1. Chapter 3 Vocabulary
Paul Nation & Paul Meara

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

3. “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)

4. 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.

5. 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

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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)

9. 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

10. 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

11. Reading: graded readers
for learners in the beginning and intermediate stages.
begins with books about 5000 words long written within a word family vocabulary.
go up in four to six stages to books about 25,000-35,000 words long written within a 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.

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. 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

15. 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.

16. 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.

17. 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.