 92% coverage of most texts of general English. This presentation will give a brief background on the list and project before moving on introducing the new 1.01 version of the NGSL as well as the growing number of free online resources that are available to help you teach, learn, analyse, or create teaching materials based on the NGSL.
Third Presentation
In Focus: A blended solution for developing critical thinking skills and high frequency vocabulary
This session will introduce a new 3-level reading and discussion series that focuses on the development of students critical thinking skills while systematically improving their knowledge of important high frequency words with both in-text and online learning tools. Levels 1 and 2 help students to master words in the New General Service List (an updated version of West's 1953 list, developed by Browne, Culligan and Phillips, 2013, and informed by the Cambridge English Corpus) while Level 3 focuses on a new Academic Word List). Participants will get a brief explanation of the pedagogy and science behind the course, followed by demonstrations of key activities and learning tools.
KOTESOL is pleased to co-sponsor these presentations with Cambridge University Press Korea.
