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 i 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 ii 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 iii 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? iv 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 v 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 vi 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 8 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. 9