Transcript ASPECTS OF VOCABULARY TEACHING: Selection, first …

VOCABULARY TEACHING:
Some insights from the research
Penny Ur
ETAI mini-conference, Ohalo
January, 2010
General background
It is generally agreed today that a wide ‘sight’
vocabulary is essential for proficiency
(especially reading comprehension).
This means at least 1,000 items by the end of
6th grade
About 4-5,000 by the end of 10th
About 7-8,000 by the end of 12th.
How do we help our students acquire this?
Agree or disagree?
1. You need to know about 85% of the words of a
text in order to understand it reasonably well.
2. It helps you remember if you learn items in lexical
sets (e.g. colors, animals).
3. The most efficient way to learn new words is
through extensive reading.
4. It helps students remember a word if they first
found it out through ‘inferencing’ from context.
5. Providing translations helps learners to remember
words.
6. We need to review a new item about four or five
times in order for our learners to remember it.
You need to know about 85% of the words
of a text in order to understand it
satisfactorily.
Wrong.
85% not only does not ensure understanding
the main ideas: it also does not provide
sufficient evidence to help guess the unknown
words (Laufer, 1997a).
Extract from Obama’s speech
That is the work we began last year. Since
the day I took office, we renewed our focus on
the __________ who __________ our nation.
We have made substantial __________ in our
homeland __________ and disrupted
_________ that threatened to take American
____________.
You need to know about 85% of the words
of a text in order to understand it
satisfactorily.
Wrong.
85% not only does not ensure understanding
the main ideas: it also does not provide
sufficient evidence to help guess the unknown
words.
In order to understand a text successfully,
you need to know between 95-98% of the
words (Schmitt, 2008).
That is the work we began last year. Since
the day I took office, we renewed our focus on
the _________ who threaten our nation. We
have made substantial __________ in our
homeland security and disrupted plots that
threatened to take American lives.
That is the work we began last year. Since
the day I took office, we renewed our focus on
the terrorists who threaten our nation. We have
made substantial investments in our homeland
security and disrupted plots that threatened to
take American lives.
The most efficient way to learn new
words is through extensive reading.
Wrong.
(Zahar et al., 2001; Schmitt, 2008).
We learn new items very slowly through extensive
reading (about one for each 1000 words read).
The value of extensive reading is mainly in recycling
common items and in increasing reading fluency.
It helps you remember if you learn items
in lexical sets (e.g. colors, animals)
Wrong.
It is better to teach words in ‘horizontal’
combinations than in ‘vertical’ lists (e.g. teach
blue with sky and not blue with red, yellow
etc.)
Research on learning semantic sets
Tinckham (1993), Waring (1997)
Question:
Does it help learners to master a new set of
lexical items if they are all connected to a
central topic (e.g. clothes, animals)?
Learners were presented with two sets of items from an
artificial language, and told their ‘meanings’; one set all
related to the same domain, the other did not.
shirt = moshee
jacket = umau
sweater = blaikel
rain =moshee
car = blaikel
frog = umau
rain = achen
car = nalo
frog = kawvas
shirt = achen
jacket = kawvas
sweater = nalo
RESULT:
The learners consistently learned the
unrelated items better.
The research was replicated by Waring five
years later with the same results.
It helps students remember a word if they
first found it out through ‘inferencing’
from context.
Wrong, from the point of view of vocabulary learning.
Inferencing is a useful reading skill; but it does not
help the learning of the ‘inferenced’ word.
1.Inferencing is not reliable (Laufer, 1997; Nassaji,
2003)
2.Inferencing does not aid retention (Mondria,2003)
Research on inferencing
Mondria (2003)
One group was asked to learn words through
inferencing from a ‘pregnant’ context and verifying with a
glossary, and was then given time to memorize. The
other group was simply provided with L1 translations and
given time to memorize.
When tested, the two groups achieved the same
scores, which were maintained in a delayed post-test.
So it just isn’t efficient to make students go the ‘long
way round’: doesn’t improve learning.
Providing translations helps learners
learn and remember items
Right.
Laufer (1997b): L1 glosses tend to produce better
remembering than L1 glosses.
1.
Laufer and Girsai (2008): words practised using
translation techniques L1 were consistently better
retained than those practised through L2-based
exercises.
2.
We need to review a new item about four
or five times in order for our learners
to remember it.
Not enough.
The evidence is that learners usually need at
least ten (maybe more) meaningful encounters
in order to acquire a new item (Webb, 2007).
How far do the coursebooks take care of
this?
What does this mean in
practice?
You need an enormous amount of
vocabulary …
Do vocabulary expansion activities:
 ‘Show and tell’
 Brainstorming round a word (associations,
objects of a verb…)
 Word of the day
 A word I heard on television
You need to know 95-98% of the words
of a text in order to understand it
-
Use graded readers for extensive reading (‘i-1’)
Don’t expect students to cope with ‘difficult’ reading
comprehension texts on their own
-
But DO use ‘difficult’ texts as a basis for your own
teaching.
-
Extensive reading doesn’t provide
enough vocabulary on its own
‘Incidental’ learning of vocabulary is
inefficient.
So we need to teach vocabulary deliberately,
in focused vocabulary activities in the
classroom and for homework.
Group words by ‘theme’ not as ‘lexical
sets’
If your book teaches lexical sets …
Choose which are the most important and
‘thematize’ them (learning more vocabulary in
the process).
 What things can you see in this room that are
red?
 What things in the real world are blue?
 Forget about ‘purple’…!
Inferencing
Don’t expect students to infer meaning from
context, unless the context makes them megaclear!
Just give the meanings yourself.
Teaching vocabulary in and out of
context
New items are usually encountered in
context.
But then: decontextualize and focus on them,
one by one.
Make sure that there is ‘impact’.
Some tips…
-
Simply write up on the board, and leave there
-
Use lingual lists
-
Use (dramatic/humorous) representations
(pictures? icons? mimes? Jokes?)
-
Use mnemonic devices / keywords
-
Make students write new items in vocabulary
notebooks.
Use translation as well, for
understanding, retension, and testing
Happy:
Happy = ‫שמח‬
Disappointed: If you are disappointed you are
sad because something has not happened or
because something is not as good as you had
hoped.
OR:
Disappointed = ‫מאוכזב‬
Now: tell me in English about some situations
when you were disappointed!
‫?…‪How do you say in English‬‬
‫יריד ספרים ‪book fair‬‬
‫עוגת תפוחים ___________‬
‫רשימת מילים ___________‬
‫רכבת נוסעים ___________‬
‫עץ תפוזים ___________‬
‫חדר ישיבות___________‬
If the book doesn’t provide enough
review
…then we need to supplement
Tips:
Weekly (bilingual) dictations
Cumulative review activities
Various techniques:
Practical principle: review, don’t test
So don’t ask them to produce the item in
response to a picture or definition…
Rather, make them a present of the items,
and then tell them to do interesting things with
them that will help fix them in their memories.
cellphone
life
facts
all over the world
countries
remote areas
earthquake
communicate with
photographs
for example
location
the invention of
important events
hurricane
rescue party
save lives
the outside world
Tips
(Make up a sentence with an item)
Make up a question
Make up a sentence with at least two of the items
Make up a negative sentence
Make up a true sentence
Make up an obviously untrue sentence
Make up a personal sentence
And more…
Make up a new story that includes all the items
Once there was a terrible hurricane ...
Brainstorm (but with full answers):
How many remote areas can you think of?
What kinds of people travel all over the
world?
Summary
Vocabulary knowledge is crucial for our
students’ success in English;
We need to be aware of how vocabulary is
most effectively taught and learnt.
And use our knowledge to inform practical
classroom technique and materials selection.
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