Learning Vocabulary in Another Language

611 Pages·1938·2.37 MB·English

by  I. S. P. Nation

LEARNING VOCABULARY IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE

I.S.P. Nation
8 I.S.P. Nation 2000
Table of contents

Preface Introduction
Learning goals
The four strands
Main themes
The audience for this book

Chapter 1 The goals of vocabulary learning
How much vocabulary do learners need to know?
How many words are there in the language?
How many words do native speakers know?
How much vocabulary do you need to use another language?
High frequency words
Specialised vocabulary
Low frequency words
Testing vocabulary knowledge

Chapter 2 Knowing a word
Learning burden
The receptive /productive distinction
The scope of the receptive/productive distinction
Experimental comparisons of receptive and productive
vocabulary
Aspects of knowing a word
Levelt=s process model of language use
Spoken form
Written form
Word parts
Connecting form and meaning
Concept and referents
Associations
Grammatical functions
Collocations
Constraints on use

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Item knowledge and system knowledge

Chapter 3 Teaching and explaining vocabulary
Learning from teaching and learning activities
Vocabulary in classrooms
Repetition and learning
Communicating meaning
Spending time on words
Rich instruction
Arguments against rich instruction
Providing rich instruction
Spoken form
Written form
Word parts
Strengthening the form-meaning connection
Concept and reference
Associations
Grammar
Collocation
Constraints on use
Vocabulary teaching procedures
Computer assisted vocabulary learning
Vocabulary content
Presentation of material
Monitoring progress
Using concordances
Research on CAVL

Chapter 4 Vocabulary and listening and speaking
What vocabulary knowledge is needed for listening?
Providing vocabulary support for listening
Learning vocabulary from listening to stories
Learning vocabulary through negotiation
The vocabulary of speaking
Developing fluency with spoken vocabulary

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Using teacher input to increase vocabulary knowledge
Using labelled diagrams
Using cooperative tasks to focus on vocabulary
How can a teacher design activities to help incidental
vocabulary learning?
Designing the worksheets
An adapted activity

Chapter 5 Vocabulary and reading
Vocabulary size and successful reading
Learning vocabulary through reading
Vocabulary and extensive reading
Extensive reading by non-native speakers of texts written for
young native speakers
Extensive reading with graded readers
Extensive reading of unsimplified texts
Extensive reading and vocabulary growth
Intensive reading and direct teaching
Preteaching
Vocabulary exercises with reading texts
Analysis of vocabulary exercises
Readability
What are graded readers?
Designing and using a simplified reading scheme for
vocabulary development
How to simplify
Alternatives to simplification
Glossing
Vocabulary and the quality of writing
Measures of vocabulary size and growth in writing
Bringing vocabulary into productive use
Responding to vocabulary use in written work

Chapter 6 Specialised uses of vocabulary
Academic vocabulary

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The importance of academic vocabulary
Making an academic vocabulary list
Sequencing the introduction of academic vocabulary
The nature and role of academic vocabulary
Testing academic vocabulary
Learning academic vocabulary
Technical vocabulary
Distinguishing technical vocabulary from other vocabulary
Making lists of technical vocabulary
Learning technical vocabulary
Vocabulary in discourse
Vocabulary and information content of the text
Vocabulary and the organisation of the text
Vocabulary and the relationship between the writer or speaker
and reader or listener
Words in discourse

Chapter 7 Vocabulary learning strategies and guessing from context
A taxonomy of vocabulary learning strategies
Planning vocabulary learning
Sources: finding information about words
Processes: establishing vocabulary knowledge
Training in vocabulary choice and use
Learners= use of strategies
Procedures that integrate strategies
Learning words from context
Intentional and incidental learning
What proportion of unknown words can be guessed from
context?
How much vocabulary is learned from context?
What can be learned from context?
What clues does a context provide and how effective are they?
What are the causes of poor guessing?
Do different learners approach guessing in the same way?

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How can teachers help learners improve learning from context?
How can learners be trained to guess from context?
Learning from context and attention-drawing activities
Do glossing and dictionary use help vocabulary learning?
Formats for testing and practising guessing
Steps in the guessing-from-context strategy
Training learners in the strategy of guessing from context

Chapter 8 Word study strategies
Word parts
Is it worthwhile learning word parts?
Studies of the sources of English vocabulary
Studies of the frequency of affixes
Do language users see words as being made of parts?
Word stems
The knowledge required to use word parts
Monitoring and testing word building skills
The word part strategy
Using dictionaries
Is it necessary or worth training learners to use dictionaries?
What skills are needed to use a dictionary?
What dictionaries are the best?
Evaluating dictionaries
Dictionary use and learning
Learning from word cards
Criticisms of direct vocabulary learning
Decontextualized learning and memory
Decontextualized learning and use
The contribution of decontextualized learning
The values of learning from word cards
The word card strategy
Training learners in the use of word cards

Chapter 9 Chunking and collocation
Chunking

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The advantages and disadvantages of chunking
Language knowledge is collocational knowledge
Fluent and appropriate language use requires collocational
knowledge
Some words occur in a limited set of collocations
Classifying collocations
The evidence for collocation
Collocation and teaching
Encouraging chunking
Chunking through fluency development
Chunking through language focused attention
Memorizing unanalysed chunks

Chapter 10 Testing vocabulary knowledge and use
What kind of vocabulary test is the best?
Is it enough to ask learners if they know a word?
Should choices be given?
Should translations be used?
Should words be tested in context?
How can depth of knowledge of a word be tested?
How can I measure words that learners don=t know well?
How can I measure how well learners actually use words?
How can I measure total vocabulary size?
Choosing a test item type

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Types of tests
How can we test to see where learners need help?
How can we test whether a small group of words in a course has
been learned?
How can we test whether the total vocabulary of the course has
been learned?
How can we measure how well learners have control of the
important vocabulary learning strategies?

Chapter 11 Designing the vocabulary component of a language course
Goals
Needs analysis
Environment analysis
Principles of vocabulary teaching
Content and sequencing
Format and presentation
Monitoring and assessment
Evaluation
Autonomy and vocabulary learning
The goals of vocabulary learning
What should be learned and in what order?
Learning procedures
Checking learning

Acknowledgements

Parts of Chapter 4 appeared in Joe, A, Nation, P. and Newton, J. (1996 ) Speaking activities and
vocabulary learning. English Teaching Forum 34, 1: 2-7. Parts of Chapter 5 appeared in Nation,
I.S.P. (1997) The language learning benefits of extensive reading. The Language Teacher
21, 5: 13-16. Parts of chapter 11 appeared in Nation, I.S.P. (1998) Helping learners take
control of their vocabulary learning. GRETA 6, 1: 9-18 . Parts of Chapter 8 appeared in
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Nation, I.S.P. (1982) Beginning to learn foreign vocabulary: a review of the research. RELC
Journal 13, 1: 14-36. I am grateful for permission to use these references.

1 The goals of vocabulary learning

How much vocabulary do learners need to know?

When designing a language course and planning our own course of study, it is useful to be
able to set learning goals that will allow us to use the language in the ways we want to.
When we plan the vocabulary goals of a long term course of study, we can look at three
kinds of information to help decide how much vocabulary needs to be learned - the
number of words in the language, the number of words known by native speakers, and the
number of words needed to use the language.

How many words are there in the language?

The most ambitious goal is to know all of the language. This is very ambitious because
native speakers of the language do not know all the vocabulary of the language. There are
numerous specialist vocabularies, such as the vocabulary of nuclear physics or
computational linguistics, which are known only by the small groups of people who
specialise in these areas. Still, it is interesting to have some idea of how many words there
are in the language. This is not an easy question to answer because there are numerous
other questions which affect the way we answer it. They involve considerations like the
following.

What do we count as a word? Do we count book and books as the same word? Do we count
green (the colour) and green (a large grassed area) as the same word? Do we count
people=s names? Do we count the names of products like Fab, Pepsi, Vegemite, Chevrolet?
The few brave or foolish attempts to answer these questions and the major question AHow
many words are there in English?@ have counted the number of words in very large
dictionaries. Webster=s Third New International Dictionary is the largest non-historical
dictionary of English. It contains around 114,000 word families excluding proper names
(Goulden, Nation and Read, 1990). This is a very large number and is well beyond the
goals of most first and second language learners.
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