Paul Nation

Teaching and learning vocabulary

1. Introduction 2. The Goals of Vocabulary Learning and Vocabulary Size 3. What is Involved in Learning a Word 4. Communicating Meaning 5. Assessing Vocabulary Size 6. Vocabulary and Listening 7. Vocabulary and Speaking 8. Vocabulary and Reading 9. Vocabulary and Writing 10. Learner Strategies 11. Simplification of Reading Material 12. Directions in Vocabulary Studies

A vocabulary-size test of controlled productive ability

It is important in the design of the vocabulary component of a teaching program that teachers are able to discover the state of their learners’ vocabulary knowledge. It is also important that researchers can draw on a variety of vocabulary measures to investigate the nature of vocabulary growth. This study focuses on a controlled production measure of vocabulary consisting of items from five frequency levels, and using a completion item type like the following. The garden was full of fra flowers. The controlled-production vocabulary-levels test was found to be reliable, valid (in that the levels distinguished between different proficiency groups) and practical. There was a satisfactory degree of equivalence between two equivalent forms of the test.

The Four Strands

The activities in a language course can be classified into the four strands of meaning-focused input, meaning-focused output, language-focused learning and fluency development. In a well designed course there should be an even balance of these strands with roughly equal amounts of time given to each strand. The research evidence for the strands draws on the input hypothesis and learning from extensive reading, the output hypothesis, research on form-focused instruction, and the development of speaking and reading fluency. The paper concludes with 10 principles based largely on the four strands. The strands framework and the principles provide a basis for managing innovation in language courses.

Where would general service vocabulary stop and special purposes vocabulary begin

Abstract Using frequency, text coverage, and range as criteria, this study looks at the dividing line between a general service vocabulary and a special purposes vocabulary. A general service vocabulary gives a good return for learning up to the 2000 word level and after that a special purposes vocabulary gives a better return for learning effort for those learners going on with special interests.

How Useful Is Eap Vocabulary for Esp? a Corpus Based Case Study

This study compares the vocabulary of a single Economics text of almost 300,000 running words with the vocabulary of a corpus of similar length made up of a variety of academic texts. It was found that the general academic corpus used a very much larger vocabulary than the more focused Economics text. A small number of words that were closely related to the topic of the text occurred with very high frequency in the Economics text. The general academic corpus had a very large number of low frequency words. Beyond the words in Wests General Service List and the University Word List, there was little overlap between the vocabulary of the two corpora. This indicates that as far as vocabulary is concerned, EAP courses that go beyond the high frequency academic vocabulary are of little value for learners with specific purposes.

Improving speaking fluency

Abstract This paper examines the improvement of learners of English during the performance of a speaking activity which involves repeating the same unrehearsed talk. Improvements in fluency, grammatical accuracy, and control of the content showed that during the short time spent doing the activity, learners performed at a level above their normal level of performance. It is argued that working at this higher than usual performance is a way of bringing about long-term improvement in fluency.

Research Perspectives on English for Academic Purposes: The specialised vocabulary of English for academic purposes

It is useful for teaching and learning to divide the vocabulary of English into four groups. The high frequency words. These consist of around 2,000 word families. They are wide range high frequency words that are an essential basis for all language use. They include most of the 176 function words of English. Typically they provide coverage of around 80% of the running words in academic text. The classic collection of these is Michael Wests (1953) General Service List of English Words (GSL). The academic vocabulary. This consists of 570 words (Coxhead, 1998) that are reasonably frequent in a wide range of academic texts, but are not so common, although they do occur, in other kinds of texts. Because they provide coverage of around 8.5%–10% of the running words in an academic text, they are very important for learners with academic purposes. They make the difference between 80% coverage (one unknown word in every five running words) and 90% coverage (one unknown word in every ten running words). Technical vocabulary. This differs from subject area to subject area. For any particular subject it consists of probably 1,000 words or less. It could provide coverage of up to 5% of the running words in a text. The low frequency words. These consist of words that are typically vey narrow range and low frequency. Because of the topic of a particular text a small number may occasionally be quite frequent within that text. In general, they consist of words that occur once or twice and then will not be met again for along time. Of the 86,741 different word types in the 5,000,000 running word corpus used in the Carroll, Davies and Richman (1971) count, 40.4% occured only once in that corpus.

Using dictionaries to estimate vocabulary size: essential, but rarely followed, procedures

This article describes the steps that need to be followed when sampling from a dictionary to make a test of vocabulary size. Because these steps have not been followed, most published estimates of vocabulary size are misleading.

Fluency Improvement in a Second Language

This article looks at the effect of a technique which gets learners to tell the same story three times to different listeners with decreasing time for each retelling. During the activity learners made substantial gains in speed of speaking and reduced the number of hesitations in their retellings. The technique allowed learners to perform at a level higher than their normal level of fluency.

Using Texts To Sequence the Introduction of New Vocabulary in an Eap Course

This paper examines the feasibility of allowing the texts that are used in a course to sequence the target vocabulary of a course, in this paper the vocabulary of academic study as represented by the University Word List. It was found that such an approach would only allow the learners to meet a little over half of the 836 word vocabulary and that a three-step sequencing procedure would be needed to effectively meet all of the wanted vocabulary. The three steps would involve (1) using adapted texts to gradually introduce the very common academic words, (2) using unsimplified texts to meet the next 200-300 words, and (3) relying on extensive reading and planned decontextualised learning to meet the remaining lower frequency items.