Abstract:

This presentation will describe the main content of a vocabulary app that is being developed for Emirati English language learners in an English foundation program at a university in the United Arab Emirates. It was based on a clear Lexical Curriculum – 2,600 restricted word families based on 3 new and up-to-date frequency-based word lists derived from corpora of over a billion words (Brezina & Gablasova, 2013; Browne, Culligan Phillips, 2013; Gardener & Davis, 2013) as well as the Oxford 3000 list. It will briefly describe how the new curriculum was created and the main features of the new list. It will also how the word families were divided into 4 levels (A1 – B2) and cross referenced with the British Council Word Families document to check the CEFR level that they should be taught at and to determine which other word forms should be taught. Word Guides were also developed to inform the materials development and as a resource for learners and teachers. These included information about the Form (Spelling), Meaning (Simple definition in English and Arabic translation) and Use (4 most common and useful collocations.