Vocabulary Development for ESL Students

1. Vocabulary Development for ESL Students Andy Gibbons Bruce Havostal Bill Camarinos

2. Introduction • “Learning a second language is a long and complex undertaking.” H.D. Brown, Principles of Language Learning and Teaching • No one is more motivated to learn a new language than an ESL student. It is a ticket of admission to mainstream America • Developing an expanded vocabulary is a critical component of the complex undertaking of learning a second language

3. Introduction (Continued) • If you go to Google and type in “ESL vocabulary development” you will be overwhelmed by the amount of information retrieved. • We couldn’t possibly survey all the known strategies. Instead: • Andy Gibbons will focus on the Lexical Approach • Bruce Havostal will describe the strategy of Finding the Meaning from the Text. • Bill Camarinos will explain a personally developed strategy he calls the “Practical and Involved Vocabulary Development Process for ESL Students.”

4. Some Ways of Teaching Vocabulary • Grammar Translation Method • Focus on reading to improve vocabulary • Audio-Lingual Method or Structural Approach-vocabulary secondary to structural patterns • The Lexical Approach. • Teach students how to find the meaning in the text. • The Practical and Involved Vocabulary Development Process. • This evening we will be describing the final three methods on this list.

5. The Lexical Approach • An approach to learning language, not just vocabulary. • Basic premise is that lexis, not grammar, is the basis of language. (“Language is grammaticalized lexis, not lexicalized grammar.” Michael Lewis, The Lexical Approach: The State of ELT and the Way Forward.

6. What is Lexis • Lexis consists of individual vocabulary words but also consists of word combinations (“Lexical Chunks”) that we store in our mental lexicons. • The theory behind the lexical approach is that language production involves piecing together ready-made units appropriate for a particular situation.

7. Lexical Chunks • Also known as lexical phrases, formulaic language, and frozen or semi-frozen phrases. • Different types • polywords (e.g. by the way, upside down) • Collocations or word partnerships (e.g. community service, absolutely convinced) • Institutionalized Utterances (e.g. I’ll get it. We’ll see, If I were you… • Sentence frames (e.g. That is not as … as you think.)

8. Lexical Chunks (Continued) • Sentence heads (e.g. The fact was that….) • Text frames (e.g. In this paper we explore….Firstly...; Secondly…; Finally….) • “Rather than trying to break things into ever smaller pieces, there is a larger effort to see things in larger, more holistic ways.” Michael Lewis, “Pedagogical Implications of the Lexical Approach.”

9. Exercise • Write down a phrase or sentence that includes the word “figment.”

10. Implications of the Exercise-Does It Support the Notion of Lexical Chunks? • Supporters of Lexical Theory would argue that we did not extract a syntactical structure from our grammar mental store and the appropriate words from our vocabulary mental store. • They would say that we went into our lexicon of words and lexical phrases and retrieved something like “It (is/was) a figment of (his/her/your) imagination.”

11. Learning Activities Appropriate for the Lexical Approach • Intensive and extensive listening and reading in the target language. • Repetitive, recycled activities (e.g. summarizing a text orally one day and then doing the same thing several days later). • Guessing the meaning of vocabulary items from context • Noting and recording language patterns and collocations • Working with dictionaries and other reference tools.

12. Finding the Meaning from the Text • Also called lexical inferencing is a strategy ESL students use to learn vocabulary. • Involves making inferences “or ‘informed guesses’ about the meaning of words based on linguistic and non-linguistic cues in the text”, Haastrup’s study (as cited in Soria, 2001).

13. Lexical inferencing • These ‘informed guesses’ are based on the “learner’s general knowledge of the world, awareness of context and relevant knowledge” (Haastrup, 1991).” • Nagy codifies this knowledge into three categories: linguistic, world, and strategic (Nassaji, 2004).

14. Inferenceing is a complex mental process that functions on an Information Processing model Eggen and Kauchak (2004) Educational Psychology, 6th ed. Pearson 239

15. Lexical inferencing • Is widely used “by second language (L2) learners when dealing with unknown words in their reading (Nassaji, 2004)”. • Is directly linked to vocabulary learning through reading texts (Huckin & Coady, 1999; Nagy, 1997).

16. Linguistic and Non-linguistic Cues Include the following: • Lexis • Phonology/Orthography similarity • Morphology including prefix, suffix, and stem. • Contextual clues. • Pictures and Captions.

17. Inferencing Phonology/Orthography similarity • Phonology i.e. the sound of the words. • Orthography how the words are spelled. • Example: The artifact was trianguloid in shape. • What would you infer the meaning of trianguloid to be?

18. Inferencing with Morphology • Morphology is “the science of word forms” like those involving prefixes, suffixes, and stems (Fromkin, 2003). • Example: “When the two groups of pigeons were mature enough, Grohmann took them out and possed them into the air. (Chern, 1993)” • In the sentence what would you infer the meaning of possed to be?

19. Contextual Inferencing • Inference clues may be locali.e. in the same sentence, forward in a sentence following, or backwardin a sentence prior to the unknown word (Chern, 1993).

20. Inferencing by Pictures • The gold blicked magnificently under the luminous beams.

21. What did you infer the meaning of “blicked” to be?

22. Advantages of Lexical inferencing • Speed-students quickly solve problems and are not slowed down to look up terms. • Vocabulary acquisition and development are enhanced (Nassaji 2004). • Fosters higher order thinking skills as students construct meaning from text.

23. Lexical Inferencing • (Lexis + Grammar + Phonology/Orthography + Morphology + Pictures/Captions) sifted through (Socio-cultural Knowledge + Content + Experience + Beliefs)= correct inference.

24. Practical and Involved Vocabulary Development Process for ESL Students • Have students watch the Evening News or Late News and pick out a story of interest. • They should make a note of all words heard in the story that they did not understand. • On the following day have them pick up a copy of “The Express” or “The Examiner.” • They should read through, several times, the printed story that corresponds to the one they saw on TV.

25. Practical and Involved Method (Continued) • Students should underline words they don’t understand and look them up in their dictionaries. They should listen to the pronunciation on their electronic dictionaries. • Students should prepare to give a summary and answer questions on the story they have selected. • Besides summarizing and answering questions, students should be asked what words they underlined.

26. Practical and Involved Method (Continued) • Students should be asked what they were able to learn about the words from context and what they found in the dictionary. • Students should enter their new words into their personal dictionaries. • This method also lends itself to expanding discussion beyond the contents of the story. For example, if US government organization is discussed in the story, they could be asked to make a comparison with that of their native country.

27. Conclusion • We selected Vocabulary Development as our topic because we believe that, once the basics of English have been subsumed, enhancement of an ESL student’s vocabulary is the best route to achieving fluency. • We focused on some proven strategies • Andy described the Lexical Approach which considers words and groupings of words as the basis of language. • Bruce discussed the strategy of finding meaning from the text.

28. Conclusion Continued • Bill exposed you to what he has developed and has been using successfully for the last three years. Besides helping vocabulary development, this Practical and Involved method improves conversation, reading, and knowledge • We hope that this overview has been helpful. • We have references and some handouts that we will be sharing with you.

29. References 1 • Barnhardt, S. (1997, April). Strategy of the month: Making inferences. Retrieved July 22, 2005, from http://www.nclrc.org/caidlrin.htm#BM2 • Belisle, T.A. (1997, November) Developing Vocabulary Knowledge in the Immersion Classroom Retrieved July 22, 2005 from http://www.carla.umn.edu/immersion/acie • Brown, H.D., (2000). Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. (Fourth Edition.)Pearson Education: White Plains, NY. • Chamot, A.U. & O’Malley, J.M., (1994). The CALLA Handbook: Implementing Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach. Addison-Wesley Publishing. • Chamot, A.U., Barnhardt, S., El-Dinary, P., & Robbins, J., (1999) The Learning Strategies Handbook. Pearson Education: White Plains, NY. • Chamot, A.U., (2004). Issues in Language Learning Strategy Research and Teaching, Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, Vol. 1, pp. 14-26. • Chern, C-L. (1993) Chinese Students’ Word-Solving Strategies in Reading in English. In Huckin, T., Haynes, M., and Coady, J. (1993) eds. Second Language Reading and Vocabulary Learning. Ablex Publishing Corporation, Norwood, New Jersey: pp 67-85 • Eggen and Kauchak (2004) Educational Psychology, 6th ed. Pearson 239 • Fromkin, V. & Rodman, R. (2003) An Introduction to Language, 7th ed., Orlando, Fl. Harcourt. • Gabrielatos, Costas, (2002).Inference: Procedures & Implications for TEFL. Revised versionof TESOL Greece Newsletter 63& 64 (September & December 1999),(Full text available online:http://www.gabrielatos.com/Inference.htm.

30. References 2 • Giridharan, B. & Conlan, C. (2003). L2 Vocabulary Acquisition: Investigating the Key to Lexical Comprehension. HERDSA • Hunt, Alan. (1996) Constraints on Inferring Word Meaning from Context. Journal of Inquiry and Research63(February 1996) pp.239-49, Osaka, Japan. • Lewis, Michael (1993). The Lexical Approach: The State of ELT and the Way Forward. Hove, England: Language Teaching Publications. • Lewis, Michael (1997). Pedagogical Implications of the Lexical Approach: Putting Theory into Practice, In J.Coady and T. Huckin (Eds.), Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition: A Rationale for Pedagogy, pp. 255-270. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. • Nassaji, H. (2004).The Relationship between Depth of Vocabulary Knowledge and L2 Learners’ Lexical Inferencing Strategy Use and Success. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 61, 1(September) pp.107-134 • Krashen, S., (1997). Foreign Language Education: The Easy Way.Language EducationAssociates: Culver City, CA. • Roskams, T., (2001).What’s a guess worth? Chinese students’ inferencing strategies for unknown words while reading, Retrieved July 22, 2005 from http://www.sunzil.lib.hku.hk/hkjo/views/5/500048.pdf pp.65-102 • Rubin, J. (1975). What the ‘Good Language Learner’ Can Teach Us, TESOL Quarterly, Volume 9, pp. 41-51. • Sinclair, J.M. and Renouf, Antoinnette (1988). A Lexical Syllabus for Language Learning, In R. Carter and M. McCarthy (Eds.), Vocabulary and Language Teaching, pp. 140-158. Harlow: Longman.

31. References 3 • Soria, J., (2001).TA Study of Ilokano Learners’ Lexical Inferencing Procedures Through Think-Aloud. Second Language Studies, 19(2), pp.77-110 • Swain, M. & Canale, M., (1980).Theoretical Bases of Communicative Approaches to SecondLanguage Teaching and Testing. Applied Linguistics, 1: 1-47 • Wesche, M. & Paribakht, T.S. (1994).Enhancing Vocabulary Acquisition through Reading: A Hierarchy of Text-Related Exercise Types. Applied Linguistics, 1: 1-24 • Zimmerman, C.B. (1997). Historical Trends in Second Language Vocabulary Instruction, In J.Coady and T. Huckin (Eds.), Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition: A Rationale for Pedagogy, pp. 5-19. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.