1. 2.7.1 Techniques for Presenting Vocabulary
OBJECTIVES
You will understand:
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:
Integrate effective vocabulary Study Focus activities into your lesson planning and delivery.

2. 2.7.1 Techniques for Presenting Vocabulary
“Without grammar, very little can be conveyed. Without vocabulary, nothing can be conveyed.”
Do you agree or disagree with this statement?

3. 2.7.1 Techniques for Presenting Vocabulary
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.

4. 2.7.1 Techniques for Presenting Vocabulary
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.

5. 2.7.1 Techniques for Presenting Vocabulary
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.

6. 2.7.1 Techniques for Presenting Vocabulary
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.

7. 2.7.1 Techniques for Presenting Vocabulary
When crucial content words are added to the top frequency words, the number of words required for effective basic conversation rises to approximately 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 core words. The average vocabulary of a native speaker at the college level, for example, is between 30,000 and 40,000 words.

8. 2.7.1 Techniques for Presenting Vocabulary
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.

9. 2.7.1 Techniques for Presenting Vocabulary
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.

10. 2.7.1 Techniques for Presenting Vocabulary
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.

11. 2.7.1 Techniques for Presenting Vocabulary
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.

12. 2.7.1 Techniques for Presenting Vocabulary
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.

13. 2.7.1 Techniques for Presenting Vocabulary
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).

14. 2.7.1 Techniques for Presenting Vocabulary
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’).

15. 2.7.1 Techniques for Presenting Vocabulary
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.

16. 2.7.1 Techniques for Presenting Vocabulary
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.

17. 2.7.1 Techniques for Presenting Vocabulary
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.

18. 2.7.1 Techniques for Presenting Vocabulary
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.

19. 2.7.1 Techniques for Presenting Vocabulary
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.

20. 2.7.1 Techniques for Presenting Vocabulary
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.

21. 2.7.1 Techniques for Presenting Vocabulary
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.

22. 2.7.1 Techniques for Presenting Vocabulary
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.

23. 2.7.1 Techniques for Presenting Vocabulary
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.

24. 2.7.1 Techniques for Presenting Vocabulary
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.

25. 2.7.1 Techniques for Presenting Vocabulary
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.

26. 2.7.1 Techniques for Presenting Vocabulary
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.

28. 2.7.1 Techniques for Presenting Vocabulary
The other thing to be careful about is student over- dependence 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.

29. 2.7.1 Techniques for Presenting Vocabulary
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.

30. 2.7.1 Techniques for Presenting Vocabulary
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.

31. 2.7.1 Techniques for Presenting Vocabulary
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.

35. 2.7.1 Techniques for Presenting Vocabulary
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.

36. 2.7.1 Techniques for Presenting Vocabulary
Complete Question 4 in your Task Journal.
Task Journals can be submitted via to (preferred) or printed and handed in.