Vocabulary aspects of reading... with special attention to what the teacher can do

1. Vocabulary aspects of reading... with special attention to what the teacher can do Part 1: You need vocab in order to read

2. The learner needs to know vocab in order to read... • ....but not only vocab. • What other kinds of knowledge does a learner need in order to read? Aka What factors potentially affect ‘readability’ of text? • Is vocab the top problem? • TASK

3. Factors affecting readability.... • Can we improve on this?... • Ease-of-reading is the result of the interaction between the text and the reader. • In the reader, those features affecting readability are 1. prior knowledge, 2. reading skill, 3. interest, and 4. motivation. • In the text, those features are 1. content, 2. style, 3. design/format, and 4. structure • (Gray and Leary 1935; style includes vocab and grammatical complexity; design = print font, layout etc.; structure = text organisation, paragraphing etc.)

4. Gray and Leary found… • Of the 64 countable variables related to reading difficulty, those with correlations of .35 or above were the following (p.115): • Average sentence length in words: -.52 (a negative correlation, that is, the longer the sentence the more difficult it is).2. Percentage of easy words: .52 (the larger the number of easy words the easier the material).3. Number of words not known to 90% of sixth-grade students: -.514. Number of “easy” words: .515. Number of different “hard” words: -.506. Minimum syllabic sentence length: -.49 • ….so words are the top = problem with sentence length

5. Can you spot what lexical items might be least likely to be known in this FCE text?... So cause vocab-related difficulty • Is it just ‘unknown words’? • TASK

6. Types of vocab problem... • Words you know you don’t know • Words etc. which you think you know but cannot retrieve • Also unknown meanings and phrases with words that you know in other meanings • Words etc. which you think you know but actually don’t (Laufer 1997 ‘mistaken ID’)

7. What % of words in a text actually does a reader need to know in order to read it successfully? (assuming the focus is on reading comprehension, not ‘vocabulary mining’) • The coverage ‘threshold’

8. Density of unknown words in relation to comprehension • Comprehension figures based on Hu &Nation (2000) who had students read a text with differing % of nonsense words, no dictionaries allowed, followed by a 14 item m/c comprehension test

9. What % coverage gives an appropriate % comprehension? • It depends on..... What? • TASK

10. The ideal % lexical coverage (% of words known by the reader already) depends on: • type of text (fiction, academic...; how clearly structured…) • length of text • what % comprehension score you regard as ‘successful’: 55% (Laufer 1989) or 100%? • purpose of reading (intensive, extensive1, extensive2) • amount of support (dictionary, teacher etc.)

11. Hu and Nation’s answer on coverage: • 95% needed to read intensively, with support of dictionary, teacher etc. (level i + 1) • 98% needed to read extensively1 for pleasure without use of dictionary, for vocab expansion purposes (level i + .5) • 100% needed to read extensively2 for pleasure without use of dictionary, for fluency purposes (level i)

12. What are the teacher’s (or textbook’s) solutions if a text has too many unknown words for specific readers? TASK

13. Specific to the text: • Change the text for an easier one • Simplify the text • Preteach the vocab in the specific text • Allow more resources to be available (e.g. ask teacher, peers, dictionary) when reading the text. • More general solutions to implement, before expecting such texts to be read: • e. Train learners in WAS, incl. dic. use • f. Raise the readers’ general lexical prof

14. a. Change the text for an easier one • Often not an option in practice... e.g. required syllabus, textbook, exam. Fine with extensive reading. • How to choose a suitable text? TASK

15. Three ways of assessing the vocab level of a text (% of words likely to be unknown) • Teacher judgment of text, based on knowledge of students and what vocab they are likely not to know • Use of Compleat Lexical Tutor facilities to check text against general frequency (what frequency level of words do students need to know to attain 95% or 98% coverage?) or a specific syllabus wordlist. Students’ vocab prof profile can also be measured to assess the match. Khim. • Rely on learner judgment as to whether a text is at the right level for them? (Hu and Nation found 2/3 students could predict their comprehension scores within 14%)

16. b. Simplify the text, aka ‘Input modification’ • Often not an option either... • But anyway how do people do it? TASK

17. Methods of simplifying text • replacing/removing hard words, so all vocab is within a certain frequency level (the usual choice of publishers). E M Forster example text TASK • keeping them, but building in extra clues so they can be easily guessed (context enhancement) • providing glosses along with the text (a common teacher choice). • Danger of oversimplification so words are 100% known: triage

18. Simplification by context enhancement • Our uncle was a nomad, an incurable wanderer who could never stay in one place • “I’ll take the money now before I leave” “Oh certainly”, Professor Ruddle agreed. “Of course you can have your cheque immediately”. He wrote quickly across the green paper, and tore it out of his chequebook. Cartney looked hard at the number: one hundred dollars. And the name of the bank: the Farmers and Growers Bank. He pushed the cheque into his shirt pocket. (Longman Structural Readers Me Myself and I)

19. c. Preteach the vocab in the specific text • Often done in practice • A variety of possible ways of doing it…. TASK • But what are the disadvantages? • Bright and Mcgregor’s objection • Triage: see again FCE text … TASK

20. d. Allow more resources to be available (e.g. ask teacher, peers, dictionary) when reading the text. • Again not a solution for exam reading typically • but fine in other reading circumstances, arguably • relies on availability of sources, dictionary skills

21. a-d overall • Beware making the text too easy if new vocab needs to be met and acquired • Allow for some exercise of WAS such as inferencing alongside appeal

22. e. and f. Have received much attention recently: to prepare students for reading harder texts is it better to teach... • reading strategies (incl. WAS), or ... • vocab?

23. e. Train learners in WAS, incl. dic. use • Some WAS are not used in L1, so potentially need teaching. E.g....? • Some WAS may occur in L1 so arguably don’t need teaching. They can be transferred. E.g.....? • Some WAS used in L1, however, may be only usable in L2 above a certain threshold level of lang prof (incl. esp. vocab prof) relative to the language level of the text. E.g...? • ...so will not transfer or usefully be taught unconditionally

24. The language proficiency threshold hypothesis: ‘Is L2 reading a reading problem or a language problem?’ • (Alderson 1984). • L2 reading ability seen as L1 reading ability + L2 language knowledge (incl. vocab) • L1 reading ability, apart from L1 language knowledge, largely consists of reading strategic competence (incl. WAS) and relevant non-linguistic knowledge (content and formal schemata)

25. General conclusion on (e): • No point in teaching certain reading strategies (incl. some WAS) that are above the threshold to students below (i.e. who would not know a high enough % of words in the texts they have to read) • Next week we will look more at teaching WAS and other VLS (e) • Where students are below the language competence threshold for texts they need to read, teach vocab (f)!

26. f. Raise the readers’ general lexical proficiency • What is the vocab size that may be the threshold for independent reading of general authentic texts? • Test readers’ vocab size and, if it is below the threshold , teach the most frequent word families (f) • Then WAS can kick in as per the threshold hypothesis (e).

27. To read authentic novels and have coverage of 95-98% of the running words, so a chance of adequate comprehension, a learner would need a vocabulary size of 3000-5000 word families • (Nation and Waring 1997; or 5000-8000 words). • (Note: Proper nouns,which typically account for 4-5% of the running words, are counted as known words that do not need to be learned before reading a novel. A word family is a set of words related by wordformation, such as happy, unhappy, happiness, happily etc. as well as by inflection happy, happier, happiest)

28. What about ESP reading? • To successfully read authentic texts of the field of tourism (EOP), is it more important to know frequent general English words or words distinctively frequent in tourism texts? Carlota

29. Bibliography Alderson, J.C. (1984). Reading in a foreign language: a reading problem or a language problem? In J.C. Alderson and A. H. Urquhart (eds.), Reading in a Foreign Language. London: Longman. Bright J.A. and G.P McGregor. (1970). Teaching English as a second language. London: Longman Gray, W. S. and B. Leary. (1935). What makes a book readable. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Hu M. Hsueh-chao and P. Nation (2000). Unknown Vocabulary Density and Reading Comprehension Reading in a Foreign Language, 13(1) Hirsh, D. and P. Nation. (1992). What vocabulary size is needed to read unsimplified texts for pleasure? Reading in a Foreign Language 8, 2: 689-696. Krashen S. (1993). The power of reading. Eaglewood Colorado: Libraries Unlimited. Laufer, B. (1989) What percentage of text-lexis is essential for comprehension? In C. Lauren and M. Nordman (Eds) Special Language: From Humans Thinking to Thinking Machines Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Laufer, B. (1997). The lexical plight in second language reading: words you don't know, words you think you know and words you can't guess. In Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition: a Rationale for Pedagogy, eds. J. Coady and T. Huckin. Cambridge University Press. pp. 20-34 Nation, P & Waring, R. (1997). Vocabulary size, text coverage, and word lists. In Schmitt N, & McCarthy, M. (Eds). Vocabulary: Description, Acquisition, Pedagogy. New York: Cambridge University Press, p. 6-19

31. Vocabulary aspects of reading... with special attention to what the teacher can do Part 2: You can learn vocab through reading

32. Where there is little reading there will be little language learning (Bright and McGregor 1970, p10)

33. Basics • The learner can valuably learn vocab from reading • ... but the teacher may need to play a role in making sure it happens effectively • And the reading materials have to have some new lexical material in (not Nation’s extensive2, or oversimplified) • ... in fact in some countries the aim of ‘reading classes’ seems to be actually more to learn lots of new vocab than to develop reading comprehension ability!

34. What do we mean by ‘learning vocabulary’ A: Types of lexical information that can be learnt • There is more to vocab learning than just learning the meaning of a new orthographic word form that is met • What other lexical things can / need to be learnt? TASK • Can they all be learnt though reading?

35. Types of lexical information

36. Common tests of vocabulary learning What lexical information do they target? • Identify the written form (yes/no test) • Recognise/understand one meaning (m/c meaning test) • Recognise/understand one meaning (supply definition in L2, translate into L1) • Recall/supply word in one meaning (o/c gap fill, word translation into TL) e) Know how to use it in a sentence semantically correctly (sentence creation test scored for meaning) f) Know how to use it in a sentence grammatically correctly (sentence creation test scored for grammar) (Paribakht and Wesche)

37. Often researchers talking about vocab learning/acquisition have only measured (b) • Often teachers/textbooks only teach (b) in association with reading

38. What do we mean by ‘learning vocabulary’ B: Two steps • What is the difference between these? • He finally learnt the truth • He finally learnt the poem

39. Two kinds of ‘learning’ or ‘acquisition’ a) He finally learnt the truth: Discovery b) He finally learnt the poem: Consolidation (Schmitt) When reading you only need (a) for immediate message comprehension / communicative needs To ‘learn’ vocabulary in the usual pedagogic sense you need (b) as well Often researchers talking about vocab learning/acquisition have only measured (a) Often teachers mainly focus on (a)

40. Three ways that vocab can be learnt from reading text: • ‘incidentally’ without teacher intervention or conscious activity on the part of the reader • by teacher/textbook doing work with the learners on new vocab found in reading materials they read • by the learners using conscious VLS on words found in reading materials, VLS which the teacher may also teach

41. a. Learning vocab ‘incidentally’ while reading What do we really mean by ‘incidental’? Terminological problem: A) Unconscious, implicit , unaware (vs conscious, explicit) OR B) In a task whose focus is not on vocabulary (vs intentional, vocab-focussed)? (A) seems to imply (B) but (B) does not imply (A) • So we have potentially two kinds of ‘incidental’: • 1 Non-vocab focussed and implicit/unconscious OR • 2 Non-vocab focussed and explicit/conscious

42. Incidental1 (incidental2 we treat as (c)) • The model of L1 reading and Krashen’s input hypothesis suggests all lexical aspects can be learnt incidentally • Typically during extensive1 reading: texts must have the right level of new vocab (2%) • Teacher role then would be to encourage extensive reading by selecting and providing interesting texts of the right level (Likely to be more effective if texts are interesting: Huckin and Coady 1999) • Often not realistic to expect a lot of extensive reading in EFL settings?

43. Effectiveness of incidental1 – How much can be acquired? • Clockwork Orange studies • Malchick Boy • Malenky Little • Maslo Butter • Merzky Filthy • Messel Thought • Mesto Place • Millicent Policeman

44. Clockwork Orange typestudies

45. Problems with Clockwork Orange studies • The rate of new words looks suitable (under 1% of text), but we do not in fact know how many words other than those targeted were unknown • We do not know how many words of those targeted (if not nadsat) were already known • We do not know how many words not targeted by the test were learnt • We do not know if all subjects actually read all the text in the time • We do not know how often targeted words recurred

46. Horst, Cobb and Meara 1998 • Pretested and posttested vocab and recorded % gain = % of words available to be learnt that were learnt, from those pretested (m/c test) • 34 Oman students read along, while the teacher read aloud, all 21,232 words of the simplified Mayor of Casterbridge • Students not allowed to ask meanings or use dictionary; texts not allowed to be taken home • Around 5 words out of 23 available to be learnt were learnt on average = 22% • Correl of text frequency with gain .49 • No correl of frequency in the language with gain .14 • People who scored higher on 5000 word level got higher gain scores more consistently than those who scored well at 2000 level

47. Effectiveness of incidental1 – What is the process and why not very effective? • If reading is message/communication oriented then no attention may be paid to new words even unconsciously. Can one unconsciously pay attention/notice? • Nation’s paradox. If a word is easily guessable it may be less noticed; if it is less guessable it may be noticed but its meaning cannot be learnt • Incidental1 learning presumably depends on educated guesswork (?subconscious in L1) and thus can lead to imprecision, misrecognition, and interference with the reading process.

48. Ellis’s claim about incidental learning • Acquiring a word’s semantic properties and mapping word form to meaning result from explicit learning processes (incidental2) • A word’s form, collocations and grammatical class information are learnt by implicit processes (incidental1) • There is a complete dissociation of implicit (i.e. formal) aspects and explicit (i.e. semantic) aspects of vocabulary acquisition (N. Ellis 1997)

49. The need for focus on form... Incidental1 > incidental2 • The vital shift from text to word meaning can either be triggered by: • learner-specific factors • individual interest in a particular word, • general motivation for vocabulary enlargement, etc. • formal factors • the prominence of a word form • recurring encounters with a word (? How many) • content-related factors such as the word’s centrality for the textual meaning (A Rieder)

50. Modified input: highlighting and incidental2 learning • De Ridder, I. (2002). Does the highlighting of hyperlinks affect incidental vocabulary learning, text comprehension, and the reading process? Language Learning & Technology, 6 (1), 123-146 • Are visible or invisible links more effective in getting students to check unknown vocabulary, and the effect of each on the reading process and vocab learning • Highlighted links are clicked more often but without affecting speed, comprehension or learning of vocab.