Chapter 3 Vocabulary Paul Nation & Paul Meara

Contents: 3.1 What is vocabulary? 3.2 What vocabulary should be learned? 3.3 How should vocabulary be learned?

“Better to see than to hear.” (six tokens) (five types) 3.1 What is vocabulary? 3.1.1 Tokens & types “Better to see than to hear.” (six tokens) (five types)

Some problems: When counting tokens, it is necessary to decide if we count items such as I’m or we’ll as two tokens or one. If we are counting tokens in spoken language, do we count um and er as tokens, and do we count repetition such as I…I…I said as tokens? When counting types, what do we do with identical types that have different meaning? The answers will rely on our reasons for counting.

3.1.2. Counting word families a. Lemmas (the most conservative way) A lemma is a set of related words that consists of the stem form and inflected form that are all the same part of speech. e.g. watch, watches, watched, watching. prefixes un-, non-, ir- b. Items made with suffixes -ness, -ful, -ly

3.1.3. “multi-word units” (MWUs) A key feature: the words in the unit cannot be freely substituted with other words; rather they have strong partnership connections, a property called ‘collocation’. What is considered to be a MWUs will depend on the purpose of the counting. Goal 1: to count items that would require learning for comprehension MWUs--------non-compositional Goal 2: to come up with a list of items that could contribute to fluency and a native-like turn of phrase MWUs ---------frequent and grammatically coherent.

Vocabulary is the study of: The meanings of words Many words have several different meanings. Vocabulary studies the meanings of the words and the part of speech. How the words are used Study the words in context, apply what you learn by writing sentences with your words. Root words, prefixes, suffixes Studying these will aid in the study of vocabulary.

3.2 What vocabulary should be learned? Two major considerations to choose what vocabulary should be focused on: The needs of the learners The usefulness of the vocabulary items High-frequency words Low-frequency words The Academic Word List (Coxhead,2000)

The classic list of the most useful words of English is Michael West’s A General Service List of English Words (GSL) 2000 high-frequency words Based on written language

3.3 How should vocabulary be learned? There are four strands of learning vocabulary: 3.3.1 Learning vocabulary from meaning-focused input (listening and reading) For most first language vocabulary learning For non-native speakers, three major conditions need to be met: a. low unknown vocabulary load b. quantity of input c. some deliberate attention to the unknown vocabulary

Reading: graded readers for learners in the beginning and intermediate stages. begins with books about 5000 words long written within a 300-500-word family vocabulary. go up in four to six stages to books about 25,000-35,000 words long written within a 2000-2500-word family vocabulary. Nation and Wang (1999) estimate that second language learners need to be reading at least one graded readers every two weeks in order for noticeable learning to occur.

Listening: a. low unknown vocabulary load b. quantity of input repeated listening (listen to the same story or materials several times over several days) c. some deliberate attention to the unknown vocabulary defining unknown items noting them on the board allowing learners the opportunity to negotiate their meaning by asking for clarification. non-negotiated learning from context.

3.3.2 Learning vocabulary from meaning-focused output (speaking and writing) Guidelines for speaking (Joe, Nation, and Newton, 1996) a. predicting what parts of the written input are most likely to be used in the task b. using retelling c. role-play d. problem-solving discussion which draws heavily on the written input e. encouraging creative use of vocabulary through having to reshape the written input to a particular purpose. There are no studies of the learning of particular vocabulary through writing, but written input to the writing task could play a role similar to that which it can play in speaking tasks.

3.3.3 Deliberate vocabulary learning Some guidelines should be followed through the use of word cards: Retrieve rather than recognize Use appropriately sized groups of cards Space the repetition Repeat the words aloud or to yourself Process the words thoughtfully Avoid interference Avoid a serial learning effect Use context where this help

Deliberate vocabulary teaching Such teaching can have three major goals: a. result in well-established vocabulary learning “rich instruction” b. raising learners’ consciousness of particular words c. help learners gain knowledge of strategies and of systematic features of the language.

Deliberate vocabulary teaching can take a variety of form including: Pre-teaching of vocabulary before a language use activity Exercises that follow a listening or reading text, such as matching words and definitions, and creating word families using word parts or semantic mapping. Self-contained vocabulary activities like the second-hand cloze. Word detectives where learners report on words they have found. Collocation activities Quickly dealing with words as they occur in a lesson.

3.3.4 Developing fluency with vocabulary across the four skills Two general approaches: a. “the well-beaten path approach” (repetition) activities: repeated reading; the 4/3/2 technique the best recording; rehearsed talks b. “the richness approach” (making many connections and associations with a known item) activities: speed-reading practice; easy extensive reading; continuous writing; retelling.