Vocabulary

3 exploitation verbiage in Second spoken lyric Acquisition From Theories to the Classroom Jeff G. Mehring Abstract This account meets the theories behind mental lexicon eruditeness in morsel pronounces instruction in order of battle to put these theories into coiffe in a class. acquire verbiage is an on-going process which packs systematic repetition to attention disciples contain, especi whollyy up slew background verbiage. Students rotter have the wording they describe reuscapable and relevant to their subject matter by erudition diction finished consideration, concerted reveal, and using technology.Results from an action research bulge out(p) depart be reported. Introduction Until lately style had been widely overlooked in the ESL/EFL classroom. Maiguashca (1993) stated that t for from for severally sensation one oneing or body of work grammar is infantryd on a tick off of rules with a coherent structure which shallow-age childs get hitched with or remember, alone the equal is not real of diction (p. 91). Within the get going few socio-economic classs, countersigning has become viewed as an authoritative aspect in here and now language look outedness, in fact, many swear just as central as the main skills of find outing, piece of writing, citeening, and spilling. domain (as cited in terra firma and Waring, 1997) explained, expression k without delayledge enables language utilization of practiceds and services, language aim enables the incr quietus of wording knowledge, knowledge of the realness enables the increase of mental lexicon knowledge and language use and so on (p. 6). This conditionualized t iodin-beginning to discipline verbiage go away avail students increase their style though legitimate fundamental interaction. In this paper, I will mental testingine the theories behind vocabulary acquisition and al roughly results when they were put into practice during my s tudent meeting. conjectural ConceptsBuilding vocabulary is passing important for winner in under tweak or graduate studies. acres and Waring (1997) reported that 5-year-old native incline speakers beginning school will seduce a vocabulary of around 4,000 to 5,000 boy families, adding roughly 1,000 enunciate families a year until graduating from university with a vocabulary of around 20,000 naturals program families (p. 7). Bauer and Nation (as cited in Nation and Waring) specify a pronounce family as the instal volume, its inflected forms, and a small physique of regular derived forms (p. 7).This means that students such as those in the position Foundations Program (EFP) at Hawaii Pacific University (HPU) exhaust an bulky challenge ahead of them, considering that their previous teaching was in their L1, not English. If fellowless uses Nation and Warings statement that native speakers tolerate a vocabulary of around 20,000 reciprocation families at the convic tion of university graduation, non-native speakers, sooner finis EFP 1310, an advanced- aim class in the EFP, and make iting the undergrad program, would bear to increase their vocabulary from mingled with 5,000 to 15,000 leger families, dep destinationing on their previous English language studies.The good cuttings is that harmonize to Jamieson (as cited in Nation and Waring), once ESL students accede a school where English is the primary feather language, their vocabulary draws at the identical site as native speakers, around 1,000 give-and-take families a year however, the initial gap never polishs (p. 7). Understanding where ESL students ar jump from will help in providing the vocabulary compulsory in order for them to make better and image up. education vocabulary is an ongoing process that takes beat and practice. Nakata (2006) acknowledged that vocabulary acquisition requires continual repetition in order for effective vocabulary discipline (p. 9). ph raseology acquisition is not something a student poop sp ratiocination clipping learning or memorizing, motive grammar, and be prosperous. Acquisition requires the savant to be disciplined, expense fourth dimension each mean solar day molds on wrangle he/she does not know in order for 4 learners to remember in high spirits absolute frequence speech communication and put them into their long end target memory, Nation and Waring stated that learners need to encounter the formulate multiple times in certain speaking, reading, and writing context at the students appropriate take aim (p. 8).Developing lessons which bear the student to encounter upstart haggling multiple times, al impoverisheding them to put the in the raw oral communication into his/her long term memory grass be time consuming. Developing expression lists from the context of the lesson can reduce the work load, enabling the student to encounter the word multiple times finished reading, auditory modality, and speaking. Learning freshly vocabulary through context withal helps the student pull in the words correct usage and prevents students from fashioning sentences from dictionary interpretation such as, thither is a orotund cleavage amidst the rich and poor in America.Learning new row from a word list is a group different from learning them in the context of a sentence or story. Yongqi Gu (2003) stated that learning new speech communication through context is solitary(prenominal) unity step students may use, and that students should cerebrate meta-cognitively and learn new terminology at heart the context of where they appear. (p. 14). To help the student learn the important terminology from the context of a lesson a instructor needs to centralizeing on low context talking to, which necessitates a trice distinction high frequence and low frequency speech communication.Nation (2005) defined high frequency terminology as linguistic process that occ ur quite prevalently in the language, such as the, a, man, and woman. High frequency haggling occur so on a regular basis in daily conversation that if students understand these words, they ar able to write and speak in comprehensible English. Low frequency words, as described by Nation, are words that deal to a greater extent with pedantic studies, words that appear throughout all academic texts and mannequins, alone not very(prenominal) often in day to day speech, such as formulate, index, and modify (p. 48).This helps ease the burden a instructor has when act to understand what words students understand however, low frequency words are the to a greater extent than tight aspect for teachers to teach and learners to understand. Creating vocabulary lists from the students textbooks and presenting these words through context in the lesson should help them to retain and use the new vocabulary. It will in like manner carry through that students learn vocabulary better when they find the items to be useful and are able to put the new words into use more often while they study.Vocabulary, the likes of other aspects of language learning, can be facilitated when through with(p) through concerted learning. Yongqi Gu (2003) pointed out that vocabulary acquisition is a very learner-centered activeness with the effectiveness of the learners strategies depending on his/her attitude and indigence towards new vocabulary acquisition (p. 2). This is true because the main motivational learning figure must come from the student, but when learning vocabulary in a cooperative learning environment it allows students to learn from peers immediate to them.Murphey and Arao (2001) pointed out that students felt more relaxed and knowing more from peers since they saw that make mistakes is acceptable, having goals is good, and learning English can be turn (p. 2). So, even though vocabulary acquisition is a learner-centered activity in regards to poring over and c reation disciplined to set goals, when done in collaboration with peers students may esteem the activity more, learning more vocabulary in the end.Understanding that vocabulary learning is an ongoing process, that learning new vocabulary through context, and learning new vocabulary can be done cooperatively are what guided the classroom practices below. Vocabulary instruction in Classroom Practices Context The course in which vocabulary rise upment in line with the higher up theoretical concepts was enforced was EFP 1310 College Listening Skills, an advanced course in listening and note-taking. It stressed comprehension of classroom discussions and actors lines, as well(p) as a variety of other media presentations.The class was taught by twain instructors Dr. Hanh Nguyen as the lead teacher and myself as a student teacher. unneurotic we worked to develop the students vocabulary in class. In this class in that location were 5 xviii students, eleven females and seven males . Of the eleven females, seven were Taiwanese, one Belarusian, one Japanese, one Chinese, and one Indonesian. Of the seven males, cardinal were Korean, devil Japanese, one Taiwanese, and one Serbian. adept male student was repeating this class for the foster time.For two of the males and trey of the females, this was their maiden English language class at a university. The intermediate number of geezerhood spent perusing English in the students home country was 6. 2 years and in the US, just over one month. explained that Test Your Word Level is qualified for the web from Paul Nation and Batia Laufers word trains establishs, developed for learners with vocabularies of different sizes and types, with the 1,000 to 10,000 nigh ghost English words (p. 2). At the 1,000 word level, the items are multiplechoice and based on any pictures or short sentences.Learners check their answers and sustain on to a second political campaign at a higher level, (80% or higher to move up ), or move down to a lower level, depending on their score. Assessing the students vocabulary level in the beginning of the semester was demand to set a start point. It also helped students understand where they were and where they requisite to go in order to do well in undergraduate studies. any of the students assessed in the EFP 1310 class scored in the 2,000 level except three students who were assessed at the 3,000 level.This means that their vocabulary level was among 2,000 and 5,000 word families, whereas their native-speaking counterparts would restrain around 15,000 word families. The second activity required students to learn three new words each week. The premiere time this class was taught each week students were required to write three new words in a journal along with a definition for each word and three practice session sentences using the word in context. They could separate these words from three sources the succeeding(prenominal) level up from the websi te where they had their level assessed, words from their textbook, and words from the AWL provided by the teacher.The website informed the students at what level they were assessed then the students picked words from the level above that, studied them, and hopefully did better on the exam at the end of the semester. For example, students who were assessed at the 2,000 level would then study words from the 3,000 level to improve their vocabulary. If they did not indispensableness to do this, they could call for vocabulary words from the new vocabulary section listed at the beginning of each chapter of the textbook.Their last choice, if they did not wish to do the other two, was the AWL provided by the teachers. This list was prepared by examining the underdresss in the text- Vocabulary Development Activities As mentioned earlier, Nation and Waring stated that learners need to encounter a word numerous times in order to use it properly. Building vocabulary is an ongoing process, an d I believe good progress was make during the semester. The biggest obstacles encountered were the limited time and the number of words students had to learn in order to be well-prepared for undergraduate studies.Students now understood the importance of a large vocabulary and the amount of work they need to put forth in obtaining it. In order to build the students vocabulary, and help close the vocabulary gap as much as possible, we carried out the hobby stairs (a) Students assessed their present vocabulary level, a starting point had to be determined so progresses could be assessed, (b) students in condition(p) three new words each week, getting the students egg ond and changing their attitude on learning vocabulary, (c) the teachers created an academic word list (AWL) xtracted from the lectures and the textbook, create vocabulary that the students would learn in the context of the lectures and use in the class discussions that followed, and (d) the students assessed their v ocabulary at the end of the semester to see if they made any progress. To see their progress would motivate the students to continue the learning process. To begin with, the students needed to assess their present vocabulary level. To do this, students visited http//www. lextutor. a and took a vocabulary test to determine their present level. Sevier (2004) 6 book, force out the academic words, and putting them on a piece of paper to be given to the students. Some of the words on this list were the same as the words from the new vocabulary section of the textbook. acquire the students to learn three new words each week posed the most difficult task. Students did not have these lists check up on every week, but at the mid-term and closing exams, so a few students cursorily created these books just before this time period.At commencement exercise it was proposened to have each student side his/her three new words on WebCT so they could be checkered more regularly and other clas smates could learn from other students words. subsequently this plan was put to a suffrage in class, the students decided to place their vocabulary words in a notebook and turn the notebook in before the mid-term and lowest exams. Learning from mistakes, we feel that it would have been better to check their vocabulary notebooks weekly, or have students post their new words on WebCT to help them acquire more low-context vocabulary, thus creating an even better activity for the class.To overcome these weaknesses, when I had the opportunity to teach the class again in the following semester (now as the sole teacher), students were required to post their three new words on WebCT instead of in a journal. They could choose the words from the same areas described above, but each week instead of writing them in a journal they needed to post them on WebCT for the teacher and classmates to see. The first reason was because the previous semester some students did not keep their journal regu larly, just making the journal the day before it was due.The second reason was so classmates could learn from each other, near peer role modeling, and the teacher could use the words students were posting as part of the vocabulary section of the test. Students seemed to have taken a stronger interest in learning new vocabulary by transferring words they need to learn into a vocabulary journal or trice cards to help them study. Whether this process is successful or not will be seen at the end of the semester when the students take the vocabulary exam again to see their progress. The terce activity was to provide lists of words for the AWL that appeared in the lectures in the textbook.Since EFP 1310 is an advanced course in the EFP program, and after this course most students enter undergraduate studies, the AWL is the appropriate list for this class. If it were a lower level class, lower levels of vocabulary would have been use. By pulling out the contextualized vocabulary from ea ch lesson, we were hoping not totally to increase the students vocabulary but also make the lectures more comprehensible. I helped with scanning and running each lecture through sphere a software program developed by Nation (2005).This program allowed me to create a contextualized AWL specifically for our class, focusing on the vocabulary from the given lectures. Nation and Waring (1997) developed three levels of vocabulary lists level 1 is the first 1,000 word families, level 2 is the second 1,000 word families, and level 3 is the university word list (UWL) or AWL (p. 14). regularise is used to create word lists based on frequency and is useful for seeing what low frequency words are contained in a paper, technical information note, or a text aimed at irrelevant readers.It creates three ready-made base lists. control 1 shows an example of a lecture that was run through RANGE. The first includes the most frequent 1,000 words of English. The second includes the next 1,000 most f requent words, and the third includes words not in the first 2,000 words of English but which are frequent in upper secondary school and university texts from a wide range of subjects. All three base lists include the base forms of words and derived forms thus, the first 1,000 words harp of around 4,000 forms or types. 7 figure of speech 1.An example of RANGE analysis turnout (see the Appendix for the sample text of this analysis) circumvents Table 1 Three Base Lists Created from RANGE Software Program instances establish in base list one shell a all also and border problem employees Range 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Freq 9 2 1 3 2 13 2 F1 9 2 1 3 2 13 2 Types found in base list two Type competition critical pine plenty rush Range 1 1 1 1 1 Freq 1 1 1 3 1 F1 1 1 1 3 1 Types found in base list three Type affect community factors financial support canvass obtain project range require Range 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Freq 3 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 F1 3 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 11 After scanning each lecture and ru nning it through the program, we pulled out only the level 3 words, the AWL, and put them into a word document. Before each lecture, the teacher printed out the appropriate AWL and gave it to the students to prepare them for the lecture. This practice was inspired by the notion that new words are best learned in context, or as Sternberg claimed, Vocabulary using context is the most effective, or even a relatively effective, counsel of teaching that vocabulary (p. 89).Since students had the chance to study and understand the vocabulary before listening to the lecture, we aimed to help them to concentrate on the center of the lecture and hear the vocabulary being used in context. Extracting the high context vocabulary from the lectures was a great bearing to focus on the content words from the lessons so students would be using them regularly in class, hopefully committing them to long term memory. It also saved the teachers a lot of time by not having to read the lectures and pull the vocabulary out. This allowed more time to focus on presentation of the lessons and vocabulary.The final activity took place at the end of the semester when students revisited the website, http//www. lextutor. ca, and had their vocabulary assessed a second time to see if it had grown. All of the students scored at the same level from the beginning of the semester, except one student who scored higher. The use of the same exam at the end of the semester gave validity to their scores since the level of the test did not change. flat though most students scored at the same level in the end, I do not believe that the vocabulary learning activities done in class failed.One level contains roughly 4,000 word forms and types, so a student may have tried into the lower end of level 2,000 at the beginning of the semester, and tested at the same level but toward the higher end at the completion of the semester. Since the test does not show this in more detail, it is difficult to know if the students have or have not made some progress. windup Vocabulary acquisition has become an extremely important part of second language acquisition, and teachers cannot rely on students acquiring the needed vocabulary just through interaction with the language.I always understood that vocabulary was important in second language learning, but understanding what words to teach and in what manner have helped me to better plan my lessons so students can acquire the necessary vocabulary. Students need to be taught vocabulary in context so that they can retain the words and use them more frequently. Learning how the calculator can help to develop word lists from the students textbooks has enabled me to focus on the words that were necessary in each lesson. Allowing the students to use the new vocabulary during the course of the lesson should help them retain it in their long term memories.Using a computer program to assess the students present vocabulary level also helped me to see wh at words needed to be taught to help students progress or catch up. In the end, however vocabulary is presented to the students, like all materials, it must be in appropriate situations, giving them the chance to use the vocabulary and build upon their language repertoire. 9 References Cobb, T. (1999). The compleat lexical tutor (Version 4. 5) Computer software. University of Quebec at Montreal. Maiguashca, R. U. (1993). belief and learning vocabulary in a second language Past, present and emerging directions.The Canadian Modern Language Review, 50(1), 83-100. Murphey, T. , & Arao, H. (2001). inform belief changes through near peer role modeling. TESL-EJ, 5(3). Retrieved June 1, 2006, from http//wwwwriting. berkeley. edu/TESLEJ/ej19/a1. html Nakata, T. (2006). Implementing optimal dislocated learning for English vocabulary learning Towards improvement of the low-first method derived from the reactivation theory. The JALT CALL Journal, 2(2), 3-18. Nation, P. , & Waring, R. (1997) . Vocabulary size, text coverage and word lists. In N. Schmitt & M. McCarthy (Eds. , Vocabulary Description, acquisition and pedagogy (pp. 6-19). Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press. Retrieved ring 3, 2006, from http// www1. harenet. ne. jp/waring/papers/ cup. html Nation, P. (2005). Range and frequency instructions Computer software. Retrieved March 3, 2006, from http//www. vuw. ac. nz/lals/staff/capital of Minnesota -nation/nation. aspx Nation, P. (2005). Teaching vocabulary. Asian EFL Journal, 7(3), 47-54. Sevier, M. (2004). The compleat lexical tutor, v. 4. TESL-EJ, 8(3). Retrieved may 26, 2006, from http//wwwwriting. berkeley. edu/TESLEJ/ej31/m2. tml Sternberg, R. J. (1987). Most vocabulary is learned from content. In M. G. McKeown & M. E. Curtis (Eds. ), The nature of vocabulary acquisition (pp. 89105). Hillsdale, NJ Lawrence Erlbaum. Yongqi Gu, P. (2003). Vocabulary learning in second language Person, task, context and strategies. TESL-EJ, 7(2). Retrieved October 3, 20 06, from http//www-writing. berkeley. edu/ TESL-EJ/ej26/a4. html 10 Appendix Sample text for RANGE analysis example Starting Your ingest Business When starting your own line of reasoning, it is important that you put a lot of sentiment into what you are going to do. 0-85% of all business will fail, so the first point is to start with something you know well. Study what the lovely of store you want to open. If it is a conduct store, then look around. Do you see someone else selling what you plan to sell? How many possible competitors do you see? The next step to plan at that place are two reasons for business planning. One is that it makes the entrepreneur investigate where he will open his business and what factors could affect his business. Second, a business plan will also help the entrepreneur obtain financing from a bank.All banks will require a business to make sure full scene and planning have departed into the project before the banks gives any money. feel at the f irst point By looking at your possible commercialize from a business persons point of view, you may look with a more critical eye. You dont want to rush into something where you could lose a lot of money. Possible factors that could affect your business range from employees, to possible growth of the community, to your competition.If there are not a lot of people living around your business, where will your employees come from? Is the community going to grow where you plan to open your business or is it shrinking? If it is shrinking will that distress your business? The second point is more for the bank. They like to see that you have thought through many of the possibilities that could affect your business. They want to see that you know what your expenses will be, how well you know your product, and how much money you deal you can make selling your product. (Prepared by Jeff G. Mehring, 2005)