Enhancing the Effectiveness of English Vocabulary Learning and Teaching at Primary Level

1. Enhancing the Effectiveness of English Vocabulary Learning and Teaching at Primary Level Arthur McNeill & Tony Lai Department of Education Studies Hong Kong Baptist University English Language Education Section, CDI 27August 2007

2. Growing global concern about inadequate vocabulary of L2 learners • “… there is mounting evidence that many learners, particularly in EFL contexts, are not developing their lexicons to levels that would permit them to communicate, read, or write adequately in English, despite years of formal study.” (Atay and Kurt 2006: 256)

3. L2 vocabulary learning at primary school is still largely un-researched “… it seems likely that limited L2 vocabulary would affect elementary school EFL learners in carrying out the basic skills in English. Given the importance of vocabulary to oral and written language comprehension, it is astounding that there have been few experimental studies on English vocabulary learning among elementary school children.” (Atay and Kurt 2006: 256)

4. Growing interest in students’ vocabulary in Hong Kong • Recent evidence of inadequate vocabulary of HK university entrants • Most 2004 entrants to CUHK knew between 2000 and 3000 English words only • International research suggests that students need at least 5000 words to cope with university study in English

5. Vocabulary projects conducted by EDB

6. Sources of input for the EDB wordlists Vocabulary Study • Teachers familiar with the respective KS • Frequency data about how vocabulary is used in English: • General English • Academic English • Topics and themes listed in CGs • Vocabulary content of the recommended textbooks

7. Vocabulary Study References of the frequency-based wordlists • General Service List (GSL) - West, 1953 • Academic Wordlist (AWL) - Coxhead, 2000 • British National Corpus (BNC)

8. Frequency-based lists/corpora GSL Classic list of the most frequent 2000 words. Very widely used and respected. BNC 100 million word collection of written and spoken English. A new ‘standard’. AWL 570 words which occur frequently in academic texts across disciplines

9. Frequency-based lists/corpora GSL “General” words BNC AWL “Academic” words

10. Principles guiding final selections • Relevance to learners (now and later) • Usefulness • Combinability (collocations) • Word class distribution • Superordinates

11. Frequency data from GSL/BNC/AWL Word samples by frequency Teachers select words for own KS Initial (incomplete) wordlist Rejected items to be considered for next KS Project team add remainingitems Textbook corpus Topics from CGs Completed wordlist Design of the vocabulary selection procedure

12. Vocabulary targets 1000 1000 1000 2000 1500 3500 1500 5000

13. Wordlists • In alphabetical order • By category

22. Does L2 vocabulary teaching need to change?

23. Possible pedagogical problems • Over-reliance on reading as a source of vocabulary acquisition • Over-reliance on learner training and indirect learning (i.e. assuming that students will learn vocabulary by themselves provided they learn effective strategies)

24. How much vocabulary do L2 students learn from reading? • Finally some empirical evidence of the low extent of vocabulary gains from L2 reading • Claims about number of encounters required to learn a new word vary between 6 and 20 • ESL learners in Canada learn 70 new words a year from reading, i.e. 2000 words in 29 years. (Zahar, Cobb & Spada 2001)

25. Extensive reading revisited • Disappointing gains from reading of novels (Horst 2000) • Subjects able to select only one correct definition in 12 of the new words in text • Far more vocabulary is learned if the same text is read several times (Horst & Meara 1999)

26. Learning new words from context revisited • Encouraging learners to infer the meaning of new words from context may be useful for their academic development. • However, inferring the meaning of new words from context does not lead to vocabulary acquisition. For words to remain in the memory, learners should confirm the guesses by referring to a dictionary or asking their teacher (Mondria & Wit de-Boer 1991).

27. Insights from genre: we need to select texts carefully • Expository texts provide greater repetition of key lexis than narrative texts. • Success reported with primary learners who read more expository texts (Gardner 2004).

28. Key priorities in vocabulary teaching • Providing multiple exposures to target words • Cognitive ‘elaboration’ of the form-meaning relationship Activities which require students to focus on vocabulary appear to promote retention (e.g. “reading plus”, pre-task and post-task vocabulary focus).

29. Some teaching implications • Enhance L2 vocabulary acquisition through instructional intervention • More direct teaching of vocabulary • More vocabulary-focused activities

30. Vocabulary now:Cinderella has arrived at the ball Landmarks of the 1990s: • Lexical Syllabus (Willis) • Lexical Approach (Lewis) • Some excellent books for teachers about vocabulary teaching (e.g. Nation, Schmitt & McCarthy) • Vocabulary software (concordancing; frequency profiling) • Corpus linguistics • Enormous expansion in L2 vocabulary research

31. What has changed since vocabulary became “centre stage”? Language teaching now attaches importance to: • Collocation: “blond+girl”; “torrential+rain”; “rising+prices” • Multi-word units/formulaic language: “see you later”; “have a nice day” • Word-building: compounding; affixation • Lexical relations such as antonyms: “high/low”; “ancient/modern”

32. Vocabulary building skills recommended in CG Word formation • Affixation (e.g. unhappy, careless) • Compounding (e.g. foot+ball=football) • Conversion (e.g. cook a meal, a cook) • Derivation (e.g. excite, exciting, excited, excitement)

33. Vocabulary building skills recommended in CG Word association • Synonyms (e.g. happy, glad) • Antonyms (e.g. bright, dark) • Homonyms (e.g. catch a bus, catch a cold) • Collocation (e.g. make a wish, watch TV) • Lexical sets (e.g. furniture – table, chair, desk, cupboard) *please refer to CG (CDC, 2004): pp. 168-171

34. What challenges does L2 vocabulary present to teachers? AREAS OF FOCUS DEPTH BREADTH

35. Productive vocabularyWhat are the main vocabulary issues in HK students’ writing?

36. Text written by a primary school pupil in a HK exam • I have a rubber, an old, small rubber. Although it is so small that I can not use it anymore, I still keep it carefully in my drawer as it is so important for me. • That is a long, long time that I have my rubber. Four years ago, when I was still an eight-years-old child, my parents bought me a rubber as my birthday present. I put it into my pencil-box and brought it to school everyday. • We had an interesting game in the past. We used our rubber to play with in the game. We pushed our rubber one by one and tried not to be pushed out at the desk by another rubber. We pushed and pulled our rubbers, soon our rubbers became older and smaller one day than one day.

37. Vocabulary Profile (VP) provides the following breakdown (RANGE, 2002)

40. I have a rubber, an old, small rubber. Although it is so small that I can not use it anymore, I still keep it carefully in my drawer as it is so important for me. • That is a long, long time that I have my rubber. Four years ago, when I was still an eight-years-old child, my parents bought me a rubber as my birthday present. I put it into my pencil-box and brought it to school everyday. • We had an interesting game in the past. We used our rubber to play with in the game. We pushed our rubber one by one and tried not to be pushed out at the desk by another rubber. We pushed and pulled our rubbers, soon our rubbers became older and smaller one day than one day.

41. Lexical characteristics of L2 student writing • Repetition of key words rather than lexical substitution • Under-use of super-ordination • Need for lexical enrichment (in particular, adjectives and adverbs)

42. What vocabulary skills are involved in developing lexical richness? • Avoiding repetition of words (e.g. by lexical and pronominal substitution) • Knowing and using synonyms • Ability to give definitions • Knowing the name of the immediate superordinate • Knowing the name of the member of the group (e.g. “item”, “piece”, “article”, etc.) • Use of metaphor (e.g. using known words in a metaphorical sense)

43. EXAMPLES: Stuff Problem Issue Thing Material Business Behaviour Phenomenon Trend Pattern “General” superordinates can also help

44. Lexical expansion of a first draft “My hobby is swimming. Every Saturday I go to the swimming pool in Ma On Shan. I swim for one hour. At the end, I feel good. Then I go to McDonald’s with my friend.”

45. Lexical feedback on a first draft “My [adjective] hobby is swimming. Every Saturday I go to the [adjective] swimming pool in [precise location] Ma On Shan. I swim [how exactly do you swim?] for one hour. At the end, I feel good [a better adjective?]. Then I go [better verb of movement] to McDonald’s with my friend.”

46. 2. Pre-requisites for vocabulary building

47. Paradigmatic approach (topic strand) • Deliberate organization of words into hierarchies • Develops associative networks • Encourages efficient vocabulary learning • Paradigms are fixed (but ‘open’) • Other associations are more personal (e.g. acoustic, visual, ‘linkword’)

48. Assumptions about paradigmatic arrangement • Allows for efficient vocabulary growth because the system is ‘open’ and allows for additions • Associated with receptive vocabulary knowledge in particular • Retrieval of words operates through the ‘cohort’ principle

49. Example One:

50. Example Two: