![]() ![]() Essentially, teachers should practice vocabulary every day with students in an effort to develop full acquisition (Folse, 2004). Students need many opportunities to see the vocabulary words, practice using them, and retrieve the words regularly. Frequent encounters with new vocabulary words help learners acquire words in their various forms and contexts. Students need to be exposed to new words repeatedly and in different contexts. Does the word tend to be used primarily in academic writing, or is the word also used in more casual writing? Once again, this contextual information builds students’ acquisition of the vocabulary word. ![]() ![]() Finally, it is helpful to understand at what level of writing and speaking the word is used. Knowing these word collocations can prove important in using a word appropriately in a specific context. At the same time, economic might not be used with synonyms of development or growth. For example, to go back to the word economic, we often see it paired with the word development or growth. Learners also need to see what other words are paired with vocabulary words. Is a word only used in speaking or writing, or both? How does it change within each of these contexts? Is a word used with a particular connotation in speaking but never in writing? Learners need to see how the word is used. Vocabulary words must be taught and learned in context. For students and teachers, learning these many pieces of information in vocabulary requires explicit time and attention in the classroom, particularly taking time to look at the whole word in context. Then, if we change economic to economics, we get a similar word but which is a different part of speech that carries its own definitions and connotations. This is all in addition to knowing how to pronounce and spell the word. For learners to know the word economic, they must recognize its part of speech, identify its various definitions, acknowledge appropriate synonyms and collocations, and understand that connotations across contexts may vary. For example, economic is an adjective with multiple definitions and connotations in its use. There are a number of derivations of the word economic, including different forms, meanings, and uses. In addition, each word is part of a larger family of words that derive from a root word of a similar meaning.Ĭonsider the word economic. Each word has many parts that help learners understand it. We now know that acquiring a new vocabulary word involves much more. In this month’s Teacher’s Corner, we will discuss the teaching and learning strategies that best support vocabulary learning and examine how we can adapt our existing lessons to incorporate vocabulary.įor many years, vocabulary learning had a singular focus: a word’s definition. Given what we know about vocabulary, how do we teach it in a way that supports language acquisition and all language skills? Such findings reinforce the fundamental role that vocabulary teaching and learning play in the English classroom. In fact, research linking reading comprehension to vocabulary knowledge has shown that a reader must know 98% of the words in a text to process and comprehend the text independently (Hu and Nation, 2000). Regardless, we must remember that vocabulary is at the center of language teaching and learning. Since teachers are tasked with teaching vocabulary in addition to the skills of listening, speaking, reading, writing, and grammar, vocabulary ends up getting a small amount of attention in the classroom. They do this work all while studying the other skills in a language. From such vocabulary sets, students make flash cards, list words, practice spelling, and memorize definitions in an attempt to acquire new language. Teachers may also pull vocabulary words from readings and listening materials that they see as necessary to classroom success. To create these sets of vocabulary words, teachers may use or draw from existing word lists, such as the Academic Word List and General Service List, or from content word lists presented in textbooks and materials, such as food words and neighborhood words. In any English class around the world, you’ll find learners studying new sets of vocabulary words related to a unit of study or topic of discussion. ![]()
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