Steve Neufeld

Middle East Technical University, Northern Cyprus Campus · School of Foreign Languages

High-stakes and high-volume English language proficiency tests typically rely on multiple-choice questions (MCQs) to assess reading and listening skills. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, more institutions are using MCQs via online assessment platforms, which facilitate shuffling the order of options within test items to minimize cheating. There is sca...

A matrix of sixteen shades of technology integration and meaningful language practice and communication incorporating the three frameworks of SAMR, Growth Mindset, and Paul Nation's four strands of language learning.

Preamble This white paper aims to highlight some of the major issues regarding the dropout rate at METU NCC EPP as points of discussion and debate for all instructors at METU NCC SFL. The white paper seeks to explore the dropout issue by examining various aspects that define the relationship between METU DBE and METU NCC EPP. The general dropout tr...

This study examines the linguistic feature known as discourse connector using a corpus-informed approach. The study applies a taxonomy which classifies and describes 632 discourse connectors in eight broad classes with 17 categories. The frequency of use of each discourse connector listed was analyzed in the three different registers of spoken, non...

The bewildering pace of change in technology has had a polarizing effect on the teaching profession. Teachers tend to cope in two ways, either by finding the least invasive ways to use technology without interfering with their standard mode of practice, or by embracing technology at every step and turn in new and innovative ways. The former does a...

This article examines a recent example of published research on the vocabulary profile of a financial corpus based on the Academic Word List (AWL) to illustrate not only the erroneous output from vocabulary profiling tools but also the pitfalls of using the AWL as a filter for academic lexis. Recent research has cautioned against eschewing high fre...

In our last article (Vol. 24/1), we looked at how corpus and concordancing tools can be integrated into teacher education, and at some of the tools that can be exploited at the Compleat Lexical Tutor (http://www.lextutor.ca/). This time round, we will look a little more closely at the implications for teacher educators of extant research into vocab...

Research into lexical patterning and frequency has grown apace in recent years, largely due to developments in computer software that have enabled the ready processing of extremely large banks of linguistic data. The insights that are emerging from this research have profound implications for content and language integrated learning. In this paper,...

Ideas and activities for teacher trainers to use in teacher development workshops to raise awareness about the lexical approach using Web2.0 tools and the Lextutor website.

Many course books for learners of English as a second or foreign language now claim to contain a strong lexical component. Other practitioners meanwhile continue to advocate the use of graded readers to augment vocabulary development. This article reports the findings of vocabulary profiling and analysis of both course books and graded readers and...

This article describes two complementary research projects into lexical patterning and frequency in general and academic English. The research suggests that treating current popularly used wordlists such as the General Service List (GSL) and the Academic Word List (AWL) as distinct constructs is of questionable merit. Rather, there are strong argum...

The BNL lists have been termed a 'a facelifted GSL' (Eldridge 2008, "No, there isn't an 'academic vocabulary', but...", TESOL Quarterly, 42(1): 111). Here is a recent description from Gardener & Davies, "A new academic vocabulary list," Applied Linguistics, Aug 2013: Critics of the AWL concept have recently proposed a new single list for academic...

The concept of vocabulary profiling texts as an aid to teaching and learning English is becoming more widespread due to the availability of computer-based tools. Two commonly used tools are RANGE, a PC-based vocabulary profiler for corpora developed under the auspices of Paul Nation, and the Compleat Lexical Tutor, a web-based suite of lexical anal...