Education logo

Vocabulary Learning and Teaching

TESOL - Teaching of English as a Second Language

By Antonette CorreaPublished 3 years ago 16 min read
Like

Introduction

During almost a decade of teaching young learners in an EFL context in South Korea, I had never been exposed to the principle of teaching lexically. When teaching meanings of words, I expected my explanations to be understood and absorbed after a single exposure. However, after enrolling in TESOL courses at Biola University, I was able to experience teaching in the adult ESL context. Teaching TOEFL in South Korea allowed me to transition smoothly into teaching an IELTS course for adult students in Rowland Heights, California.

Now I can see the value in the deliberate repetition of vocabulary words within varied exposures over the course of a term, semester, or year. This allows students to build on background knowledge and interpret words that they had not been exposed to previously. For me, word consciousness has become a key concept because it involves raising awareness to the value of learning vocabulary for both teachers and students. This entails not only teaching form and meaning, but also collocations, grammar structure, word parts, and register (Zimmerman, 2009). Furthermore, modeling vocabulary learning strategies encourages students to become autonomous learners. By focusing on teaching words with the greatest value for ESL students in a particular context, both vocabulary and language learning become more efficient based on the needs of the students within their social and professional relationships outside of the classroom which inform knowledge of authentic content and provide opportunities for practice (Zimmerman, 2009). Therefore, when planning curriculum, syllabi, and lessons, teachers must be selective about the words targeted and pre-teach words based on information relevant to class activities, which allows for sufficient repetition and spacing between exposures, making the language meaningful while reducing the learning burden. Furthermore, student-centered activities in pairs or groups allow the teacher to facilitate the expansion of vocabulary knowledge while monitoring student comprehension and providing feedback at the end of each class period.

As a reference to help students achieve their vocabulary learning goals, this paper will outline a clear rationale for vocabulary learning and teaching in an IELTS or similar intermediate to high level ESL course based on sound theories put forth by researchers and experts in the TESOL field. This reference can be used to inform curriculum, syllabi, and lesson plans from a lexical point of view.

Context

For ESL learners, there are frequent opportunities to encounter and use English outside of the classroom. Therefore, students have an immediate need to improve their reading, listening, speaking and academic writing. Students who enroll in the IELTS class are professionals from various fields, which can range from medicine to architecture. They desire to learn vocabulary to improve integrated skills because they plan to take the IELTS exam in the near future. Therefore, they tend to be highly motivated and recognize the importance of developing a solid foundation of vocabulary knowledge. As the instructor, I can introduce a lexically informed syllabus as the start of the term and get a grasp on their vocabulary learning needs from a short survey and class discussions. After doing so, I can plan my lessons to fill in the gaps in knowledge.

Students

Lessons should be prepared while keeping in mind the various ethnic and cultural backgrounds of the students. Adult students who enroll in IELTS, TOEFL, EAP’s, IEP’s and Business English courses can come from countries like China, Korea, Africa, or India. Having a class in which most of the students share the same L1 has its advantages and disadvantages. One advantage is that the instructor can decipher challenges when students attempt to transfer their L1 to the L2. On the other hand, when most students speak the same L1, they are not speaking English as often as they should be.

Because IELTS students are at the intermediate to advanced level, they are nearly fluent in the receptive skills of reading and listening. Therefore, there will be a heavy focus on improving the productive skills of speaking and writing using a lexical approach. Students desire to improve and excel in academic writing as well as demonstrate speaking fluency for the IELTS test. Students must take the IELTS test in order to gain admittance into university, maintain their visa status, and take certification exams required for professional development. Students seek socioeconomic upward mobility and opportunities to travel and study abroad. Major topics and themes in the IELTS workbook include student life, work, interests, hobbies, culture, social activities and life experience. Knowing the background and L1 of each student will allow me to understand how new vocabulary words are interpreted and learned.

According to Dellar and Walkley (2016), students learn English because they aim to exchange information and communicate thoughts and feelings as well as to achieve a deeper understanding of the host country’s culture. Students have dynamic lives which include deeply ingrained attitudes, beliefs, and goals that have led them to make the hard decision to leave their country behind to live abroad and study English. For these reasons, students at the IETLS level are highly motivated to expand their vocabulary knowledge.

Course

The IELTS is a comprehensive English exam covering the four major skill areas of listening, reading, writing, and speaking. The test is primarily used to gain admittance into universities in Australia, England, and the United States with most American universities accepting an IELTS score. The minimum score on the IELTS is 1.0 and the maximum score is 9.0. Students receive a score on each individual section first, and then the four scores are averaged for an overall score. The course is designed to give students an in-depth overview of the IELTS test as well as daily practice with real IELTS test questions. Students also review skill-building exercises relevant to IELTS testing. Weekly practice involves individual exercises as well as group exercises in all four areas of the test.

Many adult ESL courses utilize integrated skills workbooks like Focus on Grammar or Interchange. There is a limited number of books that prepare students for the IELTS test while there are a vast number of IELTS websites online. However, students need the guidance of a facilitator. The workbook to be used in the IELTLS class is called Complete IELTS published by Cambridge University Press, which comes with a supplementary audio CD to be used by the teacher. Exercises are labeled with correlating track numbers for each unit and units are divided by themes. The student workbook includes a supplementary CD Rom which students can use on their own time for additional practice. For this course, students will be encouraged to regularly maintain a vocabulary notebook and writing portfolio in which they keep their written essays.

Supplementary materials for the IELTS class can include PowerPoint slides, handouts, media, images, videos, podcasts, news articles, dictionaries, corpora, and various other language learning websites organized and compiled in lists by the teacher. Therefore, the optimal setting for the IELTS class would be a classroom with access to technology, as their will be heavy instruction from online resources. There should be a computer with headphones and comfortable chairs at each desk, which would provide a comfortable environment conducive to autonomous learning.

The overall learning goals of the IELTS course include familiarizing students with all parts of the IELTS test and to improve the students’ ability to succeed relative to strategy, time management and decision making. The course will allow students to improve reading comprehension and critical thinking skills by noticing, discovering, and understanding how vocabulary and grammar structures are used in tandem to convey meaning. Students will improve their test taking skills and enhance their ability to listen discern meaning through conversations, class discussions, and academic lectures while noticing vocabulary through active listening. Finally, the course will allow students to learn rules and structure for academic writing, as well as techniques to improve fluency and coherence, utilizing advanced vocabulary and grammar together to continually sharpen their writing ability.

Placement tests assess if the student is in the appropriate level and comprehension is assessed by weekly quizzes, a midterm test, and a final exam. All tests assess the vocabulary comprehension by including questions that require students to compose their own sentences using vocabulary with correct register. Finally, the overall goal in the IELTS class is to build on the students’ background knowledge of vocabulary words and introduce new vocabulary to increase fluency when having conversations about work, student life, hobbies, interests, culture, travel, social organizations, life experiences and other familiar topics.

Working with Collocations

Collocation refers to the way words are combined with each other into lexical chunks (Zimmerman, 2009). Zimmerman’s take on collocations has raised my awareness to how vocabulary words should never be taught as isolated units. Therefore, as the instructor, it is my job to help students recognize the significance of collocations and the meaning they convey. First, I can model the process of noticing collocations using the board and websites on the television screen. Even for advanced IELTS student, collocations are hard to notice. I can then provide many opportunities for practice. Finally, we can have a class discussion about our findings. This helps raise the awareness of language transfer from the L1 so that students can discover that many collocations don’t transfer from one language to another and that it is more beneficial to learn words in collocations in which they naturally occur. Furthermore, teaching collocations raises awareness to various nuances of words and how they can change meaning within various contexts. The overall result will be students recognizing the value of learning new vocabulary within collocations.

Working with Register

Zimmerman (2009) notes that register in language reflects “language appropriate to a given situation,” and that vocabulary is particularly important to register (p. 95). Register varies according to a range of factors, such as occupation, purpose, and relationships. Academically speaking, ESL teachers refer to register as informal or formal: written language is normally more formal than spoken language and spoken language is usually more casual and interactive (p. 97). Academic register is defined as English that is suited for academic or educational purposes (p. 98), which requires mastery of both general and academic vocabulary. Zimmerman's clear categorization of register, including spoken and written register, academic register, slang, euphemism, and domain-specific jargon, allows the instructor to pick and choose which areas to focus on based on the needs of the student and the level and context of the class.

Register would only be appropriate for intermediate to high intermediate IELTS students, such as those in an IELTS or TOEFL class. This is because students at this level should already possess a strong enough foundation of vocabulary in order to be able to distinguish meaning as they communicate. Arming students with the skill of identifying register will empower them. Therefore, the teacher should be noting register when choosing target words to teach, being aware of differences in register across languages while pointing out cognates.

Extensive Reading, Listening, and Viewing

The IETLS classroom is the ideal for implementing the four strands principle (Nation, 2017) due to long class periods, access to technology, and the use if an integrated skills workbook. While language-focused learning is achieved through the traditional stand in front of the class role, access to technology allows for dynamic ways that a teacher can model vocabulary use and learning strategies. Extensive reading, extensive listening, and extensive viewing allow for incidental learning, as well as the deliberate learning, as students comprise a bank of vocabulary words and collocations that are to be posted on the walls around the classroom, further allowing for repeated exposures through meaning-focused input. Students will become aware of their own fluency development that comes from reading large amounts of texts and listening to extended podcasts.

According to Web and Nation, extensive listening allows the learner to receive large quantities of comprehensible spoken input that consist of at least 95% of known words. Listening and reading activities should require a low density of unknown words so that learners can focus on comprehension. In an IELTS class, students will individually listen to podcasts and videos of their own choosing based on resources provided. Allowing students to choose their own resources for meaning-focused input that is comprehensible increases the chance that they will learn incidentally. Furthermore, IETLS websites provide podcasts specific to the test, with conversations that are supplemented with transcripts. Because of the ability to listen and pause, repeated listening results in better vocabulary learning. After both extensive reading and listening, a comprehension check could be conducted in the form of a discussion, a summary writing task, or journal entry, all aimed at solidifying vocabulary learning through the repetition of words and exposure to partially known words.

Dictionary and Corpora

According to Webb and Nation (2017), proper use of dictionaries should be modeled and encouraged when discussing form, meaning, use, word parts, word families, register, parts of speech, example sentences, and the origin of words in Latin and Greek. Students often will insist on using dictionaries in their L1. However, it is up to the teacher to gain the trust of the students to be able to effectively encourage the use of dictionaries that allow students to think in English.

The Longman’s Contemporary Dictionary derives basic words from frequency lists and is specifically designed to be useful for ESL learners. Having access to technology in the IELTS classroom will allow use of the website daily, allow for the teacher to model its use, and instill the value of using dictionaries in students. Other dictionaries have special functions as well, and can be utilized according to need, such as the Collins COBUILD Dictionary, which includes frequency markers, and the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, which notes register.

In the IETLS class, access to resources like the COCA will benefit the students greatly because it is designed to represent contemporary and authentic uses of language. It also is very useful in noticing register as colocations and sentences are labeled by genre. Modeling the use of the COCA encourages autonomous learning for students who are highly motivated to learn new vocabulary. The COCA can even be used to notice various grammatical structures and how they convey meaning Overall, corpus informed textbooks, dictionaries, teaching resources, curriculum, syllabi, and lesson plans are a great idea because the COCA leaves a lot of the guess work out for students as they struggle to express themselves using appropriate vocabulary and register. Data-driven learning is a new concept according to Szudarski (2018) and designing a syllabus and curriculum from a lexical view is "groundbreaking" but like most other innovations, not quickly accepted by professionals in the TESOL field. Nevertheless, in future, I see DDL being implemented into classrooms all over the world. Technology is already being used in classrooms today and considering humanity’s ever-increasing dependence on technology, DDL seems to be inevitable.

Activities

As ESL teachers, we need to consider how learning activities can be implemented, adapted, and improved in order to offer our students the best opportunities for English vocabulary learning. Webb and Nation (2017) argue that when planning activities, teachers need to understand effective conditions that facilitate learning. Furthermore, principles for the selection of activities should incorporate both incidental and deliberate vocabulary learning as students interact, communicate, and share knowledge. Activities must include teacher explanation, noticing, meaning-focused input from reading, meaning-focused output when recalling and speaking, language focused learning, and fluency development (Webb and Nation, 2017, 180-181). Chosen activities should be based on research evidence that justifies its use and purpose. Additionally, while engaging in activities, students should be learning new words and strengthening knowledge of partially known words. Finally, vocabulary learning activities are useful for a cumulative review of words learned over the course of a semester.

Sample Activity for IELTS

In the activity, Areas of Expertise (Ur, 2012) students must make presentations as if presenting at a formal conference. This activity is appropriate for the IELTS class because students want to improve their speaking fluency to achieve upward mobility within their professions while working here in the U.S. Furthermore, when they take the IELTS test, an examiner will ask them questions regarding their work. Therefore, this activity is ideal for preparing students for the IETLS because it requires them to use items from their specific area of knowledge while speaking for twenty minutes. A lot of assistance and support should be given by the instructor in order to reduce the learning burden, boost confidence, and set students up for success. At the end of each presentation, the teacher can invite questions from the class and review useful vocabulary taught in the course by writing them on the board during a wrap up discussion, being sure to thank each student and give sincere praise for their effort and progress.

Another activity that would help students expand their vocabulary knowledge is the Lexical Scavenger Hunt activity (Zimmerman, 2009). The goal of the activity is for students to find target words in written sources outside of the classroom, describe their context, and notice use and register. Over the weekend, students will be asked to compose a summary of the printed article and bring both the article and the summary to class on Monday to be graded and filed into their writing portfolios after receiving helpful feedback from the teacher in the form of written comments regarding language use.

Conclusion

After completing the IELTS course, students will have a heightened awareness of the value of vocabulary learning strategies that will facilitate the expansion of their vocabulary knowledge and improve their lexical development. As autonomous learners, they should be trained and well versed in vocabulary learning strategies that include dictionary and corpora use, setting learning goals, finding ways to encounter and use English outside of the classroom, analyzing word parts and analyzing words within context, just to name a few. Ideally, they should be studying vocabulary seven days a week to make significant gains.

According to Webb and Nation (2017), the teacher’s role involves various aspects in supporting and enhancing our students’ lexical development and modifying vocabulary learning programs according to the needs of students based on the context. The aspects of vocabulary learning and teaching outlined in this paper serve as tools in a tool box to be used when needed. “Because lexical development is likely to impact performance in all aspects of language development, it is worth taking the time to carefully consider how vocabulary learning might be optimized within a vocabulary learning programme and beyond” (Webb and Nation, 2017, p. 242).

References :

Brook-Hart, G., Jakeman, V., Jay, D., & University of Cambridge. (2012). Complete IELTS. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Browne, C., Culligan, B. & Phillips, J. (2013). The New General Service List. Retrieved from http://www.newgeneralservicelist.org

Brown, D. (2011). What aspects of vocabulary knowledge do textbooks give attention to? Language Teaching Research, 15, 83-97. doi:10.1177/1362168810383345.

Dellar, H., & Walkley, A. (2016). Teaching lexically: Principles and practice. Surrey, U.K.: Delta.

Graves, M. F. (2016). Teaching word-learning strategies. The vocabulary book: Learning and instruction (2nd ed., pp. 117-142). New York: Teachers College Press.

Lessard-Clouston, M. (2013). Teaching vocabulary. Alexandria, VA: TESOL International Association.

Lessard-Clouston, M (2018). Lecture on Vocabulary Learning and Teaching, Personal collection of M. Lessard-Clouston, Biola University, La Mirada CA.

Lessard-Clouston, M., & Chang, T. (2014). Corpora and English language teaching: Pedagogy and practical applications for data-driven learning. TESL Reporter, 47, 1-20.

Szudarski, P. (2018). Corpora and teaching vocabulary. Corpus linguistics for vocabulary: A guide for research (pp. 96-114). London: Routledge.

Ur, P. (2012). Vocabulary activities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Webb, S., & Nation, P. (2017). How vocabulary is learned. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Zimmerman, C. B. (2009). Word knowledge: A vocabulary teacher’s handbook. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

teacher
Like

About the Creator

Antonette Correa

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.