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Vocabulary acquisition in language classrooms

Vocabulary acquisition in language classrooms. Learning Vocabulary in Another Language: A Test of Teachers’ Knowledge. How many word families does an average adult native speaker of English know? A 150,000 B 100,000 C 50,000 D 20,000

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Vocabulary acquisition in language classrooms

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  1. Vocabulary acquisition in language classrooms

  2. Learning Vocabulary in Another Language: A Test of Teachers’ Knowledge • How many word families does an average adult native speaker of English know? A 150,000 B 100,000 C 50,000 D 20,000 2. If learners know the most frequent 2000 words of English, what percentage of running words in an academic text will be known to them? A 60% B 80% C 90% D 98% 3. What is the most important factor in formal measures of readability? A background knowledge B vocabulary knowledge C reading skill in L1 D grammatical knowledge 4. The most effective way of beginning to learn the meaning of a word is by… A the use of a picture B translation into the first language C a dictionary definition D seeing a word in context 5. How many words does an average learner of English as a foreign language know after five or six years of four 50 minute English classes per week? A 1,000 B 3,000 C 5,000 D 10,000

  3. Research vocabulary size • Question: how large should a receptive vocabulary be? • Approach 1: to calculate all words in English • 114,000 word families (Goulden, Nation, & Reed, 1990) • 85,500 (Nagy & Anderson, 1984) • Approach 2: to see what the NS know • A well-educated NS: 20,000 word families • Approach 3: to find out how much is needed for typical language use • Around 5,000 (Hirsh & Nation, 1992)

  4. Research cognitive studies • How is L2 word represented in learner’s mind? • How is the meaning accessed? • Directly in L2? • Through learner’s L1? • How are the words from the same word family stored in our mental lexicon? • Individually? • In groups? • How are the words retrieved? • As holistic units? • Get assembled in the process?

  5. General recommendations (P. Nation) • Teaching a word: a small amount of information at a time • Spend more time on high-frequency words, words that fill a language need (technical words) • The learning burden of a word: • Meaning (meaning/ referents/ associations) • Form (spoken/ written/ word parts) • Use (grammatical functions/ collocation/ constraints on use)

  6. A good vocabulary exercise should be … • focusing on useful words (high frequency) • emphasizing the useful aspects of learning burden • setting useful learning conditions • involving learners in active work with a word • avoiding interference

  7. Additional resources: http://www.uefap.com/vocab/vocfram.htm

  8. Potential research topics • Preparing high- and low-frequency word lists for your academic discipline • Comparing learners’ use of a specific word (a word combination) to that in a corpus of specialized authentic texts (e.g., research articles, book chapters, etc. published in your discipline) • Analyzing learners’ typical mistakes in vocabulary use (e.g., form/meaning/context) • Exploring contextual/ meaning differences of special vocabulary compared to their general meaning/use

  9. Selected references • Coxhead, A. (2000) A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly 34, 2: 213-238. • Laufer, B. (1998) The development of passive and active vocabulary: same or different? Applied Linguistics 19, 2: 255-271. • Laufer, B. (1994) The lexical profile of second language writing: does it change over time? RELC Journal 25, 2: 21-33. • McCarthy, M. and Carter, R. (1997) Written and spoken vocabulary. In Schmitt and McCarthy: 20-39. • Nation, I.S.P. (1993) Vocabulary size, growth and use. In R. Schreuder and B. Weltens (eds) The Bilingual Lexicon. John Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: 115-134. • Nation, I.S.P. (1990) Teaching and Learning Vocabulary Newbury House, Mass. • Nation, I.S.P. and Waring, R. (1997) Vocabulary size, text coverage, and word lists. In Schmitt and McCarthy: 6-19. • Schmitt, N. (2000) Vocabulary in Language Teaching Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

  10. Questions/ comments • Can you think of any ways how to apply this information in your own classroom? • Are there any new/ interesting/ unusual ways to teach vocabulary you are aware of and can share with your colleagues? Any special programs? Thank you!

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