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LEARNINGANDTEACHING
VOCABULARYProf. Tamar Mikeladze
Telavi State University
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WORDFREQUENCY
What do you think are the ten most frequent words
in English? Would you teach them all to beginners?
Why do you think frequency is important?
Keyword:
word frequency: simply measured by counting how
often a word or word form occurs in a large sample
of spoken or written language, such as the BritishNational Corpus (BNC) (www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk)
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The first surprise on looking at this list is that
most of the words feature in the discussion of
grammar in Chapter 2 since they are structure
words, such as articles the, pronouns it,
auxiliaries would and forms of the verb be.
Usually the teaching of structure words is seen
as part of grammar, not vocabulary. Frequency
is taken to apply more to content words.
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Influential as frequency has been in teaching, it has
not played a major role inSLA research. It belongs
more to the descriptive Lang3 sense of language
as a collection of sentences. It is true that you are
more likely to remember a word you meet everyday than one you only meet once. But there are
many other factors that make students learn words.
A swear word **** said accidentally when the
teacher drops the tape recorder is likely to beremembered by the students for ever, even if it is
never repeated. Common words like because and
necessary are still spelt wrongly after students
have been meeting them for many years.
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Frequency is usually established nowadays from a
large corpus of a language, such as the BNC for
English.
Words vary extremely in how often they are used.
Frequency is only one factor in the choice of words
to teach.
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FOCUSINGQUESTIONS
What do you know about a word like man if you
speak English?
When you teach students the meaning of a word,
what do you mean by meaning and how do you
teach it?
Keyword:
argument structure: the aspect of a word thatdictates the structures in which it may be used, for
example, the verb give requires an animate
subject, a direct object and an indirect object: Peter
gave a stone to the wolf
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Most people assume that knowing a word is a
matter of knowing that plane in English means
or that the English word plane mea
A word in the Language sense of language asknowledge in the mind is more than its meaningns
the same as laereo in Italian.
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EXAMPLEOFTHEWORDMAN
FORMSOFTHEWORD
Pronunciation /mJn/ or /mn/ (chairman)
Spellingdouble n in man verb form
Grammatical properties Grammatical categorynoun, verb, possessive
form, plural, subject or object
Possible and impossible structures- She manned
the barricades, not They manned. the argumentstructure of words is pivotal in language acquisition.
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LEXICALPROPERTIES
Collocations. We know many more or less set
expressions in which the word man conventionally
goes with other words, such as my good man,
man in the street, man to man, Man of God, to
separate the men from the boys, my man Jeeves,and many others.
Appropriateness. my man may be used as a form
of address Hi my man. The prime minister might
be surprised at being greeted with Hi my man, apop star might not. We have to know when and to
whom it is appropriate to use a word.
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MEANING
General meanings. We know general properties
about the meaning of man, such as male, adult,
human being, concrete, animate. These aspects
of meaning, called semantic features or
components of meaning, are shared with manyother words in the language.
Specific meanings. We know a range of specific
senses for man. The OED has 17 main entries for
man as a noun, ranging from A human being(irrespective of sex or age) to One of the pieces
used in chess.
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Hence the message for language teaching is thatvocabulary is everywhere. It connects to the systems ofphonology and orthography through the actual forms ofthe words, to the systems of morphology and grammarthrough the ways that the word enters into grammatical
structures and through grammatical changes to thewords form, and to the systems of meaning through itsrange of general and specific meanings and uses.
Knowing a word means its spoken and written forms, itsgrammatical and lexical properties and its meaning.
Vocabulary impinges on all areas of languageacquisition and is not just learning sets of words andmeanings.
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ONEWORD-STOREORTWOINTHEL2
USERSMIND?
When you learn a new word in a second language,
do you try to keep it separate from your first
language words?
When you teach a new word do you try to link it to
words in the first language, say, by translation, or
do you keep it separate?
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THEFUNDAMENTALQUESTIONINSLA VOCABULARYRESEARCHIS
HOWTHEWORDSOFTHETWOLANGUAGESARESTOREDINTHE
MIND. THEVARIOUSALTERNATIVESARESETOUTBELOW.
1.Separate s tores. The vocabulary of the secondlanguage is kept entirely separate from that of the first:an English person who learns the word libre in Frenchkeeps it separate from the English word free.
2. L2 store dependent o n L1 store. The two word-storesare tightly linked so that L2 words are always related toL1 words; to think of the French word libre meansthinking first of the English word free.
3. Overlapp ing s tores. There is an overlapping system sothat some words are shared, some not; libre in Frenchmight be associated with English free, liberty orliberal.
4. Sing le sto re. There is a single overall word-store forboth languages; French libre and English free arestored together.
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The L1 and the L2 sets of vocabulary in the L2
users mind may be related in various ways,
ranging from completely separate to completely
integrated.
Research suggests that in many cases the two
vocabulary stores are closely linked.
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TYPESOFMEANING
What do you mean by meaning?
What nouns can you remember learning first in your
first language? In your second?
Keywords
components of meaning: general aspects of
meaning which are shared by many words; boy
has the components male, human, young, andso on
prototype theory: words have whole meanings
divided into basic level (car), subordinate level
(Ford) and superordinate level (vehicle)
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COMPONENTSOFMEANINGANDLEXICAL
RELATIONS
Often the meaningof a word can bebroken up intosmallercomponents. Thus
the meaning of girlis made up offemale, humanand non-adult.The meaning of
apple is made upof fruit, edible,round, and so on.
Words do not exist by themselves, however, butare always in relationship to other words. Themeaning of hot relates to cold; the meaning ofrun to walk, of high to low, of pain topleasure, and so on. When we speak, wechoose one word out of all those we haveavailable, rejecting all the words we could havesaid: I love you potentially contrasts with I hate
you. Words function within systems of meaning.A metaphor for meaning that is often used istraffic lights. When a traffic light has two colours,red and green, red means stop, contrasting withgreen go. Hence red does not just mean stop,it also means not green, that is, dont go, asystem with two options. Add another colour,called amber in England, and the whole systemchanges, with amber acting as a warning that
something is going to change, having twopossibilities: amber alone, officially stop(unofficially, prepare to stop), and amber andred together, officially stop (unofficially prepareto go). If a simple three-colour system can leadto such complexity of meanings (and indeedtraffic accidents), think what happens with thethousands of words in any human language.
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PROTOT
YPES
Prototype theory claims that children first learn words that are
basic because they reflect aspects of the world that stand out
automatically from the rest of what they seeprototypes.
Sparrow is a basic-level term compared to a superordinate
level term like bird, or a subordinate-level term like housesparrow. The basic level of vocabulary is easier to use and to
learn. On this foundation, children build higher and lower levels of
vocabulary. Some examples of the three levels of vocabulary are
seen in Table 3.2.
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WAYSOFMEANING
Words have many different kinds of meaning, whethersharing general components, linked in lexical relationsor related to prototypes and levels.
While some aspects of meaning are universal, there aredifferences between languages in how they express
concepts of colour, and so on, which may affect thethinking of L2 users.
Vocabulary strategies
To understand an unfamiliar L2 word, people make use
of a variety of strategies, such as guessing, usingdictionaries, deducing meaning from the words formand relating it to cognates.
To acquire new L2 words, people use strategies such asrepetition, organizing them in the mind, and linking themto existing knowledge.
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