Vocabulary Learning Discussion (afternoon)

June 18, 2005, Hayama

(Andy, Dave, Jamelea, Saigusa-sensei, Yuri)

Summarized by Andy

Jamelea and Andy started off the discussion by explaining that they had been doing some informal research since April about how students learn vocabulary. They had decided to do this research because students often say that they need a bigger vocabulary and need more words, but don’t have very clear ways of learning vocabulary.

1. J & A had first asked students in a couple of classes to discuss and write about the following questions in relation to 6 to 8 words or phrases that each student had noted down and decided that he or she individually wanted to learn:

Ø What will you do to learn the words and phrases that you have chosen?

Ø What steps and actions will you take to try and learn them?

Ø What dictionaries will you use to help you? Why?

Ø When will you next review the words and phrases that you have chosen?

Ø How do you evaluate your current vocabulary learning habits and actions?

Ø What do you think is missing from your current vocabulary learning habits and actions?

2. J & A presented on a handout 20 “snippets” of what students reported. (These snippets will be word-processed and attached later. Commenting on these snippets, J & A noted that many students tend to:

Ø focus on “new and difficult” rather than “useful” vocabulary;

Ø be pre-occupied with correct equivalence in Japanese;

Ø see vocabulary learning as memorization rather than repeated exposure;

Ø use English-Japanese dictionaries only;

Ø feel that vocabulary learning must mean taking a lot of extra time;

Ø connect new vocabulary more into Japanese than into English.

3. J & A had also noticed that students hardly ever made any effort to connect vocabulary that they wanted to learn to vocabulary that they already knew, thus decreasing any chances of the new vocabulary becoming “strongly linked into” their L2 mental lexicons

4. J & A drew out from this what they thought were a number of tensions or fault-lines around vocabulary learning:

Ø new and difficult vs. (new and) useful

Ø single words vs. collocations & phrases

Ø memorisation vs. use and repeated exposure

Ø connecting to Japanese vs. connecting to English.

5. J & A next reported on some consciousness-raising activities that they had used with their students. They shared a very simple handout Andy had made, showing how a learner could make quick connections for the word “obligation”. (Will be attached later.) The style of the worksheet was rough and ready to encourage students to see that they don’t need to spend huge amounts of time learning vocabulary.

To try out this idea of “you can do a lot in a short time”, Jamelea showed some student vocabulary networks that her students had made in 10 minutes without using dictionaries. (Examples will be attached later.) Jamelea had emphasized to her students that vocabulary learning was something that they could do in short bursts on the train, etc. She had also showed her students how to make notes in the margin on key words and key phrases for a particular issue; she had also asked her writing class to collect and build up a double page of vocabulary phrases on the particular issue that they were writing an essay about.

Andy showed a two-page handout that he had given a few classes about “Some different ways of making connections.” These include simple clusters and forks for connecting new and useful vocabulary into mini-networks, whether by association with words the students already knew very well or by frequent collocations, and so on. The handout also included suggestions about personalizing the recycling of vocabulary in mini-stories that you tell yourself, or explaining the words in easy English to yourself (through self-talk, rather than writing).

6. Finally, J & A talked about the idea of spaced interval recycling, noting that people forget most new things within 24 hours unless they review what they are trying to learn. They emphasized that “review” does not mean memorization. “Spaced interval recycling” simple extends that notion to reviewing at progressively longer intervals as vocabulary shifts from new, short-term memory into long-term memory through use and repeated exposure – review within 24 hours, then 48, then 4 days, 1 week, 2 weeks and 1 month.

Discussion

Yuri talked about how she had learned English vocabulary. She had done lots of reading, as well as focused on phrases and collocations, but feels she should have read more and more. She feels that it is important to give students systematic guidance on dictionary use, such as the introduction of various kinds of dictionaries available and instruction on which dictionary to use in what kind of situation for more effective learning. According to Yuri, heavy dependence on dictionaries can be a hindrance in production, but this problem may be avoided also by giving students appropriate dictionary guidance.

Saigusa-sensei talked about how students are often trained in junior high and senior high to focus on Latinate vocabulary with the result that tend to know lots of “difficult” words, but can’t analyse them; they also do not know the very common everyday collocations and idioms of English. Saigusa also stressed two other points. First, it is important to help students to learn by analogy by breaking down words into parts. He gave the example of students knowing “genocide” but being unable to guess what “pesticide”, “herbicide” and “homicide”, for example, might also mean. So, students’ generative powers of analogy are weak. Second, students sometimes need help with finding the appropriate sense of a word as they often tend to look at the first sense only in a dictionary.

Dave explained how he gets students to be actively involved in vocabulary learning by making such learning playful and collaborative. He described a classroom sequence of activities in which learners generate 10 difficult (i.e., new) words that they need for talking about everyday topics. These words were written up on the blackboard at the top, before Dave wrote 10 sentences with a gap for the new word each time. Students then had to figure out which new word belonged where.

Zorana sent by email this idea:

“With regard to vocabulary, one activity that I have found to work quite well is the substitution exercise. They work in pairs. Partner A reads Partner B a sentence. Partner B has to restate that sentence using one of the expressions from the list. Partner A check Partner B's answer against the model answer. Then they switch roles.

For example:

Student A

Instructions:

Read the following sentences to your partner. Check your partner's answer against the model answer in brackets. If you have any questions ask your teacher.

1. He is very sensitive about his baldness.

(Answer: He is very touchy about his baldness.)

Student B

Instructions:

Listen to your partner and restate the sentence you hear using an appropriate word from the list.

juvenile to tackle lucrative indignant touchy

This forces them to use target words, makes them speak and they also get feedback on their mistakes.”

As a group, we talked further about the need to focus on word parts and phrasal verbs, as well as came back to the question of encouraging students to read more in order to meet and build up vocabulary. We also mentioned that, while using an English-Japanese dictionary was perhaps a useful stage, successful students seemed to combine use of different dictionaries. For example, they might use first an English-English dictionary, and, if still not clear, they would check in an E-J dictionary. Or, they might use an E-J dictionary while reading, and then select various words to focus on closely by using an E-E dictionary or a collocation dictionary Similarly, successful students seemed to be active in getting English input and exposure outside the classroom (through reading, movies, newspapers etc).

We also discussed the importance of using class time to help students talk with each other about how they learn and to teach each other the vocabulary that they feel is important for them.

In the end, we seemed to feel that, although you can take a horse to water but can’t make it drink, we had shared some interesting ways to let the horse see how it might satisfy its thirst.