what does it mean to know a word?
A vocabulary test in which the students merely have to vomit the words onto the page, and once purged walk away fresh with no memory of the incident, is no good to anyone. How can we ensure our students LEARN words, rather than just REMEMBER them.
- Learner Autonomy – Are students more likely to learn words if they are relevant, personal and useful?
- Learner Training – Is it better to teach students how to study vocabulary, rather than teach them vocabulary?
- Language – What does it actually mean to learn a word? When can you truly say “Yes, I KNOW this word”?
I’ll point you in the direction of two excellent resources, and bear in mind that quite a few academics offer pdf downloads of scholarly articles on their websites these days. Both names will be familiar if you know a little about vocabulary. The first is Norbert Schmitt ‘s staff page at the University of Nottingham, the second is Paul Nation‘s page at the University of Wellington. Both are chock full of reading, but if you wander about halfway down each I’d recommend two particular articles (citations after the jump). Nation suggests self-selection of vocabulary, and Schmitt recommends a system of whole-word study.
I decided to try an experiment with a couple of reading classes I teach. As the students are focussing mainly on their extensive reading, and thus encountering completely different vocabulary, it seemed a good fit. Each student would compile a list of new words encountered in their reading (or anywhere else), and check for synonyms, definitions, antonyms, translations, word family and collocations. I also pointed out that they should check how useful a word is before studying it – most modern dictionaries (certainly the electronic ones my students use) will tell you if a word is amongst the top 1000, 2000 or 3000 words in spoken or written English. I encouraged them to choose words they liked for whatever reason.
Every couple of weeks, I’d take in the list of words and write a code beside each. For example, (C) means collocation, (ES) stands for example sentence and so on. In the second semester, I am dropping in words from their previous lists to recycle. This pdf is the handout I gave to the learners to explain the task
..and this pdf is the template for the tests
Both are specific to Japanese learners, so if you want a word document you can play with, email me ; D
So far, it has been fairly successful. There are a couple of question marks.
- There is some evidence that antonyms and synonyms cause interference, if BOTH words are new. For example, it may well be wrong to teach left and right together – fix one concept first, then introduce the next.
- Some students will choose words which are too ‘easy’ or ‘difficult’ for their needs or current language level.
Working on these, but it’s an interesting experiment nonetheless.
Moir, J. and Nation, I.S.P. (2002) Learners’ use of strategies for effective vocabulary learning Prospect 17, 1: 15-35.
Schmitt, N. and Schmitt, D. (1995). Vocabulary notebooks: Theoretical underpinnings and practical suggestions. English Language Teaching Journal, 49, 2: 133-143.
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Darren, I find this very helpful thank you. I would like to use your templates for my Spanish students. Could you email them to me in word documents?
Thank you
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Darren, the idea I like most in this post is of testing students on vocabulary that they’ve chosen. You’re giving students the power to develop their English in ways they feel are appropriate and then incorporating that into the class. I really like it. Rather than a test, perhaps you could do some kind of share your knowledge activity where the learners demonstrate some of the vocabulary they’ve learned to each other.
Something I find useful to do with my Turkish students is to take 10 new vocabulary words we learned in a lesson and then give 5 to the boys and 5 to the girls. They then have to use a number of the strategies you have in your pdf there and give it to me as homework the next day. A week later I’ll check the 10 words to see who remembers and, inevitably, the boys remember mostly their words and the girls remember mostly theirs. Then I ask the students why and they remember the homework. It’s a great way to convince your students of the effectiveness of these strategies.