ELT News Think Tank

This Month's Think Tank Panel

Marc Helgesen

Peter Viney

Setsuko Toyama

Rob Waring

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

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

Rob Waring

Vocabulary instruction is one of the most misunderstood aspects of language learning and language teaching. Research shows that most teachers deal with vocabulary in a haphazard and rather unprincipled way, and most teachers leave the selection of vocabulary to the coursebook. This need not be so. This short article will present a few points that teachers should be aware of when dealing with vocabulary.

Which words?
Research shows that learners need about 3000 'word families' to be good at English. (A 'word family' is a group of words that share the same meaning such as 'help', 'helping', 'helped', 'helpless' etc.). Luckily for language teachers and language learners, not all words need to be learned. Teachers should concentrate on the most frequent and useful words first, as it is these words the learners will meet very often. Here is a list of very useful words which you can download and use with your learners.

Many teachers focus on rarer words assuming that the basic words like 'get', 'make' and 'bring' are known. But it is these words which are among the most troublesome, with their multiple meanings and idiomatic uses. Therefore, learners should work VERY hard on the highly frequent words.

But what is a word? We all know 'traffic' is a word, but is 'traffic light' one word or two? 'Traffic light' has a single meaning which is different from that of 'traffic' and 'light' but is made up of two words. How about 'by and large' and 'the day after tomorrow', or 'how do you do?' and 'of course'? All languages are full of short phrases made up of several words, or chunks of language, and teachers should focus on these rather than just the 'word' itself. Words are almost never found in isolation, they nearly always have partners that together form meanings in certain restricted ways. For example, we say 'beautiful woman' or 'handsome man' but not usually a 'beautiful man'. The same for 'black and white' (not 'white and black'), or 'here and there' (not 'there and here' - but achi kochi in Japanese). These word relationships (often called collocations) are very important for learners. If learners do not know these word relationships then they will sound strange and say things like 'weak cheese' (mild cheese) or 'yesterday night' (last night). Thus, in order to speak and write well, teachers need to introduce lots of word relationships not only single words.

How to learn vocabulary?
The most fundamental idea that should underlie any method is that 'the most important vocabulary to work on is what the students learned yesterday'. The nature of human memory dictates that vocabulary (like all item and system learning) will probably be forgotten, especially if the word has just been met. This is because it is at the initial meeting of the word that word knowledge is so fragile. This means that words and phrases need to be recycled often. Introducing a word, and not recycling or revisiting, means that it is highly likely that it will be forgotten. Coursebooks are very bad at recycling so the teacher must work out ways to recycle the vocabulary.

There are two main stages in learning words. The first stage is achieved when a connection is made between the meaning and the form of the word (its spelling or pronunciation). The second stage is much more difficult and involves knowing when to use the word (and not use it), its word relationships, its shades of meaning, and so on. The first stage of learning a word is quite easy. This can be most effectively done by rote memorization such as by using word cards (the word on one side of a piece of paper, and its translation on the other). Research clearly shows that this is VERY effective and students can learn hundreds of words very quickly. Many people misunderstand this kind of learning, saying it is boring and behaviorist. True, but it IS very effective. The important point to remember is that the rote learning part is only the initial stage and MUCH more work should be done to deepen this knowledge. This can be done by word study exercises and by mountains of graded reading. There is a free downloadable introduction (PDF file format) to Graded Reading published by Oxford University Press in English or Japanese

Research also shows that learners learn best when they are made actively involved in word learning and at different levels of mental activity. If a learner just repeats a word over and over, the processing is quite shallow because it is just maintaining knowledge. Learners should be trained to work with words deeply, by working with the collocates, looking at how the word is similar, but different from other words, by forming 'networks' of word relationships in their minds, not just keeping words in isolation. Thus, learners must be given chances to notice new words for themselves, and made to hypothesize about the meaning of new words. They should also be given chances to experiment with their hypotheses by producing the new words in speech or writing. Only by experimenting will they know if the learning has been successful.

The most important vocabulary strategy to teach is to 'guess unknown words from context'. When you learned your first language, most of the words were not taught to you, you picked them up from books, the TV and from conversations. There is not enough time to teach thousands of words one by one in class, so language learners must also know how to guess unknown words successfully. Sadly, many teachers just expect learners to know how to guess well, but there are thousands of learners who could be helped to be more successful at guessing. The first thing to do when a leaner meets a new word is to ignore it. If it is important it will come again. If they meet the word a second time and communication breaks down, then they should try to guess its meaning. Initially, it is important to make them realize its part of speech, and then they should look for clues around the word to help with the meaning. If they have an idea, they should try to substitute their guess into the sentence to see if the meaning of the sentence is clear. They will soon realize if they have the wrong part of speech, or wrong meaning. Finally, they can use word-affix knowledge to confirm the guess. However, it is vital to understand that learners will not be able to guess successfully until they know about 95-98% of the other words in the text. If the text is too difficult, then the large number of unknown words will make successful guessing much less likely.

Finally
It should always be remembered that 'teaching does not cause learning' so teachers should expect learners to not understand sometimes and they should not expect learners to remember every word they teach. The aims of vocabulary instruction then should be to create the conditions where the student can learn independently of the teacher. The ultimate aim of any teaching is to enable the learner to get to a position in which she does not need us anymore. Thus, teachers should teach vocabulary learning strategies, such as 'how to use a dictionary well'; 'how to learn words systematically'; 'how to keep vocabulary notebooks' and so on.

If teachers can do these things, learners will benefit more from their classes and will not only remember more words, but will be on the road to becoming independent vocabulary learners.

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

Rob Waring, Notre Dame Seishin University

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