Transcript Document

OBJECTIVES
You will understand:
1.
2.
3.
How students learn new words.
How to select and group words for teaching and learning.
Techniques and activities for presenting vocabulary (Study
Focus)
You will be able to:
1.
Integrate effective vocabulary Study Focus activities into
your lesson planning and delivery.
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“Without grammar, very little can be conveyed. Without
vocabulary, nothing can be conveyed.”
Do you agree or disagree with this statement?
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INTRODUCTION
•
Most language courses and textbooks emphasize grammatical
structures over vocabulary learning. However, if you consider
the issue in any depth, you will realize that this emphasis is
misplaced. Take the sentence “I watched TV last night.” If I
say it incorrectly in terms of its grammar, “I watch TV last
night” or “Last night TV I watch” you can still understand my
meaning. However, if I don’t have the vocabulary for “watch”,
“TV” or “last night” I will have a hard time communicating my
idea.
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One of the main reasons for the communication difficulties I will
have if I don’t have sufficient grammar lies in the difference
between structure words and content words. Structure words
(pronouns, determiners, conjunctions and prepositions) provide
the grammatical framework for a language. Content words
(nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives), on the other hand,
provide meaning. To make grammatically correct but meaningful
sentences we put our content words onto the framework
provided by the structure words.
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In any language, the total number of structure words is quite
limited; there are far more content words in any language than
structure words. This is particularly true in English. English has
the largest vocabulary of any language in the words and the
majority of these words are content words. The most challenging
task in English, then, is one of vocabulary acquisition. The task
of learning the rules of English sentence formation (grammar)
pales in comparison to the task of learning the words of English.
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HOW MANY WORDS DO STUDENTS NEED TO LEARN?
• It is important to understand how large the task of vocabulary
acquisition is for students of English. In other words, how
many words do students of English need to learn in order to
communicate effectively? This question is the subject of
intense debate amongst language teaching professionals and
researchers.
• Research on everyday English texts, in both written and verbal
form, indicates that there are 100 high frequency words in the
language. These top 100 words occur over and over again on
basic communication, and therefore are vital for students to
know. However, these top 100 words are almost all structure
words, and therefore little meaning can be communicated
with them.
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When crucial content words are added to the top frequency
words, the number of words required for effective basic
conversation rises to approximately 2000. These 2000 words are
often referred to as the core vocabulary of the language. If a
student learns 40 new words a week, it will take them
approximately a year to learn the core vocabulary of English.
This core vocabulary forms the basis of most learner dictionaries.
Learners who want to use English for higher level
communication, in professional and academic contexts for
example, must dramatically increase their vocabulary above the
2000 core words. The average vocabulary of a native speaker at
the college level, for example, is between 30,000 and 40,000
words.
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HOW ARE NEW WORDS LEARNED?
•
Students learn new words in two ways—intentionally and
incidentally. They learn words intentionally during vocabulary
activities run by the teacher or through intentional self-study.
They learn new words incidentally by finding out the
meanings of new words on an at need basis while reading,
listening, writing or speaking in English.
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Intentional learning can be directed by the teacher or the
student. In teacher-directed intentional learning, it is commonly
recommended that students be presented with no more than a
dozen new words to learn at a time. There is conflicting research
as to the validity of this number, but it has, nonetheless, been
commonly accepted by textbook publishers. The intentional
learning then progresses through presentation of the words
(Study Focus), controlled practice of the words (Study Practice)
and use of the words in a real life context (Activate). Later in
this module we will look at vocabulary Study Focus. We will look
at vocabulary Study Practice and Activate in subsequent
modules. In student-directed intentional learning, students take
the task of vocabulary acquisition upon themselves and decide
which words they would like to learn.
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SELECTING VOCABULARY ITEMS
•
There are four criteria to consider when making the decision
as to which words to have students study in teacher-directed
intentional learning. These criteria are: usefulness, frequency,
learnability, and teachability.
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•
•
•
•
Usefulness applies to words that students can put to work
immediately in their immediate context. The top 100 high
frequency words and the 2000 core words are considered
useful words. These are word that are used in definitions of
other words, superordinates (such as flower but not rose),
words that are used in a lot of collocations and words that can
be used in a number of registers (formal and informal).
Frequency indicates how often a word is used. Those words
used in every day conversations have a higher frequency than
those used in conversations on specialized subjects.
A word is more learnable from a student’s perspective if it is
similar to a word in the student’s L1.
A word is more teachable from a teacher’s perspective if it
can be easily explained or illustrated.
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2. WORD SELECTION
•
You want to teach your beginner students twelve words that
fit the theme of vacations. Which twelve words would you
select? Justify your answers in terms of usability, frequency,
learnability and teachability.
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When we think about which vocabulary items to select for
learning we tend to think only of single words. There is
increasing evidence of the need to also address learning words in
groups or chunks. This is appropriately called chunk learning.
Chunk learning includes things like learning collocations (two
words that frequently appear together), phrasal verbs, idioms,
catch phrases, sayings, sentence frames (Would you mind if..,
The thing is…), social formulae (See you later. Have a nice day),
and discourse markers (On the other hand…I take your point).
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Chunks of words can be divided into fixed chunks, in which
there is no variation (such as an idiom), and semi-fixed chunks,
in which some substitution or variation is allowed (such as ‘Nice
to see you’, ‘Great to see you’ and ‘Lovely to see you’). Chunks
of words can also be divided into idiomatic chunks, in which we
can not determine the meaning of the word chunk from the
meanings of the individual words (such as ‘To spill the beans’),
and transparent chunks, in which the meaning of the chunk is
more evident from the meanings of the individual words (such as
‘As old as the hills’).
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HOW DO STUDENTS ORGANIZE WORDS IN THEIR MEMORY?
• As a student learns new vocabulary, through either incidental or
intentional learning, they build a mental lexicon for that language.
A mental lexicon is the set of words, or vocabulary, that a person
knows in a particular language. Within that mental lexicon a student
will organize the words they learn so that the words can be
retrieved for use. Research shows that the words within a mental
lexicon are organized according to three criteria:
• Words are organized according to meaning. Words with similar
meanings are therefore organized together, as are words from the same
lexical field.
• Words are organized according to form. Words with similar sounds are
therefore organized together.
• Words are also mapped against the word for the same concept in the
student’s L1.
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•
The goal of vocabulary learning is to have the third criteria—
the organization of words according to their L1 equivalent—be
the weakest organizing link. The more advanced a learner, the
more they should be disconnecting their English mental
lexicon from their L1 mental lexicon.
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WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO KNOW A WORD?
•
There are two types of knowledge that students have about
any new word that goes into their mental lexicon—receptive
knowledge and productive knowledge. Receptive knowledge
means that a student can recognize and understand a word in
its written and oral form (reading and listening). Productive
knowledge means that the student can actually use the word
correctly and appropriately in a real life situation (writing and
speaking). A student’s receptive vocabulary is much greater
than their productive vocabulary. Students know many more
words than they can use.
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Let’s take a closer look at what knowledge is involved in knowing a
word both receptively and productively. If we take a look at a typical
dictionary entry for any word, we can find the answer. Knowledge of a
word includes:
• how to spell it
• how to pronounce it (or how it sounds)
• its word class
• its meaning (including is denotative and connotative meanings,
synonyms and antonyms)
• its derivations (other words in the same word family)
• Collocations
• register (spoken and written)
• frequency of use in the language, which dialect it is in, and idioms
that are built around the word.
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This is a lot of information!
•
Students don’t learn all of this information at one time nor
should teachers attempt to teach it all at once. Teachers
should teach only the information about a word that students
need to know at a given point in time. This will vary
depending upon student level, the requirements of the
context and whether the student will use the word receptively
or productively.
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WHAT MAKES A WORD DIFFICULT TO LEARN?
• Intuitively we know that some words are easy for students to learn
and some words are difficult for students to learn. We also know
that one student may find a particular word easy to learn and
another student will find the same word difficult to learn. The ease
of a particular word for a particular student is very dependent on
the student’s L1:
• Cognates: These are words that appear in a student’s L1, with the
same meaning, because both languages have taken the word from the
same original language.
• Loan words: These are words that a learner’s L1 has taken from the
target language, with the original meaning being retained.
• False friends: These are words that look the same as a word in the
learner’s language, but actually have a different meaning. These words
are easy for a learner to acquire, but the student also frequently
misuses the words.
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Characteristics that make words difficult to learn include:
• Pronunciation;
• Spelling;
• Length and complexity;
• Whether the word is used in a complex grammatical format;
• Whether the word overlaps with other words in meaning;
• Whether the word falls within a very limited range,
connotation and/or idiomaticity.
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STUDY FOCUS TECHNIQUES
•
Now that you know a little bit about how words are learned,
you need to consider how to present the new words you have
selected to teach your students. The list of techniques here is
by no means exhaustive.
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WORD LISTS
•
You can give students a list of new words, selected according
to usefulness, frequency of use, learnability and teachability.
The advantage of word lists is that research shows that when
students learn words that are NOT related by meaning or
sound, there is less interference among the words once they
are learned. Students who learned ‘table’ and ‘word’
together, for example, are less likely to confuse the two words
than students who learned ‘table’ and ‘chair’ together.
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WORD CARDS
•
Rather than writing words as lists, you can write the words
separately on cards, either with just the written word, with
the word and a picture or with the word and definition.
•
The advantage of using word cards is that the order of the
words can be varied to ensure that students don’t rely on
word order as a memory tool. As a variation, students can
make their own word cards, which can then be used for
personal and pair practice activities.
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LEXICAL SETS
• You can present new words to students as a lexical set. For
example, you can present a types of animals, types of food or
types of transportation vehicles. This is the approach that
most textbooks use. The justification is that this type of
learning mimics how words are organized in the student’s
mental lexicon. Unfortunately, research indicates that this
may not be the most effective word-learning technique. The
more connections are made amongst new words, the more
interference there is. In other words, students are more likely
to confuse ‘lion’ and ‘giraffe’ if these words are learnt
together, than ‘lion’ and ‘boat’, because the former are part
of the same lexical set. Interference can be decreased,
however, if the differences among the words in the lexical set
are emphasized, rather than the similarities.
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THEMATIC SETS
•
Research shows that presenting words in thematic or topical
sets is more effective than presenting them in lexical sets.
Thus presenting the word ‘airplane’ along with other words
about travel and vacations is more effective than presenting
the word along with other words in the lexical set of
transportation vehicles. With a thematic set there are fewer
connections among the words than in a lexical set, but there
are more connections than in a random word list. The learning
can be made even more effective by linking the words
together in a narrative that will provide context. Another way
to contextualize words is to put them into example sentences
or example situations.
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BILINGUAL DICTIONARY
•
Students can learn new words by looking them up in a
bilingual dictionary (with English and the student’s L1). The
advantage of this technique is that it is fast and efficient.
Translation also allows students to map the new language onto
their first language, a strategy supported by language
acquisition research. Learners are also comfortable with this
approach. The disadvantage is that unless the teacher speaks
the student’s L1, the teacher has no idea if the definition
provided by the dictionary is correct. This is of particular
concern with electronic bilingual dictionaries which are still
not as accurate as paper dictionaries.
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•
The other thing to be careful about is student overdependence on bilingual dictionaries. Students may end up
using dictionaries as a crutch, rather than doing the mental
work to figure out word meaning from contextual clues.
Finally, while students want to map new words onto their
existing L1 mental lexicon, at some point, we want the mental
lexicons to be separate. Use of bilingual dictionaries, then,
should be reserved for situations in which students can not
otherwise determine word meaning or for situations in which
time is an issue.
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LEARNER DICTIONARY
• You can have students learn new words by having them look the
words up in an English dictionary. You should encourage students to
use a learner’s dictionary that matches their language level. A
beginner’s dictionary, for example, has the language in the
definitions graded at a low level so that students can understand the
definitions.
• All aspects of a word many NOT be provided in a beginner’s
dictionary so as to NOT overwhelm the students with too much
information. A beginner dictionary will also include more pictures,
diagrams and example sentences. An advanced learner’s dictionary
will include more aspects of a word’s use including idiomatic
expressions, multiple meanings, collocations and derivations.
Regardless, looking words up in a dictionary allows students to
discover word meaning themselves. This self-discovery effort
contributes to increased retention.
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3. VOCABULARY STUDY FOCUS: DICTIONARY USE
•
Take two English dictionaries, one written for native speakers
of English and one written for learners of English. Look up the
word “watch” in both dictionaries. Compare and contrast the
entries in both dictionaries in terms of:
• Completeness of the information presented;
• Ease of comprehension of the information presented;
• Relevance of the information presented to a language learner;
• Receptive and productive knowledge;
• Usefulness for a vocabulary Study Focus activity.
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AUTHENTIC AND ADAPTED TEXTS
•
New words can be presented to students in context through
authentic and adapted listening and reading texts. This
presentation of the new words is memorable and motivating
because it is related to a real life situation. Students can be
given the challenge of guessing the words in context, a skill
that will serve them well in a real English environment. When
selecting which words to have students learn, focus on words
that will be unfamiliar to students and words that will be
necessary for comprehension of the text.
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WORD FORMATION
•
You can present students with groups of new words that have
been made according to the same word formation rule. We
saw the following word formation rules in the ACE TESOL
Certificate:
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Your Vocabulary Study Focus can feature one type of word
formation pattern, with a variety of example words formed
according to that pattern.
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WORD MAPS
•
You can visually diagram the relationships among the words
you are presenting to students through a word map. Put the
central word (either the lexical field name, superordinate or
thematic topic) in the middle of the board and put a circle
around it. Then draw branches out from that central word to
indicate how other words are related to the central word and
to each other.
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Other presentation techniques include:
• Example sentences;
• Example situations;
• Eliciting the word meaning from the class to test collective
prior knowledge;
• Use of visual materials or real objects.
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•
Complete Question 4 in your Task Journal.
•
Task Journals can be submitted via email to
[email protected] (preferred) or printed and handed in.
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