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What’s in a Word? The Importance of Vocabulary

& Some Ways to Teach It

ELC688 Methods I

Survey of Best Practices in TESOL

Jodi Crandall & Bev Bickel

University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC)

Adapted with permission by Teresa Hecht Valais, UMBC

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Why is Vocabulary so Important?

• Content-based language Instruction

• Corpus linguistics and collocations

• Frequency lists (ex: Academic Word List)

• Learner and teacher experiences

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What Is Vocabulary?

• Words

• Word families

cared, careful, carefully, careless, caring, cares, carelessly

• Phrasal verbs

turn off, put on, figure out, look up, run off

• Collocations

ice cream, digital photograph, hot summer

• Idioms

couch potato, Valley girl, hot under the collar, cold shoulder, hit the road, on track

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What Vocabulary Should We Teach?

Vocabulary Items That Are:

• Frequent (West General Service List)

• Important (Academic Word List)

• Needed for Classroom Tasks & Activities

• Regular (common patterns or features)

• Easy to learn (cognates)

Must consider level & needs/interests of learners

Must answer students’ vocabulary questions

(Nation, 2001)

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What Does It Mean to “Know” a Word?

• Different contexts of use

• Different meanings (connotations)

• Different word partners or collocations

Students’ receptive vocabulary will exceed their productive one.

(Carter, 1998)

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How Should We Teach Vocabulary?

• Focus on important words

General Service List of first 2000 Academic Word List

• Give simple, clear explanations & translations

• Provide repetition over time

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How Should We Teach Vocabulary?

• Provide both extensive & intensive instruction

reading and listening to “pick up” vocabulary AND direct instruction of key vocabulary

• Help learners develop vocabulary learning strategies

personal dictionaries; memory strategies

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How Should We Divide Our Time in Teaching Vocabulary?

Teach each of these for about the same amount (25%) of the time:

• Learning from Input (listening and reading)

Most common 2000-3000 words

These are stored as one unit

Together they account for 80-90%

• Learning from Output (speaking and writing)

Opportunity to use the words; repetition (Nation, 2001)

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How Should We Divide Our Time?

• Focused Language Learning Looking for patterns; dictionary work; etc,

The 100,000 + most infrequent words

These are rebuilt each time we use them

• ex: Ungovernable = govern + able + un

• Fluency Activities All 4 skills; use known words & grammar

Encourage lots of use

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What Are Some Activities for Teaching & Learning Vocabulary ?

For Children and Lower English Levels:

• Word walls/mobiles/blocks/bulletin boards

• Charades/Act out meaning

• Draw/point to items that match definition

• Alphabet books

• Word games

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What Are Some Activities for Teaching & Learning Vocabulary?

For Older Students

• Word Grids • Wordsplash • Personal Dictionaries & Vocabulary Notebooks • Word Analysis (Roots, Suffixes, Prefixes) • Find words with the same root • Change words from 1 part of speech to another (compose-composition) • Underline words known; circle unfamiliar ones • Word games (especially with technology) • Bingo/Concentration/Word search • Crossword puzzles

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VOCABULARY WEBSITES Vocabulary Activities

Learning vocabulary can be fun http://www.vocabulary.co.il/ 200 vocabulary exercises http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/elc/studyzone/200/vocab/index.htm

Interactive vocabulary games http://pbskids.org/arthur/games/unmatching/index.html http://esl.fis.edu/vocab/index-fp.htm Interactive puzzles http://vlc.polyu.edu.hk/XWord/xword.htm

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VOCABULARY ACTIVITIES Vocabulary quizzes/activities http://www.geocities.com/pccprep/qz.htm#vocab Interactive vocabulary matching exercises http://www.eslbears.homestead.com/matching.html Vocabulary and grammar activities http://english-zone.com/index.php Vocabulary and other activities for young learners http://www.abcteach.com/sitemap.htm Vocabulary website from Ohio University http://www.ohiou.edu/esl/english/vocabulary.html

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Dictionaries, Word Lists & Frequency Lists

School-related idioms/vocabulary

http://www.idiomconnection.com/education.html#A

Little explorers’ dictionary. Click on letter

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/Bisfor.shtml

The Internet picture dictionary

http://www.pdictionary.com/

Like a dictionary for intermediate or advanced Ss, simple and clear definitions of words

http://www.englishpage.com/vocabulary/vocabulary.html

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Voice of America ESL dictionary

http://esl.about.com/library/vocabulary/blvoa_a.htm

General Service Word List (most frequent 2000+ words)

http://jbauman.com/aboutgsl.html

Academic Word List (most frequent university academic words across several disciplines)

www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/research/awl/

Dictionaries, Word Lists & Frequency Lists

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For Further Reading Carter, R. (1998). Vocabulary 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. Cobb, T. (2005). The complete lexical tutor. Retrieved from

http://132.208.224.131/ (Links to West List, Academic Word List, Vocabulary Profiler,

Concordancer, and many other vocabulary aids)

Folse, K. (2004). Vocabulary myths: Applying second language research to classroom teaching. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Nation, I.S.P. (1990). Teaching and learning vocabulary. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

Nation, Paul (Ed.) (1994). New ways in teaching vocabulary. Alexandria, VA: TESOL.

Nation, I. S. P. (2001). Learning vocabulary in another language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press