Using ChatGPT to Teach Lexical Blends

Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Future of Teaching and Education

Year: 2025

DOI:

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Using ChatGPT to Teach Lexical Blends

Dr. Carla Ovejas-Ramírez

ABSTRACT:

Lexical blends combine two or more lexical items, with at least one undergoing shortening, often ignoring morpheme boundaries. Both English and Spanish are increasingly incorporating blends into their vocabularies. While some lexical blends become widely used and are included in dictionaries, others fade out. Online dictionaries like Oxford, Cambridge, and Macmillan regularly update to reflect evolving vocabulary trends. This study examines 500 lexical blends from 2015 to 2024, collected from online dictionaries and social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The focus is on teaching English vocabulary to Spanish-speaking learners at B2 and C1 levels, as blending is less common in Spanish. To facilitate this, we designed activities using ChatGPT to help students identify blend components and understand their semantic contributions. AI tools provide customized exercises, interactive tasks, and feedback tailored to individual learning needs. The activities aim to help students recognize the structure, meaning, and context of blends, and even create new ones. Using Cognitive Linguistics terminology (Ruiz de Mendoza & Peña 2005), blends can arise from (1) apparent incompatibility (e.g., douser ‘dress + trouser(s)’), (2) parametrization (e.g., shofie ‘shoe + selfie’), or (3) strengthening (bombogenesis ‘bomb + cyclogenesis’) (Peña 2022). AI integration enhances the learning experience by promoting a dynamic, engaging, and practical approach to understanding blends.

keywords: creation of new words, lexical blends, Cognitive Linguistics, Artificial Intelligence, English teaching