Vocabulary Acquisition
Learning and teaching vocabulary
Coady, J and Huckin, T Second Language
Vocabulary Acquisition, 1997, CUP.
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Historic trends
Knowing words
Orthographic knowledge
Oral production
Tracking acquisition
Vocabulary enhancement strategies
Mnemonic methods
Extensive reading and SLA
Lexical approach
Knowing a word
 What does knowing a word mean?
What does ‘knowing a word
mean?
We need to know:
 Form (pronunciation and spelling)
 Structure (the root word and its inflections)
 Syntactical information
 Meaning: referential; affective;pragmatic
 Lexical relations with other words: synonymy, antonymy etc
 Common collocations
(Laufer B 1997 What’s in a word….)
Learners/users will often only partially know a word
And this can be represented on a cline:
Not at all _________________________________fully
(katamuku) (shiru)
(natsukashi)
Factors affecting learnability
 Make a list of factors which affect
learnability
Factors affecting learnability
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Pronounceability
Orthography
Length
Morphology: inflectional complexity; derivational complexity
Synformy (similarity to other forms)
Word class (nouns easiest; adverbs most difficult)
Semantic features of the word: idiomaticity; polysemy
(Laufer B 1997 What’s in a word…)
How should we teach vocabulary?
 Think of five strategies that a teacher has at
his or her disposal
How should we teach vocabulary?
 Integrate new words with old
 Provide a number of encounters with the word (7
occurrences in a coursebook leads to learning?)
 Promote deep-level processing
 Facilitate imaging and concreteness
 Use a variety of techniques
 Encourage independent learning
(Sokmen A 1997 Current trends in teaching language vocabulary.)
Criteria for selecting vocabulary to
be acquired
 Think of as many factors as you can that
might be considered in selecting or
highlighting new vocabulary.
Vocabulary Syllabus
Criteria for selection
 Frequency: the more frequently a word is used, the sooner it should
appear
 Coverage: words with broader coverage should be taught first (eg go
before walk or travel)
 Range: words found in a variety of texts
 Learnability: words which are similar, easily demonstrated meanings,
which are regular.
 Opportunism: words that are relevant to learners’ immediate
situation.
 Centres of interest: lexical sets that will interest learners in a
particular group.
 (adapted from, O’Dell F 1997 Incorporating Vocabulary into the
Syllabus)
Practical presentation
This web site includes some practical
ideas for developing vocabulary
acquisition:
http://sched.sbu.edu/courses/fb1/Present
ations/Vocabulary_files/frame.htm