About LEXICLIL

Want to join the course? If you don't have an account, click the logo to create one. Follow the instructions to confirm your account by email. If you have an account, log in with your username and password and enrol in the first MODULE. LEXICLIL is an exciting new concept offering practitioners a series of unique resources and tools all wrapped up within an exploratory online teacher development programme. LexiCLIL is free to individual users. If you want more information or you want to support our work, please visit our About Us page. Both process and product, LEXICLIL examines how content and language integrated learning (CLIL) can be enriched by a lexical approach to language learning. LEXICLIL provides practical hands-on tasks to help users make the most of the course, including a structured peer observation programme to help practitioners put the resources and tools into practice where it matters most -with their own learners. On this introductory page we hope to give you a clear picture of the objectives of the LEXICLIL programme and package and what you and your institution might gain from the programme and from the resources that we will provide you with. Top 100 words in our LexiCLIL white paper created by http://wordle.net

Getting an Overview of LexiCLIL

The slideshow below should help give you a good general idea of what LEXICLIL comprises:

The Common English Lexical Framework (CELF)

Click to see full-size collage of the
Common English Lexical Framework

The LEXICLIL course provides you with access to The Common English Lexical Framework (CELF). This brand new wordlist has a number of unique features:

• It is divided into bands according to the six levels described in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.
• The list is productive. Word families are distributed across CEF bands according to frequency of use in writing.
• So 'age' is A1, 'ages' is B2 and 'aged' is C1.
• CELF shows how the productive use of words and their word family members grows and develops as the learner's language ability develops.
  
• Recycling and in-depth learning of vocabulary is a natural outcome of following the lexical syllabus in a language learning programme.
• The words are tagged according to their possible uses in specific subject areas, making the list CLIL-friendly.

CELFCARD

CELFCARD comprises a series of interactive flashcards that enable learners to explore key lexis in depth either as part of a classroom programme or autonomously.

• CELFCARD decks are designed for use with the ANKI flashcard software, which is open source and free to use.
• ANKI is a multimedia tool, so learners are able to add there own pictures, sound, video and example sentences to the flashcards, and with ANKI they can make their own decks.
• ANKI provides a scientifically proven method 'spaced repitition system' to promote long-term memory, which will adjust itself to each learner according to their individual progress.
  

The BNL Vocabulary Profiler

Based on the most frequent 2709 words in English, the BNL Vocabulary Profiler colour words according to frequency of use: BLUE for very common words, GREEN for frequently used words, and YELLOW for common words. RED words are not very commonly used in general English.

This is an example of the text from the first topic in this course. On the left you see the original text, on the right you see the words, coloured to indicate how common the words are.

Try it out for yourself! Copy some text and paste it into the BNL Vocabulary profiler. The BNL VP is hosted on Tom Cobb's widely acclaimed Lextutor web site, so you need to use Internet Explorer version 6 or higher. This tool is used by professional authors of EFL course books published by mainstream publishers like Pearson. Joan Baker-Gonzalez and Eilen Blau produced the Academic Reading series "World of Reading" using the BNL profiler to help them select the target vocabulary. This very same tool is also available for any EFL teacher to use in their own materials.

How LEXICLIL was designed

If you would like to know a little more about how and why LEXICLIL was put together, feel free to take a look at our research notes below:

About us

Lexitronics is a team of ELT specialists who share a common interest in lexis and the use of technologies to enhance the teaching and learning of lexis. You can find out more about Lexitronics by visiting our Lexitronics Blog. The LexiCLIL project is the work of Nilgun Hancioğlu, John Eldridge and Steven Neufeld.

Nilgun Hancioğlu John Eldridge Steve Neufeld

You can contact us at lexitronics@gmail.com