vocabulary development

UNLPam – Facultad de Ciencias HumanasPRÁCTICA EDUCATIVA II

(Didactics of ELT and Practicum at Primary School Level)

Blanco, Fátima – Fernández, Fiorella

Practical N° 18 : Chapter 4: Learning Vocabulary

1) What is the relationship between teaching vocabulary and grammar at Primary school level?

Important grammatical information is tied into words, and learning words can take students a long way into grammar. This suggests that if we give a high priority to vocabulary development, we are not thereby abandoning grammar. Rather, vocabulary learning can serve as a stepping stone to learning and using grammar.

2) What aspects are included in vocabulary development?

Vocabulary development is not just about learning words, it is also about learning more about those words, and about learning formulaic phrases or chunks, finding words inside them, and learning even more about those words. Children will ask what a particular word means, or how to say a word in the foreign language, and, in learning to read, the word is a key unit in building up skills and knowledge. The role of words as language units begins with the early use of nouns for naming objects in first language acquisition, and of use of other words to express the child’s wants and needs. Infants go through a period of rapid vocabulary growth as they start to name, as well as interact with, the world around them.

3) What is ostensive definition?

A relationship can be established between infants learning to point and a well-documented sudden increase in the rate of acquisition of nouns for naming objects, as if the two reinforce each other by enabling the children to get helpful adults to label the word for them. Many os these words are “name for things”, acquired through ostensive definition, i.e. by the child seeing or touching the object that a word refers to. Very often early words are used to do things, so that when a young child says “daddy book”, she may be trying to get her father give her a book or to read a book to her.

4) What is Vygotsky’s warning about the nature of concept development?

We need to be aware, as Vygotsky warned that although children may use the same words as adults, they may not hold the same meanings for those words. The acquisition of word meanings takes much longer than the acquisition of the spoken

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form of the words, and children use words in their speech long before they have a full understanding of them.

5) How do the L1 and L2 interrelate in vocabulary learning?

For children learning the vocabulary of a foreign language, this partial knowledge issue is compounded. Some of the foreign language words will map on to word meanings that are already fully formed in the first language. Many of the words, however, may link to first language words and concepts that they are in the process of learning about and have only partial meaning for. In addition, the first and foreign language words may not map straightforwardly one on to another, but may have different underlying meanings because of cultural or other differences.

6) Why is learning words a “cyclical process”? What are the implications for EFL teaching?

Learning words is a cyclical process of meeting new words and initial learning, followed by meeting those words again and again, each time extending knowledge of what the words mean and how they are used in the foreign language. Each time children meet familiar words again, they too have changed and will bring new first language and conceptual knowledge to the vocabulary. The root system of word knowledge continues to grow and become thicker and more tightly-linked, so that the flowers of word use are more and more strongly supported. The implications for EFL teaching are that vocabulary development is about learning words, but that learning words is not something that is done and finished with.

7) Can you provide examples for the different areas involved in knowing about a word (chart by Sincalir and Ellis (1990:99)?

Type of Knowledge What is involved ExampleReceptive knowledge: aural / decoding

To understand it when it is spoken / written.

Memory To recall it when needed.

Conceptual knowledge To use it with the correct meaning

Not confusing carpet with folder.

Knowledge of the spoken form: phonological knowledge

To hear the word and to pronounce it acceptably, on its own, and in phrases and sentences.

Not to add a schwa before a word that starts with “s” e.g. School./

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not

Grammatical knowledgeTo use it in grammatically accurate way; to know grammatical connections with other words.

She is 16 years old not she has got 16 years old.

Collocational knowledgeTo know which other words can be used with it.

Do my homework not Make my homework.

Orthographic knowledgeTo spell it correctly. Responsible not

responsable.

Pragmatic knowledge, knowledge of style and register.

To use it in the right situation.

How are you? is more appropriate in a formal semi-formal situation than What´s up?

Connotational knowledge

To know its positive and negative associations, to know its associations with related words.

To know that plump has positive connotation when used about a person, whereas fat is negative.

Metalinguistic knowledge

To know explicitly about the word, e.g. its grammatical properties.

To know that power is a noun; to know that “less” is a prefix.

8) What does the syntagmatic-paradigmatic shift refer to?

Conceptual knowledge grows as children experience more and more of the world in their daily lives. There are also maturational factors that seem to affect the nature of conceptual knowledge about first language vocabulary at different ages, and that can be expected to have a knock-on effect for foreign language learning. One of these factors is the “syntagmatic-paradigmatic shift” that occurs between five and ten years of age. This shift refers to the types of associations that children make between words and ideas. Children in word-association experiments are given a word and asked what the word brings to mind; as they get older, so the types of words that come to mind seem to change. Children shift to paradigmatic responses probably reflects other developments: they become more able to deal with abstract connections, and they build up more knowledge of the world, words to go with it and ways of organizing it.

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9) How does schooling foster vocabulary development?

School introduces students to formal thinking; i.e. they learn how to classify, label, compare and contrast things. Eventually, students carry the same strategies to language learning because they learn new items of vocabulary that are related to different areas of knowledge. School also contributes to vocabulary development in the sense that it moves students from the concrete to the abstract. Therefore, students are able to work with words that have abstract meaning.

10) At what age do the different components of word learning develop? (Lakoff, 1987)

The different components of word learning develop in early-childhood. Children first learn the most common words (e.g. cat) and then they start using the superordinate (e.g. pet), until finally they are able to master more specific vocabulary (e.g. meow).

11) What is the use of schemas?

“Schema” refers to the different categories and connections that people have in their minds in relation with words. I.e. When people encounter a new word, the schema (the field to which the word belongs to) is activated in order to make sense of the meaning of what is being said.

12) State the differences between younger and older learners in vocabulary acquisition. (Summary, 4.2.7)

Young learners’ vocabulary acquisition:

They need concrete vocabulary that can be connected with objects they can perceive with their senses.

They need to meet words again and again in different contexts in order to be able to acquire it.

They learn basic level words. They learn words as a collection.

Older learner’s vocabulary acquisition:

They can cope with abstract topics and wordings. They also need to meet words in different contexts.

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They are able to build superordinate categories in connection with the basic level words they have already learned.

They are able to make connections between the words they learn.

13) What is the difference between content words and functions words? How they are taught?

Content words are those that carry a lexical meaning and, function words are used to carry grammatical meaning. Content words are taught by talking about them and using them in context and they are linked to schemas. On the other hand, function words are learnt by incident, through their permanent use.

14) How do people relate word meaning to develop sense relations?

In order to develop sense relations, people relate word meanings in different ways such as through the use of antonymy, synonymy, hyponymy and meronymy.

15) Read through 4.4.2 and relate it to your teaching experience during your practicum. Which of these ways of teaching vocabulary have you used? What is the problem with translation?

We have used pictures (flashcards), body language (when performing the verbs for routines), we also put the words in a context, as in the case of listening and reading comprehension, and in many cases we had to use translations. (Fiorella Fernández)

When presenting new vocabulary, we have used flashcards (visual aids), body language (mainly when given instructions such us “open the book” or “listen”) and gestures. Likewise, we have put the new word in a defining context, for instance, in reading texts and listening to songs. Very often we have had to translate, especially when explaining the activities and the homework. (Fátima Blanco)

The problem with translation is the fact that it prevents students from thinking about the meaning and it brings about only short term remembering.

16) How can we help children attend to form and make memory connections?

It is necessary to make students hear a new word several times (both in isolation and in context) in order to let them notice the sounds, the stress pattern and the

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syllables that make up the word. Furthermore, when children encounter the same word in written form, they will pay attention to its shape and its spelling. Memorising activities at regular intervals are important at the moment of learning and recycling a new word because they keep the word active and ready to use. Teachers can use different strategies to help children memorise, for example, by the use of diagrams and images, repetition and chants.

17) What is the importance of teaching?

It is really important to teach stories because they provide students with a great variety of new vocabulary. The advantage of stories is that the new lexical items appear in context and the grammatical and collocational information about words is available. Also, the plot of the story and its characters, are likely to form a thematic organization which will contribute to the understanding and learning of the new vocabulary. Something relevant to mention is that it is essential to keep in mind children’s interest and their language level when choosing a story.

18) How can teachers encourage the use of strategies for young learners acquiring vocabulary?

There are many ways in which teachers can encourage young learners to use strategies for acquiring new vocabulary:

Teacher can model how to use strategies. Teachers can teach the sub-skills that are needed to use of strategies. Teachers can ask students to be rehearsed in the classroom so as to help

students familiarize with them. Teacher can ask students to evaluate their achievements so as to reflect on

the learning process.

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vocabulary development

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