Taxonomy of VLS by Schmitt (1997)
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Taxonomy of Language Learning Strategies (LLS) by O’Malley & Chamot, 1990:
cognitive, metacognitive, socio-affective
Oxford’s (1990) LLS taxonomy – direct strategies: involving the target language
directly and require mental processing of the language (memory, cognitive,
compensation) and indirect strategies: (metacognitive, affective, social)
Nation (1990) – discovery vs consolidation strategies
Schmitt’s (1997) VLS taxonomy:
(1) Discovery: discovering the meaning of unknown words
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Determination strategies (finding meaning without recourse to others)
Social strategies (consulting or working with others to discover meaning)
(2) Consolidation: remembering words once their meaning has been discovered
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Social strategies
Memory strategies (mnemonics)
Cognitive strategies (similar to memory, but without the use of mnemonics)
Metacognitive strategies (planning, monitoring, evaluation of learning)
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The positive effect of VLS training:
Strategies can be taught and acquired
Strategies that were reported to be used significantly more frequently
at the end of the course than at the beginning of the course:
Analyze the word parts that make up the word *
Analyze any available pictures or gestures
Use (dental/medical) word lists*
Use flash cards
Create or use a visual image about the word in my mind*
Group words using a mind map*
*Strategies introduced in the English (EAP) course for Dentistry students
Source: Loong Y & Chan S W L, A Study of Vocabulary Learning Strategies Adopted by Dentistry
Students in Hong Kong In Learning Specialized Dental Vocabulary, September 2012, Asian ESP
Journal
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Schmitt (1997)
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600 Japanese EFL college learners (junior high school /
high school / university / adult ss)
preferred using the bilingual dictionary to discover
meaning of words
Preferred verbal and written repetition (mechanical
rehearsals) to remember the meanings
As the Japanese learners matured, they tended to move
away from shallow, mechanical repetition such as word
lists and flash cards to deeper mental processing such as
word association strategies
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Nation’s (2001) Taxonomy
General class of
strategies
Planning:
choosing 
what to focus on and

when to focus on it
Types of strategies
Choosing words to focus on
Choosing aspects of word knowledge to focus on

Choosing appropriate strategies to use and when to switch to another strategy
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Planning repetition (increasingly spaced repetition)
Sources:
finding 
information about the

words
Analysing word parts
Using the context
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Consulting a reference source in L1 and L2 (e.g. dictionaries, glosses,
concordancers)
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Comparing similarities and differences in L1 and L2 words (e.g. cognate
words)
Noticing (seeing a word as an item to be learnt, e.g. keeping a notebook,
using word cards, written and verbal repetition)
Processes: establishing 
knowledge
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Retrieving (recall of previously learnt/met items, e.g. meeting a word in a
new context, covering parts of a word recorded in a notebook)
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Generating (generation of word knowledge, e.g. using a word in new
contexts across the 4 skills, speaking, reading, writing or listening)
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Memory Strategy – Using Mental Images
(Adapted from forthcoming “Loong Y & Chan S W L, A Study of Vocabulary Learning
Strategies Adopted by Dentistry Students in Hong Kong In Learning Specialized Dental
Vocabulary, September 2012, Asian ESP Journal”)
Memory Strategy – The Keyword Technique
Step One: Think of a
word that you know that
has a similar sound
(audionym
“Keyword” )
Step Two: Create a
mental image to link up
the Keyword with the
target word
(Adapted from Brahler, C. J. & Walker, D. (2008). Learning scientific and medical
terminology with a mnemonic strategy using an illogical association technique. Advances in
Physiology Education, 32, 219-224.)
The “keyword” technique
Japanese
word and
meaning
kurai (dark)
karada (body)
English
Link and visual
word that image created
has a
similar
sound
The “keyword” technique
Japanese
word and
meaning
English
Link and visual
word that image created
has a
similar
sound
kurai (dark)
cry
A baby cries
when it is dark
karada (body) colored
a colored body
Kurai - Cry
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Imagine the visual of a
baby crying when it’s
dark
Karada - colored
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a colored body
How easy is it to guess the meaning of the underlined words?
The Nanu region is famous for its wonderful scenery, ancient temples and, above all, the
indigenous people of Sofa. In their remote village, reached after an arduous and
dusty drive, live the Sofans, with their welcoming smiles and warm affability.
Few visitors, however, make this trip as it is not on the normal itinerary of most
tour groups.
As I sauntered through the village, I stopped for a few moments on a bridge to watch
the boisterous children splashing each other with water. School hours are short
here and many of the teenagers seem to squander their daylight hours riding
around the square on noisy old motorcycles.
Groups of local women spend their days weaving coloured silk into stunning fabrics.
Their remuneration is only a few dollars although they may have worked for
several days to create each one. As dusk approaches, the men return from the fields
where they have been toiling all day, hungry and ready for a quiet evening with
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their families.
Guessing strategies
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Study the word itself (what pos? any word
parts?)
Examine immediate context
Examine wider context
Make a guess
Verify your guess by using a dictionary
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Strategies for guessing word
meaning from context (Nation, 1990)
Step 1:
What part of speech is it? Is it a noun, a verb, an adjective or an adverb?
Step 2:
Does it contain any familiar parts? (e.g. in-digest-ible)
Does it look similar to another word you already know?
Step 3:
Examine the immediate context. If the unknown word is a
Noun
Adjective
What adjectives describe it?
What verb does it go with?
What does it do and what is done to it?
What nouns go with it?
Does an adverb tell you more about it?
What noun does it go with?
Adverb
Which verb does it go with?
Verb
Step 4:
Examine the wider context. Look at the relationship between the clause or sentence
containing the unknown word and other sentences or paragraphs.
1. Sometimes this relationship is signalled by a linking word, e.g. but, because, if, when,
however, as a result.
2. Word like this, that and such as provide useful information.
3. Look for a definition or synonym in the wider context.
4. Make use of that / which clauses that give further information.
5. Look at punctuation for clues.
dashes brackets ( )
colons :
semi colons ;
Step 5:
Guess the meaning.
Step 6:
Substitute your guess. Does the sentence make sense? If you’re still unsure, look it
up in a dictionary.
Answers
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Arduous – difficult / tiring
Affability – friendliness
Saunter – walk slowly
Boisterous – noisy / energetic
Squander – spend in a wasteful way
Weave – make cloth
Remuneration – payment
Dusk – early evening
Toil – work very hard
Selection Strategies:
Which words should you skip learning?
(Nation, 1990)
Recording vocabulary
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Relate new words with old words (e.g. words
that look / sound similar, synonyms, antonyms
collocations
Grammatical behavior (e.g. prepositions, pos,
c/unc, regular/irregular verb)
use a drawing
Word cards? Portable devices?
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Revising vocabulary
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Plan for “spaced repetition”
Use quizzes to test yourself regularly
Follow a particular topic reported in the media over a few days,
e.g. reading about the development of an issue on the Internet or
in newspapers over a few days so that you keep meeting the
same words or synonyms of these words
Try to use the words you learnt before, e.g. by writing sentences
or paragraphs using these words
Revise the words recorded in your vocabulary notebook or cards
regularly (e.g. cover up the word or definition and test yourself)
Ask a friend to test you / practice using words you learnt before
with a friend
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Importance of Revision
Spaced / Distributed Repetition
VLS research on Chinese learners
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VLS research on Chinese learners
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Gu and Johnson (1996) -- China
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Gu (2002) -- China
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VLS and gender, major, lg prof (self-reported), problems in vocab learning
Liao (2004) -- Taiwan
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VLS of two successful EFL learners (selected from 11 learners who carried
out “think-aloud” during a reading task, and were interviewed afterwards;
the notes they took during the reading task were studied)
Wei (2007) -- China
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VLS and vocab size, lg prof, gender, academic major
Gu (2003) -- China
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VLS and learning outcomes (vocab size and lg prof)
VLS and major
Fan (2003) -- HK
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Use of VLS (questionnaire – frequency of use & perceived usefulness)
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Some conclusions based on these studies
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Positive correlation between strategy use and
language proficiency / learning outcomes
Successful learners use a wider range of
strategies, use deeper processing strategies, and
use strategies more skillfully / flexibly
Importance of self-initiation, selective attention,
guessing word meaning, activation of newly
learned words
Management, activation of newly learnt /known
words, association, and social strategies seem
under-used by Asian learners
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Use of Concordancers
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A corpus – a large collection of texts, written or
spoken, stored on a computer.
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A concordancer – a computer programme used
to search this database
Considerations
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General English / Academic English /
Specialised English (e.g. medical and law
corpora on Compleat Lexical Tutor)?
Written / Spoken?
Size?
Currency?
Free of charge?
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Corpus Size
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“I don’t think there can be any corpora,
however large, that contain information about
all of the areas of English….that I want to
explore [but] every corpus that I’ve had a chance
to examine, however small, has taught me facts
that I couldn’t imagine finding out about in any
other way.” (Fillmore, 1992, p. 35)
Use of Corpora
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Word lists and dictionary entries (different
senses of a word / typical examples of usage /
frequency information) are compiled by
computational linguists using a corpus of the
language.
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E.g. In the 1980s, Collins started to use a computerised corpus (then called
the COBUILD corpus) with John Sinclair of University of Birmingham;
now the Collins Cobuild Corpus has 2.5 billion words (part of which is the
Bank of English Corpus (http://www.collinslanguage.com/collins-eltlearners-of-english/cobuild & http://www.mycobuild.com/about-collinscorpus.aspx)
E.g. Macmillan Dictionary:
http://www.macmillandictionary.com/corpus.html
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Major corpus: BNC
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100 million words
Written (90%) and spoken (10%) samples
British English from the 1980’s to 1993
General English
http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/
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Major corpus: Bank of English
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450 million words by 2005
75% written and 25% spoken
70% British, 20% American and 10% others
Contemporary English
http://www.titania.bham.ac.uk/docs/svenguide.
html
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Major corpus: Brown corpus
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1 million words
American English
One of the earliest corpora / compiled in 1960s
500 text samples from 15 text categories
Searchable through Compleat Lexical Tutor at
http://www.lextutor.ca/concordancers/concor
d_e.html
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Major Corpus: The Corpus of
Contemporary American English
(COCA)
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Contemporary American English containing
about 450 million words
from 1990 to present
http://www.americancorpus.org/
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Major corpus: MICASE
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Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English
started in 1997
contains transcripts and audio files of academic
speech
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/micase/
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Some user-friendly concordancers
1.
2.
3.
Word Neighbors (developed by University of
Science and Technology)
www.just-the-word.com
COCA (needs registration)
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Tasks - answers
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The public have expressed concern about … /
… are of great concern to the public
Sufficient / clear / strong evidence
Improve / increase / promote efficency
Substitute for
Sheer ( volume / numbers / rates / amount /
number )
How can corpora be used in the
classroom?
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Among these suggestions by Nicholas Medley,
which ones are applicable in your classroom?
How can corpora data be used to
facilitate vocabulary learning/teaching?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Study words in context and increase depth of
processing
Check grammatical behaviour of words e.g. what
prepositions to use after a verb
Check collocations and lexical patterns
Find out about the frequencies of words / word
combinations
Find out about usage of a word in different text
types (e.g. fiction vs academic / spoken vs written)
Submission of Assignment
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Deadline: October 28
Hard copy to Cecilia
Soft copy via www.turnitin.com
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Preparation for next class
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Give an oral outline of your assignment
Can consider:
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Conference abstracts of JALT Vocabulary
Symposium (2012) (post-session 4 reading)
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