INTRODUCTION About half a century ago, Sweet (1964) supported that the real intrinsic difficulty of learning a language lies in that of having to master its vocabulary. This claim was made at a time when vocabulary was notably neglected in language learning for a plethora of reasons. Decontextualised vocabulary instruction had been emphasised too much in the classroom during the years of the Grammar Translation Method, so there was a need for a shift of emphasis on the structural component of the language. This was also partially due to the specialisation in linguistic research on syntax and morphology, which fostered a climate in which vocabulary was thought to be less important (Carter, 1987). Thus, teachers tended to concentrate less on lexis for fear of students making mistakes in sentence construction, if a large amount of vocabulary was acquired before the basic grammar (Allen, 1983). Carter moves on to say that this neglect was in accordance with the “underlying perception that significant structural description and generalisation is possible within syntax, where relations are finite, but less likely in lexis, where relations are theoretically infinite” (1987:145). Furthermore, there may have been more practical reasons for this aversion to teaching vocabulary, since measurement of lexical knowledge can be difficult and only approximate, and vocabulary items do not lend themselves to clear-cut specifications in a syllabus, in terms of either their number, type, or range – unlike syntactic structures (ibid.). Having said the above, we come to the present practice of teaching English, where teachers and learners realise and admit the value of vocabulary, since lack of the necessary words results in failure in communication.... ... middle of paper ... ...aknesses of word lists will be presently examined based on Michael West’s GSL since it is still considered “easy to use [and] deservedly popular” (Fox and Manhood, 1982:128). It contains 2000 headwords and was developed in the 1940s, based on a five-million-word written corpus. The GSL was compiled in order to be used as a resource for developing simplified reading texts categorised into stages or steps. The entries can be divided into the most frequent 1000 words, which according to Carter (1987) and Nation (2001) cover over 75% of the running words in an academic text, and the second 1000 most frequent ones which cover 5-6% of the running words. Elsewhere (Nation and Newton, 1988) it is claimed that the percentage amounts to 85% of the words in any page on any book no matter what the subject matter and that the coverage provided is even greater is spoken language.
Teachers who work with English Language Learners know that academic language takes longer to achieve proficiency in than does conversational language. On average, ELL students need at least two years to achieve conversational language and, five to nine years to develop academic language proficiency. Many English words ELL students are exposed to in school, they have not yet learned or even heard in their first language, which makes transference of knowledge impossible. The vast differences in the ability to use conversational versus academic language can be a hindrance to these students and have lasting effects on their academics and therefore, their lives.
This paper is devoted to the discussions about three main areas of the selected article-- What aspects of vocabulary knowledge do textbooks give attention to.
To accomplish vocabulary development, before reading the teacher needs to instruct their students on any prerequisites that they need to understand to interpret the text appropriately. This means the teacher has to pull out the most important words as well as those that may be too difficult for the stud...
Hatch, E. M,. & Brown, C. (1995). Vocabulary, Semantics and language education. New York: Cambridge University.
The readability of a text is determined by examining the whole text to measure such characteristics as sentence length and word frequency, characteristics that are highly related to overall reading comprehension. The word-frequency and sentence-length results are then entered into the Lexile equation to compute the Lexile measure of the book. Word frequency is based on the frequency of the word in a body of text of over 300-million words taken from a variety of sources and genres. Knowing the frequency of words, as they are used in writing and oral communication, provides the best means of increasing the likelihood that a reader would encounter a word and that it would become a part of their daily vocabulary. Sentence length is determined by counting the number of words per sentence.
This report was assigned for us to learn understand language teaching and how it is practiced more. My assigned area is vocabulary learning and teaching. For this I have thought about what my thoughts and believes on the subject of learning and teaching vocabulary were and how they changed after interviewing a teacher of English as a second language and a learner of English as a second language.
Learning of vocabulary as one of the basic communication tools is often considered by language learners as the
How do children acquire language? What are the processes of language acquisition? How do infants respond to speech? Language acquisition is the process of learning a native or a second language. Although how children learn to speak is not perfectly understood, most explanations involve both the observations that children copy what they hear and the inference that human beings have a natural aptitude for understanding grammar. Children usually learn the sounds and vocabulary of their native language through imitation, (which helps them learn to pronounce words correctly), and grammar is seldom taught to them, but instead that they rapidly acquire the ability to speak grammatically. Though, not all children learn by imitation alone. Children will produce forms of language that adults never say. For example, “I spilled milk on hisself” or “Debbie wants a cookie”. This demonstrates that children have the desire to speak correctly and have self-motivating traits to communicate. This supports the theory of Noam Chomsky (1972)-that children are able to learn grammar of a particular language because all intelligible languages are founded on a deep structure of universal grammatical rules that corresponds to an innate capacity of the human brain. Adults learning a second language pass through some of the same stages, as do children learning their native language. In the first part of this paper I will describe the process of language acquisition. The second part will review how infants respond to speech.
Lynne Flowerdew (2009) “Applying corpus linguistics to pedagogy” International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 14:3, 393–417
Beck, I., McKeown, M., & Kucan, L. (2002). Choosing Words to Teach. Retrieved March 6,
Nassaji, H., & Fotos, S. (2011). The role of context in focus on grammar: Teaching Grammar in Second Language Classroom (pp.121-134). New York and London: Routhdge
...006). Current issues in the teaching of grammar: An SLA perspective. TESOL Quarterly, 40(1), 83-107.
Children’s acquisition of language has long been considered one of the uniquely defining characteristics of human behaviour.
Beginning as a young child, we develop an understanding of how important vocabulary is in our daily lives. Vocabulary allows us to consciously participate in speaking comfortably and confidentially. Parents, guardians, and teachers actively teach and support children in vocabulary development and comprehension.
When discussing the teaching of grammar, it is crucial to realise what the exact meaning of grammar is because grammar is more closely related, in instructors’ perspectives, to language pedagogy than of other modalities (Hudson,2012). In other words, to understand this study and its purposes to distinguish what pedagogical grammar methods should be implemented and what aspects of grammar teachers instruct in class, it is worth accentuating its definitions first. Consequently, it seems sensible to contemplate meanings regarding the term “grammar” with a view to finding out what the most common understanding of grammar is as there is lots of diversity in the usage of this term. Demystified by Ur (2012,p. 82-84), the