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Second language for students, Summaries of English Language

Chu Hai CollegeEnglish Language

Second language for foreign students

Typology: Summaries

2025/2026

Uploaded on 01/13/2026

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Teaching Vocabulary
1. Decisions about content
What vocabulary to teach: criteria for selection
When making decisions about content, one of the first questions the
language teacher will have to address is what vocabulary to teach. For many of
them this will be determined by the choice of the coursebook, the syllabus
designers, or other factors. Even so, the teacher should be concerned about the
different criteria used when designing their syllabuses and materials, the one
followed in making decisions about vocabulary content in language courses, and
what the objectives of these particular decisions are. Otherwise, it becomes
difficult to evaluate syllabuses and materials, to understand why particular
vocabulary is to be taught as well as to explain to learners why they must learn
particular words.
Lexis is, of course, derived in part from the notional-functional and
grammatical inventory ( time expressions, prepositions, verbs that fit the patterns
being dealt with, etc.), but more significantly, it is drawn from the thematic
content. The themes or topics should be selected according to learners’ interests,
needs and background knowledge, while most of the lexis chosen derives from
the treatment of each theme. Sometimes, however, when the objective is spelling,
pronunciation or word formation, for example, it is probably necessary to
incorporate words wich do not always have to do with the topic being discussed in
the unit.
Now, different criteria can be employed to select the particular words to be
taught, but before dealing with this it is important to point out that every teaching
situation is different and so essential items in one context may be quite useless in
another (e.g. ESP). The relative importance we attach to the various criteria about
to be described below will therefore depend on our own teaching situation.
The criteria wich may be used to select vocabulary are as follows:
a) Frequency
It seems self-evident that it is sensible to teach the most frequent words in any
language before the more unusual ones are taught as they are likely to be the most
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Teaching Vocabulary

1. Decisions about content What vocabulary to teach: criteria for selection When making decisions about content, one of the first questions the language teacher will have to address is what vocabulary to teach. For many of them this will be determined by the choice of the coursebook, the syllabus designers, or other factors. Even so, the teacher should be concerned about the different criteria used when designing their syllabuses and materials, the one followed in making decisions about vocabulary content in language courses, and what the objectives of these particular decisions are. Otherwise, it becomes difficult to evaluate syllabuses and materials, to understand why particular vocabulary is to be taught as well as to explain to learners why they must learn particular words. Lexis is, of course, derived in part from the notional-functional and grammatical inventory ( time expressions, prepositions, verbs that fit the patterns being dealt with, etc.), but more significantly, it is drawn from the thematic content. The themes or topics should be selected according to learners’ interests, needs and background knowledge, while most of the lexis chosen derives from the treatment of each theme. Sometimes, however, when the objective is spelling, pronunciation or word formation, for example, it is probably necessary to incorporate words wich do not always have to do with the topic being discussed in the unit. Now, different criteria can be employed to select the particular words to be taught, but before dealing with this it is important to point out that every teaching situation is different and so essential items in one context may be quite useless in another (e.g. ESP). The relative importance we attach to the various criteria about to be described below will therefore depend on our own teaching situation. The criteria wich may be used to select vocabulary are as follows: a) Frequency It seems self-evident that it is sensible to teach the most frequent words in any language before the more unusual ones are taught as they are likely to be the most

useful ones for learners of that language. But frequency is a more complex matter that it looks, and it is unlikely that any syllabus or coursebook would want to stick to frequency lists alone. Thus, the most frequent words are not necessarily the most useful ones for learners and the common sense demands that the most frequent words be supplemented by intuition. If we want to organize our vocabulary teaching on a subject basis it may be a good idea to work out what the most frequent words are in that subject area either intuitively, with the aid of teachers of other subject matters (ESP), through the study of a limited set of related texts or with the help of a dictionary. b) Range A word may be quite different, but a majority or even all of its occurrences might be in just one or two texts. In this case, although its frequency might look significant, its range might be quite small. The most useful words for the learners then are those wich are frequent and occur across a wide variety of texts. Teachers who take their own texts into classroom will often have to decide from experience, intuition or even the use of a dictionary, witch words are likely to have the most useful range, a job which has already been done to a great extent in good coursebooks. c) Availability and/or expediency Thus, although “ chalk” or “BB” have a very low frequency and restricted range, because they name things wich the learner can see and touch and wich the teacher can use in his or her teaching, both these words may be very helpful. The converse of this situation is where knowledge of one particular item will make others redundant as far as meaning is concerned. Thus, it may be useful to have a receptive knowledge of “sweater”, “jumper” and “pullover”, for instance, but one of theses words would be sufficient for productive purposes. The classroom will also often dictate the need for certain vocabulary without wich the SS may fail to understand their teacher, classmates or the activity they are engaged in. One of these areas is grammatical terminology. Many teachers do not wish to burden their SS with too many grammatical labels, but it is also true that understanding such items can be very helpful. One the one hand, the

they will obviously reflect the cultural interests of these speakers. Such interests may not, however, be shared by L1 learners, who may wish to express ideas and experiences quite outside those of native speaker’s. Thus, “sleet” and “double- glazing” as lexical items are as about as useful to Brazilians as “mangos” and “cockcroaches” are to Scandinavians, at least while they remain in their home environement. How many items to teach We need to consider two basic questions:

  1. the optimum vocabulary load for a lesson and
  2. the number of items that should be covered over the duration of the course. As regards the number of new lexical items that should be presented in class, we consider that it is impossible to be dogmatic. We suggest an average of eight to twelve productive items as a reasonable input, the lower figure being suitable for elementary students and the upper one for those who are more advanced. Now, if this rate of input were sustained, low level SS would be expected to achieve a productive vocabulary of approximately 1.000 items after 125 hours of study, wich is rather ambitious. So, while it may be reasonable to present eight items per lesson, it is probably unrealistic to expect the majority of students to have acquired this number over the duration of the course. What we can do then to compensate for restricted classroom time is resort to homework. Thus, workbooks or practice books can allow lexical consolidation as well as give learners an opportunity to acquire vocabulary relevant to their own personal needs and interests. How to group the items of vocabulary to be taught As vocabulary consists of a series of interrelating systems and not just a random collection of items, lexical items should be presented in a systematized manner wich will enable the learner to internalize them in a coherent way and make him aware of the organized nature of vocabulary. At the same time, research in memory suggests that vocabulary is stored in the brain in a highly organized and efficient lexicon, although not like a

dictionary. It seems that lexemes are stored and remembered in a network of associations. These associations can be of many types and be linked in a number of ways. As teachers then, we should devise different types of activities and help students develop different techniques to facilitate storage and retrieval of words. And, as organization is the key to memory, this will become an important part of our teaching. Now, words may be grouped into different types of semantic fields ( or lexical sets) as well as into phonological and grammatical sets. Clearly, some grouping are more appropriate at certain levels than at others. The possible groupings are as follows ( Gairns and Redman):

  1. items related by topic, one of the most common and useful grouping found in course books, e.g. types of fruit, articles of clothing, etc.
  2. items grouped as an activity or process (also topic-related), e.g. steps involved in taking a photograph, opening an account, etc.
  3. items wich are similar in meaning, e.g. ways of walking, ways of looking, etc.
  4. items wich form “pairs” as synonyms or antonyms.
  5. items along a scale or cline, wich illustrate differences of degree, e.g. temperatures, ages, etc.
  6. derivatives, e.g. “psychologie”, “psychologist”, etc.
  7. items grouped by grammatical and notional similarity, e.g. adverbs of frequency, prepositions of position, …
  8. items wich connect discourse, e.g. discourse makers (“to begin with”), adverbs ending in “ly” (surprisingly”), etc.
  9. items forming a set of idio ms or multi-word verbs, e.g. “ring up”, “get through” and “ring back” or “to be out of sorts”, “under the weather” and “on top of the world”.
  10. items grouped by spelling difficulty or phonological difficulty; for instance, within a topic area, e.g. food: “recipe”, “vegetable”, “tough meat”, “steak”.
  11. items grouped by style, e.g. “cigarette/ciggy”, “toilet/loo”, operation/op’, vegetable/veg”, etc.
  12. an item explored in terms of its different meanings, e.g. different meanings of “sentence”.

d) with synonyms/opposites e) by using scales for gradable items

  1. Translation Used sensibly, translation can be a useful technique to convey meaning as:
  • it saves time
  • it allows us to check correct comprehension, if necessary (e.g. in the case of false friends) On the whole, however, translation of vocabulary into the mother tongue should be kept under tight control. From the lower intermediate stages onwards it is better to resort on other techniques (e.g. a simple explanation in the target language). Apart from giving the student extra exposure to the target language ( as students rarely listen so intently as when they are learning new words), this technique has another benefit: if on a future occasion he cannot remember the target item, he can always give an explanation or a synonym, a technique that is in fact often used by native speakers of the language. The problem with the students who have been taught through the translation technique is that they often give up if the exact lexeme does not come to mind, while those who are accustomed to operating in the target language will often fall back on some type of alternative communicative strategy. Og course, it is also possible to use a combination of the techniques mentioned above. Student-centred learning Student-centred learning can also take place in different ways such as by allowing them to ask other students in the classroom, by using a dictionary or through contextual guesswork. As regards the proper and efficient use of a dictionary, it is something that students certainly ought to be trained in, if only as a way of helping the student to be independent of the teacher and the classroom. On the other hand, many of the students’ errors derive from its wrong usage. Nevertheless, recourse to the dictionary should not be typical of every reading session as:
  • it may encourage the tendency to concentrate on individual words rather than on averall meaning,
  • the learner may not attempt to use the context to decode meaning, and
  • over-frequent use of dictionary slows up the flow of reading. And makes the passage more boring to read and perhaps even more difficult to understand since concentration is interrupted. We may also choose to teach vocabulary within a written context, specially at intermediate and advanced levels. If we are thinking about a comprehension lesson the teacher should make sure that the SS have at least a general understanding of the passage. The usual procedure would be to ask questions to establish the general sense of the passage first and then continue with more specific questions about the meanings of pieces of the text and individual words. This technique is probably the most efficient in the long run. As the teacher will only be able to teach the student a small percentage of the words that he or she will later need, it seems to be a good idea to promote extensive reading so that SS’s vocabulary can grow naturally, and to spend some time on showing SS what we calls “word-attack skills”. Through these it is possible :
  1. to infer meaning from context in the same way native speakers or competent speakers of a foreign language do,
  2. to show SS that many words can just be ignored, probably the first and most basic word-attack skill and the most difficult one to accept. Students must be taught to use sentence structure to establish the grammatical category of the new item, word structure to find out the type of word it is and its meaning, as well as contextual, logical and cultural clues to discover the meaning. And FL readers certainly do require specific training in using this skill for different reasons:
  3. Because L2 readers have less exposure to the language than L1 readers and, therefore, have to m ake more conscious effort to learn words.
  4. Because most SS are not aware that it is possible to understand new words without being told what they mean.