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Date Posted: 18:36:26 04/16/07 Mon
Author: Houssam Zahreddine
Subject: Peer Editing of Sonia's work, group three

Learning vocabulary is more than learning words. The process of acquiring English language items is not so simple as it seems to be.
First of all, vocabulary gives power to communicate. “Knowing a minimum of 3000 words can guarantee an effective reading at University, while 5000 ones indicate an academic success”. But to get to this point , it takes time once learning happens gradually. It is advisable an everage of 8 to 12 productive items per lesson. It is important to mention a distinction between receptive and productive vocabulary to illustrate this subject. The first refers to language items which can only be recognized and comprehended in the context of reading and listening material. The second relates to the ones that can recall and use appropriately in speech and writing.
Secondly, “ It is not enough to know what words mean, but how they are used” as well. It is necessary to be aware of collocation, that is, “ the items that co-occur or are used together frequently simply because the combination reflects a common real world state of affairs”. For instance, “pass” and “salt” used in expression like, pass me the salt please! occurs only because people often want to pass salt. Besides it, the learners need to know about different sorts of registers and its respective uses; the right words pronunciation which includes notions of sounds, spelling and stress ,and also , have notions about syntax which focuses on the way language items are organized to convey messages. Moreover, so as to have an effective result in learning, the learners need to do exercises, “ acquire a habit to take notes of words and expressions in class each week” , revise the vocabulary, associate new words with their life, using them to talk about their own feelings. According to Felicity O´dell, personalizing language in this way not only makes for enjoyable lessons but also help to fix new vocabulary in the learner´s mind.
Thirdly, despite all the difficulties the learners can face there is a great possibility to have fun while they learn English language. It comes easily through activities such as reading, writing, listening and speaking .For example, they can read a book according to their interest, choose their favourite song to listen to and understand the lyrics, write and talk about special events that occurred to them. They can also choose to go beyond the class, navigating on the internet , doing researches, talking in a chat and etc.
In summary, learning English vocabulary takes time and requires a lot of hard working from the learners’part. It includes notion about a complex system which relates to semantics, phonology, syntax and pragmatics. As a result, the learners can have fun and power to communicate.


Works Cited:
O’dell , Felicity. “ Vocabulary”. English Teaching Professional. 2004.
Gairns, Ruth., and Redman Stuart. A guide to teaching and learning vocabulary.Cambridge University Press ,1986


Peer Editing: I like the topic chosen, and the points of view presented by Sonia are very constructive for in-class dynamics. However, I almost mistook the introduction paragraph for the title, since it was pretty short, and not very specific as to the thesis statement, which says that learning vocabulary is not "as" easy as it seems (correction to the mistake found there, "so" easy as it seems. There are also other mistakes throughout the text, for which I would suggest having someone proofread your paper in order to avoid them). Transition signals are well used, however in each of the three developmental paragraphs, there is an excess of topics presented, and therefore these topics are not developed and exemplified to the extent that they could be had you been more objective in your choice of topics, narrowing them down so that you don't run out of space and just fill your paper brushing on various different topics without undertaking two or three in a more extensive and thorough manner. I also felt that in the conclusion paragraph new ideas were introduced. Although you did brush up on some of these in your developmental paragraphs, you did not list these points in the introduction. The conclusion, from my point of view, should be basically a repetition of the introduction. I do think, nevertheless, that the paper has a lot of potential. The topic chosen is extremely fruitful, probably the reason for which you ended up presenting so many ideas, which is excellent, don't get me wrong. I would just suggest a better organization, as Isenguel said, narrowing down the topic to less points, and providing a more inviting introduction paragraph. You'll be set then. Good luck!! =]

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