Running Head: Teaching negation with corpus-based activities

Teaching Negation with Corpus-based Activities

Special Topics in Linguistics（Corpus Linguistics）

Mengzi Cai
Teaching negation with corpus-based activities 2

Table of Contents

Introduction.................................................................................................................................... 3
Background ........................................................................................................................................................ 3
Setting .................................................................................................................................................................. 4
Preparation for corpus-based activity .......................................................................................................... 5
Goals of unit ....................................................................................................................................................... 5
Organizational Overview ................................................................................................................................ 5
Teaching portfolio .......................................................................................................................... 6
Activity 1：Patterns of negation ................................................................................................................... 6
Activity 2：Syntactic Function of Negation words ................................................................................... 7
Activity 3: Variation ...................................................................................................................................... 8
Activity 4：Negative intensification：repetition of never and never ever ............................................ 8
Reflection...................................................................................................................................... 10
References .................................................................................................................................... 11
Appendices.................................................................................................................................... 12
Teaching negation with corpus-based activities 3

Introduction

Background

Negation is the action or logical operation to contradict or deny something. “Negation is

a fundamental element of human language- it is essential to logical systems, allows us to

evaluate whether a statement is true or false, and it gives us a way to express concepts such as

nonexistence.” （Nordmeyer& Frank, 2013, p.1）Negation also plays an important role in

English learning because negation is one kind of common usage in English. In daily English

speech, declarative, interrogative and negative sentences are used frequently. Thus, second

language learners have to study negation at the very beginning of English learning. In addition,

the usages of negation vary across different languages. For example, one pattern of negation in

English is negative prefixes and suffixes, like non- or -less. However, in Chinese, there are no

negative prefixes and suffixes, but the negative word Bu is used in the negation in Chinese. For

instance, “Wo bu xiang du shu (I don’t want to read)”. Bu is the negative word that negates the

sentence. Second language learners could be affected by their L1 when they are learning English.

Therefore, Chinese L1 students might make some mistakes in negation because of the L1

transfer. They might struggle to use the negative prefixes or suffixes. It is worthwhile to pay

attention to the study of negation in the ESL classroom.

It has been proved that using corpora is a beneficial teaching method in the ESL

classroom. Several studies discuss the advantages of corpora.McEnery and Xiao (2005)

concluded that corpus data which lies in empirical nature, collects materials from a great number
Teaching negation with corpus-based activities 4

of speakers. It can make linguistic analysis more objective. Corpora also can be used in

lexicographic studies, grammatical studies and language variation studies.

Negation takes two main patterns: negative prefixes/suffixes or adding negation words.

These two patterns can be searched in the corpora. We would discover the frequency of these

two patterns and the authentic examples of negation. In addition, negation intensification is used

in English to express speaker’s emotion or intensify the negation meaning. These will be the

useful materials for teaching. In this portfolio, I will focus on negation and using corpora in

teaching negation.

Setting

There are 12 sophomore students who are at the intermediate level in ESL class,

according to the ACTFL standards. The activities focus on the form, meaning and use of

negation which may be difficult and require a certain proficiency to reach the ACTFL standard.

In other words, the students had basic knowledge of negation. The activities increase the

difficulty of the basic study of negation and help students to learn negation more completely and

deeply. The students in this class are Asian, and the majority of students come from China. The

students are in an English program in the US which means that this is an ESL class. The main

purpose for learning English is to improve their speaking and writing skills for communication.

The course in this portfolio has one unit with five activities where the topic is negation. There are

five lessons and each lesson takes one hour. The class has one lesson per week, which enables

students to have enough time for reviewing. The Corpus of Contemporary American English

(COCA), Spoken and Written English Corpus of Chinese learners (SWECCL) and AntConc will

be used to search the corpora.

Teaching negation with corpus-based activities 5

Preparation for corpus-based activity

Because students will be asked to use corpora in class, the instructor should introduce the

corpora to students and specifically introduce COCA, SWECLL and AntConc to students.

What’s more, the instructor teaches students to use the function or operation of these corpora.

Goals of unit:

• Students will get to know the form, meaning and use of negation efficiently by

engaging with corpus-based activities.

• Students will be able to use the two main patterns of negation which are negative

prefixes or suffixes and negative words in conversation and writing.

Organizational Overview

The aim of the course is to improve students’ speaking and writing skills. This unit is

designed at the beginning of the course, following the introduction of assertive sentences. The

activities focus on the form, meaning and usage of negation and pays attention to the students’

production after they gain knowledge.

The teaching portfolio has five pedagogical activities. First, the overall objectives of the

activity are listed before the content of the activity. Secondly, the portfolio includes appendices

which are related to each activity and these appendices are the actual materials which students

will use in the class or the screen which will be shown in the search for words in the corpora.

Thirdly, the portfolio has a reflection which contains the reason for the design of the activities.
Teaching negation with corpus-based activities 6

Teaching portfolio
Activity 1：Patterns of negation

Objective:

• Students will understand two main patterns of negation: negative prefixes or suffixes and

adding negative words.

• Students will be able to use frequency function to search the words they study and focus on the

examples in COCA.

Procedure：

1. Instructor delivers the handouts and gives an introduction to negation with the basic rules

of negation. (See Appendix A-1).

2. 12 students will be divided into three groups randomly.

3. Students are asked to infer the negation patterns based on the previous instruction and

finish the fill-in-the-blank (See Appendix A-2). Then students check their answers in

their group. The examples are collected from corpora and the Internet.

4. Students have to summarize the patterns of negation they observed in the fill-in-the-blank

and the instructor will choose one or two groups to share their answers.

5. Explain the two main patterns of negation which will be focused on in this unit-negative

prefixes or suffixes and negative words.

6. Students in groups should search the frequency of words with negative prefixes or

suffixes and negative words in COCA and finish the chart ( See Appendix A-3)The

instructor should teach students input un*/non*/dis*/*less/no/not/never/rarely in the

search box and press “Find matching strings” (See Appendix A-4). Students will finish

the chart based on the data shown in COCA. For negative prefixes or suffixes, students
Teaching negation with corpus-based activities 7

have to look at the first 30 lines in COCA and choose the words which have negative

meaning, then count for their frequency. Tips on the features of words with negative

prefixes and suffixes (See Appendix A-5) will be provided for students to help them

select the words with negative meaning. Students have to focus on the most frequent and

least frequent usage of the negation patterns in order to know the common use and less

use of negation.

7. If students have problems figuring out words with negative meaning, the instructor will

help them.

Activity 2：Part of Speech of Negation Words

Objective:

• Students will be able to recognize the syntactic function of negation words.

• Students will be able to use the negative word to make negative sentences.

Procedure：

1. Firstly, the instructor introduces syntactic functions like adjective and adverbs for

students. Instructor taught the rules that adjective commonly follow noun and adverbs

modify verbs. In addition, the instructor will introduce the relationships that negation

words, like no, is adjective which would follow noun as well as not is adverb which

modify verbs.

2. Students have to choose three examples for each negative word in COCA (See Appendix

B-1).

3. Students should match the syntactic function of the negative word in the examples.

4. Students are asked to use the negative words to make sentences.

Teaching negation with corpus-based activities 8

Activity 3: Variation

Objectives:

• Students will understand there are different usages and frequencies in different registers, such

as spoken or academic register.

• Students will be able to distinguish differences in frequencies between the spoken and

academic registers.

Procedure：

1. Students will search items in COCA and identify the frequency of use in spoken and

academic registers. Then they should finish the form (See Appendix C-1)

2. The instructor will teach students to use the sections function of COCA to limit the

spoken and academic register (See Appendix C-2).

3. For the negative prefix or suffix, students will choose the five most frequent words as

representations in each category.

4. Students are asked to compare the frequency differences.Students focus on what pattern

of negation is the most frequently used in spoken and academic registers and the pattern

can be used in what specific context.

Activity 4：Negative intensifiers：repetition of never and never ever

Objective:

• Students will recognize the two forms of negative intensifiers: repetition of never and never

ever

• Students will be aware of the usage of negative intensification in speaking and writing.
Teaching negation with corpus-based activities 9

Procedure：

1. The instructor should teach students to type never never/ never ever in the search box and

use the chart function of COCA (See Appendix D-1).

2. Students will find which register has the most frequent use of negative intensification.

3. Students will click the context function of COCA (See Appendix D-2) and analyze the

reason why negative intensification would be used in these registers.

4. Students will have a discussion after they finish the analysis chart (See Appendix D-3).

Activity 5： Comparison with SWECCL

Objective：

• Students will compare the different negation uses of native speakers and L2 learners and

discover the correct use of negation based on the comparison.

• Students will know mistakes the L2 learners might make in negation.

Procedure

1. The instructor teach students to use AntConc, open the files and input the

negation patterns: un*/non*/dis*/*less/no/not/never/rarely, and click start (See

Appendix E-1).

2. Students have to repeat the step 6 in activity 1(page 6) but in SWECLL and finish

the same chart in activity 1.

3. Students will compare the chart from activity 1 and activity 5. Then they will be

asked to discuss what they found in the comparison of these two charts in the

group.

4. The instructor will ask each group to share their answers.

Teaching negation with corpus-based activities 10

5. The examples which contain the frequent uses of negation from Chinese students

and native speakers and some wrong usage from Chinese students will be

provided by the instructor for students to compare the usage of negation in these

two corpora (See Appendix E-2).

Reflection

These five activities focus on the form, meaning and usage of negation. The focus is on

negative prefixes and suffixes, negative words and negative intensification. The materials are

collected from COCA and SWECLL.

The purpose of Activity 1 is to expose students to the two main patterns of negation.

Providing the cloze game in Activity 1 enables students to experience the patterns in an

inductive approach. As the examples in the cloze game are derived from COCA and the

Internet they provide authentic examples for students. Tips for selecting the word with

negative prefixes and suffixes help students to choose the words more easily because the

identification of words with negative prefix or suffix is not the focus in this task. Activity 2

relates to the usage of negation words. Understanding of the syntactic function of negative

words enables students to use the negative word correctly instead of making a mistake in

grammar. For example, a Chinese L1 learner might make mistakes like I do no understand

this question. If students know that no is a modifier for a noun phrase and in this sentence,

they should negate an action, they will choose the adverbial not instead of the modifier no.

The authentic examples from COCA provide students efficient references to help them

identify the syntactic functions. The final task is asking students to make sentences which
Teaching negation with corpus-based activities 11

can help them to strengthen their knowledge and apply the knowledge to actual usage. There

are different usages of negation in spoken and academic English. Students will recognize the

differences which will help them to have a more complete understanding of usage of

negation. The last task is designed for students to make conclusions which could help

students. Negative intensification is one important type of negation. The repetition of never

and phrase of never ever are common uses. Therefore, it is worthwhile for students to learn

these two forms of negative intensification. When students use the context function of

COCA, they can see the different uses in different registers, and so they will learn how to use

negative intensification. An L2 learner will make mistakes when they use the L2. It could be

affected by the L1 transfer or insufficient learning. Therefore, Activity 5 is designed for

students to check mistakes or differences which are compared to native speakers.

References

McEnery, T. & Xiao, R. (2005). What Corpora Can Offer in Language Teaching and Learning.
In Hinkel, E. (ed.) (2005). Handbook of research in second language teaching and
learning(pp.364-380). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Nordmeyer, A.E.& Frank, M.C. (2003), Measuring the comprehension of negation in 2-to 4-
year-old children. Retrived from https://langcog.stanford.edu/papers/NF-cogsci2013.pdf

Wen, Q. F., Liang, M. C., Yan, X. Q.(2008), Spoken and Written English Corpus of Chinese
Learners. Beijing: Foreign language teaching and research press
Teaching negation with corpus-based activities 12

Appendices

Appendix A-1

Introduction to negation

Negative statements are the opposite of affirmative statements. In English, there are several ways
to create negative statements.

Affirmative Negative

She is hungry. She is not hungry.

I have friends at work. I have no friends at work.

There are some over there. There are none over there.

Tom always walks to school. Tom never walks to school.

Somebody is here. Nobody is here.

Something happened. Nothing happened.

Both parents have arrived. Neither parent has arrived.

Tom and Sue have left. Neither Tom nor Sue has left.

We’re happy and pleased. We’re unhappy and displeased.

（Retrieved from：https://www.lawlessenglish.com/learn-english/grammar/negation-
introduction/）
Teaching negation with corpus-based activities 13

Appendix A-2

Fill in the blank:

Direction: Please use the negative form of word in the parentheses.

Example: We don’t mean (mean) to deny that people are the object of statutory harm.

They dislike (like) you but sometimes I don’t think it’s that.

1. My first class was Math. I ________________ (understand) the lesson, so I asked the teacher

for help. She taught me how to do the problems, and I think I understand now.

2. For lunch I ate soup with my friends. My friend Rachel _________ (have) any soup, because

she doesn’t like it. She ate a sandwich.

3. Meanwhile, senators faced ________________(stop) questions.

4. The four men ________________(appear)over a two-day period starting last Wednesday

night.

5. They can ________________(provide) adequate justification for the practice of differential

punishment.

6. ________________(fortunately), they did not analyze the impact of fees.

7. Indeed, Carlin ________________(resorted) to outlandish prose.

Teaching negation with corpus-based activities 14

8. She _______________ (teach) me how to do the problems.

9. The process was suspended in an _______________ (expect) way.

10. Their status as part of the union was _______________ (certain).

*Please summarize two patterns of negation based on the exercise below：

Teaching negation with corpus-based activities 15

Appendix A-3

Negative prefix or Frequency Negative word Frequency

suffix

Un- e.g. no

unidentified：38328

unlike:29622

Non- not

Dis- never

-less rarely
Teaching negation with corpus-based activities 16

Appendix A-4

Explanation：Instructors should teach students search the items like this and the chart should be

finished based on this result.

Teaching negation with corpus-based activities 17

Appendix A-5

Word with negative prefix or suffix tend to be:

1. meaning: negative

2. part of speech: adjective or adverb

3. morphology: two or more morphemes

Teaching negation with corpus-based activities 18

Appendix B-1

*Please search the words in COCA and write down examples from COCA, then identify the

syntactic function (adjective or adverb) of the negative words in the examples.

Negative Words Syntactic Function

No：1.e.g.There is no reason to think that…

2. ________________

3. ________________ Adjective

Not: 1. ________________

2. ________________

3. ________________

Never：1. ________________

2. ________________

3. ________________ Adverbial

Rarely: 1. ________________

2. ________________

3. ________________

*Use the negative words to make four negative sentences:

Teaching negation with corpus-based activities 19

Appendix C-1

*Write down the frequency of each category in spoken and academic registers.

Negative prefix or suffix Negative word

category Un- Non- Dis- -less no not never rarely

spoken

academic
Teaching negation with corpus-based activities 20

Appendix C-2

Explanation：Instructor should teach students to use the sections function to limit the register

like this.
Teaching negation with corpus-based activities 21

Appendix D-1

Explanation：Students use the chart function of COCA to search the phrase never never and

they will report the result.

Teaching negation with corpus-based activities 22

Appendix D-2

Explanation: Students should look through the context of the phrase and think about why writers

would use negation intensification in the context.

 Teaching negation with corpus-based activities 23

Appendix D-3

*Please write down the pattern of negation and which register it belongs to. Try to explain the

reason why writers use this negation intensification in the specific register.

Pattern of negation intensification Register Reason

Teaching negation with corpus-based activities 24

Appendix E-1

Explanation: Instructor should teach students to open the files and search the items in the search

box, then students will get the result.

Teaching negation with corpus-based activities 25

Appendix E-2

Compare the similar and different usages between Spoken and Written English Corpus of

Chinese Learners (SWECCL) and COCA (e.g. structure, usage) .

SWECCL COCA

no 1. Many years ago my mother was 1. He will be punished no more severely

has beening getting to this disease than for his un successful attempt.

and with many surgery treatment and 2. There is no direct victim of the

there was no successful. offence itself.

2. Because no feeling no feeling will 3. It makes no sense to talk about.

be useful. 4. It has no moral weight and provides

3. The hospital says that, there’s no no justification for punishing harmless

hope for her mother to recovery. wrongdoers less than harmful one.

4. No, dangerous no happened every

minutes.

not 1. She could not speak, work, eat and 1. It is not a necessary element of crime.

even dressed on her own. 2. But juries can not exercise their

2. There was not a success one. power of nullification to increase a

3. She was little jealous because her sentence.

dream was not Spanish. 3. I have not done anything.

Teaching negation with corpus-based activities 26

4. I have not enough money to go 4.It does not follow that it is required of

there by plane. us.

never 1. Her mother could never awaken. 1. They might never have had a mentor

2. They would never know each who encouraged them to think

other. ambitiously.

3. She can never play with us. 2. On one hand, never before has more

4. I never say straightly to my father. information been available to more

people at essentially no cost.

3. They will all confirm that they never

expected to be earning the incomes they

now receive-firm profits.

4. All seven sitting judges reported that

they almost never receive these forms.

rarely 1. it’s very rarely really, so I think er 1. We rarely depend upon any one

you should you can travel by air. method.

2. Those heavy weight persons you 2. In practice, however, the forms are

rarely see in your daily life. rarely used or helpful.

3. But very rarely do you get a question,

the question is more like what will

happen.

4.In practice, this is rarely the case.