Catedra de Limba i literatura englez EFL Methodology for English students, year II, 2011

TEACHING VOCABULARY
For many people, the question What is vocabulary? has a simple answer: Words. But which words? Are am, is, was, had and of vocabulary items, or are they something else? On the other hand, we may wish to say that such words as am, is, was, has, etc. are part of our vocabulary in a general sense. What is a word? Is put up with (tolerate) one word or three? It has three parts, certainly, but only one meaning. Beat, on the other hand, has several meanings; is it one word or more? One way of avoiding this dilemma is to refer to items of vocabulary with a single meaning as lexical items, whether they consist of one word or more. The term word can then be reserved for a group of letters preceded and followed by a space. However, the word may include the base form with its inflections and derivatives (e.g. makes, made, making, maker-s). Since the meanings of these different forms of the word are closely related, it is assumed that little effort is needed to learn them. However, it should be remembered that vocabulary learning is more than the study of individual words. A significant amount of the English language is made up of lexical phrases which range from lexical verbs to longer expressions, and routines. Because these can often be learned as single units, the same principles of learning apply to them as to individual words. The notion of a word has been broadened to include such lexical phrases and routines, and it has been suggested that in the initial stages of learning these play a primary role in communication and acquisition. In addition, access to lexical corpora has made it possible for applied linguists to identify common patterns of collocation, word formation, metaphor, and lexical phrases that are part of a speakers lexical competence. Whatever linguistic distinctions we choose to make, however, it is clear that our pupils need to know both lexical items and grammar words in order to communicate in English. Vocabulary is a core component of language proficiency and provides much of the basis for how learners speak, listen, read and write. Without an extensive vocabulary and strategies for acquiring new vocabulary, learners often achieve less than their potential and may be discouraged from making use of language learning opportunities around them such as listening to the radio, listening to native speakers, using the language in different contexts, reading, or watching television. By the end of this unit, you should be able to: explain what vocabulary is and what role it plays in the system of a language and its culture explain how vocabulary itself is systematic set up, apply and monitor a variety of interactive classroom tasks for developing vocabulary offer a theoretical justification for each of these tasks explain and illustrate using a dictionary and the phonemic symbols integrate vocabulary activities with the development of one or more of the four skills have reconsidered and improved your own repertoire of skills in the area of language teaching assess the learning outcomes of classroom vocabulary activities have some ideas for developing pupil autonomy in vocabulary learning.

Key Concepts: comprehension vs. production, active vs. passive vocabulary,

cognates, vocabulary acquisition vs. learning, vocabulary sets, incidental, intentional and independent learning of vocabulary. Anca Cehan 1

1. Knowing a word
To know a word is to know much more than just its stress, its spelling and its most commonly accepted meaning. It is to know its grammar: is it a verb? an adjective? a noun? Is it followed by a gerund, an infinitive or a clause? What is its range of meaning (e.g. head of a school, head of a bed, etc.)? its diversity of meaning (e.g. light weight; light literature, light food; light: illuminate; lamp, etc.)? its collocations (e.g. keen on; interested in; to gamble on; raw materials; heavy traffic), and its connotations (e.g. dustman vs. refuse collector; chairman vs. chairperson; trendy vs. fashionable)? Many teachers advise their pupils to write new words in special vocabulary notebooks. However, these are of little practical use unless some indication is given of how the new lexical item is used. Words do not have meaning in isolation. If we see the single word beat, for instance, we have no way of knowing whether it is a noun meaning rhythm, an area for which a policeman is responsible, or a verb meaning defeat. Similarly, round may refer to the shape of something, but it is also another name for a bullet, a type of song and a number of drinks. Words take their meaning from the context in which they occur. It therefore makes sense to teach new vocabulary as part of a sentence or utterance that makes the meaning clear. Harmer (1991: 158) suggests that, in order to know a vocabulary item, we must be aware of its: Meaning: many words have more than one meaning. For the noun face, for instance, Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English lists fourteen meanings. Use: a word may carry information about register or style. Both Good morning and Hi are greetings, but they indicate different levels of formality. A words meaning can also be extended in metaphor and idiom*. Formation: words change shape according to the affixes attached to them, and also according to their function, e.g.: lie, liar, lying, lied. Grammar: nouns may be countable, uncountable; adjectives and adverbs may have degrees of comparison, etc. In addition to all this, as Penny Ur suggests (1996: 61, ff) we need to know what a lexical item sounds like and what it looks like: that is its pronunciation and spelling. We also need to be aware of its denotation, connotation and collocations. Denotation and connotation both reflect the meaning of an item. However, while denotation refers to the usual dictionary definition, connotation is concerned with socio-cultural factors, with the feelings associated with the item. For example, thin and slim have roughly the same denotative meaning: they are the opposite of fat. But when used to describe people, slim has favourable connotations while thin is unflattering. Learners need to appreciate this kind of differences. Certain words tend to go together. We make coffee, we make the beds, but we do the dishes and the shopping We speak of sweet and sour taste, but the opposite of sweet wine is dry wine. We say that wine collocates with dry, that coffee collocates with make and that the shopping collocates with do. Pupils therefore need to learn not only new items of vocabulary but also the words and phrases that collocate with these items. The collocations of a word are the combinations that it regularly makes with other words. Coming to know a word is to absorb all the elements of its usage over time. In other words, during the first few encounters with a word the pupils will acquire a rough idea of what it means and the way it is used. This rough idea will become more accurate with each new encounter of the word in context. To conclude, to know a word is to be able to use it accurately in all its possible usages. There is a fundamental difference between the native speakers process and the foreign language learner's process of learning vocabulary. This is to do with the semantic networks that each of them carries in his/her mind. To the native speaker, a new word is simply a new way of Anca Cehan 2

referring to something in an already very familiar cultural setting. To our pupil, a new word in English is a way of referring to something in an unfamiliar cultural setting. So the pupil tends to incorporate the meaning of the new word into his/her own familiar cultural and semantic system. The meanings, both semantic and cultural, of the forms of a new language are most readily and precisely learned in the milieu where the language is spoken. Failing this, we need to surround the learner in the classroom with as much authentic speech, writing, aspects of the cultural environment, and contacts with native speakers as possible. Why? Because a language can only be truly and thoroughly absorbed in conjunction with its culture. To what extent can you aim at accuracy in the use of vocabulary in the classroom?

2. The importance of vocabulary: comprehension and production

How important is vocabulary to the pupil? Scrivener (1994: 73) claims that, as a means of communication, vocabulary is much more powerful than grammar. Without a substantial stock of vocabulary items the pupil will be unable to communicate much at all. However, frequency counts show us that there is a very rapid drop-off in frequency of occurrence of vocabulary after the most frequent 2,000 to 3,000 high-frequency words of the language. Here are some points about teaching vocabulary, on which theoreticians are in general agreement: 1. Like grammar, vocabulary can provide an effective vehicle for conveying meaning. 2. Vocabulary for recognition purposes (i.e. passive vocabulary) is acquired in significantly greater quantities than vocabulary for productive purposes (i.e. active vocabulary). This is true for native speakers and foreign language learners alike. 3. The vocabulary of a language reflects the semantic systems of conceptual meaning that have developed within the culture and history of that language. The semantic systems of English and Romanian will therefore be different. The amount of difference between two languages depends on the degree of divergence between the two cultures. For instance, the semantic systems of Chinese and English will differ far more from those of English and Romanian. 4. Vocabulary in the mother tongue is acquired unconsciously and via active interaction with adults and other children. 5. Vocabulary is stored in the memory in different ways by different learners. Learners own strategies for vocabulary acquisition should be encouraged and developed so that they can continue to acquire vocabulary independently of the teacher and the classroom. Even native speakers can rarely say they know the meaning of a word, because there is often a new use of a new collocation to learn that they haven't encountered before.

2.1. Receptive (passive) and productive (active) knowledge of vocabulary

Receptive knowledge means being able to recognise one of the aspects of knowledge though reading and listening. Productive knowledge means being able to use it in speaking and writing. Teachers should be selective when deciding which words deserve deeper receptive and/or productive practice, as well as which type of knowledge will be most useful for their learners. In other words, active vocabulary is made up of those words the learners will be Anca Cehan 3

expected to use, to produce, and passive vocabulary of those words they will merely have to recognise/comprehend when they hear them or see them in print. The distinction between active and passive vocabulary assigns priority to comprehension. Comprehension should precede production. The object of a vocabulary lesson is to enhance the different strategies for comprehension and production. Thus, when considering active and passive vocabulary, three principles are important to bear in mind: (i) you need to teach any lexical item either for active production or passive recognition. (ii) the memory processes involved in assimilating passive vocabulary are less demanding than those involved in assimilating active vocabulary. (iii) pupils can easily learn passive vocabulary independently of both you and the classroom. As active vocabulary, you may look for high frequency words, and words with wide coverage. Such a high-frequency and wide-coverage word is for example get. English nativespeaker primary school children are discouraged by their teachers from using get because they tend to use it too frequently: I got up, I got washed, I got dressed, I got ready, I got to the bus stop, I got punished, I got ill, etc. This simply shows what a very useful word get is, particularly for pupils in the early stages or where ability to communicate is seen as a highly motivating factor. However, as Harmer warns, the distinction between active and passive vocabulary is not always clear cut, particularly at intermediate levels and above. A word that has been active through constant use may slip back into the passive store if it is not used anymore. On the other hand, a word that pupils may have in their passive store may become active of the situation or context provokes its use (Harmer, 1991: 159). Consequently, you need to spend more time on active vocabulary, with examples and questions, but to present passive vocabulary briefly and allow pupils to guess the meaning from context where possible. Not all pupils will start guessing automatically, so you need to invest a little time in training this skill. Vocabulary is only learnt if it is understood. Nothing can be learnt unless it can be incorporated into an existing mental picture of the way things are, a sort of framework of perceptions and associations. Pupils therefore need careful guidance about the meaning of lexical items, and about their grammatical use, before they can place them in their internal networks of meaning. A problem, however, may be one of interference from concepts in Romanian and English that seem to have associations with the target item. This is unavoidable, and has to be countered with clear examples of how the English word is used (or not used) in that context and in comparison with other words. The vocabulary that pupils encounter will only be assimilated if it has relevance to the messages they want to understand or to the messages they want to convey. Only those lexical items are learnt that are perceived as having personal significance for the pupil. Personal significance can take many forms, e.g. I need it to understand this text, I need it to understand a letter from my English pen-friend, I need it to understand the instructions in my grammar book, etc. In your own words, try to formulate the classroom implications of these views of vocabulary. Think of what is taught versus what is learnt, of the pupils motivation for learning vocabulary, and of the strategies you may want to use in teaching vocabulary.

Anca Cehan

2.2. Classroom vocabulary

It is not always easy to decide which lexical items should be part of the active vocabulary. However, it is fairly clear that classroom vocabulary is a high priority. By this we do not simply mean the names of classroom furniture, although it is obviously important for the pupils to know and use desk, board, wall, picture, book, chalk as well as write, read, draw. Classroom vocabulary includes the key words we use in instructions to the learners. Here are some of the more common ones: true/false get into pairs/groups tick/cross grid/chart/map/form regular/irregular fill in/cross out/leave out/underline gaps/blanks top/middle/bottom offer/accept/refuse/invite instructions/description/suggestion/opinion There are many vocabulary items that need to be learned to a very high degree of fluency as quickly as possible. These include not only classroom vocabulary but also numbers, polite formulas, items for controlling language use (ask someone to repeat, speak more slowly), times, and periods of time and quantities.

2.3. How much vocabulary?

How much new vocabulary do you think is appropriate for a one-hour lesson in a lower secondary school? Is this more, less, or the same as the textbook you are using expects? Does this apply to all vocabulary, or are some items more difficult to learn than others? If so, which and why? Opinions vary on the amount of new vocabulary that pupils can be expected to absorb. Suggestions range from five to twelve new items in a one-hour lesson. Many teachers might feel that a number between five and eight would be more reasonable. A great deal depends on the aims of the lesson, the pupils level of ability, motivation, aptitude and so on. Nor can we expect that the pupils will remember all the vocabulary they are taught. In fact, they will not remember very much of it unless the items are recycled in later lessons. Pedagogic considerations Your decisions about what to teach will be affected by considerations referring to the pupils, the resources and the linguistic components, but also by pedagogic ones, that is by the factors that affect how you teach, and which choice you will make. These considerations are: teachability/ learnability You will teach according to the level of your pupils, and to how easy is an item to put over. Even at low levels, you can teach: i) international words (e.g. taxi, television, hotel, cinema, weekend) ii) cognates, that is words which are similar in both form and meaning in the two languages (e.g. the names of many school subjects like chemistry, geography, biology, mathematics, etc., or verbs such as obtain, admire, insult, form, etc.). These are obviously very easy to learn. Can you think of any other words of Romanian which are similar to English words in both form and meaning (cognates), and of any others which are false friends (similar in form, but not in meaning)?

Anca Cehan

 extendability Some words allow the use of prefixes and suffixes; others enter various combinations or include the meaning of other words (their hyponyms): i) word families: photo graph, -graphy, -graphic, -grapher. ii) combinable items: hand bag, home work, guitar string iii) cover words: (at early levels): seat for chair / stool/ sofa / bench, nice with people / weather / events, house for house / flat / home / building, etc. concrete vs. abstract Those words that show concrete entities will be taught before the more subtle or abstract words, e.g.: i) beautiful before responsible ii) cant stand before not keen on iii) Could you? / Yes of course before Would you mind ing? / Not at all. amount (learning load) A rough guide according to level, mood and motivation of the learners is: maximum 6 for beginners maximum 9 - 10 for intermediate for advanced students, it is up to the students themselves.

teaching for active for for passive vocabulary is a crucial decision which affects your entire approach. Are the pupils to learn vocabulary in order to recognise it or in order to produce it? if only to recognise, concentrate on pronunciation, spelling, context and meaning; if to produce, concentrate on pronunciation, spelling, context, meaning and practice. difficulty of concept and pronunciation, etc. will also be factors to consider. One obvious way of adding to ones vocabulary store is to search for words in English which are similar to ones in Romanian. Pupils should be encouraged to do this, but they should also be warned to watch out for false friends, that is, words which look or sound similar but which have rather different meanings and uses. For example, the English library does not mean the same as the Romanian word librrie. Match the following false friends with their Romanian equivalents. A few Romanian words have no English equivalents in this list! 1. accommodation a. comptimire 2. argument b. gol, vid; loc liber; rgaz 3. (to) assist c. a relua, a rencepe 4. commodity d. spectacol 5. conservatory e. ochelari 6. industry f. vacan 7. interest g. marf, produs 8. (to) resume h. cazare, gzduire 9. spectacles i. hrnicie 10. sympathy j. comoditate 11. vacancy k. a ajuta l. discuie, controvers m. dobnd n. ser

Anca Cehan

3. Teaching vocabulary
There are three main approaches to the teaching of vocabulary: incidental learning, explicit instruction and independent strategy development.

3.1

Incidental learning (acquisition)

Most words in both L1 and a foreign language are probably learned incidentally, through extensive reading and listening. Learning vocabulary is a gradual process based on many exposures to the word in context. Vocabulary is learnt as it crops up for instance, from a listening or reading text, or during a discussion. The incidental learning of vocabulary requires that teachers provide opportunities for extensive reading and listening. The role of graded (i.e. simplified) readers is to build up the learners vocabulary and structures until they can use more authentic materials. Low-proficiency learners can benefit from graded readers because they will be repeatedly exposed to high-frequency vocabulary. The incidental learning of vocabulary may eventually account for a majority of the advanced learners vocabulary; however, intentional learning through instruction contributes significantly to vocabulary development. Explicit instruction is essential for beginning learners whose lack of vocabulary limits their reading or listening, and generally speaking, their ability to communicate.

3.2. Explicit instruction

This involves diagnosing the words learners need to know, presenting words for the first time (e.g. before presentation of structures, before elicited dialogues or narratives, before reading or listening activities, or before discussion, games or role-play activities), elaborating word knowledge, and developing fluency with known words. Quite often, explicit instruction involves teaching vocabulary in lexical groups/ sets or fields. Also, translation has a necessary and useful role, although it can hinder learners progress if it is used to the exclusion of English-based techniques. Furthermore, translation needs to be followed up with other English-based exercises and learning strategies. Vocabulary lists can be an effective way to quickly learn word-pair translations. A more effective way is to use vocabulary cards because learners can control the order in which they study the words. Also, additional information can easily be added to the cards. When teaching unfamiliar vocabulary, you need to consider the following: 1. learners need to do more than just see the form; they need to hear the pronunciation and practise saying the word aloud. The syllable structure and stress pattern of the word are important because they are two ways in which words are stored in memory. 2. Start by teaching semantically unrelated words. Also avoid teaching words with similar forms and closely related meanings at the same time (e.g. affect and effect). Also, bilingual vocabulary books often simply list words in alphabetical order, increasing the chances of confusing words that start with the same syllable. Likewise, words with similar, opposite, or closely associated (e.g. types of fruit, family members) meanings may interfere with one another if they are studied at the same time. 3. It is more effective to study words regularly over several short sessions than to study them for one or two longer sessions. Repetition and review should take place almost immediately after studying a word for the first time. 4. Teach 5 7 words at a time, dividing larger number of words into smaller groups. 5. Associating a visual image with a word helps learners remember the word. 6. A wide variety of L2 information can be added for further elaboration. Newly met words can be consciously associated with other L2 words that the learner already knows: sentence examples, parts of speech, definitions, and images can be added. Anca Cehan 7

Writers distinguish between the acquisition and the learning of vocabulary. Vocabulary can be acquired or picked up, through exposure to authentic samples of the target language. It may also be learned consciously or deliberately, and this process may depend to a great extent on your presentation and learner techniques. The deliberate learning of vocabulary is successful especially if the words learned are not complicated and if the learning is meaningful. Memory is aided if the pupil is encouraged to make as many cues or memory triggers as possible when committing the vocabulary item to memory. These cues can take the form of: a visual reminder such as a picture or diagram (the use of colour can be very effective) the sound and rhythm of the word (this is why repetition practice is helpful) the inclusion of the item in a sentence which is bizarre and/or personal a translation of the item in Romanian.

Most importantly, the association of one item with another item aids memory. Pupils will remember best those lexical items in which they have an interest, or which they can associate with other words, objects, colours and so on. Presenting new vocabulary How do you present new vocabulary items in class? Various techniques are available. These include: definition: a simplified version of a dictionary entry illustration: a picture or a blackboard drawing context: using the item in a sentence mime: acting the meaning synonym: using a word or phrase with roughly the same meaning antonym: using a word or phrase with roughly the opposite meaning superordinate: using a more general category, of which the new item is a member / hyponym (e.g. chair, table, stool, wardrobe, sofa are all hyponyms of the category furniture. Furniture is the superordinate term. translation: often the simplest way to present a new item is to translate it. Which techniques you choose will depend upon circumstances and type of item being introduced. Concrete items are often best introduced through pictures or translation. Asking the pupils to suggest synonyms and antonyms is a way of extending vocabulary by considering various shades of meaning and of expanding the range of the pupils command of English. Teaching vocabulary using sets Think of three different ways in which new words can be grouped for learning purposes, and write your suggestions in the space provided below. Look for more ideas as you are reading this section.

The view that vocabulary is in some way systematic has been partly responsible for the idea of teaching vocabulary in lexical sets where this is possible and appropriate. Hence, you may use sets such as: types of transport English money rooms in a house professions services weather, etc. Anca Cehan 8

or sets such as: sets: 1. where a word has multiple meaning, you would want not to teach all the meanings of that word at the same time; 2. collocations are by nature one-offs; 3. connotation: for instance, youths is used to mean something different from young people; and slim is used to mean something different from skinny. The connotational meaning of words can be taught in contrasting pairs, but other than this they are not systematically teachable; 4. idioms: these are more likely to occur in informal language than in formal language. Idiomatic language includes such commonly used phrases as as well (e.g. He took out an insurance policy as well) and such uncommonly used phrases as between the devil and the deep blue sea. Clearly, we cannot teach idiomatic language systematically; what we must do, however, is systematically select what aspects of it are worth teaching to our pupils. To summarise, the knowledge that lexis does (to a certain extent) have a system should help you to make decisions about how to select and organise vocabulary for teaching purposes. The basic principle of lexical meaning is that: the meaning of a word is in its use and in its relationship with other words, so, when teaching vocabulary, contexts are better than definitions and network diagrams of lexical relationships are useful too. Elaboration Knowing an English word means a lot more than just its translated meaning or its English synonyms. There are various aspects of word knowledge such as knowing related grammatical patterns, affixes, common lexical sets, typical associations, how to use the word receptively and productively, and so on. Expanding the connections between what the learners already know and new information involves elaboration. One way to elaborate is to choose English words from the surrounding context and to explain their connections to the recently learned word. Also, teachers should create opportunities to meet these useful, recently learned words in new contexts and provide new collocations and associations. Exercises that can deepen pupils knowledge of words include: o Sorting lists of words and deciding on the categories; o Making semantic maps with lists either provided by the teacher or generated by the learners; o Generating derivatives, inflections, synonyms, and antonyms of a word; o Making trees that show the relationships between superordinates, coordinates, and specific examples; o Identifying or generating associated words; o Combining phrases from several columns; o Matching parts of collocations using two columns; o Completing collocations as a cloze activity; o Playing collocation crossword puzzles or bingo. degrees of fear (e.g. anxious / petrified) ways of walking (e.g. stagger, tiptoe) degrees of raining (e.g. drizzling / bucketing down) opposites in food description (e.g. disgusting vs. delicious; savoury vs. sweet), etc. personal characteristics concerning people (e.g. sociable)

There are, however, areas of vocabulary where it might not be appropriate to teach in

Anca Cehan

3.3

Independent strategy development

This is done through students own mini-research and involves practising guessing from context and training learners to use dictionaries when working on texts, projects, etc. The current concern in teaching vocabulary is to offer a cocktail of techniques. Several writers suggest various mnemonics to aid the memory process. Others advocate grouping lexical items into various categories, associating items with pictures, colours or events, and so on. Various textbooks provide activity questions encouraging pupils to look at the way words share affixes, how they are arranged in lexical sets or word families, and in phrases. Pupils play with words to increase their language awareness by experimenting with homophones, homonyms, idiom and imagery, collocations and cultural cues. Other textbooks offer activities requiring pupils to predict which words they are likely to find in a specified text, or to draw their own pictures as frames for learning and remembering new words. Yet others use pictures to stimulate vocabulary acquisition. (One such activity requires the pupils, in groups, to study six pictures of single items and create a narrative which will include all these items. The stories are then read out to other groups who have to guess what the six pictures were). Most textbook writers try in one way or another to make vocabulary learning an interactive process, using pair, group or teamwork, competitions and games. Recent approaches to teaching vocabulary do not totally reject rote learning. This is generally accepted as a valid method of dealing with new lexical items. But it is only one method, and like any other method, not suitable for all learners at all times. Penny Ur (1996: 65 67) shows that lexical items are learnt more easily if: they have clear, easily comprehensible meanings; they can be linked to other items though meaning or sound association; they are taught and reviewed for brief periods in several different parts of the lesson; they have personal or emotive significance. Independent strategy development: pupils own vocabulary extension As the emphasis on learner independence deepens, you may also think of the amount of time and number of activities that you spend on learner training in class, aimed at helping your pupils to develop autonomy in vocabulary learning. The skills concerned, once acquired, will enable your pupils to become independent learners of vocabulary outside the classroom. There are a number of ways of fostering learner independence in the area of vocabulary: Brainstorming A useful technique is getting pupils into the habit of brainstorming around a topic area that is being focussed on. This helps them to reactivate known vocabulary and also warm them for a particular topic. In class, for example, ask your pupils in groups to note down every item of vocabulary that relates to, say, bedroom. This can work particularly well at later levels and can be made competitive. The visual element in brainstorming can reinforce learning. The pupils may be given a key word and asked to put it in a box in the middle of a piece of paper. They then think of all the associated words they can. Each of these branches off on a line drawn out from the key word and is written in its own circle. Each word may itself become a minor key word with branches going off it. If you give them the word bedroom, for example, ask them to think first of the large items in a bedroom, then of the small ones, and finally of the things that surround them.

Anca Cehan

10

If you were asked to draw the network of associated words for bedroom, what words would you contribute, and how would you organize them? Draw your meaning network for the word bedroom.

The point of the exercise is that the pupils are creating their own word associations, and the information collected is visually striking and thus they likely to be remembered more easily. Out of class, they may mentally run through or note down any words they can think of related to, for example, the topic of a film they are about to watch on TV, or of an article they are going to read for homework. It can be done in preparation for a task (e.g. writing about a particular topic; explaining areas of interest or hobbies, etc.) Guessing from context

The context offers clues to the meaning of an unknown word. (Is the word a verb? A noun? An adjective? Does it refer to a being? A thing? A concept? etc.) The same unknown word may occur a number of times in the text, and the variety of contexts in which it occurs, the importance of the word to understanding the text all these contribute to facilitating or hindering the use of these clues. However, guessing from context is a complex and often difficult strategy to carry out successfully. To guess from context, learners need to know about 19 out of every 20 words (95%) of a text (Hunt and Beglar, 262), which requires knowing the 3,000 most common words. Even when one knows these words, unless the context is very constrained, which is a relatively rare occurrence, or unless there is a relationship with a known word identifiable on the basis of form and supported by context, there is little chance of guessing the correct meaning. Moreover, because guessing from context fails to direct attention to word form and meaning, relatively little learning occurs. Although this strategy often may not result in gaining a full understanding of word meaning and form, guessing from context may still contribute to vocabulary learning. Just what is and what is not learned will partly depend on text difficulty as well as learners level. More proficient learners can be expected to use this strategy more effectively than low proficiency level learners. Although time-consuming, if regularly practised, this strategy may contribute to deeper word knowledge for advanced learners as long as they pay attention to the word and its context (collocations, associations, related grammatical patterns). Can you arrange the steps of this strategy from the first to the last? Use numbers from 1 5 to arrange the steps in an order that makes sense to you: guessing the meaning of the unknown word checking that the guess is correct looking at the relationship between the clause containing the unknown word and surrounding clauses and sentences finding the part of speech of the unknown word looking at the immediate context of the unknown word and simplifying this context if necessary A dictionary may be consulted to confirm the guess. This strategy is recommended as a class rather than as individual work. It should also be demonstrated by the teacher by circling the unknown word and drawing arrows from other words that give clues to its meaning.

Anca Cehan

11

Pupils find words in the text which mean

This activity can be done in pairs or groups. Deducing meaning from context is a skill which needs to be practised in class, with emphasis on the contextual clues that can help your pupils deduce meaning (e.g. part of speech, synonyms elsewhere in the text and so on). This is a fairly standard activity in many textbooks nowadays. Dictionary work Bilingual dictionaries have been found to result in vocabulary learning. A bilingual dictionary may be much more likely to help lower-proficiency learners in reading comprehension because their lack of vocabulary can be a significant factor in their inability to read. Bilingual dictionaries have some advantages over monolingual dictionaries, especially if they provide L2 definitions, L2 sentence examples as well as L1 synonyms. Electronic dictionaries with multimedia annotations offer a further option, especially when both pictures and text are available for students. (See CD-ROM dictionaries published by Collins COBUILD, Longman, and Oxford). Training in the use of dictionaries is essential. In addition to learning the symbols and what information a dictionary can and cannot offer, learners may need extra practice for words with many entries. Furthermore, learners need to be taught to use all the information in an entry before making conclusions about the meaning of a word. The learners attention should also be directed toward the value of sentence examples which provide collocational, grammatical and pragmatic information about words. Finally, the teacher should emphasise the importance of checking a words original context carefully and comparing this to the entry chosen, because context determines which sense of a word is being used. Pupils must be trained in this and there are such exercises in many textbooks. Once the pupils have acquired this skill, dictionaries can lend themselves to a number of useful classroom activities: Can you remember any classroom activity that involves the use of the dictionary?

A lot has been said about the use of dictionaries. While all EFL teachers will agree that a dictionary, properly used, is a valuable tool for the language learner, it is also recognised that there are potential problems. Sensible use of a good dictionary can lead to learner autonomy; that is, the learner will be able to continue learning outside the classroom. Over-reliance on the dictionary, on the other hand, can slow down the learning process. The meanings of many words can be guessed form the context in which they occur, and if pupils automatically reach for the dictionary every time they come across a new word, they are denying themselves genuine learning opportunities. Dictionary work is helped if pupils are familiar with the names of the parts of speech and their dictionary abbreviations, as this allows them to become immediately familiar with the new words function in an utterance. The dictionaries themselves vary in their value to the learner. At one end of the scale are the small bilingual dictionaries which provide one-word Romanian equivalents. As the meaning of a word tends to change according to the context in which it is used, the chances of getting the wrong meaning with this type of dictionary are fairly high. At the other end of the scale, we find dictionaries where the definition of the word is written in language too complex for the pupil to understand. It is probably better to choose a dictionary specially produced for pupils, which recognises this problem and tries to simplify its definitions. In this type of dictionary, definitions are not reduced to note form: they usually consist of a full sentence showing how a lexical item is used in a particular situation or for a particular purpose. Anca Cehan 12

By facilitating the pupils use of dictionaries and other skills concerning vocabulary, you are helping them become more independent and more in control of their own learning outside the classroom. Use of the phonetic script

Another element that most EnglishEnglish and English Romanian dictionaries offer is the phonetic script / transcription of the words. You may think that asking your pupils to learn the International Phonetics Association (IPA) symbols is asking too much. As with any aspect of language teaching, there are arguments both for and against this point of view. Here are the reasons why some attempt to introduce the IPA system should be made: If knowing a word means, among other things, knowing how to pronounce it acceptably, then the ability to transcribe it in phonemic symbols is obviously a valuable teaching/learning aid. The phonemic transcription avoids the perils of English spelling, as here one symbol equals one sound. Although a symbol chart looks rather frightening at first glance, it is really quite easy to learn the phonemes of English. There are only 44 of them, and half of these are the normal English letters, with others very close. Knowledge of the IPA symbols is extremely helpful to dictionary work. Problems with awkward words such as cough and bough disappear if the learner can discover in a dictionary that cough is pronounced /kf/ and bough /bau/. It is worth mentioning that, if the phonetic script is taught imaginatively, pupils enjoy it. Many see it as a secret code they can use for their messages and become quite proud of their skill once they have learnt the symbols. An ability with the phonetic script helps to give you and your pupils a knowledge of what happens generally to sounds as they move from their decontextualised form to their contextualised form. This knowledge will help you to appreciate the difficulties your pupils face, especially in listening. This will benefit the preparation of your lessons and the anticipation of the difficulties that your pupils are up against. Teaching and practising the phonetic script with pupils will also facilitate knowledge of the most obvious phonetic differences between Romanian and English, which will help you in anticipating and dealing with errors (both reception errors and production errors) in the classroom. Awareness of the role played by prefixes and suffixes

The majority of words in English come from French, Latin, or Greek and the majority of these have word parts, particularly prefixes and suffixes. Knowledge of these word parts can be used to improve the learning of many words through relating unknown word forms and meanings to known word parts. This is similar to the effect of mnemonic devices on vocabulary learning. This can help your pupils to expand their vocabulary store. You can ask pupils, in groups, to think of as many words as they can which end in ship but have nothing to do with water, and then write sentences showing how each word is used. A group scores one point for each word none of the other groups has thought of, plus one point for each word used correctly in a sentence. The effect of such learning is to add to explicit knowledge. This will contribute to implicit knowledge receptively because it is a very strong form of consciousness-raising, and productively through the deliberate production of meaning-focused output. Developing fluency with known vocabulary Fluency-building activities recycle already known words in familiar grammatical or organizational patterns so that learners can focus on recognizing or using words without hesitation. Fluency partly depends on developing sight vocabulary (receptive vocabulary) through extensive reading and studying high-frequency vocabulary. Fluency exercises include timed and paced readings. In timed readings, learners may try to increase their speed by sliding a card or Anca Cehan 13

a piece of paper down the page to increase their speed while attempting to comprehend about 80% of a passage. Also, learners need to be given practice in looking at groups or words rather than each individual word when reading. Teachers can ask learners to practice timed reading on passage that have already been read. In paced readings, the teacher determines the time and pushes the learners to read faster. One type of paced reading is the reading sprint in which learners read their pleasurereading book for 5 minutes and count the number of pages they have read. Then they try to read the same number of pages while the time they read decreases from 5 minutes to 4 to 3 to 2 minutes for each sprint. Finally they read for five minutes at a relaxed pace and count the number of pages they have finished. Use of games Puzzles always entertain, and word puzzles develop vocabulary at the same time. Tell your pupils you are going to get from sick to well by changing one letter at a time so that each new formation is an acceptable word. Demonstrate as follows: sick silk sill sell well. Then ask the pupils in pairs to get from cold to warm in the same way (cold cord word worm warm). Ask your pupils to find hidden words in a text. For example, ask them to find six capital cities in the following text. The answers are highlighted here for easy reference, but would not be in the pupils text, of course. I needed to call on Donald last week and found the trip a risky one. I went on my horse and had a mad ride along the street charging at hens and cocks, boys and girls. Go slowly, I shouted. Was I brave? A hero? Me? Never. Young learners also enjoy taking words to pieces and making new words out of the letters. This is an activity which is simple to prepare and mark, can be made into a competition, and provides an opportunity for them to experiment and be creative with language in group interaction. The word tempo, for example, yields met, pot, toe, mop, mope mote, me, pet, top and poem. These are just a few ideas for developing vocabulary. Many others can be found in methodology books and textbooks. What you need to do is to develop a clear programme for the systematic development of your pupils vocabulary, as vocabulary acquisition is much too important to be left to chance. Bear in mind, however, that vocabulary should be taught: regularly in balance with all the other aims of your syllabus whenever the pupils express a desire to know. It is your job to establish priorities and make choices. Vocabulary teaching cannot account for all the words our pupils actually learn. Some authors hypothesized that successful learners use a guessing approach: as readers or listeners, they look for clues in the text and build a mental representation of what they think the text says. This has been called the top-down model of reading and listening. In contrast to this approach, the more traditional approaches view reading and listening as decoding of letters into sounds and ultimately meaning (the bottom-up approach). More recent theories claim that both approaches are important. Typically, our pupils are poor decoders (readers and listeners) since their vocabulary is poor. At the same time, they are already literate in Romanian, and are familiar with top-down processing. When a pupils vocabulary is poor, this needs to make big efforts to recognize vocabulary. Her/his short-term memory is so taxed that s/he cannot take full advantage of the context. However, a good reader or listener, who has sufficient command of the language, recognizes words automatically or in context. Anca Cehan 14

Summary
This lecture explores aspects of the lexicon and vocabulary teaching within the framework of the communicative approach to language pedagogy. It does not claim to say all there is to say about vocabulary or vocabulary teaching. In spite of the long history that vocabulary teaching has, applied linguists and language teachers are paying now renewed attention to it after decades of relative neglect. There is still much work to be done and many perspectives to be considered and tried in the classroom. In this unit, we looked at the difference between active and passive vocabulary and at the pedagogic considerations that you need to take into account when dealing with vocabulary. We described many techniques for the teaching of vocabulary, discussing their advantages and disadvantages, including both new and old activities. In more traditional textbooks, new vocabulary appears as columns of words to be learned, with the Romanian translation provided. Often there is no general pattern to the words: it is simply a matter of rote learning. This does not mean that rote learning is to be condemned. For many pupils it is a valuable learning tool. We do however need to be aware of its limitations and introduce a variety of techniques in our teaching. As learners vocabulary expands in size and depth, extensive reading and independent strategies may be increasingly emphasised. Extensive reading and listening, translation, elaboration, fluency activities, guessing from context, and using dictionaries all have a role to play in systematically developing the learners vocabulary knowledge. The vocabulary component of a course can be largely indistinguishable from the listening, speaking, reading and writing parts of the language programme. The main difference lies in the deliberate, language-focused learning and in the deliberate planning and manipulation of the written input to listening, speaking, reading, and writing activities to provide optimal conditions for vocabulary growth.

Further Reading
Carter, R. and McCarthy M., 1988, Vocabulary and Language Teaching, Longman, pp. 39-60, 62-83, 97-111, 181-201 Hunt, Alan and Beglar, David. Current research and Practice in Teaching Vocabulary in Richards, Jack C. and Renandya Willy A., 2002. Methodology in Language Teaching. Cambridge: CUP, pp. 258 266. Ur, P., 1996, A Course in Language Teaching, CUP, pp. 60-69

Anca Cehan

15