TEACHING AND

LEARNING VOCABULARY
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VOCABULARY
It should be said at the beginning that there is no "right"
or "best" way to teach vocabulary. The best practice in any
situation will depend on the type of student, the words that are
targeted, the school system and curriculum, and many other
factors.
Thus, we will not prescribe a regimen of vocabulary
teaching that is optimal for all teaching situations. Rather, it will
draw together points from the previous chapters and outline a
number of guiding principles that should be considered when
developing a vocabulary component to a language course.
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HOW MANY AND WHICH WORDS TO TEACH

To get some idea of how many words we need to teach, let us examine
what some goals for vocabulary size might be.
If a learner only wished to survive a short vacation in a foreign
country, perhaps he or she would be best advised to invest in a good phrase
book and to only bother learning the most basic lexis of the L2, such as
numbers from 1 to 10 and wh- question words(what, where, when, why, and
how). A slightly larger "survival list" of 120 items also includes vocabulary for
everyday activities such as buying and bargaining, reading signs, and ordering
food.
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But most students have higher aspirations than mere survival, and would
wish to be able to express themselves, however simply, in their chosen second
language. For this, a vocabulary of about 2,000 words would be a realistic goal.
Schonell, Meddleton, and Shaw (1956) found that people (Australians in
their study) regularly use about this many different words in their daily
conversations. Of course, this will not enable a conversation on every topic, and
certainly not an in-depth conversation on most topics, but it should still allow
satisfying interactions with native speakers on topics focusing on everyday
events and activities.
In fact, 2,000 words seems to be the most commonly cited initial goal
for second language learners. In addition to allowing basic conversation, this
number of words is seen as providing a solid basis for moving into more
advanced study.
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As a learner becomes more proficient and having the vocabulary to
communicate on everyday subjects becomes less of a problem, the next step
is acquiring enough vocabulary to begin to read authentic texts. There is no
magic vocabulary size threshold that allows this, but the consensus seems to
be that 3,000-5,000 word families is enough to provide initial access to this
kind of written material (Nation & Waring, 1997).
If the material is challenging, as in university textbooks, the figure may
be closer to 10,000 word families (Hazenberg & Hulstijn, 1996).
If a learner wishes to communicate in a particular subject area, then a
foundation of higher-frequency vocabulary plus the specialized vocabulary for
that area can be a useful target If a learner's goal is to develop a vocabulary
similar in size to that of a native speaker, then a vocabulary size of 15,000-
20,000 word families is necessary (Nation & Waring, 1997).
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These figures imply that a viably-sized vocabulary cannot realistically
be taught exclusively through explicit study. But certainly some of it can be
taught, and the question becomes which words to focus upon.
Nation (1995) proposes a cost-benefit perspective for deciding which
words to teach. He suggests that the most frequent 2,000 words are essential
for any real language use, and so are worth the effort required to teach and
learn them explicitly. The General Service List (GSL) is a good source for these
key words. Most of these extremely frequent words are polysemous, and the
GSL has the advantage of giving information about the frequency of each
meaning sense. This has obvious application in helping teachers to sequence
the order in which the different senses are presented.
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The first 2,000 words of a language are so important that Meara
(1995) wonders whether it might not be better to concentrate on teaching
them right at the beginning of a language course. This might not be as radical
as it seems. If a student could learn fifty words per week (a figure certainly
attainable if students were not concentrating on other language aspects such
as grammar), then in 40 weeks of school this basic vocabulary could be
introduced.
Although the students would not know a lot about grammar at the
end of this vocabulary-based period, they would quickly make up this
shortfall, and would soon overtake students who were taught by more
traditional methodologies.
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The main reason for believing that vocabulary knowledge can help
grammar acquisition is that knowing the words in a text or conversation
permits learners to understand the meaning of the discourse, which in turn
allows the grammatical patterning to become more transparent. Learners can
see for themselves how certain grammatical structures and sequences of
words lead to certain meanings.
In addition, "knowing" the first 2,000 words should increase
comprehensible language input, as students would be able to understand
more of the speech they are exposed to and also more of the written texts
that they read.
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The 2,000 level is only a beginning, and teaching words explicitly
beyond this level can still supply sufficient benefits that warrant the time
expended.
But Nation (1990) believes that there comes a point where words
occur so infrequently that it is better to use teaching time to help students
acquire the strategies necessary to learn these words on their own.
Guessing from context, learning word roots and affixes, and applying
mnemonic techniques are three strategies that he believes are especially
useful. The students can then independently learn the less frequent words
through a combination of extensive reading and explicit self study. In this way,
vocabulary-learning strategies can take learners beyond the level of word lists.
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Frequency is not the only criterion for choosing words to teach

explicitly. Another is words particularly useful in a specific topic area (e.g.,
technical vocabulary).
Once a solid foundation of 5,000 or so words have been mastered,
technical vocabulary can be the logical next step in vocabulary building.
Vocabulary beyond this frequency level is mostly used in limited and rather
specific situations in any case, so it makes sense to concentrate on the lower-
frequency vocabulary most likely to occur in your field of interest.
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A third category of words to focus on explicitly is those that students
want to learn. The learner-centered movement was built on the premise that
taking student wishes into account can be motivating to their learning. If
students choose some of the words they study, they may well be more
dedicated in trying to learn them.
A fourth category, especially important at the beginning of a course, is
the vocabulary necessary for classroom management. Although words such as
pen, pencil, book, and page are not especially frequent in general English, it
makes sense to teach them at the beginning of a course so that basic
commands such as "Please open your books to page 30" can be transacted in
the target language as soon as possible.
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So far, we have discussed general vocabulary size goals, and which
words make obvious targets for teaching. This leaves the question of how
many words to teach per class period. Numbers in the area of ten new words
per 1-hour session are sometimes cited, and this does not seem unreasonable.
However, it is useful to remember that teachers can improve their students’
vocabulary by deepening their quality of knowledge about words already
partially known, even if no new words are introduced.
In fact, teaching new words in class may not be the most efficient way
of handling vocabulary. It is probably more productive to assign students
homework that introduces them to new words, such as word lists or reading,
and then elaborate, expand, and consolidate these words in the classroom.
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This does not mean that all elaboration work needs to be done in
formal classes; many elaboration exercises, such as semantic mapping, can be
done in study groups. Most people tend to think of vocabulary learning as an
individual pursuit, unaware of the advantages many researchers have
attributed to cooperative group learning: It promotes active processing of
information and crossmodeling/imitation, the social context enhances
motivation of the participants, cooperative learning can prepare the
participants for "team activities« outside the classroom, and, because there is
less instructor intervention, students have more time to actually use and
manipulate language in class. Thus, teachers may well find it useful to set up
vocabulary learning groups in which members work together and encourage
each other.
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Of course, learners can also take individual responsibility for their own
learning, by using such strategies as keeping a vocabulary notebook. Research
has shown that learning thirty words per hour is possible (at least in the sense
of gaining some initial partial knowledge) by using techniques such as word
lists or the keyword method, so how much vocabulary one learns seems to be
limited only by personal ambition.
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TEACHING VOCABULARY
In any well-structured vocabulary program there needs to be the proper
mix of explicit teaching and activities from which incidental learning can occur.
With rank beginners, it is probably necessary to explicitly teach all words
until students have enough vocabulary to start making use of the unknown
words they meet in context. But beyond this most basic level, incidental learning
should be structured into the program in a principled way.
It is important for at least two reasons: meeting a word in different
contexts expands what is known about it (improving quality of knowledge) and
the additional exposures help consolidate it in memory. Taking an incremental
view of vocabulary acquisition, such elaboration and consolidation are both
crucial.
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Explicit approaches to vocabulary learning, whether teacher-led in
a classroom or through self-study, can only provide some elements of
lexical knowledge. Even lexical information amenable to conscious study,
such as meaning, cannot be totally mastered by explicit study because it is
impossible to present and practice all of the creative uses of a word that a
student might come across.
We have also seen that some kinds of word knowledge, such as
collocation, register constraints, and frequency, can only be fully grasped
through numerous exposures. Therefore, explicit and incidental
approaches are both necessary in the course of learning vocabulary, each
with its own strengths and weaknesses.
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EXPLICIT APPROACH
Traditional approaches to vocabulary teaching have unsurprisingly
focused on activities for the explicit study of vocabulary. There are numerous
sources that illustrate a wide variety of vocabulary exercises, including
teachers' reference.
Computer-Aided Language Learning (CALL) has begun to address
vocabulary learning as well. Now that most computers include multimedia
capability (they have sound as well as pictures), they are ideal for language
practice that requires a variety of written and spoken contexts. They are also
very patient about repetition and recycling. These traits fit very well with the
requirements of vocabulary learning.
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Sokmen (1997) surveys explicit vocabulary teaching and highlights a
number of key principles:
• build a large sight vocabulary
• integrate new words with old
• provide a number of encounters with a word
• promote a deep level of processing
• facilitate imaging
• make new words "real" by connecting them to the student's world in some
way
• use a variety of techniques
• encourage independent learning strategies.
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Sokmen mentions integrating new words with old, which is often done by
some form of grouping similar words together. However, if two or more similar
words are initially taught together, it might actually make them more difficult to
learn. This is because students learn the word forms and learn the meanings but
confuse which goes with which (cross-association).
Research shows that cross-association is a genuine problem for learners with
Nation (1990, p. 47) suggesting that about 25% of similar words taught together
are typically cross-associated. Antonyms are particularly prone to cross-
association because they tend to come in pairs like deep/shallow or rich/poor,
but synonyms and other words from closely related semantic groupings (e.g.,
days of the week, numbers, foods, clothing) are also at risk.
Nation (1990) suggests that the way to avoid cross-association is to teach the
most frequent or useful word of a pair first (e.g., deep), and only after it is well
established introducing its partner(s) (e.g., shallow).
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Another principle is teaching the underlying meaning concept of a
word. Many words are polysemous in English, and often some of their
different meaning senses have a common underlying trait.
Let us take the word fork as an example. It can mean a fork to eat
with, a fork in a road or river, a tuning fork for use with music, a pitchfork,
which farmers use to throw hay, or several other things. The GSL indicates
that the meaning sense of "implement used for eating or in gardening"
makes up 86% of the occurrences, while "anything so shaped," like a fork in
the road, makes up 12%. This would suggest that "eating fork" is the most
important meaning sense.
By defining the underlying meaning concept, we maximize the effect
of the teaching, by enabling students to understand the word in a much
wider variety of contexts.
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We can also maximize vocabulary learning by teaching word families
instead of individual word forms. Teachers can make it a habit when
introducing a new word to mention the other members of its word family. In
this way, learners form the habit of considering a word's derivations as a
matter of course.
To reinforce this habit, teachers may eventually ask students to guess
a new word's derivatives at the time of introduction. Including a derivation
section as part of assessment also promotes the idea that learning the
complete word family is important.
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When teaching vocabulary, it is quite useful to have some idea of
what makes words relatively easy or difficult to learn. Factors can be related
to the word itself (intra-lexical factors), or they can involve how well the
learner’s L1 matches the L2 (crosslinguistic factors).
Laufer (1997) summarizes the various intra-lexical factors as follows,
but note that the first one involves the degree of matching with the L1 sound
system.
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Intralexical factors which affect vocabulary learning
Facilitating factors

familiar phonemes familiar letter combinations

stress always on same syllable consistency of sound-script relationship
inflectional regularity derivational regularity
transparency of word parts general words with neutral register
one form for one meaning
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Intralexical factors which affect vocabulary learning
Difficulty-inducing factors

presence of foreign phonemes unfamiliar letter combinations

variable stress incongruency in sound-script relationship
inflectional complexity derivational complexity
deceptive transparency similarity of word forms
idiomaticity specific words with register constraints
one form with several meanings
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Intralexical factors which affect vocabulary learning
Factors with no clear effect

word length
part of speech
concreteness/abstractness
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. In general, we find that the more regular the behavior of a language's
vocabulary, the easier it is to learn; it is the exceptions that cause problems. Swan
(1997, p. 166) suggests that learners typically use a form of "equivalence
hypothesis" when learning new L2 words, expressing a strategy something like
"Regard everything [words in the L2 and L1] as the same unless you have a good
reason not to."
Learners do seem to assume that the core meaning senses of translation
equivalents are the same across languages, but that more peripheral, irregular, or
idiomatic uses are not. This is probably generally correct and shows that learners
have intuitions about the relationships between L2 and L1 words. Swan argues
that these intuitions can be sharpened by making learners more aware of the
similarities and differences between the native language and the target language.
In other words, contrasting key aspects of the L2 and the L1 can help students
make better guesses about when it is appropriate to transfer knowledge about
L1 words over to their L2 counterparts.
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INCIDENTAL LEARNING APPROACH
In contrast to explicit approaches to vocabulary teaching and learning, the
key to an incidental learning approach is to make sure that learners get maximum
exposure to language.
Milton and Meara (1995) estimate that the European Exchange students
they studied learned an average of 275 English words per half year at home,
whereas their vocabulary increase during 6 months at a British university averaged
1,325 words, a growth rate about five times larger in magnitude. These students
were studying in an English-medium environment but were not taking English-
language courses. There was a great deal of variation in the students' vocabulary
improvement but most of them did benefit from immersion into the L2, with the
weaker students making the largest gains.
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Unfortunately, this desirable approach is not widely available to students
around the world. Teachers must find ways of increasing their students' exposure
to the L2 without their getting onto an airplane. The consensus on how to do this is
to have the students read more. The book-flood studies showed that additional
reading led to a tangible increase in learners' vocabularies, even though the
classroom discussions about the books read focused on meaning and the students'
enjoyment of the texts. It seems that just using a language can be a potent way to
learn it, even without explicit focus on linguistic forms.
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Vocabulary and Reading
Reading is an important part of all but the most elementary of
vocabulary programs. For intermediate and advanced learners with
vocabularies above 3,000 or so words, reading offers a portal of
exposure to all remaining words. Even beginning students with a limited
vocabulary can benefit from reading by accessing graded readers. Of
course, many words can be learned incidentally through verbal
exposure, but considering that spoken discourse is associated with more
frequent words and lower type-token ratios than written discourse (only
about 2,000 words made up the majority of speech in the Schonell,
Meddleton, and Shaw [1956] study), it would be optimistic to expect to
learn a wide vocabulary from only spoken discourse. Written discourse,
on the other hand, tends to use a wide variety of vocabulary, making it a
better resource for acquiring a broader range of words.
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There is plenty of evidence that learners can acquire vocabulary
from reading only. However, most other studies show that the
vocabulary uptake from reading is really rather small and it is only
through numerous repeated exposures from a great deal of reading
that any significant number of words are learned.
This means that the odd reading session may not have much of
an effect on vocabulary learning. Vocabulary learning can be somewhat
enhanced by making certain words salient, such as by glossing them
clearly in book margins. But what is really needed is extensive reading,
as in the book-flood studies, where reading is both consistent and takes
place over a period of time. Advanced students can take advantage of a
wide variety of authentic texts, but for beginning students, graded
readers probably give the best access to this amount of input.
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Nation believes that graded readers are an effective resource that
should not be ignored, especially as they provide the following benefits:
they are an important means of vocabulary expansion, they provide
opportunities to practice guessing from context and dictionary skills in a
supportive environment in which most words are already known, and
partially known words are repeatedly met so that they can be consolidated.
For intermediate students just on the threshold of reading authentic
texts, narrow reading may be appropriate. The idea is to read numerous
authentic texts, but all on the same topic. Reading on one subject means
that much of the topic-specific vocabulary will be repeated throughout the
course of reading, which both makes the reading easier and gives the
reader a better chance of learning this recurring vocabulary. One example
of this approach is reading daily newspaper accounts of an ongoing story.
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Narrow reading can accelerate access into authentic materials
but of course most of the words in any text need to be known before it
can be read. The exact percentage has not been established and almost
certainly depends on factors such as familiarity with topic and whether
the unknown words are essential to the gist of the text. A figure of 95%
known words (Laufer, 1988) crops up in the literature frequently, and at
the moment this seems to be a reasonable estimate.
The percentage of known and unknown vocabulary is one of
the most important factors that determine the difficulty of a text. Thus,
one way to determine students' reading levels is to gauge their
vocabulary knowledge. One can do this by using cloze tests.
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The percentage of text known also affects the ability to guess an
unknown word's meaning from context (also called inferencing from
context).
Guessing a new word's meaning from context is a key vocabulary
learning skill, and Nation (1990) identifies it as one of the three principal
strategies for handling low-frequency vocabulary. However, we now
know that inferencing is a complicated process, and we cannot assume
that learners will automatically be successful. In addition to needing to
know enough of the words in a text, extensive research has highlighted
a number of other factors that affect the likelihood of inferencing
success.
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1. The context must be rich enough to offer adequate clues to guess a
word's meaning. Although many contexts offer multiple clues to a new
word's meaning, the undeniable fact is that many contexts simply do not
offer enough. Even if enough clues are present, a single context is rarely
sufficient for a reader to guess the full meaning of a word; repeated
encounters in diverse contexts is necessary for this.
2. Readers are better able to use local clues in proximity to an unknown
word than more global clues that are located further away.
3. Learners may mistake an unknown word for one they already know with
a similar orthographic or phonological form. Once this happens, learners
may continue with this interpretation evert if it does not make sense in the
context. In other words, learners may interpret the surrounding context in a
way that is consistent with their erroneous reading of the unknown word,
rather than letting the context help define the word (Haynes, 1993).
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4. Cognates can help guessing from context if they are used prudently.
Especially for speakers of Romance languages, awareness of cognates
can help increase the number of English words that are known in a text,
which increases the chances for inferencing success.
[Link] knowledge about the topic and the culture being
discussed aids inferencing.
6. Learners need to be skilled in guessing. Learners need to know what
clues to look for and where to find them. With the almost unlimited
variety of clues possible, a systematic approach to guessing from
context may be advisable.
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7. Guessing a word from context does not mean that it will be
remembered. If a word is easy to guess, then a learner will inference it
quickly with the minimum amount of mental processing in order to
carry on with reading. This shallow processing may not ensure that the
word is retained. Also, the text may be so rich with clues that it can be
comprehended without the unknown word. On the other hand, if the
clues are sparser and the guessing process requires more cognitive
effort, then the word is more likely to be remembered. Thus,
guessability and retainability may have an inverse relationship. This
does not mean that inferencing is unimportant, but it might facilitate
fluent reading more than vocabulary acquisition.
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Vocabulary and Writing, Listening, and Speaking
Vocabulary research has tended to focus on reading, but
vocabulary is obviously necessary for the other three skills as well.
In the teaching of writing, many teachers focus on the grammatical
well-formedness of a composition. However, it seems that lexis may
be the element requiring more attention. Research has shown that
lexical errors tend to impede comprehension more than
grammatical errors and native-speaking judges tend to rate lexical
errors as more serious than grammatical errors (Ellis, 1994). In
addition, lexical errors tend to be relatively frequent.
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Vocabulary and Writing, Listening, and Speaking
A typical problem is that learners often use basic vocabulary
where a good native-speaking writer would use more precise lower-
frequency words. Improving learners' vocabulary size is the best
answer to this problem, as well as recycling and elaborating
receptive vocabulary until it becomes productive.
A more immediate answer is to encourage use of «productive»
learner dictionaries, such as the Longman Language Activator (1993)
or the Oxford Learner's Wordfinder Dictionary (Trappes-Lomax,
1997). These allow students to look up basic words that they are
likely to know (listen) in order to be directed to more precise lexical
choices (eavesdrop):
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Vocabulary and Writing, Listening, and Speaking
When it comes to verbal skills, lexis is somewhat easier
because much less is required for listening and speaking than for
reading and writing. Nation (1990) recommends reading stories aloud,
glossing new words when they occur, and dictation exercises as ways
of improving listening vocabulary.
For speaking, a number of possibilities exist. Pair-work
activities that have an information gap are often used to stimulate
oral communicative practice. These can be made more effective by
giving key vocabulary to one of the partners, which then has to be
negotiated with the other. Practice with paraphrasing can help
learners when they do not know a word, by making full use of the
words they do know.
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Let us again highlight the incremental nature of vocabulary
learning. The implication of this is that, except for totally new
words, learners will be adding to some existing knowledge of the
L2 words. When attempting to enhance this partial knowledge,
vocabulary learning will depend on what the learner already
knows, and how well the learner wishes to know the word.
Graves (1987) highlights the multiplicity of vocabulary
learning, distinguishing six types: (1) learning to read known
words, (2) learning new meaning senses for known words, (3)
learning new words representing known concepts, (4) learning
new words representing new concepts, (5) clarifying and enriching
the meanings of known words, and (6) moving words from
receptive to productive vocabularies.
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One can see that Graves's list emphasizes the ongoing
learning of a word, as all of these except (4) involve prior
knowledge of either the word or the associated concept.
Although Graves is referring to L1 vocabulary, the list
should apply equally to an L2 context. The important lesson to be
taken from this is that vocabulary teaching means more than just
introducing new words, it also includes nurturing partially known
vocabulary along to the point where learners can use it at will.
 NEXT WEEK

ASSESSING VOCABULARY
KNOWLEDGE