academic vocabulary instruction background on learning words incidental vocabulary acquisition

Academic Vocabulary Instruction

I. Background on learning wordsII. Incidental Vocabulary AcquisitionIII. Intentional Vocabulary InstructionIV. Unknowns in Current Literature

- Literature, tools, and activities will be discussed and reviewed throughout the presentation.

Number of words

1. difficulty understanding a text if less than 95% of words are known (Nation, 2001)

2. In Academic English, 95% coverage = about 4,000 word families (Nation, 2001)

3. No agreed upon number

Word Families

- One word family includes the base form plus all inflections and derivations.

characterize characterizescharacterizing characterized characteristic characteristics characteristically etc.

English as a Second Language university students do not have sufficient derivational knowledge of English words.

(Schmitt & Zimmerman, 2002; Ward & Chuenjundaeng, 2009)

Knowing a Word

1. Forma. Orthographicb. Phonological

2. Meaninga. basic and derivedb. changes in context

3. Syntactic Features4. Idioms5.Others(de la Fuente, 2006; Ellis, 1997, Nation, 2001)

Receptive vs. Productive Knowledge

1. Two different cognitive processes (de la Fuente, 2006)

2. Direction of instruction (Webb, 2009)

Orthographic vs. Phonological Form

1. Knowing the written form does not equal knowing the spoken form (Goh, 2000).

Lexical Competence

Defined as a “combination of different aspects of vocabulary knowledge together with vocabulary use, speed of access and strategic competence” (Laufer, 2005, p. 570).

Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

1. A by-product

2. Massive amounts of exposure420 Novels = 2000 words (Hill & Laufer, 2003)

3. Rich contexts (Webb, 2008a)

1. Dictionary use

a. does lead to gains in vocabulary knowledge (Knight 1994; Prichard, 2008)

1. small gains2. Better than guessing from context

b. Instruction on how to use a dictionary

2. Guessing from Context

Four Assumptions (Laufer, 2003)

1. The noticing assumption

1. If they comprehend, they don’t pay attention to exact meaning

2. Homonyms, false cognates, similar spellings

Four Assumptions (Laufer, 2003)

2. The guessing ability assumption

1. sufficient context

2. 95% of words (Nation, 2001) – not in Laufer, 2003

Guessing from Context

(Stahl 1999, p. 28)

1. One might expect the meaning of grudgingly to be admiringly.

Four Assumptions (Laufer, 2003)

3. The ‘guessing-retention link’ assumption

1. Guessing does not lead to long-term retention2. However, difficult words are retained

Four Assumptions (Laufer, 2003)

4. The ‘cumulative gain’ assumption

1. Assumes that learners will encounter the word multiple times

Guessing from Context: Four Assumptions

1. The noticing assumption2. The guessing ability assumption (context)3. The guessing-retention link assumption4. The cumulative gain assumption

Reading Strategies vs. Vocabulary Acquisition

1. Incidental vocabulary acquisition is slow

2. However, students comprehend a text and may learn a few words (Rott et al., 2002)

Glosses

1. Noticing Assumption

2. Glossing leads to vocabulary acquisition (Cheng & Good, 2009; Hulstijn et al., 1996, Rott el al., 2002; Webb 2007c)

Intentional Vocabulary Instruction

Definition: Vocabulary acquisition is the goal.

1. Target Word Assessment2. Depth of Processing3. Repetition and Spaced Retrieval4. Various tasks geared toward lexical competence

1. Target word assessment

A. CorporaB. Teacher analysisC. Knowledge rating checklist

Corpora

1. The General Service List (GSL) (West, 1953)

-Most useful 2000 words in the English Language

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/~alzsh3/acvocab /wordlists.htm#gsl

Corpora

1. The Academic Word List (AWL) (Coxhead, 2000)

a. 570 word families = 10% of total words in academic texts (excluding the GSL)

b. 3.5 million running words from 28 disciplines

c. with GSL, = 86% of words in academic texts

Using the AWL

1. AWL Highlighter

2. Lists and sublists

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/~alzsh3 /acvocab/awlhighlighter.htm

Criticism of AWL

1. science, social science, engineering texts (Hyland & Tse, 2007)

2. agriculture (Martinez, Beck, & Panza, 2009)

-only 92 words in AWL common in agricultural field

1. classes with students from many fields

2. general education classes in U.S.

www.lextutor.ca

1. Target word assessment

A. CorporaB. Teacher analysisC. Knowledge rating checklist

Teacher Analysis

1. Read the text and determine which words are(Grabe & Stoller, 2001)

1. necessary for text comprehension and are useful in other settings

2. necessary for text comprehension but not useful in other settings

3. neither necessary for text comprehension nor useful in other settings.

2. Note of caution

a. McCrostie (2007) found that trained instructors are not necessarily good at determining frequently occurring words.

b. Schmitt (2008) suggests combining frequency lists with intuition.

1. Target word assessment

A. CorporaB. Teacher analysisC. Knowledge rating checklist

Knowledge Rating Checklist

1. Let students determine which words to focus on

2. Narrow down target words for the teacher

(Stahl, 1999)

Intentional Vocabulary Instruction

1. Target word assessment

A. CorporaB. Teacher analysisC. Knowledge rating checklist

Intentional Vocabulary Instruction

Definition: Vocabulary acquisition is the goal.

1. Target Word Assessment2. Depth of Processing3. Repetition and Spaced Retrieval4. Various Tasks geared toward lexical competence

Depth of Processing

As discussed previously, students need to know more than the form-meaning connection.

Learners need to be engaged with the words.

The involvement load hypothesis (Laufer & Hulstijn 2001)

-based on Craik & Lockhart’s (1972) - when lexical items are semantically processed, they are being processed at a deep level

The involvement load hypothesis

1. Three components of involvement1. need2. search3. evaluation

2. Weak, moderate, and strong

1. Tasks with higher levels of involvement produce better vocabulary acquisition (Kim, 2008).

2. Different tasks with the same level of involvement produce similar results (Kim, 2008)

Generation

1. When a person encounters a word in ways that are different from initial contact, s/he will process the word more elaborately (Nation, 2001; Stahl, 1999).

2. Nation (2001) provides this example with the word cement (p. 69).

First encounter: We cemented the path.

Second encounter: We cemented our relationship with a drink.

3. Applying generation to word families.

a. insufficient knowledge of word families for English L2 university students (Schmitt & Zimmerman, 2002; Ward & Chuenjundaeng, 2009)

Intentional Vocabulary Instruction

Definition: Vocabulary acquisition is the goal.

1. Target Word Assessment2. Depth of Processing3. Repetition and Spaced Retrieval4. Various Tasks geared toward lexical competence

Repetition and Spaced Retrieval

a. Multiple encounters with a word are necessary for acquisition.

b. Multiple contexts increase depth of understanding of the word.

Repetition and Spaced Retrieval

c. Ideal number is unknown. 1. Two encounters produce small gains (Rott, 1999)

2. Twenty may not be enough (Waring and Takaki, 2003)

3. Ten encounters is generally agreed upon (Schmitt, 2008; Stahl, 1999)

Repetition and Spaced Retrieval

d. Spaced retrieval:Words that are encountered at increasing

intervals, they are more likely to be remembered(Nation, 2001; Sökman, 1997).

Repetition and Spaced Retrieval

1. consciously reintroduce target words

2. note cards

3. journals

Intentional Vocabulary Instruction

Definition: Vocabulary acquisition is the goal.

1. Target Word Assessment2. Depth of Processing3. Repetition and Spaced Retrieval4. Various Tasks geared toward lexical competence

Intentional Vocabulary Instruction

4. Various tasks geared toward lexical competence

a. cloze activity1. No better than glosses (Kim, 2008)

2. A series of three cloze activities is better than one cloze or one original sentence writing activity (Folse, 2006).

3. Cloze for collocations (Webb & Kagimoto, 2009)

b. Affix activities

1. (Ward & Chuenjundaeng, 2009)

2. 82% of words in AWL are of Greek or Latin origin (Coxhead, 2000).

-examples 1 and 2

c. Vocabulary notebooks1. Walter’s & Bozkurt, 2009

d. role-play with planned focus on form and meaning (de la Fuente, 2006)

e. post-reading retells in jig-saw activities (Atay & Kurt, 2006)

f. peer discussion of words (Atay & Kurt, 2006)

-examples 3 and 4

g. original sentence writing (Kim, 2008)-example 5

h. teacher led discussions with feedback (Atay & Kurt, 2006)

i. matching

j. Activities for phonological representation(Goh, 2000)-examples 6 and 7

Intentional Vocabulary Instruction

1. Words must be properly taught

-listening comprehension (Chang & Read, 2006)

Intentional Vocabulary Instruction

Definition: Vocabulary acquisition is the goal.

1. Target Word Assessment2. Depth of Processing3. Repetition and Spaced Retrieval4. Various Tasks geared toward lexical competence

Problems and Unknowns

1. How many words to teach?

2. When to explicitly teach words?

3. How to assess acquiring a word?

Academic Vocabulary Instruction

I. Background on learning wordsII. Incidental Vocabulary AcquisitionIII. Intentional Vocabulary InstructionIV. Unknowns in Current Literature

- Review of literature, tools, and activities

Thank you.

Mark Poupardmpoupard@gmail.com