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The
Language
Teacher
July, 2005 • Volume 29, Number 7
The Japan Association for Language Teaching
全国語学教育学会
ISSN 0289-7938
¥950
Special Issue: Vocabulary
Batia Laufer, Paul Meara, and Paul Nation share their
Ten Best Ideas for Teaching Vocabulary
David Beglar and Alan Hunt present Six Principles for
Teaching Foreign Language Vocabulary
Tsuyuki Miura interviews Paul Nation
With:
Additional articles by John Fujimori, Jeffrey Shaffer, and
Tsuyuki Miura
My Share articles by Todd Squires and Richard Barber
Book Reviews by Brent Wolter and P.C. Blocksom
•
•
•
•
•
•
— Pre-Conference Workshops —
A chance to "Skill-Up" before JALT2005 starts!
2:00 – 6:00 p.m., Friday, October 7, 2005
For JALT2005, we will be running pre-conference workshops aimed at helping teachers develop their
professional skills. This year, we are offering three workshops—one on neuro-linguistic programming
(NLP), and the other two on basic computer skills. Registration for these workshops will be by pre-
registration only and will be on a rst come, rst served basis. A maximum of 25 people will be
accepted for each workshop. They will be held from 2:00 – 6:00 p.m. on Friday, October 7 in the
Granship Convention Center. Cost is ¥6,000 (JALT member) / ¥7,500 (conference member) for the
NLP workshop, and ¥4,000 / ¥5,000 for either of the computer workshops. Please register when you
complete your conference pre-registration.
Workshop 1: A Taste of NLP for Beginners
—Tim Murphey and Brad Deacon
Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) does not exist. People who do amazing things when they interact
with others, such as teaching and learning things worth learning so as to improve the world, do exist.
NLP is just a term we use to refer to those practices and the research about them. The frames of NLP
can help us understand more of how we behave and help us transform ourselves into more capable L2
users or more effective teachers. In the workshop we will learn about ethically changing states, beliefs,
and strategies in order to help people to be and feel more resourceful.
First we will provide a brief introduction to NLP followed by copious examples of how we use
elements of NLP in our language teaching. Most of all, you will actively experience NLP in a variety of
practical, stimulating and enjoyable activities that include: rapport skills, empowering language patterns,
powerful metaphor creation and delivery, anchoring for states of excellence, and more. We have both
conducted NLP trainings before and have written and researched NLP so we know NLP does not exist.
In many ways, you may already be doing NLP and yet you may still want to discover even more of the
thrill of learning and helping others learn. When you are ready to tap into more of your own potential
and help others to do the same please join us.
Workshops 2 & 3: Computer Skills Brush-Up
Teachers often have little time to develop their computer skills, yet the need for reasonable competence
is becoming more and more evident. These workshops are being run in collaboration with JALT’s
Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) SIG, and will focus on areas that will benet users with
novice or rusty computer skills. There will be two workshops, each with three 60-minute sessions, and
a 15-minute Q&A session after each. If you have been hesitant about incorporating computers in your
teaching, or have skills that you have allowed to atrophy, then these workshops are for you!
—Workshop 2 - CALL Skills for Novice Users
• Session 1. How to set up a website - Bill Pellowe
• Session 2. PowerPoint as a teaching and learning tool - Peter Grevstad
• Session 3. An overview of MS Ofce - Clay Bussinger
—Workshop 3 - A CALL Skills Brush-Up
• Session 1. Meandering through Moodle - Paul Daniels
• Session 2. Practical Word techniques - Naeko Naganuma
• Session 3. Managing digital sound - Kevin Ryan
For more information, visit
<conferences.jalt.org/2005/>
July, 2005
Special Issue: Vocabulary
S
everal years ago, we came across a book entitled
Ten best ideas for reading teachers (Fry (Ed.), 1991),
a collection of 44 articles written by leading reading
specialists such as Jeanne Chall, Ronald Carver, and Edward
Fry, which gave these experts an opportunity to present ten
practical teaching ideas that could be applied by any class-
room teacher. In this special issue of The Language Teacher,
we have applied the format that we discovered in Fry’s book
by asking three of the top experts in the eld of second lan-
guage vocabulary acquisition—Batia Laufer, Paul Meara,
and Paul Nation—to share with us their “ten best ideas.”
David Beglar & Alan Hunt synthesize the ideas of Laufer,
Meara, and Nation by examining them from the perspective
of six principles that they believe underlie effective vocabu-
lary instruction.
In her interview with Paul Nation, Tsuyuki Miura uncov-
ers new ideas about past, present, and future trends in sec-
ond language vocabulary acquisition. Three of this month’s
articles break new ground in the eld of second language
vocabulary acquisition. First, secondary school teachers will
be interested in the analysis of the vocabulary in the three
top selling Ministry of Education oral communication text-
books by John Fujimori. Jeffrey Shaffer presents useful
information for reading teachers in his investigation of the
lexical overlap that occurs in different types of thematically-
related reading texts. Tsuyuki Miura reports on the results
of her study of her own lexical knowledge as a high pro-
ciency EFL learner.
This month, Todd Squires and Richard Barber contrib-
ute vocabulary activities to the My Share column, and Brent
Wolter and P.C. Blocksom provide insightful reviews of two
books that will be useful to anyone involved in teaching vo-
cabulary and extensive reading in a foreign language class-
room.
David Beglar
Alan Hunt
TLT Guest Editors
CONTENTS
Special Issue
3 Ten best ideas for teaching
vocabulary uency
7 Six principles for teaching
foreign language vocabulary
11 Interview with Paul Nation
15 The lexical composition of
two Oral Communication
textbooks
21 Choosing narrow reading
texts for incidental
vocabulary acquisition
29 A case study of the lexical
knowledge of an advanced
prociency EFL learner
My Share
35 Using a consciousness-
raising task to learn register-
appropriate vocabulary in a
technical writing assignment
38 Chunking chunks: An exciting
vocabulary review activity
JALT Focus
41 From JALT National
43 JALT News & Notices
44 Perspectives: The Story of
Iwate JALT
Departments
46 Book Reviews
49 Recently Received
51 SIG News & Contacts
54 Chapter Reports
57 Chapter Events & Contacts
60 Job Information Center
63 Conference Calendar
65 TLT Wired: Mobile Blogging
69 Old Grammarians
70 Submissions
71 Staff List
72 Membership Information
2 Advertiser Index
Foreword
| 2 | THE LANGUAGE TEACHER: 29.07 | July 2005 |
Advertiser Index
Key: IFC = inside front cover, IBC = inside back cover, OBC = outside back cover
• Seido 20
• MacMillan LanguageHouse 28
• IIBC 34
• EFL Press 40
• Thomson Learning 48
• Cambridge University Press 50
• Longman Japan 66
Please support our advertisers!
TLT / Job Information Centre Policy on Discrimination
The editors oppose discriminatory language, policies, and employment practices, in accordance
with Japanese and international law. Exclusions or requirements concerning gender, age, race,
religion, or country of origin should be avoided in announcements in the JIC Positions column,
unless there are legal requirements or other compelling reasons for such discrimination, and these
reasons are clearly explained in the job announcement. The editors reserve the right to edit ads for
clarity, and to return ads for rewriting if they do not comply with this policy.
TLTでは、日本の法律、国際法および良識に従って、言語、政策および雇用慣習の差別に反対
します。JICコラムでは性別、年齢、人種、宗教、出身国（「英国」、「アメリカ」ではなく母語
能力としての国）に関する、排除や要求はしません。そうした差別がなされる場合には、明確に
説明されるべきです。編集者は、明瞭に求人広告を編集し、かつこの方針に応じない場合には求
人広告を棄却する権利を持ちます。
今
月は第二言語における語彙習得の特集号です。そこで、この分野の著名な研究者である
Batia Laufer, Paul Meara, Paul Nationの三氏に語彙習得のアイディア、ベスト１０をあげて
もらい、それらを６つの原則に基づいてDavid Beglar と Alan Huntの両氏が総括します。
Tsuyuki Miura氏によるPaul Nation氏へのインタビュー記事のあとには、３つの論考が続きます。ま
ず、John Fujimori氏によるオーラル
・コミュニケーションの文科省認
定テキストにおける語彙分析、次に
Jeffrey Shaffer氏によるテーマ別のリ
ーディングテキストの語彙分析、
そして、Tsuyuki Miura氏による上級
EFL学習者の語彙知識に関する考察
があります。
その他にも、Todd Squires と Richard
Barberの両氏が語彙指導のアクティ
ヴィティをマイ・シェアで紹介し、
Brent Wolter とP.C. Blocksomの両氏が
語彙指導と多読について書評を寄せ
ています。
Special Issue
Ten best
ideas for
teaching
vocabulary
Batia Laufer
University of Haifa
Paul Meara
University of
Swansea
Paul Nation
Victoria University
of Wellington
Batia Laufer
University of Haifa
1. Do not rely too much on
uninstructed acquisition
Picking up words from context has
limitations, unless learners are ooded
with input. When the main source
of vocabulary is classroom learning,
enhance it by form-focused instruction
such as the explanation and study of
words both in lists and in contexts of
various lengths.
2. Create your own lexical
syllabus
Unless your institution has provided
you with a lexical syllabus, create your
own based on your teaching materials,
frequency lists, and learners’ specic
needs. Check a word on your syllabus
whenever you expose students to it. Try to
provide six to ten exposures to each word during
the course.
3. Do not count on guessing strategies
to replace vocabulary knowledge
Guessing is useful, but the most important
condition for inferring word meaning from
context is the understanding of the surrounding
words that include the clues. Knowing 98% of the
surrounding vocabulary is optimal for effectively
guessing unknown words from context.
4. Increase learners’ vocabulary size
Some researchers suggest that learners need to
know 5000 word families to reach a reasonable
comprehension (70%) of authentic non-ction
texts. Others say that knowing 10,000 word
families is the minimum for comprehending
academic texts. When class time is limited,
encourage learners to keep individual vocabulary
notebooks or computer les as a strategy for
increasing vocabulary size.
5. Recycle words that have been
introduced earlier in the course
Students are likely to forget words that are not
repeatedly encountered or used. Therefore,
reinforce their memory from time to time.
Several minutes per lesson devoted to reviewing
“vocabulary oldies” will improve the retention of
these words.
| THE LANGUAGE TEACHER: 29.07 | July 2005 | 3 |
weblink: www.jalt-publications.org/tlt/articles/2005/07/index
6. Give frequent vocabulary tests
Even if words are practiced in class, they are
remembered much better after an additional stage
of intentional memorization, and testing is one
way to encourage students to do this. Suggest to
students that they prepare and review cards with a
word on one side and its meaning, grammar, and
examples of use on the other side.
7. Draw learners’ attention to
“synforms”
Synforms are word pairs or groups of words
with similar (though not identical) sound,
script, or morphology, which learners tend to
confuse. Examples are: cancel/conceal/counsel,
embrace/embarrass, unanimous/anonymous, and
sensible/sensitive/sensual. Do not teach several
new synforms together; instead, have the students
practice them after all members of the pair or
group have been encountered individually.
8. Pay attention to interlingual
semantic differences
An L1 word may have several alternatives in
English, an English word may have several
unrelated translations in the L1, or have no L1
equivalent whatsoever. Many lexical errors,
including fossilized ones, stem from such
differences.
9. Do not ban the L1 translation of
words
Use translation judiciously with words that have
an exact or close equivalent in the L1. Learners
translate unconsciously anyway. Research shows
that L1 glosses provided by teachers or looked up
in a good bilingual dictionary are benecial for
text comprehension and word learning.
10. Practice the use of collocations that
differ from the learners’ L1
Since collocations are easy to understand (e.g.,
strong coffee, make a copy), their difculty is
often unnoticed or underestimated. Learners,
even advanced ones, make mistakes in the use of
collocations that differ from their L1.
Batia Laufer is professor and chair of the English
Language and Literature Department at the
University of Haifa, Israel. Her
areas of research are: vocabulary
acquisition, lexicography, cross
linguistic inuence, reading, and
testing. She has published several
books and numerous articles in
various professional journals,
presented at many international
conferences, and given invited lectures at over 30
universities in different countries.
Paul Meara
University of Swansea
1. Teach your students to use a
mnemonic system
Learning words is hard work, and anything that
makes it easier is an advantage for students.
Mnemonic systems, like the keyword method, are
amazingly effective, counteract forgetting, and
help students remember words long enough for
them to become part of their active vocabulary.
2. Set demanding vocabulary targets
for your students
Serious language teaching outts insist on
students rapidly learning a large number of words.
The British Army, for example, sets a target of 60
words for homework every day, and they test that
students have actually achieved this target.
3. Teach words in context
Learning lists of words by heart in context is
sometimes easier than working with single words.
A good way of doing this is to learn newspaper
headlines containing just one word you do not
know. The headlines provide a topical context
that makes it easier to remember what the
unknown word might mean and shows you how
it is used.
4. Get the students to read something
new every day
You cannot learn all the vocabulary you need just
by attending classes. Research shows that most
people increase their vocabulary by reading, and
this works for second language learners, too.
5. Get your students to write something
every day
Writing is a good way to consolidate your
knowledge of words. It ensures that you know
how to spell the words you think you know, and
it reinforces the connections between the words
you use in the same context. Also, writing does
not put you under time pressure, so it lets you
| 4 | THE LANGUAGE TEACHER: 29.07 | July 2005 |
Special Issue: Laufer, Meara, & Nation
| www.jalt-publications.org/tlt/ |
access and rehearse vocabulary that you can then
use later in speech.
6. Get students to review their
vocabulary regularly
You will forget vocabulary if you do not review it
regularly. You can now get computer programs
that let you automatically review vocabulary lists
and remind you of words that you are likely to
forget.
7. Play word association games
Links between words are what make your
vocabulary active, so any activity which involves
students in making links between words is going
to help turn passive vocabulary into an active
lexicon.
8. Watch videos with subtitles
Subtitled videos are easy to watch and usually
fun. If you watch them three or four times, you
will probably know the dialogue by heart. Then
watch the video without the subtitles. You should
understand most of it. Avoid dubbed movies at all
costs!
9. Listen to songs
Music is stored in a special part of the brain,
and things you learn with music are often more
resistant to attrition than other kinds of learning.
People with aphasia can often sing, even when
they cannot talk, and people who forget their rst
language can often still sing in it.
10. Learn a book by heart
This is an amazing way to ensure that you will
learn many words. Work with a book that is im-
portant to you, and learn whole sections by heart.
This method is particularly good if you already
know the book well in your L1. Even a short book
will give you a vocabulary of thousands of words.
Paul Meara is head of research in the Centre for
Applied Language Studies at the University of the University ofthe University of
Swansea. Paul is best known for
his innovative vocabulary assess-
ment tools, some of which can be
downloaded from the Swansea
website <www.swan.ac.uk/cals/
calres/lognostics.htm>. Paul also
maintains a large bibliographical
database on <www.swan.ac.uk/
cals/calres/varga/>. This database
covers almost
everything that has been written on second
language vocabulary acquisition.
Paul Nation
School of Linguistics & Applied
Language Studies, Victoria
University of Wellington
My ten best ideas for teaching vocabulary do not
consist of a list of vocabulary teaching techniques.
This is largely because I believe that teachers
should not do a lot of teaching of particular
words and should not spend a lot of time making
vocabulary learning exercises, such as nd the
hidden word, crossword puzzles, or match the
word and meaning. There are much better ways of
using valuable learning time.
1. Apply principles of teaching and
learning
Principled planning of vocabulary learning is
more important than particular techniques. In the
ideas that follow, I will mention some of these
principles. The principles can be applied in a
variety of ways according to the circumstances in
which the language course is taught.
2. Approach high and low frequency
words differently
Teachers should deal with high frequency and
low frequency words in quite different ways, and
teachers and learners should know whether they
should be focusing on high or low frequency
words. High frequency words deserve a lot
of attention from teachers. When these are all
known, teachers should concentrate on training
the learners to use strategies for learning and
dealing with low frequency words.
3. Use the four strands
A well-balanced vocabulary course (and indeed
a language course) should have roughly equal
proportions of opportunities for learning in each
of the four strands of meaning-focused input
(learning through communicative listening and
reading activities), meaning-focused output
Special Issue: Laufer, Meara, & Nation
| THE LANGUAGE TEACHER: 29.07 | July 2005 | 5 |
| www.jalt-publications.org/tlt/ |
(learning through communicative speaking
and writing activities), language-focused
learning (form-focused instruction), and uency
development in the four skills of listening,
speaking, reading, and writing. This means that
about three-quarters of the course time should
be spent on communicative, message-focused
activities, and about one quarter on the deliberate
learning of language.
4. Implement an extensive reading
program
As part of the meaning-focused input strand of
a course, there should be a substantial extensive
reading program making use of a large number of
interesting graded readers. Learners should read at
least one book every two weeks and a major aim
should be to gain pleasure from such reading with
as little interference as possible from the teacher.
An extensive listening program would also be a
very good idea.
5. Carefully design speaking and
writing activities
The teacher should design speaking and writing
activities so that there are good opportunities for
vocabulary learning. This involves making sure
that there is written or spoken input in the activi-
ties, that each piece of input contains about 12
words that may be new to the learners, and that
the input is used several times in some changed
way (e.g., use the word in an original context) in
spoken or written output.
6. Use a variety of activities aimed at
uency development
The uency development strand of the course
involves activities where the learners do not meet
or use any new vocabulary; instead, they become
more uent at using what they already know. The
uency techniques I like are the 4/3/2 technique
for speaking, speed reading, ten-minute writing,
and listening to easy stories.
7. Provide extended training and
practice in guessing unknown
vocabulary from context
This can begin as a very deliberate strategy, but
the eventual goal is to become uent at guess-
ing. Like the strategies described in the next two
ideas, this strategy is very useful for dealing with
both high frequency and low frequency words. It
can be approached in many ways, but generally,
it is best to use a bottom-up guessing strategy that
relies on language clues rather than background
knowledge.
8. Train students to use word cards
Learners should be trained in the strategy of learn-
ing words using word cards. Word cards are small
cards with the foreign (English) word or phrase
on one side and the L1 translation on the other.
Using cards is a form of rote learning and it is an
excellent way of quickly increasing vocabulary
size. Forget all the criticism you have heard about
rote learning and translation; research has repeat-
edly shown that such learning is very effective.
9. Teach the high frequency afxes of
English
Get learners to learn the most useful 15-20 English
prexes and sufxes. These afxes can be a very
effective tool for helping learners remember the
meanings of the many Latinate words of English.
This word part strategy involves relating the mean-
ing of the afx to the meaning of the whole word.
10. Encourage learner autonomy
Encourage students to take informed responsibil-
ity for their own vocabulary learning. If students
know what vocabulary to learn and how to learn
it, their learning can be much more effective than
if they are reliant on teacher prepared exercises
and material. Students also need to be motivated
and encouraged to make their own vocabulary
learning decisions.
I had to limit myself to ten ideas so I had to
leave out some that I would have added if I had
written this on another day. They include avoid
interference between related words, encourage
depth of mental processing when learning
vocabulary, and provide training in the strategy of
effective dictionary use.
Paul Nation is a professor of Applied Linguistics
in the School of Linguistics & Applied Language
Studies at Victoria University
of Wellington, New Zealand.
He has taught in Indonesia,
Thailand, the United States,
Finland, and Japan. His spe-
cialist interests are language
teaching methodology and
vocabulary learning. His lat-
est book is Learning Vocabu-
lary in Another Language
published by Cambridge University Press (2001).
| 6 | THE LANGUAGE TEACHER: 29.07 | July 2005 |
Special Issue: Laufer, Meara, & Nation
| www.jalt-publications.org/tlt/ |
Special Issue
Six principles
for teaching
foreign language
vocabulary: A
commentary on
Laufer, Meara,
and Nation’s “Ten
Best Ideas”
David Beglar
Temple University ,
Japan
Alan Hunt
Kansai University
M
any linguists and cognitive
psychologists place lexis
at the center of human
language processing and production.
Thus, modern researchers have
reached conclusions that are similar
to those of many foreign language
learners: vocabulary acquisition is a
crucial, and in some senses, the central
component in successful foreign
language acquisition. Our experience
with even highly advanced learners
conrms that they are acutely aware
of the lexical gap separating them
from educated native speakers of the
language.
Many of the suggestions made by
Laufer, Meara, and Nation apply to
beginners and advanced prociency
learners alike. Rather than simply
synthesize their ideas here, we would
like to interpret them in light of what
we see as six principles underlying
both successful second language
acquisition and successful lexical
acquisition. The rst four principles,
what we call decontextualized
and contextualized input, communicative
output, form-focused instruction, and uency
development, are the same as Nation’s four
strands of a well-designed language course
(Nation’s ideas #1 & #3, in this issue). We
have added two further principles, enhanced
motivation and effective strategy use.
Principle 1: Provide access to
decontextualized and contextualized
input.
The rst principle concerns learners gaining
access to two types of input: temporarily
decontextualized target vocabulary and large
quantities of comprehensible, engaging, and
contextualized input. These are complementary
and mutually reinforcing.
In the case of decontextualized input, teachers
need to be highly selective when choosing lexical
items for their students to study (Laufer #2 #4;
Meara #2). It is best for teachers of beginning
and low intermediate learners to concentrate on
introducing high-frequency vocabulary (Nation
#2), while many intermediate and advanced
students should focus on academic vocabulary
(Coxhead, 2000) and useful technical vocabulary.
| THE LANGUAGE TEACHER: 29.07 | July 2005 | 7 |
weblink: www.jalt-publications.org/tlt/articles/2005/07/index
The second type of input is communicative,
contextualized, and meaning-focused (Nation
#3). It can take a number of forms including
intensive and extensive reading (Meara #4, 10;
Nation #4) as well as intensive and extensive
listening (Meara #8 #9; Nation #4). The repeated
exposure to large quantities of contextualized
vocabulary found in engaging extensive reading
and listening texts provides an excellent means of
review and increases the probability of students
retaining new and previously met vocabulary
(Nagy, 1997).
This type of input has been found
to be “the best predictor of vocabulary growth
between grades two and ve” (Nagy, 1988, p.
30) for native speakers of English, a nding that
foreign language teachers should note carefully.
More information about extensive reading
activities and programs can be found in a special
edition of The Language Teacher (Waring, 1997,
Ed.), Jacobs, Davis, and Renandya (1997), Day and
Bamford (1998), Bamford and Day (2004), and
at the Extensive Reading Pages website <www.
extensivereading.net/index.html>.
Principle 2: Encourage communicative
output.
Output activities allow students to use the foreign
language to develop a personal voice in the L2,
try out new words that they have met in input
activities, and gain feedback from others about
the correctness of their use of new language
forms. As Nation (# 5) has stated, speaking and
writing tasks can be designed so as to promote
vocabulary acquisition at three points in a set of
tasks. This can occur (a) during pre-activities,
for instance through the use of semantic maps
containing target vocabulary that students discuss
in pairs (Stahl & Vancil, 1986) and engaging
students with reading or listening texts in which
target lexis has been embedded and highlighted
in some way; (b) in main activities, such as
ranking activities and problem-solving activities in
which target vocabulary that is useful or necessary
for completing the task is placed on a handout
for easy reference, and; (c) in post-activities in
which students report their group’s decisions
and conclusions to other groups. At this stage,
students should once again be encouraged to use
the vocabulary on their handout as they work
though the task. More information can be found in
Chapter 4 of Nation’s (2001) Learning Vocabulary
in Another Language.
Principle 3: Provide form-focused
instruction.
Mere exposure to large amounts of
communicative input and output will often not
result in highly accurate language use (Laufer
#1). Form-focused instruction has two primary
purposes. The rst involves helping students
to acquire the L2 lexicon more accurately by
overcoming predictable problem areas in the
foreign language, such as synforms (Laufer #7),
interlingual semantic differences (Laufer #8),
and some collocations (Laufer #10). Without
explicit teaching and learning, learners may
avoid these areas altogether or acquire them
incorrectly. The second purpose of form-focused
instruction is to help students more efciently
acquire foreign language lexis that will serve
them well in a wide variety of situations. These
include high-frequency vocabulary (Nation #2)
and high-frequency afxes (Nation #9), both
of which occur with great regularity in written
and oral texts, formal and informal language,
and academic and nonacademic situations.
Temporarily decontextualizing vocabulary allows
the students to focus on word form (e.g., spelling
and pronunciation) and to make a connection
to L1 meaning (Laufer #9). Target words may be
temporarily isolated from context as a part of
prereading exercises or during reading and then
studied in relation to their contexts (Meara #3).
Furthermore, once students know the meanings
of words that can be broken down into stems and
afxes, then teachers may want to teach some
of the more common afxes and have students
practice word analysis (Nation #9), a skill that
can help them guess the meaning of newly
met words. Teachers can promote the retention
of target vocabulary through the recycling of
previously studied words (Laufer #5) and by
training students to make and review vocabulary
cards (Meara #6; Nation #8). Recycling is most
effective when students engage in short, frequent
review sessions over an extended period of
time. One effective method of review has been
provided by Mondria and Mondria-De Vries
(1994). Decontextualized vocabulary should, soon
after being introduced, also be encountered and
reviewed in meaningful contexts.
Principle 4: Promote uency
development.
The fourth principle requires that teachers and
learners devote time to the development of
uency (Nation #6), which involves students
in developing faster access to already known
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Special Issue: Beglar & Hunt
lexis and larger lexical chunks. Effective ways
to develop uency include repeatedly meeting
known and partially known words (a) through
regular review (Meara #6); (b) in communicative
tasks and course materials (Laufer #5); (c) in
integrated tasks in which students study a single
topic through a variety of reading, listening,
speaking, and writing activities; (d) while engaged
in narrow reading and listening (Krashen, 1981)
involving students in reading or listening to
several texts on the same topic (see Schaffer’s
article in this issue; Schmitt & Carter, 2000), and;
(e) while reading and/or listening extensively
(Nation #4). In addition to large amounts of
repetition, many uency activities should put time
pressure on the students (e.g., speed reading and
timed story retelling) and use familiar vocabulary
and tasks. This ensures that accuracy is less
compromised while emphasizing the quantity and
speed of the input or output.
Principle 5: Enhance student
motivation.
Although none of the contributors mentioned
motivation explicitly, important ways to motivate
students are implicit in many of their ideas. For
instance, autonomy (Nation #10), which has been
characterized as a fundamental human need that
all individuals seek to satisfy (Deci & Ryan, 1985),
is potentially one of the most powerful motivators
available. Research from general education has
consistently shown that increased autonomy can
lead to greater intrinsic motivation, which has in
turn been tied to greater achievement (Gardner,
1985; Tremblay & Gardner, 1995). In addition, the
setting of vocabulary learning goals (Meara # 2) is
strongly related to Locke and Latham’s (1990) goal
setting theory, which states that motivation can
be enhanced when goals are seen as important
and possible to achieve. Past research has shown
that specic goals (e.g., I will learn 20 words per
week) are preferred to general ones (e.g., I will
improve my English) and that difcult goals lead
to higher performance than easily attained goals.
Furthermore, increasing vocabulary size (Laufer
#4) can occur relatively rapidly for all students
(unlike, for instance, the acquisition of morpho-
syntax or pragmatic competence), and success
in learning vocabulary can help to establish or
enhance student self-condence, which has been
found to be particularly important in foreign
language situations (Clément, Dörnyei, & Noels,
1994).
Principle 6: Develop effective strategy
use.
Although effective strategy use is an integral
part of each of the above principles, we believe
it is worth highlighting because learners need
extensive training in using strategies effectively
and efciently. As students grow as L2 learners,
they need to expand their strategies and to
develop a metacognitive awareness of when to
use a given strategy or combine several strategies
for a specic task (Chamot & O’Malley, 1994;
Hulstijn, 1993).
The process of acquiring new words can be
sped up by teaching learners how to effectively
use vocabulary cards (Nation #8), the keyword
technique (Meara #1), and to engage in regular
review (Meara #6). Moreover, when learners meet
unknown words in context they may choose to
guess their meaning (Nation #7), ignore them,
or check them in a dictionary (Hulstijn, 1993).
Guessing from context and dictionary use can
be combined, as guessing may promote depth
of processing while dictionaries help to ensure
accuracy in understanding word meaning
(Scholeld, 1997). Indeed, as learners read or
listen, they will need to decide which words
deserve attention and which of these strategies
would be the most effective to apply. Although
it is ultimately the learners who must take
responsibility for adopting a strategic approach
to vocabulary learning (Nation #10), teachers
play an important supporting role by providing
opportunities to practice new strategies,
encouraging learners to choose from a variety of
strategies to carry out a task, and then monitoring
and providing feedback on the effectiveness of
strategy choice.
Conclusion
One interesting aspect of the contributions by
Laufer, Meara, and Nation is that some of their
ideas signicantly diverge from mainstream
SLA. How many contributors to professional
journals suggest having students use word
lists (Laufer # 1), word cards (Nation # 8), and
memorize large chunks of discourse (Meara #10)?
Some would label such ideas as outdated and
behaviorist. However, our experience as well as
empirical research show that such ideas play an
important role in speeding up lexical acquisition,
particularly in EFL settings, provided that they
serve rather than dominate more communicative
approaches.
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Special Issue: Beglar & Hunt
SLVA research has a rich history in which an
impressively large number of techniques that
can enhance vocabulary acquisition have been
identied. When viewed holistically, these
ndings can be grouped into principles, and in
lieu of a comprehensive theory of SLVA, we view
such principles as the best general guidelines
currently available for both teachers and students
alike, as we believe that they will lead to more
effective vocabulary teaching and learning.
References
Bamford, J., & Day, R. R. (2004). Extensive reading
activities for teaching language. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Chamot, A. U., & O’Malley, J. M. (1994). Language
learner and learning strategies. In N. C. Ellis (Ed.),
Implicit and explicit learning of languages (pp. 371-
392). London: Academic Press.
Clément, R., Dörnyei, Z., & Noels, K. A. (1994).
Motivation, self-condence, and group cohesion in
the foreign language classroom. Language Learning,
44(3), 417-448.
Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL
Quarterly, 34(2), 213-238.
Day, R., & Bamford, J. (1998). Extensive reading in the
second language classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic motivation
and self-determination in human behavior. New
York: Plenum.
Fry, E. (Ed.). (1991). The ten best ideas for reading
teachers. New York: Addison Wesley.
Gardner, R. C. (1985). Social psychology and second
language learning: The role of attitudes and
motivation. London: Edward Arnold.
Hulstijn, J. H. (1993). When do foreign-language
readers look up the meaning of unfamiliar words?
The inuence of task and learner variables. Modern
Language Journal, 77(2), 139-147.
Jacobs, G. M., Davis, C., & Renandya, W. A. (Eds.).
(1997). Successful strategies for extensive reading.
Singapore: SEAMEO Regional Language Centre.
Krashen, S. (1981). The case for narrow reading. TESOL
Newsletter, 15 (6), 23.
Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (1990). A theory of goal
setting and task performance. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall.
Mondria, J. A., & Mondria-De Vries, S. (1994). Efciently
memorizing words with the help of vocabulary cards
and “hand computer”: Theory and applications.
System, 22(1), 47-57.
Nagy, W. E. (1988). Teaching vocabulary to improve
reading comprehension. Urbana, IL: ERIC, NCTE, &
IRA.
Nagy, W. E. (1997). On the role of context in rst and
second language vocabulary learning. In N. Schmitt
& M. McCarthy (Eds.), Vocabulary: Description,
acquisition, and pedagogy (pp. 64-83). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Nation, I. S. P. (2001). Learning vocabulary in another
language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schmitt, N., & Carter, R. (2000). The lexical advantages
of narrow reading for second language learners.
TESOL Journal, 9(1), 4-9.
Scholeld, P. J. (1997). Vocabulary reference works
in foreign language learning. In N. Schmitt &
M. McCarthy (Eds.), Vocabulary: description,
acquisition, and pedagogy (pp. 279-302). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Stahl, S. A., & Vancil, S. J. (1986). Discussion is what
makes semantic maps work in vocabulary instruction.
The Reading Teacher, 40(1), 62-67.
Tremblay, P. F., & Gardner, R. C. (1995). Expanding the
motivation construct in language learning. Modern
Language Journal, 79(4), 505-520.
Waring, R. (Ed.). (1997). The Language Teacher, 21(5).
David Beglar is an Associate Professor at Temple
University Japan. He is interested in vocabulary
acquisition and language assessment.
Alan Hunt is an Associate Professor at Kansai
University. He is interested in vocabulary
acquisition, extensive reading, and dictionary
research.
October 7 – 10, 2005
Granship Convention Center
Shizuoka, Japan
—
Plenaries, workshops, discussions,
food, meetings, papers, parties,
. . . and LOTS of stories!
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Special Issue: Beglar & Hunt
Special Issue
Interview
with Paul
Nation: The
past, present,
and future
of second
language
vocabulary
acquisition
Tsuyuki Miura
Kwansei Gakuin
University
October 31, 2003
Tsuyuki Miura (Interviewer):
Professor Nation, you’ve conducted a
large amount of research, published a
great number of articles, and written
a comprehensive book in this eld.
Could you tell me how you got your
initial interest in vocabulary? What has
kept you in that particular area for such
a long period of time?
Paul Nation: I’d like to think that
the interest goes back even as far as
Michael West in India, or what was
then in Bangor. My teachers who got
me interested in vocabulary were H.
V. George and Helen Barnard, who
taught in India. The traditions that
they taught in were ones that gave a
lot of importance to vocabulary. H. V.
George, in particular, was interested in
looking at vocabulary frequency, and
he did early corpus linguistics work on
verb form frequency. Helen Barnard
wrote a course book, which was
English for specic purposes, but with
a very strong vocabulary focus. I think
that their focus on vocabulary came
from that Indian situation in which they
taught, which was partly inuenced by
Michael West’s work there. As a result,
I became interested in vocabulary, and once you
start, it’s hard to stop (laughs).
TM: So you were strongly inuenced by your
teachers.
PN: Yes. I’ve seen an interesting article in which
that person made a family tree of vocabulary
studies in the US. The family tree went back
to Edward Thorndike, the great educational
psychologist, who worked on what became the
Teachers’ Wordbook of 30,000 Words. When you
look at the major names in vocabulary studies in
the US, after Thorndike, it was Edgar Dale, and
after Dale, it was Jean Chall. Dale was Thorndike’s
student and Chall was Dale’s student. It’s sort of a
teacher-student family tree.
TM: Then once you started, you just kept going?
PN: That’s right. In those days, I started off
by doing a project for a course I was studying.
I thought I’d write a survey of studies on the
teaching and learning of vocabulary. I thought
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maybe I’d nd about 15 or 20 pieces of research,
but to my surprise, I found around 100 or 200
pieces of research, many, many more than I
expected. That was around 1975. Nowadays, it’s
almost impossible to read every piece of research
which is written about vocabulary because the
number has grown enormously. Now I’ve got a
bibliography of at least 2,000 articles very strongly
focused on vocabulary. It’s almost getting into the
stage now where it’s too much for one person to
be able to understand it all, or to read it all and to
know it all.
TM: What recent research on vocabulary
acquisition stands out to you as particularly
important?
PN: It’s very difcult to answer. I have to separate
the research from the people who I’ve known
and look at the research studies individually. You
have people like Batia Laufer, who’s probably
the most productive experimental researcher in
vocabulary as a second or foreign language. She’s
always looking to answer very practical questions
by well-designed experiments. Then you have
people like Norbert Schmitt. He’s doing some of
the old research again and doing it much better
than that it was done in the past. We can get
much more reliable and better explained results
than we did before. Then you have Paul Meara,
who’s developing models and theories of how
vocabulary is stored and organized in the brain,
and this is very important. Then you even have
more recent researchers, who’re now starting
to publish internationally. The one that stands
out for me is Rob Waring in Japan, who’s just
published probably the best article on learning
from a graded reader. If I want to pick one study
which stands out, that would probably be the
book-ood studies by Warwick Elley and Francis
Mangubhai. Even though they’re not really
vocabulary studies, the work they did on the
effect of message-focused approaches to learning
was really important research. Anyone who’s a
teacher of English as a foreign or second language
should read the book-ood studies because
they’re just so important in language learning.
TM: Your 2001 book includes research that
was conducted many decades ago, rather than
focusing only on recent studies. Why is that?
PN: When you get older, you have to believe
that something new is not necessarily better
than something old (laughs). Some of the classic
studies are still very good. Some of them, like
West’s General Service List (GSL), are outdated
now, but so far, no one has made a better list than
that. Partly because it hasn’t been fashionable for
quite a long time to do research on word lists and
to make word lists. And partly because it’s a very
big job. The people who want to replace the GSL
have realized that it’s a job which would take a
person probably at least a year of fulltime work to
do properly.
TM: Sounds like you have tried to make a new
word list.
PN: I tried to help Norbert Schmitt replace the
GSL. I tried to make my own list from the British
National Corpus because it is one of the largest
well-organized corpora of English. I wanted to
see if whether using that list would be a way of
making a new GSL. But it became clear after I
made the rst 3,000 words that that wasn’t the way
to do it. One of the reasons for that was that the
corpus didn’t represent the needs of second or
foreign language learners. It represented formal,
adult, British language. That raised once again
very important questions like if you’re going to
replace the GSL, what sort of corpus would you
base your frequency count on, and how would
you organize that corpus and choose the material
to go into it. Those are difcult questions that I
don’t know the answer to. Those are just some of
the things which come out.
TM: What kind of vocabulary activities do you
nd yourself constantly coming back to?
PN: I probably get a little bit hung up too much
on deliberate learning because there is a prejudice
against it. The communicative approach has
tended to emphasize that things should be picked
up as you go along. Yet there’s over a hundred
years of research that shows that deliberate
learning is very effective. I keep coming back
to that because I want people to see that it’s a
question of how you balance deliberate learning
with message-focused learning so that you can
get the best of the two approaches. The other one
is learning through graded reading. There’s quite
a lot of prejudice against that, too. Some people
think that using simplied material is somehow
inferior to using material written for native
speakers—but not in Japan, fortunately. Some
of the stronger supporters of extensive reading
programs using simplied readers are working in
Japan.
TM: Let’s talk about the current Japanese context.
Firstly, some research has shown that many
Japanese high school students are probably
exposed to less than 10,000 running words
of English per year. In addition, the Japanese
Ministry of Education has set the minimum target
for vocabulary learning as approximately 2,700
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Special Issue: Miura
words through the 6 years of secondary school.
What do you think about those numbers?
PN: Clearly 10,000 running words a year is not
nearly enough because that would represent
probably about two level 1 or level 2 graded
readers a year. That’s a ridiculously low gure
because the research on graded reading indicates
that learners should be reading at least one graded
reader every two weeks. From that perspective, it
should be closer to 200,000 running words a year.
That’s not unrealistic because that’s input which
is not dependent on English teachers. Also, the
2,700 word goal for six years is not an efcient
goal in the sense that given that amount of time,
you’d expect more to be learned. However, if they
knew almost 3,000 words of English by the end
of the sixth year of study, and if they could make
reasonable use of those words, that would be an
enormous step.
TM: I’ve brought two English textbooks with me
today that are widely used in Japanese secondary
schools. A common feature of these books is that
some vocabulary is glossed below the reading
text. What is your opinion about studying words
in this way?
PN: Using text as a basis for deciding the
sequencing of vocabulary is quite a good idea
because it avoids interference problems, and it
establishes a relationship between vocabulary
in use and the decontexualization of vocabulary.
One of the major problems with it is a principle
that teachers can apply to almost any lesson.
That is, when you do a piece of teaching, you
should ask yourself, “Does this teaching make
tomorrow’s lesson easier or not?” Not today’s
lesson. The problem is that the words which stand
out are likely to be unfamiliar words which are
peculiar to that text. If you give attention to those
words, you’re helping today’s text, but probably
not helping very much with tomorrow’s text.
There can be two purposes for a glossary. One
is to draw attention to important things—the
things that you want the learners to learn. Another
purpose of a glossary is to deal with the words
which are important for that text, but that you
don’t want to pay attention to as a teacher. When
teachers look at these texts, they really have to
think, “What’s the purpose of this particular listing
of words with their meanings?” “Is this there so
that I can get on with the important things?” or,
“Is this something I should give some attention
to?” One way to make that decision is to go back
to the principle of, “Does today’s learning make
tomorrow’s learning easier or not?”
TM: Most English textbooks in Japan don’t
include activities that specically aim at
enhancing students’ vocabulary knowledge. Do
you think that’s a problem?
PN: Not necessarily, because I don’t think there
has to be vocabulary activities after a text. The
problem with activities after a text is that it’s
giving the responsibility for vocabulary learning
to the course book writer. In the ideal situation,
the responsibility for vocabulary learning should
be with the learner. The learner should be
working out what the important words to learn
are and how they should go about learning them.
A vocabulary exercise after the text is something
useful but only one step in the learning of the
vocabulary, so I don’t get very excited about
having or not having vocabulary exercises.
Another thing would be that it’s possible to
design things like comprehension questions with
a vocabulary learning goal in mind. That seems
more important to me because the course book
makers can build in several foci to the activities
that they design. There are many ways to make
vocabulary part of a course. One way is that the
teacher or the course designer has a plan how
vocabulary can be helped to be learned, and this
is worked into the activities. I’m not a religious
fanatic who wants to make everything vocabulary
(laughs).
TM: Could you say more about the learners’
responsibility to learn vocabulary?
PN: This is the autonomy movement. It really
comes down to the idea that if people don’t take
interest and responsibility in their own learning,
the learning probably doesn’t mean very much.
Depending on teachers to do it all is not what
learning is about. It’s an idealistic goal, but it’s one
that we should always be trying to reach.
TM: Many teachers feel that by the time good
students in Japan graduate from high school, they
know a fairly large number of English words, but
have not effectively developed strong connections
among those words. The students often have great
difculty dealing with contexualized listening
and reading texts, and speaking or writing with
uency.
PN: You know, I agree with that.
TM: One of the causes of this problem may be
that many students intensively study vocabulary
using commercially published vocabulary
building books for the purpose of succeeding
on university entrance examinations. I brought
one of the best-selling vocabulary books today
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Special Issue: Miura
to show you. It has a reading part, Japanese
translation, and the vocabulary list. What do you
think of these kind of books?
PN: This goes back to my main idea of the four
strands of a language course. These books focus
to a large degree on deliberate learning, the
language-focused learning part of the course.
That’s ne. Every course should have that. These
books probably do it quite well. If I was reviewing
these books, I’d be looking for things like, “Has
the vocabulary been selected properly?” or, “Has
consideration been given to the various frequency
levels?”
TM: This vocabulary is specically selected by
the frequency on past entrance examinations.
PN: Oh, I see. That’s a slightly funny corpus to
base choices on (laughs). The vocabulary which
is listed in the index looks OK, but it’s certainly
going well beyond the third or even fourth
thousand words. Even so, there are some very
useful words here. I don’t have any problems
with deliberate learning, but that shouldn’t
make up more than about 25% of the course.
The other 75% of the course should be learning
through message-focused or meaning-focused
input, practicing meaning-focused output, and
uency development. As you rightly mentioned,
the problem is uency. Certainly, if you’re only
learning a little bit of a language, it’s really
important to learn a little bit to a high degree of
uency. When learners are learning in secondary
school, I don’t mind if the vocabulary learning
goals are 2,700 words or even 2,000 words, if
those 2,000 words could be used really uently
and well at the end of the 6-year period. I’d be
absolutely happy with that. So, I think the books
are a good idea. Learning with the Japanese
translation is a good thing. There’s plenty of
research to show that.
It’s important that, when you look at the
learning situation in any country, you don’t get
too critical about it. If things have been going on
for a long time, you need to see how you can use
that to good purpose and how to make it nicely
balanced. Saying this is a lot of rubbish, throwing
it away, and starting with something else is not
the way to bring about change, and to get people
on to your side. In Japan, people have had years
and years of experience of teaching and learning
English, and they’ve worked out things which
are effective for some of the goals that they have.
You’ve got to take those things, see their value
and put them as part of a bigger picture. I think
that that’s the way to make progress.
TM: What directions do you see the eld moving
in in the coming years?
PN: That’s a really hard question. Some of
my students now are doing some really good
research that I’m quite pleased with and proud
of. Some are researching, for example, technical
vocabulary, others are looking at the effect of
different learning activities on what is actually
learned, and seeing whether different activities
result in different kinds of knowledge. Someone
is looking at the nature of learning activities much
more closely, to see how the design of activities
affect what can be learned. And I hope someone
else in the future would be looking closely at
vocabulary size and how much you need to know
in order to do certain things.
TM: How about yourself? What would you like to
see researched more?
PN: My personal big research project at the
moment is trying to design a test of vocabulary
size. I can see that project answering questions
like how do vocabularies grow? I’ll start looking
at native speakers’ vocabulary growth. But every
time I do a little bit more research on it, I nd that
it’s more difcult than I thought it was (laughs).
That’s where my interest lies. But that’s an old-
fashioned interest from the 1920s, 30s, and 40s
and still probably not fully back in fashion. But, as
you said earlier, you should respect age, not see it
as a disadvantage (laughs).
TM: Do you have any plans to write a new book?
PN: Maybe in a year or two, I’d like to write
a book about vocabulary growth, but I’m still
a long way from being able to do that yet.
Generally, I write books for myself because I
want to understand and know, and to write a
book is a way which forces you to systematically
understand and know something.
TM: I’m looking forward to the new book. Thank
you very much for an interesting talk today!
Tsuyuki Miura completed a Master's program in
TESOL at Temple University Japan, Osaka. She is
currently teaching speaking and writing courses at
Kwansei Gakuin University.
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Special Issue: Miura
Special Issue
John Fujimori
Meiji Gakuin High
School
The lexical
composition
of two Oral
Communication I
textbooks
T
he Ministry of Education,
Culture, Sports, Science, and
Technology (MEXT) has
formulated an ambitious ve-year
plan for cultivating “Japanese with“Japanese withJapanese with
English abilities” beginning from the” beginning from the beginning from the
2003 school year (MEXT, 2003a). This
comprehensive plan touches on all
aspects of English education in Japan,
including teacher hiring and training,
super English language high school
programs, international exchanges, cur-cur-
riculum, and textbooks. This revision of, and textbooks. This revision of
the MEXT course of study focuses on
developing the ability to use English,
while de-emphasizing grammaremphasizing grammar grammar
and translation and teacher-oriented
classes. The ve-year plan is to bee ve-year plan is to be ve-year plan is to be
achieved by 2008, the goal being that,
“On graduating from junior high schoolOn graduating from junior high school
and senior high school, graduates can
communicate in English” (MEXT, 2003a).” (MEXT, 2003a). (MEXT, 2003a).
One goal of MEXT is to have Oral
Communication lessons focus on communicative
activities that use functional language and
emphasize aural and oral skills. Learners are
to acquire communicative English skills for
a variety of real-life situations, such as using
English for phone calls, traveling, shopping,
parties, home, school, restaurants, hospitals,
interviews, letters, and email. Moreover, while
emphasizing contemporary standard English,
MEXT recognizes that different varieties of
English are being used throughout the world.
It recommends that 900 words, unlike the 1,000,000000
words suggested under the previous curriculum,
be taught in junior high school. For senior high
school learners, MEXT recommends 400 words
be taught to learners taking English I or Oral
Communication I, 500 words be taught to English
II or Oral Communication II learners, and an
additional 900 words be taught to learners taking
Reading. However, except for a basic 100-word
vocabulary list for junior high school learners,
which can be found at <www.mext.go.jp/english/<www.mext.go.jp/english/www.mext.go.jp/english/nglish//
shotou/030301.htm>, MEXT has left it up to the>, MEXT has left it up to the, MEXT has left it up to the
publishers to determine the vocabulary to inc