ELT News Think Tank

This Month's Think Tank Panel

Marc Helgesen

Peter Viney

Setsuko Toyama

Rob Waring

Panelists: Marc | Setsuko | Peter
Guest panelist: Rob Waring
Date: February 2001

Topic: "How should teachers incorporate vocabulary teaching into their classes?"

Peter Viney

So what is vocabulary teaching and why is a separate item?

Vocabulary is best learned in context and for a reason. If you need to know a particular list of items, a photo dictionary serves the purpose. In an ideal world the course book should have integrated structure and vocabulary and applied the most suitable vocabulary sets to the teaching point. The course book, especially now that writers use computers, should recycle vocabulary items in workbooks, practice activities and subsequent units. It's by constant recycling that words are acquired.

When I started teaching, classes of business people would often ask for more vocabulary. I'd give them a fairly useless set (like parts of a car) and they'd write it down assiduously. A few days later I'd give them a spot test which proved my point that it's not an efficient way to learn.

When we were working on the Grapevine / Main Street series we codified vocabulary in the teacher's notes as active, passive or classroom. Students need to be aware that some words are just there to carry a context. The same applies to graded readers. Certain words need to be understood on the day, but not necessarily ‘learned.' Having said that, students tend to remember the obscure items and forget the basic ones. Often they remember words where the sound appeals to them, as Jeremy Harmer has pointed out in talks, words like hug and cuddle stick in the mind because the sound appeals. One textbook had a passage about Scotland, and students would recall stuff like sassenach, wee dram, kilt and dirk, but totally forget ostensibly more transferable items like Highlands, lowlands, isles, canal and oats.

One way of ensuring that every person in the class remembers a word is to say "This one's not worth remembering." You can be sure that they'll never forget it, for a very healthy reason. People want to impose their own criteria on what they choose to learn. They can see that structures need to be learned by everyone, but see vocabulary sets as personal items. Therefore, the most important thing is to teach strategies for noting vocabulary, strategies for using reference materials, and to polish the learner skills of noting and codifying new vocabulary items.

I wouldn't go in with a list of items that I wanted everyone to memorise, and while I'd devote time to vocabulary learning strategies, I'd be careful not to impose lists. My very first teaching experience, as a summer job while I was a student, consisted of teaching eight or ten young Germans. The school believed that vocabulary lists were of primary importance and supplied handouts which I used to call "English for zookeepers" because there were lists on animal gender (duck, drake, duckling; swan, pen, cygnet), animal groups (herd of bison, parliament of owls), animal plurals (snipe / snipe, ox / oxen) and animal noises (a donkey brays, an owl hoots). It was total nonsense, and there were at least ten words in each list that were new to me. I've had a prejudice against vocabulary lists ever since.

Panelists: Marc | Setsuko | Peter
Guest panelist: Rob Waring

Peter Viney, Freelance ELT Author

Co-author of New American Streamline & Grapevine. Peter's Web site

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