Giving a course on using Just The Word- advice, and lesson ideas would be most appreciated.

[Peter Parise]

Dear Just The Word Group,

 Hello,  My name is Peter, (check out my Google+ page for more info or http://tesolpeter.wordpress.com/ for my blog) and I will be giving a workshop for Japanese teachers of English in Yokohama on using Just The Word and Wordle. You can see a post on the workshop here ( it is in Japanese but, there is always Google translate.)

 I must admit while I have much experience using Wordle, I have never used  Just The Word the same way. It seems on first glance it like a concordance based cousin of Wordle since it too has a Wordle function. I am interested in what anyone out in the field has done with Just The Word for their EFL classes? I found one reference to it in Graham Stanley's book Language Learning with Technology but the focus was more on using the tool directly.

My approach to this workshop is based on the advice from Alex Boulton on Data-driven learning=start with paper first and gradually go from there. So if anyone has any kind of activity that has made use of Just The Word, either on paper or on the screen, I and probably everyone else here would be very interested. Of course you will be credited for any unique ideas.

Looking forward to your comments,

Thank you,

Peter

P.S. I noticed you have a presence in the forums here Mura Nava. Good to see you!  Maybe I should post this on the Google+ Corpus Linguistics group too?  Are you involved to some degree with Just The Word? Anyway, I think I need to contact Phil about the learner error function as well.

[Mura Nava]

hi peter

have written about using the alternatives function here http://eflnotes.wordpress.com/2013/07/02/just-the-word-alternatives-function-or-how-to-introduce-concordances-to-your-students/

ta
mura

[Ulugbek Nurmukhamedov]

I really wanted to use the Just-The-Word (JTW) in my research project last year BUT it failed me; in the middle of the instruction, the whole website did not work. The website was fixed after about 2 weeks or so; this ruined my study. I was very happy that I was piloting JTW and I noticed this problem. 

Having said that I LOVE the JTW website and it has huge implications for collocation learning/teaching (although empirically not researched yet). I've developed a video tutorial for my students featuring JTW. Feel free to use it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQZx0YNTUFo  I hope you'll find it helpful. 

Good luck with your workshop, 

Bek

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Northern Arizona University

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[Phil Edmonds]

Hi and thanks for your comments. I'm sorry the site was down and you couldn't finish your project. That must have been the time when I was migrating the site to a new server, and it took some time to get it right. Nowadays it crashes once in a while, but I usually get it back up quickly.

Phil.

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[Peter Parise]

Thank you Mara and Bek for the materials. This will help me a lot. (●´∀｀●)

Now, I gotta sit down and give these a look. 

Peter 

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Peter Parise
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[Peter Parise]

Hello everyone.

Bek, thank you for making this video. I am still in the planning stages of my workshop, so I will try to fit it in. You also have a new subscriber for your youtube channel too.

Mara, this article on the alternatives is another layer I can recommend as well. I didn't really understand this function until I read your article. Thanks again!

If anyone out there has used printouts from JustTheWord to add to worksheets or paper assignments, I would be very interested in knowing.

Peter

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[Steve Neufeld]

Hi!

A bit late, but maybe this will be useful.  I sometimes use CONCORDLE as an introduction to the concepts of word frequency and KWICs.  CONCORDLE is a bit quirky, but it is does combine both a word cloud (clickable) which students seem to immediately understand and a concordance (also clickable to the context), which they often don't understand.  Once they do understand both, then JTW is much more accessible.  See Concordle at http://folk.uib.no/nfylk/concordle/  - it is all included in the web page, so you can download it and take it with you, or even run it in a lab without the Internet.

Hope that is of some use.

Steve

[Steve Neufeld]

Hi!

According to Murphey's law, I have suffered lapses in JTW during workshops as well, so I have been looking for some alternatives as a contingency.  I still think JTW is one of the best.  Here is my blog post about the alternatives I've come across so far: http://sfltdu.blogspot.com/2014/10/collocations-and-more-collocations.html  If you find any others, let me know. 

All the best

Steve

On Tuesday, 3 June 2014 05:26:54 UTC+3, Peter Parise wrote:

[Phil Edmonds]

Hi folks,

Just to say I'm sorry that Just The Word is down sometimes. I think it's due to unscrupulous robots that are trying to download the database. The server can't handle all the requests. It comes and goes in waves. Thanks for your continuing support, and do send me ideas to improve Just The Word.

Very best,

Phil.

Just The Word.

[Peter Parise]

Hi Steve and Phil,

Thank you Steve for the suggestions. my motto is: "better late than never" with any kind of advice. I will have to try CONCORDLE and visit your blog post soon because it is good to see what is out there for teachers and researchers. 

Phil, you have our support and we know there can be glitches once and a while. When I had my workshop, I had all the participants ( about 40 people I believe) all search for the same word on JTW and it seemed to cause some delays on the site. I hope it didn't seem like an attack so my apologies. 

But the reaction to the JTW was very positive when I gave my workshop. Just last week I spoke to one participant of the course, she said she was really happy to have been exposed to JTW since it helps them find examples for language that a teacher manual for a textbook fails to provide. I also suggested to have her students try it as well, since a majority (if not all) of the students have smartphones at their disposal. She seemed to like that idea. 

The nice thing about JTW is the simple interface, which is really necessary if we want to promote data-driven learning in the classroom. Teachers hesitate to use corpus tools if such applications seem too complicated to use, so if the interface design is taken into consideration, I think gradually we will see a change. 

Thank you both,

Best, 

Peter 

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Peter Parise

神奈川県立国際言語文化アカデミア
Kanagawa Prefectural Institute of Language and Culture Studies
〒247-0007
横浜市栄区小菅ヶ谷1-2-1
Tel　045-896-1091
Fax  045-896-0096
http://www.pref.kanagawa.jp/cnt/f7807/
http://www.tesolpeter.wordpress.com

[Steve Neufeld]

Hi!

Another tool I use in class on the fly when students are discussing acceptable collocations is GOOGLE BOOKS NGRAMS -- especially because it gives a historical perspective.

For example, see this NGRAM illustrates that 'fish and chips' is okay but 'chips and fish' is not, but 'chips and salsa' is gaining currency.

Another good example is "Merry Christmas" and "Happy Christmas".  Most of my students have only been taught that "Merry Christmas" is possible, but this NGRAM illustrates that both are possible.  You can explore BRITISH and AMERICAN frequencies which show different preferences.   Interesting to get students to speculate on the the 'peaks' and troughs (corresponding to WWI and WWII as well as the incredible decline in the late 50s and 60s.)  :)

And, when speaking of 'merry', this NGRAM shows the changing pattern of use of three synonyms - merry, festive, gay.  What happened in the 1980s???

Of course, Mark Davies' interface lets you explore such things in greater sophistication, but for a quick introduction, GOOGLE NGRAMS can be quite effective.

All the best

Steve Neufeld

Instructor

School of Foreign Languages

[Philip Edmonds]

Thanks Peter.

Always happy to hear how people are making use of JTW.

Don't worry about using it in your class this way. That's not causing any issues at all.

Phil.

 

///  Phil Edmonds

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From: Peter Parise <paris...@ILCS-kanagawa.jp>
To: just-the-...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sunday, 26 October 2014, 20:11
Subject: Re: [JTW-USERS] Re: Giving a course on using Just The Word- advice, and lesson ideas would be most appreciated.

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