Scott Thombdury how to teach vocabularyPearson Education Limited Edinburgh Gate Harlow Essex M20 JE England and Associated Companies throughout the world. wwwvilongman.com © Pearson Education Limited 2002 All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the Publisher. The Publisher grants permission for the photocopying of those pages marked ‘photocopiable’ according to the following conditions. Individual purchasers may make copies for their own use or for use by classes they teach. School purchasers may make copies for use by their staff and students, but this permission does not extend to additional schools or branches. Under no circumstances may any part of this book be photocopied for resale. ‘The right of Scott Thornbury to be identified as the author of this Work has heen asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 Printed in Malaysia, PP Fifth impression 2007 Produced for the publishers by Bluestone Press, Chatlbury, Oxfordshire, UK. Text design by Keith Rigley. Copy-edited by Sue Harmes. Illustrations on pages 90 and 159 by ‘Margaret Jones. ISBN 978-0-582-42966-6 Acknowledgements ‘We are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce copyright material: Cambridge University Press for extracts from the Catalan Word Selector and English Vocabulary in Use (Elementary) by McCarthy and O'Dell and The New Cambridge English Course 2 by Swan and Walter; Carcarnet Press Limited and the family of Allen Curnow for his poem ‘Wild Iron’ published in Collected Poems, Cummington Press for the poem ‘Silence’ by William Carlos Williams published in The Wedge, EM] Music Publishing for the lyrics from Wannabe recorded by The Spice Girls; che poet, Ruth Fainlight, for her poem ‘Handbag’ published in Selected Poems by Random House Group Limited; Oxford University Press for an extract from New Headway Intermediate by Soars and Soats; and Pearson Education Limited for an extract from Longman Language Activator © Longman Group Limited 1993. We are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce illustrative material: Corbis Stock Market for page 166; Language Teaching Publications for page 118; Net Languages for page 43; Oxford University Press for page 97, We regret that we have been unable to trace the copyright holder of the following and would welcome any information enabling us to do so: pages 95. 150 and 165,Contents Introduction 1 What's in a word? Introduction Identifying words Word classes Word families Word formation Multi-word units Collocations Homonyms Polysemes Synonyms and antonyms Hyponyms Lexical fields Style and connoration How words are learned How important is vocabulary? What does it mean to ‘know a word’? How is our word knowledge organised? How is vocabulary learned? How many words does a learner need to know? How are words remembere: Why do we forget words? What makes a word difficult? Whaat kind of mistakes do learners make? What are the implications for teaching? Classroom sources of words Lists Coursebooks Vocabulary books The teacher Other students Texts, dictionaries and corpora Short texts Books and readers Dictionaries Corpus data Page vi 13 32 535 How to present vocabulary + Presenting vocabulary + Using translation + How to illustrate meaning + How to explain meaning + How to highlight the form + How to involve the learners 6 How to put words to work + Integrating new knowledge into old + Decision-making tasks + Production tasks + Games 7 Teaching word parts and word chunks + Teaching word formation and word combination + A lexical approach + Teaching lexical chunks + Teaching word grammar + Teaching phrasal verbs + Teaching idioms 8 How to test vocabulary + Why test vocabulary? + What to test + ‘Types of test + Measuring word knowledge + Assessing vocabulary size + Doing action research 9 How to train good vocabulary learners + Learner training + Using mnemonics + Word cards + Guessing from context + Coping strategies for production + Using dictionaries + Spelling rules Keeping records + Motivation Task File Task File Key Further reading Index 75 93 106 129 144 162 178 183 184Acknowledgements Thanks, Jeremy, David and Hester once again. What a team! Thanks are also due to Guy Cook, for his very useful feedback and suggestions. 14 also like to thank the authors and publishers of the books listed in the Further Reading list, without which this present book could not have been written, (I should add, of course, that no blame must he attached to those books for any flaws in this one.) And thanks, P. It takes two to tandem, sorry. tangi, er tangoWho is this book for? What is this book about? Introduction How te Teach Vocabulury lias been written for all teachers of English who wish to improve their knowledge and to develop their classcoom skills in this important area, ‘There has been a revival of interest in vocabulary teaching in recent years. This is partly due to the recent availability of computerised databases of words (or corpora), and partly due to the development of new approaches to language teaching which are much more ‘word-centred’, such as the ‘lexical approach’. This interest is reflected in the many recent titles you will find in the Further Reading list on page 183. However, these developments have been slow to reach teachers in a form that is easily transferable to the classroom. This hook aims to bridge that gap: to sketch in the theoretical background while at the same time suggesting ways in which the teaching of vocabulary can be integrated into lessons Given the challenge involved in processing, storing and producing words in a second language, the book attempts to answer the question: what can teachers do to help? Before looking at specific procedures and techniques, we will need first to define what a word is, and how words relate to one another (Chapter 1). Chapter 2 looks at the way this knowledge is acquired, organised, stored and retrieved, and includes a brief discussion of the nature and role of memory. Crucial to the success of a teaching sequence ~ whether a lesson or a whole course ~ is the selection of items to focus on. There are a number of sources from which to select words, and Chapters 3 and 4 survey these sources ~ including coursebooks, dictionaries, corpora and literature. Classroom techniques for presenting vocabulary items, and for practising them (or ‘putting them to work’) are dealt with in Chapters 5 and 6 respectively. In Chapter 7, the concept of the word is expanded to include both the way individual words are formed from smaller components, and the way words themselves combine to form larger ‘chunks, often with idiomatic meaning. In Chapter 8 the testing of vocabulary is dealt with, while Chapter 9 looks at ways of helping learners to take responsibility for their own learning, including ways of coping with gaps in their vocabulary knowledge. a Practical classroom applications are signalled throughout by this icon © Finally, the Task File consists of photocopiable task sheets, relevant to each chapter. They can be used for individual study and reflection, or for discussion and review in a training context. An answer key is provided.Introduction at’s in a word? Introduction Identifying words Word classes Word families Word formation Multi-word units Collocations Homonyms Polysemes ‘Synonyms and antonyms Hyponyms. Lexical fields Style and connotation ‘A word is a microcosm of human consciousness.’ (Vygotsky) All languages have words. Language emerges first as words, both historically, and in terms of the way each of us learned our first and any subsequent languages. The coining of new words never stops. Nor does the acquisition of words. Even in our first language we are continually learning new words, and learning new meanings for old words. Take, for example, this description of a wine, where familiar words are being used and adapted to express very specialised meanings: A deep rich red in colour. Lush and soft aroma with plums and blackberries, the oak is plentiful and adds vanilla to the mix, attractive black pepper undercurrents. The mouthfeel is plush and comfortable like an old pair of slippers, boysenberry and spicy plum fruit flavours with liquorice and well seasoned oak, The generous finish ends with fine grained tannins and a grippy earthy aftertaste. (From web page at www.ewinexc! 1ge.com.au) If you are not familiar with wine-tasting terminology, you may have found this text heavy going, due to both the density and specialised nature of its vocabulary. For example, you may be familiar with /ush and plush but uncertain as to what they mean, or how they differ in meaning, in this context. Some words may be entirely new to you ~ such as grippy andHow to Teach Vocabulary identifying words ‘mouthfeel. Learners of a second language experience a similar bewilderment even with much simpler texts. They may be confronted by words that are totally unfamiliar, or are being used in ways that for them are novel and possibly obscure. They may even be meeting concepts that are simply not represented by words in their first language ‘Their problems are compounded when they need to produce language. Finding the right word to fit the intended meaning is frustrating when your store of words is limited. And when words get confused with each other, even within this limited store, the results can be disastrous, as in this example from a student's composition: 1 am uriting te complain you about an unnecessary operation that 1 had at St Charles Hospial, last May 24. Tuc months age, I went to visit Doctor Sdncnez, whe werks at ths Hospital, because I had adereds that prevented me to breathe. He persuaded me to have a. noise cperation to act aut the adeds. 1 was worried with this dea, but Finally 1 accepted ins decison. Tuc uxcks later I had been operated. The problem was wincn nc removed the bandages oF my noise. I gave & srouTill! My noise had Deen changed by a small noise smlar to the Pig's nevses To sum up, learning the vocabulary of a second language presents the learner with the following challenges: + making the correct connections, when understanding the second language, between the form and the meaning of words (e.g. mouthfeel, grippy), including discriminating the meanings of closely related words (e.g. lush and plush) + when producing language, using the correct form of a word for the meaning intended (i.e. nase not noise) To meet these challenges the learner needs to: + acquite a critical mass of words for use in both understanding and producing language + remember words over time, and be able to recall them readily + develop strategies for coping with gaps in word knowledge, including coping with unknown words, or unfamiliar uses of known words In order to address the above issues, it may pay to start at the beginning, and to attempt to define what exactly a word is. Here is a sentence that, at first glance, consists of twenty of them: | like looking for bits and pieces like old second-hand record players and doing them up to look like new. Of course, there are not twenty different words in that sentence. At least two of those twenty words are repeated: and is repeated once, /ike three times: [ like looking for bits and pieces like ... look like new. On the other hand, the first like is @ verb, and the other two are prepositions ~ so is this really a case of the same word being repeated? And then there's /ooking and look: are theseWord classes 1 © What's in a word? two different words? Or two different forms of the same word? Then there's second-hand: two words joined to make one? Probably ~ the hyphen suggests we treat second-hand differently from, say, I've got a second band. But what about record player? Two words but one concept, surely? It gets worse. What about bits and pieces? Isn't this a self-contained unit? After all, we don't say pieces and bits. Or things and pieces. A case, pethaps, of three words forming one. (Like bits and bobs.) And looking for: my dictionary has an entry for /ook, another for /ook for, and yet another for /ook after. Three different meanings ~ three different words? And, finally, doing them up: although doing and up are separated by another word, they seem to be so closely linked as to form a word-like unit (do up) with a single meaning: renovate, One word or two? The decision as to what counts as a word might seem rather academic, but there are important implications in terms of teaching. Is it enough, for example, to teach (o /ook and assume that learning 0 look for and 0 look after will follow automatically? Do you teach /ook, looks, looking together? Should you teach record and player as separate items before introducing record player ‘And how do you go about teaching to de something up when not only is the meaning of the whole more than the sum of its parts, but the parts themselves are moveable? You can do a flat up or do up a flat. Finally, how do you assess how many words a learner knows? If they know ids and they know pieces, can we assume they know bits and pieces? Does the learner who knows dits and pieces know ‘more’ than the learner who knows only difs and pieces? Let's take a closer look at these different aspects of what constitutes a word. In so doing, we will attempt to cover the main ways in which words are described and categorised. Knowing how words are described and categorised can help us understand the decisions that syllabus planners, materials writers and teachers make when it comes to the teaching of vocabulary. ‘We can see from our example sentence that words play different roles in a text. They fall into one of eight different word classes: nouns bits, pieces, record, player pronouns |, them verbs like, looking, doing, to look adjectives old, second-hand, new adverb up prepositions for, like conjunction and determiner = Like, like many words in English, can belong to two or more word classes. The unrepresented class are the determiners — words like a, the, some, this, fast. In terms of the meanings associated with these word classes, we can make a crude division into two groups. On the one hand, there are words like for, and, them, to that mainly contribute to the grammatical structure of the 3How to Teach Vocabulary Word families sentence. These are called grammatical words (or function words) and are generally prepositions, conjunctions, determiners and pronouns. On the other hand, there are the content words, those that carry a high information load. Content words are usually nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. The sense of a text is more or less recoverable using these words alone: like looking bits pieces old second-hand record players doing up look new Compare this with: | for and like and them to like Typically, where space is at a premium, such as in text messages, newspaper headlines, and road signs, it is the content words alone that do the job: RAIL STRIKE TALKS END. Content words are an open set: that is, there is no limit to the number of content words that can be added to the language. Here are a few that have been added recently ~ airbag, emoticon, carjacking, cybersex, quark. Grammatical words, on the other hand, are @ closed set. The last time a pronoun was added to the language was in the early sixteenth century. (It was hem.) Traditionally, grammatical words belonged to the domain of grammar teaching, while the teaching of vocabulary was more concerned with content words. However, the rigid division between grammar and vocabulary has become blurred recently. The interdependence of these two systems is a key tenet of what has been called the lexical approach (see page 112). We've seen how words may share the same base or root (e.g. /ook) but take different endings: looks, looking, looked. This is a feature of the grammar of most languages: the use of add-ons (called affixes) to make a verb past (looked), for example, or a noun plural (bits). These. different grammatical forms of a word are called inflexions. Adding affixes serves a grammatical purpose. It is also a fundamental principle of word formation generally ~ the adding of affixes to the roots of words (e.g. play) to fashion new words. A word that results from the addition of an affix to a root, and which has a different meaning from the root, is called a derivative: play play + er re + play play + ful So, while plays, played and playing are inflexions of play, the words player, replay and playful are each derivatives of play. Inflexions and derivatives are both formed by the process of affixation. Note that -er and -fi/ are end- of-word affixes, or suffixes, while beginning-of-word affixes, like re-, un-, pre-, de-,etc. are called prefixes. We can now talk about words as belonging to families. A word family comprises the base word plus its inflexions and its most common derivatives. To take another example, the base form understand includes the following members in its familyWord formation 1 * What's in a word? understands understanding understood understandable misunderstand misunderstood Research suggests that the mind groups these different forms of the same word together. Therefore, rather than talk about the number of individual words a person knows, it makes more sense to calk about the number of word families, Affixation is one of the ways new words are formed from old. Another one is compounding ~ that is, the combining of two or more independent words, as in the case of second-hand, word processor, paperback, and so on. The fact that many compounds started life as two separate words is evident from their variant spellings. Thus: dish washer, dish-twasher, dishwasher; and wild flower, wildflower, wildflower. This is one reason why it is tempting to consider record player as one compounded word rather than two single words Another reason to consider record player a single word is that this kind of compound pattern ~ noun + verb + -er~ is a very common, and highly productive, one in English: a record player is a machine that plays records. Likewise dishwasher, hairdryer, bus driver, goalkeeper, typewriter; they are all formed according to the same principle. New words that follow this pattern are constantly joining the language: screensaver, trainspotter, particle accelerator, mail server. Another common pattern is the noun + noun pattern, as in matchbox, classroom, teapot, mousemat, etc. Of course, the two patterns ~ noun + noun and noun + verb + ~er ~ can re-combine to form even more complex compounds: dumptruck-driver, candlestick-maker, swindscreen-wiper, and so on. Two words can be blended to form one new one (called a blend) breakfast + lunch = brunch; information + entertainment = infotainment. Or a word can be co-opted from one part of speech and used as another, a process called conversion. Typically nouns are converted into verbs (or ‘verbed’) as in The shell impacted against a brick wall, Let's brunch tomorrow. But other parts of speech can be converted as well: she upped and left (preposition ~* verb); @ balleon flight is an absolute must (verb ~* noun). Finally, new words can be coined by shortening or clipping longer words: flu (from influenza), email (from electronic mail) and dorm (from dormitory). In the following text, ' indicates words formed by affixation, 2 compounds, 3 conversion and 4 clipping: Weighed down by details? The 40MB Clik! PC Card Drive from Iomega, a lightweight”, removeable! storage! drive for PC users, will soon sort that out. Designed with people on the go} in mind, the Clik! PC Card Drive removes the need for additional cables and cumbersome! storage back-up”. Each Clik! disc has the capacity to store 40 megas' of information quickly and conveniently. With packaging! akin to yourHow to Teach Vocabulary Multi-word units favourite pair of Cutler and Gross specs', this stream-lined? system is an essential lubricant! to life in the fast lane. (from Wallpaper magazine, Time Life) Even when words are not joined to form compounds, we have seen that groups of more than one word, such as its and pieces, do up, look for, can function as a meaningful unit with a fixed or semi-fixed form. Technically these are known as multi-word units, but they are often called simply lexical chunks. For example, in the following extract (in which two workers are discussing the Australian car industry ~ a Holden is an Australian car) the lexical chunks are in italics: KEITH: Its amazing how the bleeding car industry's swung round. It's Holdens for years and now Fords have got it. Well and truly. (.. Year after year they're laying more off towards the end of the year so they knew this was coming ~ it wasn't out of the blue. Jo: [think that they shipped a /ot of the accessory overseas too. Before they did a let of the bits and pieces themselves. (from Slade D, The Texture of Casual Conversation) ‘The chunks vary in terms of how fixed, and how idiomatic, they are. For example, out of the blue is both idiomatic (that is to say, its meaning is not casily recoverable from its individual components) and fixed - you can't say from the blue or out of the green, for example. Well and truly and bits and pieces (as we have seen) are also fixed, but less idiomatic, Year after year, on the other hand, is only semi-fixed. It allows a limited amount of manipulation: we can say month after month and day after day. Note that both a lot of and for years are typical of the enormous number of chunks that are used to ‘express vague quantities and qualities: laads of, that sort of thing, more or less, now and again. It’s amazing bow ... belongs to a set of semi-fixed multi-word units that function as sentence frames: they provide a structure on which to ‘hang’ a sentence, and are especially useful in reducing planning time in rapid speech. Especially common in informal language are compounds of verb + adverb (like swung round), or verb + preposition (look after). These are known as either phrasal verbs or multi-part verbs. Because they are often idiomatic (like lay off) and can sometimes be separated (laying more workers off and laying off more workers), they present a formidable challenge to learners. (In Chapter 7 you will find more on chunks and phrasal verbs.) ‘To handle the fact that there are multi-word items that behave like single words, the term lexeme was coined. A lexeme is a word or group of words that function as a single meaning unit. So, to return to the sentence that started this chapter: | like looking for bits and pieces like old second-hand record players and doing them up to look like new. we could count /ooking for, bits and pieces, record players, doing ... up and fo cok as single lexemes, along with 1, like, old, them, etc.Collocations 1 What's ina word? We have seen how words ‘couple up’ to form compounds, and how they ‘hunt in packs' in the shape of multi-word units, There is a looser kind of associ- ation called collocation. Two words are collocates if they occur together with more than chance frequency, such that, when we see one, we can make a fairly safe bet that the other is in the neighbourhood. The availability of corpus data (i.e. databases of text ~ see page 68) now allows us to check the statistical probability of two words co-occurring. The most frequent collocate of record, for example, is world. Another is set. So we have no trouble filling in the blank when we hear someone say She set a new world Collocation is not as frozen a relationship as that of compounds or multi word units, and two collocates may not even occur next to each other ~ they may be separated by one or more other words. Ser, for example, is the second most frequent collocate of record but it seldom occurs right next to it: He set the junior record in 1990. Notice that set and record can also collocate in quite a different sense: Just fo set the record straight ... In fact set the record straight such 2 strong collocation that it almost has the status of a chunk, and indeed it gets a separate entry (under record) in dictionaries, as do some other strong collocates with record, such as for the record, off the record and on record. Collocation, then, is best seen as part of a continuum of strength of association continuum that moves from compound words (second-hand, record player), through multi-word units ~ or lexical chunks ~ (bits and pieces), including idioms (out of the blue) and phrasal verbs (do up), to collocations of more or less fixedness (set the record straight, set a new world record). Here is a text with some of its more frequent collocations underlined, while the more fixed multi-word units are in italics: ‘A record number of 54 teams will be competing in three sections as the Bryants Carpets Intermediate Snooker League gets underway this week. Once again all three sections are likely ¢o be very closely contested. In Section A, defending champions Mariner Automatics, captained once again by the most successful skipper in the league, John Stevens, will be the team to beat. ‘The biggest threat is /kely fo come from Grimsby Snooker Club A, and P and J Builders who will have Steve Singleton at the helm for the first time (from the Grimsby Buening Telegraph) It should be clear from this passage the extent to which word choice is heavily constrained by what comes before and after. This is perhaps the single most elusive aspect of the lexical system and the hardest, therefore, for learners to acquire. Even the slightest adjustments to the collocations — by substituting one of its components for a near synonym (underlined) ~ turns the text into non-standard English: A record lot of $4 teams will be competing in three sections as the Bryants Carpets Intermediate Snooker League reaches underway that week. One time again all three sections are possibly to be very nearly contested .How to Teach Vocabulary Homenyms Polysemes By way of an example, in the learner's text in the Introduction to this chapter (page 2) there are a number of collocations that are non-standard: to get out the adenoids (for fo remove...) Iwas worried with this idea (for The idea worried me) I gave a shout (for I shouted) ‘Taken individually, each of these ‘mis-collocations' is perfectly intelligible and nowhere near as serious as the nose~noise confusion, but in combination they may have a negative effect on some readers, We have seen how like and like can be two quite different words: I like looking ... look like new. Words that share the same form but have unrelated meanings are called homonyms. For historical reasons, English is rich in homonyms: «ell, bet, shed, left, fair, etc. Thus, while fair in the sense of beautiful or pleasing comes from an Old English word (fager), its homonym fair, as in Skipton Fair, comes from Latin feria by way of French foire. While homonyms provide a headache for the learner, their ambiguity is a rich source of humour. Like the joke about the duck who went to a chemist’s to buy lip-salve. ‘Will you be paying by cash or credit card? asked the pharmacist. Just put it on my bill, replied the duck. ‘Another potential source of confusion are the many words in English that sound the same but are spelt differently: horse and hoarse, meet and meat, tail and tale, discrete and discreet, aloud and allowed. These are called homophones (literally ‘same sound’). There are also words that are pronounced differently but spelt the same: a windy day, but a long and swindy road; a live concert, but where do you live?, a lead pipe, but a lead singer. These are called homographs (literally ‘same wr ‘As if homonyms, homophones and homographs weren't enough, another potential source of confusion for learners — and a challenge for teachers ~ is the fact that very many words in English have different but overlapping meanings. Take fair, for example. Clearly these two senses of fair are hornonyms: She had long fair hair. My pig won first prize at Skipton Fair. But what about these? This isn’t fair on anyone, but it does happen. We have a fair size garden and we may as well make use of it. She was only a fair cook. The sun's rays can be very harmful, beating on unprotected fair skin: This fair city of ours .. it will be fair and warm Although there appear to be six different senses of fair represented here, ranging from reasonable through guite large, average, pale, Beautiful to dry and pleasant, there is an underlying sense that at least some if not all of theseSynonyms and antonyms Hyponyms 1 + What's in a word? meanings are related. ‘Try substituting pleasing, for example, and you'll find that it more or less fits most of these contexts. Dictionary writers (lexicographers) classify words like fair as being polysemous ~ that is, of having multiple but related meanings, each of which is called a polyseme. Hold is another good example of a polysemous word: | held the picture up to the light. | was held overnight in a cell. You need to hold a work permit. Mrs Smith is holding a party next week Marxists hold that people are all naturally creative. He was finding it a strain to hold his students’ attention. They'll probably hold the London train if we're late in. The theatre itself can hold only a limited number of people. Will you tell her the offer still holds. ‘These books hold the bed up. (All examples of fair and fold are from the Collins COBUILD English Dictionary) If the polysemous nature of English vocabulary provides a challenge to dictionary compilers, it is a complete headache for learners. At what point can you be said to know a word such as fair or dol - when you know its most basic meaning, or when you know the different shades of meaning represented by all its polysemes? This is an issue we will return to when we look at the teaching of word meaning. Synonyms are words that share a similar meaning. Thus: old, ancient, antique, aged, elderly are all synonyms in that they share the common meaning of not young/new. However, there the similarity ends. We are more likely to talk about an old record player and even an antique one than an elderly record player or an aged one. Synonyms are similar, but seldom the same. Even between words that seem interchangeable, such as taxi and cab, oF aubergine and egg-plant, one will be preferred over the other in certain contexts and by particular speakers. Notice we were forced to define old in terms of what it is not: not ‘young/new. Words with opposite meanings ~ like of and new ~ are called ‘antonyms. Again, like synonyms, the relation between such opposites is not always black and white (to use two antonyms) and the very notion of ‘oppositeness’ is troublesome. The opposite of an old woman is a young woman, but the opposite of an old record player is a new one, not a young one. Your old boyfriend, however, could be either the boyfriend who is not your young boyfriend or the one who is not your new boyfriend. Nevertheless, like Synonyms, antonyms have a useful defining function and are therefore a convenient teaching resource. Hyponym is another -nym word that is useful when talking about che way word meanings are related. A hyponymous relationship is a kind of relationship, as in A hammer is a kind of tool or A kitvi is a kind of bird (and a 9How to Teach Vocabulary Lexical fields 10 kind of fruit). Thus, hammer is a hyponym of /00/; kitwi a hyponym of Bird (and fruit). Co-hyponyms share the same ranking in a hierarchy: hammer, saw, screwdriver are all co-hyponyms; foo! is the superordinate term. But saw also has a superordinate relation to different kinds of saw: fretsaw, chainsaw, jigsaw, etc. We can illustrate these relations like this: tool hammer screwdriver saw fretsaw chainsaw jigsaw A similar kind of relationship is @ part of: as in a keyboard is part of a computer. Notice that this is quite different from saying a keyboard is a kind of computer. In this poem by William Carlos Williams, the words that have this kind of relationship (called meronymy) are underlined, while co-hyponyms are in italics: Under a low sky this quiet morning of red and ‘yellow leaves ~ A bird disturbs no more than one twig of the green leaved peach tree Thus, eaves and fwigs are parts of tees, while red, yellow and green are kinds of colours. In the following passage (fom a short story by David Guterson) there are a number of words that are connected to the idea of Christmas (Christmas Eve, the [Christmas] tree, lights and carols): We were at my sister's house for Christmas Eve, fire in the fireplace, lights on the tree, Christmas carols playing on the stereo. Outside the window a light snow blew down. Icicles hung from the gutters and in the yard the grass looked sprinkled with powder. By morning everything would be white. As Christmas-themed words, snow, icicles and fireplace could also be included, since they all belong to a mental scenario associated with northern hemisphere Christmas celebrations. Words that have this kind of thematic relationship are said to belong to the same lexical field. Tree, carols, fireplace and fights all belong to the lexical field of ‘Christmas’ — although all of them, with the possible exception of cara/s ~ belong to other lexical fields as well. Notice that the text also contains a lexical field of weather-related words1 + Whats in a word? that partly overlaps with the Christmas words (snow, blew, icicles, powder, white), as well as words connected with the ouse theme (fireplace, stereo, window, gutters, yard, grass). Here's an extract quoted earlier in this chapter: KeITH: It’s amazing how the bleeding car industry's swung round. Ie’s Holdens for years and now Fords have got it. Well and truly. ( ... ] Year after year they're laying more off towards the end of the year so they knew this was coming — it wasn't out of the blue. JO: I think that they shipped a lot of the accessory overseas too. Before they did a lot of the bits and pieces themselves Expressions like she bleeding car industry, out of the blue and bits and pieces, suggest a style of language that is closer to spoken, informal English than to a formal written style. Moreover, the use of bleeding suggests British or Australian English rather than North American English. British, Australian and North American are different varieties of English, More than anything, choice of words is an indicator of style and place of origin. Dictionaries typically indicate the style and variety of a word by conventions such as the following: Am North American English Aus Australian English Br __ British English dated fml formal infml informal law literary poetic slang taboo (from The Cambridge International Dictionary of English, CUP) A distinction is often made between style and register. A register of English isa variety of the language as used in specific contexts, such as legal English, academic English, or technical English. Discrepancies in style and register are as disconcerting as unusual collocations. Take, for example, this email I received (from somebody I had never met): Dear Scott, L have booked Diana to arrive in Barcelona at 22.25 (10.25pm) on Saturday 19th August. T hope the lateness of the hour doesn’t discommode you too much. Di will be flying out of Barcelona on Friday 25th August at 1.25pm. Are you cool with these arrangements? If not, 1 can change them no probs. Also, I'm still trying to track down the article you want. Regards, [1 WHow to Teach Vocabulary Conclusions Looking ahead 12 Note the difference in style between words and expressions like lateness of the hour and discommode (formal, and somewhat archaic, on the one hand) and are you cael, no probs, track down (colloquial and spoken, on the other). Linked to style is the issue of connotation. Two words may be synonyms, but each may evoke quite different associations, Famous and notorious both have an underlying meaning of «well-known, but only the latter has negative connotations. In this book, you will find the term /earners used in preference to students or pupils, which have somewhat passive connotations. In the following newspaper text, the emotive connotations of the underlined words ‘emphasise the writer's disapproval of an event that itself was triggered by a politician's use of the negative (or pejorative) term ‘mongrel EX-PRIME Minister Ted Heath last night torpedoed William Hague’s desperate bid to shut down the Tory race row. He compared maverick MP John Townend — who described the British as a ‘mongrel race’ ~ to Enoch Powell and said he should be kicked out of the party. Sir Ted, who booted Powell out in 1968, warned ‘many other’ right-wing MPs shared ‘Townend extreme views. (from The Sun newspaper) In this chapter the aim has been to show that a word is a more complex phenomenon than at first it might appear. For example: + words have different functions, some carrying mainly grammatical meaning, while others bear a greater informational load + the same word can have a variety of forms + words can be added to, or combined, to form new words + words can group together to form units that behave as if they were single words + many words commonly co-occur with other words + words may look and/or sound the same but have quite different meanings * one word may have a variety of overlapping meanings + different words may share similar meanings, or may have opposite meanings + some words can be defined in terms of their relationship with other words ~ whether, for example, they belong to the same set, or co-occur in similar texts * words can have the same or similar meanings but be used in ditferent situations or for different effects Now that we have looked at some of the complexities of vocabulary, the next chapter will examine how words are learned, both in the first language and in a second language. We will also explore how theories of learning might impact on the teaching of vocabulary - a theme that will be developed in subsequent chapters.How important is vocabulary? w words are rned w important is vocabulary? hat does it mean to ‘know a word’? How is our word knowledge organised? How is vocabulary learned? How many words does a learner need to know? How are words remembered? Why do we forget words? What makes a word difficult? What kind of mistakes do learners make? What are the implications for teaching? “Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.’ This is how the linguist David Wilkins summed up the importance of vocabulary learning. His view is echoed in this advice to students from a recent coursebook (Dellar H and Hocking D, Innovations, LTP): If you spend most of your time studying grammar, your English will not improve very much. You will see most improvement if you learn more words and expressions. You can say very little with grammar, but you can say almost anything with words!” Most learners, too, acknowledge the importance of vocabulary acqui- sition, Here are some statements made by learners, in answer to the question How twould you like to improve your English? Oral is my uxakness and I can't speack a fluent sentence in English. Sometimes, I am lack oF useful vocabularies to express my opinons. + My problem is that 1 forget the words soon after I inave locked in the dictionary. For example when I read a English beck I would ke to wnprove my vocabulary. I have the fecling that 1 always use the same idiomatic expressions to express different sort oF things. I'd ike to enlarge my vocabulary (this word I also had to find in dictionary). Too oFten my speaking is hard caused by missing words. However, vocabulary teaching has not always been very responsive to such problems, and teachers have not fully recognised the tremendous communicative advantage in developing an extensive vocabulary. For a long 13How to Teach Vocabulary 4 time, teaching approaches such as the Direct Method and audiolingualism gave greater priority to the teaching of grammatical structures. In order not to distract from the learning of these structures, the number of words introduced in such courses was kept fairly low. Those words which were taught were often chosen either because they were easily demonstrated, or because they fitted neatly into the ‘structure of the day’. The advent of the communicative approach in the 1970s set the stage for a major re-think of the role of vocabulary. The communicative value of a core vocabulary has always been recognised, particularly by tourists, A phrase book or dictionary provides more communicative mileage than a grammar — in the short term at least. Recognition of the meaning-making potential of words meant that vocabulary became a learning objective in its own right. In 1984, for example, in the introduction to their Cambridge English Course, Swan and Walter wrote that ‘vocabulary acquisition is the largest and most important task facing the language learner’. Coursebooks began to include activities that specifically targeted vocabulary. Nevertheless, most language courses were (and still are) organised around grammar syllabuses. There are good grounds for retaining a grammatical organisation. While vocabulary is largely a collection of items, grammar is a system of rules. Since one rule can generate a great many sentences, the teaching of grammar is considered to be more productive. Grammar multiplies, while vocabulary merely adds. However, two key developments were to challenge the hegemony of grammar. One was the lexical syllabus, that is, a syllabus based on those words that appear with a high degree of frequency in spoken and written English, The other was recognition of the role of lexical chunks (see page 6) in the acquisition of language and in achieving fluency. Both these developments (which we will look at more closely in Chapter 7) were fuelled by discoveries arising from the new science of corpus linguistics. The effect of these developments has been to raise awareness as to the key role vocabulary development plays in language learning. Even if most coursebooks still adopt a grammatical syllabus, vocabulary is no longer treated as an ‘add-on. Much more attention is given to the grammar of words, to collocation and to word frequency. This is reflected in the way coursebooks are now promoted. For example, the back covers of three recent courses claim: Strong emphasis on vocabulary, with a particular focus on high frequency, useful words and phrases. (from Cutting Edge Intermediate) Well-defined vocabulary syllabus plus dictionary training and pronun- ciation practice, including the use of phonetics. (from New Headway English Course) a strongly lexical syllabus, presenting and practising hundreds of natural expressions which students will find immediately useful. (from Innovations)What does it mean to ‘know a word’? 2 © How words are learned We have been talking about the importance of having an extensive vocabulary ~ that is, knowing lots of words. But what does it mean to Anow a word? At the most basic level, knowing a word involves knowing: + its form, and + its meaning If tell you that there is, in Maori, a word that takes the form fangi, you can not really claim to say you ‘know #angi’ since you don't know what sangi means. The form of the word tells you nothing about its meaning. So, what does ¢angi mean? Well, it means sound. But is that sound the noun, or sound the verb, as in f sound? In fact, it can mean both ~ so part of knowing the meaning of cangi is knowing its grammatical function. But tangi doesn’t mean only sound; it also means lamentation, dirge and to weep. In fact the waiata fangi (Funeral lament) is an integral part of the tangihanga, or Maori funeral ceremony, so much so that éangi has come to mean (colloquially) simply fimeral, But, of course, not a funeral in the European sense. A Maori tangi is a very different kind of ceremony. For a start ... (and so on), In other words, knowing the meaning of a word is not just knowing its dictionary meaning (or meanings) ~ it also means knowing the words commonly associated with it (its collocations) as well as its connotations, including its register and its cultural accretions. Finally, we need to distinguish between receptive knowledge and productive knowledge. Now that you know the meaning of sangi you can probably make sense of the opening passage from the short story ‘Tangi’ by Witi Thimaera: Do not listen to the wailing, Tama, Do not listen to the women chanting their sorrows, the soaring waiata tangi which sings alone and disconsolate above the wailing. It is only the wind, Tama. Do not listen to the sorrows of the marae ... Assuming you understood tangi in this extract, you may still feel uncomfortable about working the word into a letter or dropping it into a conversation. (And so far you have only had its written form, not its spoken form.) In other words, you have receptive, but not productive, knowledge of, the word. Receptive knowledge exceeds productive knowledge and generally ~ but not always ~ precedes it. That is, we understand more words than we utter, and we usually understand them defore we are capable of uttering them. 5