Lesson 3 development

Shall we talk about criminal vocabulary?

A hand holding a magnifying glass, looking at items on a table.
Figure 3. Magnifying glass by Noelle Otto via Pexels. Retrieved on January 30, 2023.

Introduction

  15 mins            Teacher-Learners

Teacher raises students’ prior knowledge of the criminal field and how this field is portrayed in the various TV series about the topic.

  10 mins            Learners-Learners

Teacher invites learners to look for the target vocabulary in the grid.

Development (exploring COCA)

  40 mins            Teacher-Learners

Learners get to know how to use COCA. Teacher explains and shows how to use the tool. If needed, students can also watch the demo video (from Lesson 3 Description) to learn how to use COCA more effectively.

Guided by the teacher, learners use COCA to explore the concordance lines.

  20 mins            Learners-Learners

In groups, learners use COCA to explore the concordance lines on their own.

Application (corpus research)

  20 mins            Learners-Learners

Teacher asks learners to use the words found in activity 1 to generate the concordance lines on COCA and observe the given examples so that they can select the phrases that will make up activity 2.

  10 mins            Teacher-Learners

Guided by the teacher, learners discuss the different contexts of use for the criminal field words found on COCA.

Development (presentation of the concept of collocation)

  20 mins            Learners-Learners

In groups, learners compare the examples they will select in Activity 2 with the excerpts presented in Activity 3. Then, they discuss the similarities and differences between them.

  20 mins            Teacher-Learners

Teacher introduces learners to the concept of collocations, giving examples in learners’ first language before moving on to examples in English. General language collocations will be explored first, leading to the collocations presented in the excerpts of activity 3.

Application (collocations practice)

  20 mins            Learners-Learners

In groups, students complete activity 4. Then, they access COCA again and check how often the collocations they have formed occur in the corpus.

  20 mins            Teacher-Learners

The teacher then holds a discussion to explain the use of frequency as one of the indicators of the conventionality of collocations in the language and the target field. This discussion aims to help learners realise that, although it is possible to form different collocations, the ones that will be used are those that are already conventionalised in the language and in the target field.

Conclusion

  30 mins            Teacher-Learners

Learners share their activities with the whole class.

Teacher holds a whole-class discussion about what students have learned and how they can use such data in other contexts.

Assessment

The assessment will be formative-focused and occur throughout all the activities, aiming to identify learners’ understanding as they complete the activities and use the target tool.

Licence

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