As part of Temple University Japan's graduate seminar program, Dr. Batia Laufer (University of Haifa, Israel) spoke on "Vocabulary Acquisition Research in a Second Language: A Pedagogical Perspective." This report covers her May 23-24, 1998 presentation at Temple University's Osaka campus.
The first three hours of the seminar, open to the public free of charge, were entitled, "Pedagogical Issues in Vocabulary Learning and Related Research." Laufer stressed the importance of vocabulary learning, which, unlike learning grammar, is an unending task partly because lexical errors are usually more disruptive for communication and comprehension than grammatical ones. Moreover, vocabulary correlates with the holistic assessment of writing and general proficiency, and is the best single predictor of reading comprehension.
Laufer presented research data which showed that, contrary to the assumption that Japanese learners underestimate their knowledge of words, they actually overestimated it by 34%. Another study showed that teachers were only able to assess which words their students didn't know about 50% of the time. Thus, learner self-assessment and teacher assessment are often inaccurate.
The number of words students could learn in a single lesson depends upon word difficulty. In particular, synforms (different words with similar pronunciation and/or forms), and concepts that are lexicalized differently in the target language are not easily learned. Teachers should: (a) give special attention to more difficult words; (b) avoid presenting closely related words together initially; and (c) review newly introduced words periodically.
While there may be no hard and fast rule for the number of words which can be learned in a single lesson, learning targets over longer courses should be set higher. In one unique case, Israeli high school students were able to gain 1,600 words during a 180-hour general proficiency course.
Guessing Words in Context
When words are met in context for the first time, teachers can either gloss them, have students use dictionaries, or have them practice guessing from context. While guessing words in context can develop fluency and reinforce learning by intentional means, it should not be relied upon for learning new vocabulary. Guessing is often hindered by a lack of clues, unusable clues, and/or misleading or partial clues. Moreover, learners may suppress or ignore clues. Also, the learner must know about 95% or more of the surrounding words in order to have a reasonable chance of guessing correctly. Finally, words guessed from context are not retained as well as glossed words. Laufer concluded that guessing is not a perfect solution to understanding unknown words.
Extensive Reading and Vocabulary Retention
Like guessing from context, extensive reading can boost fluency. However, because it is difficult in an EFL setting to get enough input and enough frequently repeated exposure to unknown words, it should not be relied upon as the primary means of second language (L2) vocabulary learning. Furthermore, learners may pay little or no attention to unknown words during extensive reading, resulting in a lack of retention.
In contrast to extensive reading, the memorization of words for tests does improve retention. However, whether one should test words in context or in isolation depends upon the goal of the test. When testing in context, students may be able to infer the word's meaning, whereas testing words in isolation tests sight vocabulary, the ability to recognize a word in any context. Whether attention is paid to word meaning and form is a crucial issue for learning and retention, and testing periodically will contribute to retention.
Dictionaries and Learning Tasks
A majority of L2 learners favor bilingual dictionaries over monolingual dictionaries because they are easier to use. However, "bilingualized" dictionaries, which provide a monolingual entry and a first language (L1) translation of the word, give the best results for both the comprehension and production of new words. Furthermore, electronic bilingualized dictionaries will become increasingly popular because they offer a variety of look-up choices that cater to the learner's needs.
Laufer also discussed task effect, which assumes that the quality of the exposure presented by the task is critically important for learning. In particular, output (productive) tasks that require learners to attend to words will help retention and may also be used to rehearse and recycle words. However, eliciting words using output tasks does not guarantee that students will actually use them later. Unelicited productive use of words depends on how often learners meet the word thereafter and whether they will simplify their production by resorting to risk avoiding behavior.
Testing
In the Saturday evening session, "Quantitative Testing of Global Vocabulary: How it Can be Done and What it is Good For," Laufer reviewed the types of word knowledge and the distinction between the breadth of word knowledge (number of words known) and the depth of word knowledge (variety of word knowledge types demonstrated). She suggested that automaticity, how quickly words can be accessed, be considered a type of word knowledge. After discussing a number of vocabulary tests and their problems, a four-test battery was proposed as a means for measuring global vocabulary knowledge:
- The receptive version of the Vocabulary Levels Test (Nation, 1990).
- The controlled productive version of the Vocabulary Levels Test (Laufer & Nation, 1998).
- A free productive computerized test that analyzes writing samples known as the Lexical Frequency Profile (Laufer & Nation, 1995).
- A newly developed computerized measure of automaticity that tracks learner response time known as the Speed of Access Test (Laufer & Nation, forthcoming).
This type of global measure of vocabulary breadth would compliment and compensate for the limitations of controlled experiments, which often are limited to testing a few words and/or are single, short-term studies.
Passive and Active Vocabulary
Laufer presented her research on the relationship between passive and active vocabularies, and she concluded that the two develop differently (Laufer, 1998; Laufer & Paribakht, 1998). Controlled active (elicited) vocabulary grows at a slower rate than does passive vocabulary, and the gap between the two widens as passive vocabulary knowledge increases. What percentage of L2 passive vocabulary is active depends upon whether the context is EFL or ESL, the total vocabulary size of the learner, and the frequency level within a person's lexicon. Although passive vocabulary can be activated by multiple exposures in an ESL setting, passive vocabulary development in an EFL setting is probably more effective when done through direct instruction.
A large passive vocabulary does not necessarily result in a better free active vocabulary (unelicited in writing samples), which seems to progress very slowly and tends to reach a plateau unless teachers actively try to expand it. The implications for teaching are: (a) increasing target vocabulary size and explicitly activating passive vocabulary is desirable; (b) rewarding lexical richness in free production is necessary to enlarge free active vocabulary size; and (c) using output tasks can lead to better learning.
Vocabulary Size and Reading Comprehension
In the first Sunday session, "Lexis in L2 Reading Comprehension: Where the Real Problems Lie," Laufer demonstrated how unknown and misinterpreted words make guessing the meanings of words nearly impossible unless one knows about 95% or more of the surrounding words. She then presented evidence that knowing fewer than 3,000 word families or 5,000 lexical items indicates poor L2 reading ability regardless of L1 reading ability. Her research suggests that knowing 3,000 word families provides the ability to read about 95% of a reading passage and should be considered a minimum L2 vocabulary threshold since it was found to correlate with about 60% comprehension in reading. Knowing more than 5,000 word families or 8,000 lexical items in L2 correlated with about 70% reading comprehension irrespective of L1 reading scores.
Again, goals for teaching vocabulary must be set higher, especially if students are expected to do academic reading. Furthermore, knowing more vocabulary will make guessing from context more successful and can free up cognitive capacity for higher level processing.
Task Effect and "Involvement Load"
The final lecture session began with a discussion of task effect on vocabulary learning. Rather than using the concept of deep processing, which is unobservable, a model of involvement was proposed to explain retention. Tasks are described in terms of "involvement load" rather than as being input or output type tasks. Greater involvement occurs when there is a high degree of need, a search for answers, and evaluation of the word and context. In any given task, these factors can be present or absent (+/-), moderate (+), or strong (++). Indeed, initial experimental results support the assumption that higher involvement load results in better retention. In a recent study (Laufer & Hulstijn, 1998) showed that the task of writing and using a word resulted in better retention than reading and filling in blanks, which in turn, proved better than reading with glosses provided. The concept of involvement load received additional support from another study that compared second-hand cloze exercises (using summaries of previously read texts with L1 translation clues provided) to lists of words with L1 translations. As expected, words had better recall when done in the second-hand cloze condition.
Idioms and Learner Avoidance
The lecture ended with a discussion of how L2 learners use avoidance strategies for multi-word units such as idioms and phrasal verbs, which can have meanings that are not transparent. Laufer's recent research showed that not all L2 idioms were avoided, especially if they had L1 equivalents or could be expressed in different words that were still idiomatic in L1. However, L2 learners avoided English idioms that were only partially translatable into L1 or that were non-idiomatic in L1.
Conclusion
Laufer's weekend seminar demonstrated that research into how students actually learn their L2 vocabulary is of great potential benefit to teachers. Her call for increased attention to vocabulary development provides a promising alternative to the continuing tendency of traditional English education in Japan to overemphasize grammar.
References
- Laufer, B. (1998). The development of passive and active vocabulary in a second language: same or different? Applied Linguistics, 19(2), 255- 271.
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Laufer, B., & Hulstijn, J. (1998, March). What leads to better incidental vocabulary learning: Comprehensible input or comprehensible output? Paper presented at the Tokyo PacSLRF Conference, Aoyama Gakuin, March, 1998.
- Laufer, B., & Nation, P. (1995). Vocabulary size and use: Lexical richness in L2 written production. Applied Linguistics, 16(3), 307-329.
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Laufer, B., & Nation, P. (1998). A vocabulary size test of controlled productive ability. Language Testing (forthcoming).
- Laufer, B., & Paribakht, T. S. (1998). The relationship between passive and active vocabularies: the effect of language learning context. Language Learning (forthcoming).
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Nation, P. (1990). Teaching and learning vocabulary. New York: Newbury House.