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 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

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)

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?

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)

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

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

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

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

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!