Vocabulary Acquisition

Birch, B. (2011). (2nd Ed.) English L2 Reading: Getting to the Bottom. New York, NY: Routledge, ch. 9

Salient Points:

How do teachers teach vocabulary with reading comprehension? There are bottom-up and top-down strategies. The top down strategies comprehension include:

• looking at the headings or summaries making predictions
• skimming for the gist
• scanning for important information, etc.

Word learning strategies include:

• providing background knowledge to create context for new words
• pre-reading practice
• vocabulary journals
• finding textual cues
• the cognate strategy
• morphological rules
• collocations

Skipping unknown words--There are three assumptions of reading instruction:

1. ELL L2 readers can compensate for lack of specific language knowledge with background knowledge.
2. Readers don't have to understand everything in a text to achieve adequate comprehension.
3. Vocabulary learning takes up too much time in a lesson. Teachers assume readers will "get it" the more they read.

Reading for short term task only allows for a short-term memory of words. It is detrimental to long-term vocabulary building.

There are some learner variables in vocabulary acquisition: the ability to repute new words easily and using probabilistic reasoning and analogy to know spelling patterns.

The phonological loop is when a word is heard, creating a phonological image. The loop consists of two parts--a knowledge based called a phonological store and a rehearsal base that refreshes representations that disappear from short-term memory. Active word processors attempt to pronounce words and start up the phonological store.

Lexical variables in vocabulary acquisition are:

1. acoustic similarity where words with acoustic differences confuse the phonological loop in the ELL L2 learner
2. word length, which affects storage and retention in the phonological loop
3. pronounceability where more pronounceable words are easier to learn
4. orthography: l1 orthography can help in reading the L2, because of overlap between two systems, although this is only if the orthographies are similar.

Nouns are easier to learn than verbs. Transparent languages make connections between the L1 and L2 more easily, even with opaque parts of speech. Probabilistic reasoning can identify parts of speech.

Words can e formed in many ways: borrowing from other languages, compounding (common in English), acronyms and abbreviations, back formations and clipping, conversion, and blending.

Word meaning can be taught in many ways: metaphors (denotations), reasoning by analogy, polysemy (metaphors that are so common they lose special status as a figure of speech), and homonymy.

There are many word learning strategies including repetition and the key word strategy (associating unknown word with L1 word by means of a mediating word (bread is pan in Spanish, and bread is made in a pan). However, the keyword strategy does not always work.

Implications:

• There are a variety of ways to teach vocabulary and teachers should get creative and make it a fun process. They can teach the top-down strategies, because they are useful for reading comprehension, but also teaching the bottom up strategies and straight vocabulary activities are also useful.

• The old assumption of skipping a word you do not know will not work for ELLs (and native speaking readers). They can use top down strategies to help, but they can also use vocabulary building strategies as well. For example, they can keep a vocabulary journal (with pictures) of all the words they do not know, a definition, the sentences where they found them in the text, and their own sentences.

• It is true that with extensive exposure to reading, readers will acquire more vocabulary, but there still needs to be direct instruction in vocabulary, and teachers can teach their students what to do before they read the text, during their reading, and after they finish reading the text.

• We as teachers want to make our students word conscious and excited about words. If they are excited about words, they will want to read more. We want to create voracious readers who enjoy discovering new worlds and new vocabulary.

• Often times, ELLs can get discouraged, because they do not know a lot of the vocabulary in the assigned texts from their mainstream classes. As ESL/EFL teachers, we can help them build a decent vocabulary set that they can use in their future classes. We can make reading more accessible and not so daunting.

• We have to be advocates for our students and collaborate with the mainstream teachers. They need to know that vocabulary is important and that they should not brush it aside.