VOCABULARY TEACHING: Some insights from the research

Penny Ur

ETAI mini-conference, Ohalo

January, 2010

General background

It is generally agreed today that a wide ‘sight’ vocabulary is essential for proficiency (especially reading comprehension).

This means at least 1,000 items by the end of 6th grade

About 4-5,000 by the end of 10th

About 7-8,000 by the end of 12th.

How do we help our students acquire this?

Agree or disagree?1. You need to know about 85% of the words of a

text in order to understand it reasonably well.

2. It helps you remember if you learn items in lexical sets (e.g. colors, animals).

3. The most efficient way to learn new words is through extensive reading.

4. It helps students remember a word if they first found it out through ‘inferencing’ from context.

5. Providing translations helps learners to remember words.

6. We need to review a new item about four or five times in order for our learners to remember it.

You need to know about 85% of the words of a text in order to understand it

satisfactorily.

Wrong.

85% not only does not ensure understanding the main ideas: it also does not provide sufficient evidence to help guess the unknown words (Laufer, 1997a).

Extract from Obama’s speech

That is the work we began last year. Since the day I took office, we renewed our focus on the __________ who __________ our nation. We have made substantial __________ in our homeland __________ and disrupted _________ that threatened to take American ____________.

You need to know about 85% of the words of a text in order to understand it

satisfactorily.

Wrong.

85% not only does not ensure understanding the main ideas: it also does not provide sufficient evidence to help guess the unknown words.

In order to understand a text successfully, you need to know between 95-98% of the words (Schmitt, 2008).

That is the work we began last year. Since the day I took office, we renewed our focus on the _________ who threaten our nation. We have made substantial __________ in our homeland security and disrupted plots that threatened to take American lives.

That is the work we began last year. Since the day I took office, we renewed our focus on the terrorists who threaten our nation. We have made substantial investments in our homeland security and disrupted plots that threatened to take American lives.

The most efficient way to learn new words is through extensive reading.

Wrong.

(Zahar et al., 2001; Schmitt, 2008).

We learn new items very slowly through extensive reading (about one for each 1000 words read).

The value of extensive reading is mainly in recycling common items and in increasing reading fluency.

It helps you remember if you learn items in lexical sets (e.g. colors,

animals)

Wrong.

It is better to teach words in ‘horizontal’ combinations than in ‘vertical’ lists (e.g. teach blue with sky and not blue with red, yellow etc.)

Research on learning semantic sets

Tinckham (1993), Waring (1997)

Question:

Does it help learners to master a new set of lexical items if they are all connected to a central topic (e.g. clothes, animals)?

Learners were presented with two sets of items from an artificial language, and told their ‘meanings’; one set all related to the same domain, the other did not.

rain =moshee

car = blaikel

frog = umau

shirt = achen

jacket = kawvas

sweater = nalo

shirt = moshee

jacket = umau

sweater = blaikel

rain = achen

car = nalo

frog = kawvas

RESULT: The learners consistently learned the

unrelated items better.

The research was replicated by Waring five years later with the same results.

It helps students remember a word if they first found it out through ‘inferencing’

from context.

Wrong, from the point of view of vocabulary learning.

Inferencing is a useful reading skill; but it does not help the learning of the ‘inferenced’ word.

1.Inferencing is not reliable (Laufer, 1997; Nassaji, 2003)

2.Inferencing does not aid retention (Mondria,2003)

Research on inferencing

Mondria (2003)

One group was asked to learn words through inferencing from a ‘pregnant’ context and verifying with a glossary, and was then given time to memorize. The other group was simply provided with L1 translations and given time to memorize.

When tested, the two groups achieved the same scores, which were maintained in a delayed post-test.

So it just isn’t efficient to make students go the ‘long way round’: doesn’t improve learning.

Providing translations helps learners learn and remember items

Right.

1. Laufer (1997b): L1 glosses tend to produce better remembering than L1 glosses.

2.Laufer and Girsai (2008): words practised using translation techniques L1 were consistently better retained than those practised through L2-based exercises.

We need to review a new item about four or five times in order for our learners

to remember it.

Not enough.

The evidence is that learners usually need at least ten (maybe more) meaningful encounters in order to acquire a new item (Webb, 2007).

How far do the coursebooks take care of this?

What does this mean in practice?

You need an enormous amount of vocabulary …

Do vocabulary expansion activities:

‘Show and tell’

Brainstorming round a word (associations, objects of a verb…)

Word of the day

A word I heard on television

You need to know 95-98% of the words of a text in order to understand it

-Use graded readers for extensive reading (‘i-1’)

-Don’t expect students to cope with ‘difficult’ reading comprehension texts on their own

-But DO use ‘difficult’ texts as a basis for your own teaching.

Extensive reading doesn’t provide enough vocabulary on its own

‘Incidental’ learning of vocabulary is inefficient.

So we need to teach vocabulary deliberately, in focused vocabulary activities in the classroom and for homework.

Group words by ‘theme’ not as ‘lexical sets’

If your book teaches lexical sets …

Choose which are the most important and ‘thematize’ them (learning more vocabulary in the process).

What things can you see in this room that are red?

What things in the real world are blue?

Forget about ‘purple’…!

Inferencing

Don’t expect students to infer meaning from context, unless the context makes them mega-clear!

Just give the meanings yourself.

Teaching vocabulary in and out of context

New items are usually encountered in context.

But then: decontextualize and focus on them, one by one.

Make sure that there is ‘impact’.

Some tips…

- Simply write up on the board, and leave there

- Use lingual lists

- Use (dramatic/humorous) representations (pictures? icons? mimes? Jokes?)

- Use mnemonic devices / keywords

- Make students write new items in vocabulary notebooks.

Use translation as well, for understanding, retension, and testingHappy:

Happy = שמח

Disappointed: If you are disappointed you are sad because something has not happened or because something is not as good as you had hoped.

OR:

Disappointed = מאוכזב

Now: tell me in English about some situations when you were disappointed!

How do you say in English…?

book fair יריד ספרים

___________עוגת תפוחים

___________רשימת מילים

___________רכבת נוסעים

___________עץ תפוזים

___________חדר ישיבות

If the book doesn’t provide enough review

…then we need to supplement

Tips:

Weekly (bilingual) dictations

Cumulative review activities

Various techniques:

Practical principle: review, don’t test

So don’t ask them to produce the item in response to a picture or definition…

Rather, make them a present of the items, and then tell them to do interesting things with them that will help fix them in their memories.

cellphone life all over the world

facts countries location

remote areas earthquake the invention of

communicate with important events

photographs hurricane save lives

for example rescue party the outside world

Tips

(Make up a sentence with an item)

Make up a question

Make up a sentence with at least two of the items

Make up a negative sentence

Make up a true sentence

Make up an obviously untrue sentence

Make up a personal sentence

And more…

Make up a new story that includes all the items

Once there was a terrible hurricane ...

Brainstorm (but with full answers):

How many remote areas can you think of?

What kinds of people travel all over the world?

Summary

Vocabulary knowledge is crucial for our students’ success in English;

We need to be aware of how vocabulary is most effectively taught and learnt.

And use our knowledge to inform practical classroom technique and materials selection.

pennyur@gmail.com