Principles and Practice in Vocabulary Teaching



Principles and Practice in Vocabulary Instruction

Rob Waring



A: Overview of language teaching

The Balanced Curriculum

| |Input |Output |

| |(Receptive) |(Productive) |

| |Box 1 - The Formal Learning Box |Box 2 - The “Getting Control” Box |

|Building |Building knowledge about the language |Linking knowledge |

|Language |Awareness raising |Accuracy focus |

|Building | | |

|Fluency |Box 3 - The Fluency Input Box |Box 4 - The Fluency Output Box |

| | | |

| |Networking knowledge |Experimenting with language |

| |Comprehending input fluently |Developing fluency |

The Balanced Curriculum - example activities

| |Input |Output |

| |(Receptive) |(Productive) |

| | | |

|Building |Box 1 - The Formal Learning Box |Box 2 - The “Getting Control” Box |

|Language |Explicit teaching |Controlled language production activities. |

| |Dictionary lookups |Language and pronunciation drills |

| |Studying from a grammar book |Gap fill exercises |

| |Intensive reading |Memorized dialogs |

| |Language awareness activities |Sentence completion tasks |

| |Conscious word learning |Tests |

|Building |Box 3 - The Fluency Input Box | |

|Fluency |Extensive reading |Box 4 - The Fluency Output Box |

| |Extensive listening |‘Free’ language production |

| |Watching movies |activities. |

| |Browsing the Internet |Casual conversations |

| |Listening to the radio or music |Debates and discussions |

| | |Email, and online chat |

| | |Diary writing |

| | |Essays |

The Balanced Curriculum – what each box does

| |Input |Output |

| |practice |practice |

| |provides new knowledge about language features |gives practice in checking whether something is known |

| |raises awareness of how the language works |allows learners to actively construct language |

|Building |raises awareness of strategies needed to become more |focuses on attaining accurate control over language |

|Language |language aware |features |

| | | |

| |allows learners to get a feel for how the language |gives real time opportunities to experiment with |

|Building |works (getting collocational and colligational |language use |

|Fluency |knowledge) |gives feedback on the success of language use |

| |consolidates the learned discretely language features |builds fluency of language production |

| |allows learners to meet huge amounts of text | |

The Cycle of Learning

[pic]

B. Vocabulary teaching

Typical vocabulary teaching

• Most vocab teaching is from context

• Haphazard selection of materials

• Different vocab topic in each unit

• Too many words at once

• Rare words are favoured over common words

• Focus on single words not lexical chunks

• All students learn the same words

• Word teaching = definition and spelling

• Teachers give meanings

• Low recycling of vocab in course books

• Low recycling of vocab by teachers

• Teachers leave vocab learning to learners

• Vocab learning strategies are rarely taught

• Vocab learning techniques are rarely taught

• Vocabulary learning goals are rarely set

• Dictionary skills are rarely taught

• Vocab notebooks not encouraged

• Words are kept in lists

• Vocab exercises test not teach

• Teachers trust the course book to deal with vocab

•

Common sense stuff about vocab learning

• There are many things to learn about a word

- spelling - pronunciation - frequency

- meaning - relationships with other words

- inflections and derivations formal / slang?

- spoken or written? etc.

• There are 2 stages in word learning

1) the connection between the spelling or sound with its meaning “the form–meaning relationship”

2) deepening the knowledge of the word collocation (word partners)

• It takes 8-50 meetings (or more) to ‘learn’ a word

• Initial word knowledge is very fragile. Memories of new words that are not met again soon, are lost to the “forgetting curve”.

• Because we teach a word does not mean they learned it (i.e. teaching does not cause learning). Note* our text books assume this. Because they finished the textbook does not mean they know all the words in the book

• Written and spoken vocabulary are different. Fewer words are needed for speaking

• Not all words are equally frequent. There is a core useful vocabulary everyone needs (about 2000 word families). Not everyone needs the other 90% of the words in English.

• Students should learn the most frequent and useful words first, later they can specialize.

• They cannot guess new meaning from context if the surrounding text is too difficult.

• Some words are more difficult to learn than others

• Words live with other words, not in isolation

What do learners need to know?

• Words first, grammar later

• The most useful words (2000 general service words)

• High utility English- Japanese loanword pairs (gairaigo) and local words, shrine, temple etc.

• Many language management words / expressions. chalk, textbook, what does X mean?

• Common sentence heads May I …, I’d like …., Would you, …

• Fixed and semi-fixed phrases How do you do? Happy Birthday By the way , now or never

• Colligations lend something to someone vs. borrow something from s/o

excited by sthg / Agree with someone vs. agree to do something

• Collocations beautiful woman vs. handsome man / yellow car vs. blonde hair

Great surprise vs. large family

• Register Would you kindly fetch me the …. vs. Get me the …… :

awesome / groovy / fab / cool / wicked / bad

• Context – medical, engineering, sports, science, computer etc.

• Spoken vs. written exhausted vs. knackered / dirty vs. mucky

Learning vocab is a MASSIVE task. IDEA

Verb uses of Idea. “Abandon an idea.”

abandon, absorb, accept, adjust to, advocate, amplify, advance, back, be against, be committed/dedicated/drawn to, be obsessed with, be struck by, borrow, cherish, clarify, cling to, come out/up with, confirm, conjure up, consider, contemplate, convey, debate, debunk, defend, demonstrate, develop, deny, dismiss, dispel, disprove, distort, drop, eliminate, encourage, endorse, entertain, explode, explore, expound, express, favour, fit, fit in with, follow up, form, formulate, foster, get, get accustomed/used to, get rid of, give up, go along with, grasp, hammer out, have, hit upon, hold, implement, imply, impose – on sb, incorporate, inculcate, instil, jot down, keep to, launch, meet, modify, negate, oppose, pick up, pioneer, plant, play with, popularise, present, promote, propose, put an end to, put forward, put – into practice, raise, refute, reinforce, reject, relish, resist, respond to, revive, ridicule, rule out, spread, squash, stick to, subscribe to, suggest, support, take to, take up, test, tinker with, toy with, turn down, warm to

More verb uses. “An idea……….”

V: appeals to (me), arose, came to me, caught on, cropped up, emerged, evolved, fell through, flourished, grew, is incompatible with, occurred to (me), spread, took root, took shape, won support

Adjective uses. “An idea is ………...”

A: abstract, absurd, advanced, ambitious, arresting, basic, bizarre, bold, bright, brilliant, classical, clear, common, commonsense, confused, controversial, convincing, crazy, diabolical, disconcerting, elusive, enlightened, entrenched, exaggerated, extravagant, extreme, false, familiar, fantastic, far-fetched, feasible, feeble, fixed, flexible, foolish, grotesque, hazy, heretical, imaginative, inflated, ingenious, ingrained, innovative, instinctive, intriguing, irresponsible, mad, misconceived, mistaken, monstrous, new-fangled, novel, original, old-fashioned, outdated, out-of-date, outrageous, peculiar, persuasive, preconceived, preposterous, prevalent, provocative, (un)real, (un)realistic, remarkable, revolutionary, ridiculous, risky, sensible, silly, splendid, strange, striking, superficial, untenable, useful, vague, valid, well-defined

•

The two ‘levels’ of word learning.

| |The Form-Meaning relationship |The ‘deeper aspects of word learning |

| |(How spelling and sounds are matched |(The sense of how and when words are used) |

| |with meanings) | |

|What? |How meanings are pronounced |Collocation Colligation |

| |How meanings are written |Register Frequency |

| | |Spoken vs. written |

|How to learn? |Intentional learning | |

| |Word cards |Intentional learning |

| |Mnemonics |Studying word books |

| |Word study |Word cards |

| |Dictionary use |Exercises on collocation / colligation |

| |Working with definitions | |

| |Vocab notebooks |Incidental learning (‘learning by accident”) |

| | |Extensive (Graded) Reading |

| | |Extensive (Graded) Listening |

What does this mean for vocabulary learning and teaching?

Principles

• There is not enough class time to teach everything about a word

• Because time is limited, we have to teach students how to deal with new words (independent learning) thus they need vocabulary learning strategies

• Learners must be set vocabulary learning goals

• They need massive input to build vocabulary knowledge to deepen vocabulary connections

• We should teach words the students need

• We don’t need to teach every word in the book

• We should not expect things we teach to be known tomorrow

• We do not need to teach all words to be available for use

• Learners must be forced to think about words so they can make connections between words

Intensive Learning

• Words should be learned systematically

• We should focus on word units larger than a single item

• Not all learners will want to learn the same way

• Direct word learning helps them build a start up vocabulary quickly

• They must learn how to identify and master vocabulary patterns

• They have to learn how to notice the gap between their own use of a word and how it is really used

• We should scaffold the vocabulary by building on prior knowledge

Extensive learning

• They need extensive practice with words

o so they can meet them often

o to work out word relationships

o to build recognition automaticity

o to get a sense of how words go together

• They need chances

o to observe new things about words

o to hypothesize about their knowledge

o to experiment with their vocabulary

The most important things for teachers

• Use a systematic approach (set realistic goals)

• Select the vocabulary carefully

• Single words as well as phrases and collocation

• Opportunities to meet new words

• Concept check understanding

• Plan to recycle, re-visit, review, recapitulate, reiterate, reconsider, repeat, revise, re-examine, .... etc.

• Connect old learning to new learning

• Give opportunities for incidental learning

• Give opportunities for developing fluency and automaticity

• Give opportunities for guessing words from context

• Give opportunities to develop the pronunciation

• Initial meetings are followed by deep processing (force them to think)

• Opportunities for elaborating word knowledge

• Let them experiment

• Understand the vocabulary exercises in your book

• Teach them to use a dictionary properly

• Teach word learning strategies

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Looking, noticing and observing new language

Try to fit it

into previous

knowledge

Trying it out

Feedback

Adding to the language store

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