Maggie Heeney/ Pat Skinner
Renison University College
October 30, 2010
TESL Ontario Conference

“No matter how well the student learns grammar, no matter how successfully the sounds of L2 are mastered, without words to express a wider range of meanings, communication in an L2 just cannot happen in any meaningful way”
(McCarthy,1990).
Lack of vocabulary challenges most ESL undergraduates and affects both reading and writing ability (Gould,
Nation & Read, 1990)

Lexeme or a meaningful unit of language found as a headword in a dictionary
Lemmas are words with inflections… no change in part of speech…..
Derivations or word families… the other parts of speech…..

Deep vocabulary knowledge (Laufer,
1997) orthography, pronunciation and spelling the root word, its inflections and derivations word meanings from core to peripheral including connotations and pragmatics the word’s lexical relationship to other words in the form of synonyms, antonyms or hyponyms
( Red – Scarlet ), collocations and idioms

Minimum number of recognized words for reading comprehension requires a “threshold vocabulary” of
3000 word families (4800 lexical items) Laufer, 1989)
L1 strategies transfer; 80% comprehension
5000 base words are needed for minimal 95% comprehension of non-specific text (Nation ,1990;
Laufer, 1997)
10,000 words needed to understand 95% of nonspecialist text (Hazenberg & Hulstijn, 1996)
14,000 – 17,000 receptive word families in NS undergraduate lexicon (Zechmeister et al., 1993)

General Service List - GSL (West, 1953)
2000 most common words used in the English language (Basic reading)
University Word List (UWL) (Xue & Nation,
1984
Excludes the GSL and has 808 words in 11 levels
Academic Word List – (AWL)(Coxhead, 1998)
Excludes the GSL and has 570 lexemes or headwords
(3000 words) in 10 levels that most commonly occur in academic readings

assess assessable, assessed, assesses, assessing, assessment, assessments, reassess, reassessed, reassessing, reassessment, un-assessed assign assigned, assigning, assignment, assignments, assigns, reassign, reassigned, reassigning, reassigns, unassigned assist assistance, assistant, assistants, assisted, assisting, assists, unassisted

Hulstijn, (2001) asks,
Should students learn words by rote memorization or does this hinder language learning?
Should students pick up new words by seeing new vocabulary in context and by picking up words by reading and listening extensively?

Hulstijn calls for rich, deep information processing or elaboration in vocabulary learning, the deliberate rehearsal and practice of the information, and the retention or automatization of information, which includes the use of the knowledge.

The i-minus one theory (Hulstijn, 2001)
Aim for mastery and not mass
Words need to be “noticed” and practiced through a series of strategies
Direct vocabulary instruction is essential

Form or determination strategies
Rehearsal of memory-related strategies
Consolidation strategies
Social strategies
Metacognitive strategies (Schmitt,
2000)

•
•
•
In an EAP university reading to write 10-week credit course of 25 students.
Research questions
How do students perceive direct vocabulary instruction of the AWL word list as faciliting academic reading and writing?
How does contextual richness contribute to vocabulary acquisition?
Methods and Data Collection
Classroom observations of teaching
Student and teacher interviews
Student questionnaires

Vocabulary instruction imperative as a preparation for writing
Reading on branding: - “Create a buzz for yourself on Facebook”
AWL: Establish, construct, create
Brands target consumers with three
benefits based on guaranteeing quality products, distinguishing product uniqueness and satisfying customers.

“People who do well with the vocabulary, do better with their essays. It is very important to practice the vocabulary.”
Student generated sentences:
Mainstream medicine and complementary medicine offer patients great remedies because of their integrative nature.
To maintain a healthy lifestyle, people have to
persist in having an exercise regimen of at least twice a week.

Verb
Immunize
Vaccinate
Inoculate
Noun Adjective immunization adverse vaccination negative
Inoculation
Word parts: -ize, ate; tion, im, in
Parts of speech
Collocations: Adverse reaction; adverse effect be immunized against a disease

“The good thing about the vocabulary you have learned is that you can carry it forward.”
Argument essays
…… I can see your point!
Even though Genetically Modified products enhance taste, and increase
create a threat to human health, yields to disease, they government health and human ethics.

New vocabulary helped me develop content of essays.
I use academic words now such as
obtain instead of get.
Vocabulary strategies for paraphrasing helped make my writing more interesting.
I now choose academic words (in writing)

Vocabulary strategies are the most important as they really pay off in writing.
I can’t be proficient in English without using these techniques. Every step counts.
Vocabulary building strategies helped me the most, and then by reading more, I can build more vocabularies that are related to the topic.

Vocabulary acquisition through reading must be supported by direct instruction that is contextualized
Explicit or enhanced instruction is necessary to get ESL students to the 10,000 word family level
Explicit or enhanced learning will make contextual learning more effective when students are writing across disciplines
Activity types and practice can deepen the process (rich, elaborate processing and rehearsal,
Input -1) (Hulstijn, 2001).

Due to the limitations on this research based on student perception, teacher beliefs, and observation further research needs to be done.
Investigate the frequency of AWL vocabulary in student essays post-direct instruction.

References
Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word list.
213-238.
TESOL Quarterly , 34 (2),
Gould, R., Nation, P. & Read, J. (1990). How large can a receptive vocabulary be ? Applied Linguistics, 11, 341-363.
Hulstijn, J. (2001). Intentional and incidental second-language vocabulary learning: A reappraisal of elaboration, rehearsal and automaticity. In
P. Robinson (Ed.). Cognition and Second Language Instruction.
(pp.258-286). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Laufer, B. (1997). The lexical plight in second language reading: Words you don’t know, words you think you know and words you can’t guess.
Canadian Modern Language Review, 50 (4), 20-33.
Nation, I. S.P. (2001). Learning vocabulary in another language
Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
.
Schmitt, N. (2000) Vocabulary in language teaching
UK: Cambridge University Press.
. Cambridge,
Williams, J. (2005). Learning English for academic purposes.
Laurent, Québec: Longman.
St.

mheeney@uwaterloo.ca
maggie.heeney@utoronto.ca
pskinner@uwaterloo.ca