Lexicon Core Vocabulary

One observation that I made after consulting the dictionary on selected words is that the words we ought to teach first in a group of synonyms are the ones that appear in the definition of the other words. Here are the word groupings he gave as examples. In the first, “angry” is used in the definition of “furious,” for example, but not the other way around. I’ve bolded the word I think is the one to teach first.

1. guffaw, snicker, giggle, laugh
2. angry, furious, irritated, annoyed (careful: cuz these aren’t synonymous or shades of meaning; you can be annoyed without being angry, e.g.)
3. glance, look, glimpse, stare
4. unclean, messy, dirty, filthy
5. spectators, onlookers, audience
6. assassinate, rub out, massacre, murder, kill
7. overweight, plump, fat, chubby
8. mansion, igloo, trailer, house
9. sprint, lope, jog, run

What characterizes core vocabulary (i.e. the words we select as most important to learn first)?

1. Words tend to be high frequency: those that a learner is most likely to encounter more often (angry vs. furious).
2. We generally pick words that lack subtle shades of distinction (spectators v. onlookers).
3. We might stick with the basic word before moving on to its extreme (dirty vs. filthy)
4. We avoid more obtuse colloquialisms (rub out vs. kill).
5. We may try to avoid overloading the learner with close synonyms, instead picking one they’re most likely to hear (dirty vs. unclean and filthy.)
6. Subtle gradations of meaning along a continuum may also be difficult to learn (overweight, plump, fat, chubby), and we’ll choose the most frequently heard one that words as a “supercategory” for all of them.
7. We’ll choose words that have relevance to daily life (in the US, house vs. igloo).
8. In a series of synonyms, we’ll choose the most often heard or the most general
9. We might initially avoid those with very close shades of meaning (assassinate vs. murder)
10. Similarly, unless we’re teach ESP, we’ll avoid specialized, profession- or situation-specific words if there’s a more encompassing alternative

Why is it useful for teachers to be aware of this factor in word groupings?

Because the more general and practical and high-frequency a word a user has in his/her memory, the more uses s/he has for them. Specialized words aren’t used (or useful) as much, and thus are less practical and more likely to be forgotten.

Trying to teach sets of similar words is harder for the brain to process until the basic concepts are established. That is, it’s hard to understand what exact meaning “plump” has if you don’t have a point of reference, e.g. “fat.” As we’ve learned in SLA, it’s important to teach words in pairs of opposites rather than as synonyms because of the importance to teaching people what something is by showing what it is not. Brains get easily overloaded with words which are merely sounds without symbols initially. We need to give minds a way to anchor the sound to a meaning, and long strings of closely related words run counter to that idea.

Ginna’s Sample Group

assert maintain say allege

Notes from Thornbury on Grammar

The E-Factor

Efficiency = economy, ease and efficacy. Classroom time is limited so when presenting grammar, a rule of thumb is “the shorter the better.”

Regarding “economy” he describes teaching the technical steps of learning to drive a car. The more the instructor piles on instructions, the more confused is the trainee.

Regarding “ease,” it is not realistic to expect you’ll have time painstakingly to prepare the lesson you’d like. So the easier it is to set up, the better.

Regarding “efficiency”: How do we test what they’ve learned. It’s difficult because it resists measurement. Attention is prerequisite for learning, so the degree of attention an exercise arouses can help us measure. Howeer, attention without understanding is a waste of time, so efficacy depends in part on the amount and quality of contextual info, explanation and checking you can provide. Finally, all this is useless without memory, so we’ve got to do memorable things. Finally, not one of those matters if there isn’t sufficient motivation.

To summarize the “E-Factor”: are the time and resources spent on preparing and executing a grammar task justified in terms of its probably learning outcome?

The A-Factor

Appropriacy: every class of learners is different. An activity that works for one group (that is, fulfills the E-factor criteria) may bomb with another, simply because it’s not appropriate. Here are factors to consider when determining appropriateness:

• Age of learners
• Level
• Size of group
• Constitution of group  (e.g. mon0- or multi-lingual)
• Their needs (e.g. to pass an exam)
• Their interests
• Available materials & resources
• Their previous learning experience and current expectations
• Cultural factors affecting attitude, e.g. their idea of role and status of teacher
• Educational context (e.g. private v. state school)

For example, some scholars have been questioning the propriety of using Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) methods in contexts for which they weren’t designed. CLT values: learner-centeredness, discovery learning and group work, as opposed to the traditional teacher-fronted lesson. It also takes a fairly relaxed attitude toward accuracy because meaning takes precedence over form. Finally, it holds the humanist view that language is an expression of personal meaning, rather than an expression of a common culture. But all this might be inappropriate in a culture context where, for example, the teacher is regarded as a font of wisdom and a figure of respect, or where accuracy is more important than fluency.

Scott Thornbury (How to Teach Grammar) on How To Teach Grammar From Rules (chapter 3)

Deductive approach: starts with the presentation of a rule and followed by examples in which rule is applied. Also called rule-driven learning.

One reason grammar-translation method (rule driven) fell out of favor was its lack of opportunity to practicing speech and written language was contrived, designed as it was for grammar presentation.

But rule-driven teaching can include speaking as well as other skills, and translation exercises can involve authentic texts. This approach, however, requires a teacher be proficient in both languages and doesn’t work in multilingual classrooms.

Disadvantages of starting with grammar lessons

• May be off-putting to some learners, especially younger ones. They may not have sufficient metalanguage. Can be dull
• Teacher-fronted, transmission-style classroom
• Explanation rarely as memorable as other kinds of presentation, e.g. demonstration
• Gives students false impression that learning language is just knowing the rules

Advantages of deductive approach

• Time-saving; no-nonsense
• Respects intelligence of students
• Good for those with analytical learning style
• Teacher can deal with language points as they come up, rather than anticipate and prepare in advance

In either case, effectiveness of lesson hinges on quality of explanation of the rules. A good explanation is illustrated by examples, is short, checks students’ understanding, and gives students the opportunity to personalize the rule.

Linguists and teachers have different ways of describing rules. Linguists look at descriptive rules, that explain a regularity of the grammar, while teachers explore pedagogic rules, which are those that a student can apply. Distinction between the “truthfulness” of a rule (linguistic explanation) and its “worth” (teacher’s version).

Michael Swan says this is what makes a good pedagogical rule:

• Truth
• Limitation (restrictions on how a given form is used)
• Clarity
• Simplicity (avoid sub- and sub-sub-categories when introducing a rule)
• Familiarity (base rules on concepts learner already knows)
• Relevance (answers questions students have/need to know)

In rule-driven learning, the rule of form is explained before the rule of use.

Some uses of grammar-translation:

• Highlight a feature of English syntax
• Translating to show meaning (probably the most economical but least effective)
• Grammar worksheets (moving more responsibility to student; can use jigsaw, which creates information gap that they fill; teacher’s role is limited to monitor)
• Self-study grammars (design their own exercise based on a model; can include gap-filling, ordering, expansion and transformation tasks)

Grammar points we’ll have to deal with:

• active and passive forms
• direct and reported speech
• aspects of the same tense
• articles (a, an, the and the “zero” article)

To teach these, it’s ideal to contrast two forms (i.e. use minimal grammar pairs: I read a book last night; I was reading a book last night). When you teach this stuff, make sure you’re not adding new vocab in there at the same time.

One problem with minimal pairs approach to grammar presentation is that it lacks context. In the example above, it may be hard to understand the pragmatic difference without more information.

With grammar-teaching: the shorter the lesson, the better.

Scott Thornbury (How to Teach Grammar) on How To Teach Grammar From Examples (chapter 4)

Inductive approach: starts with some examples form which a rule is inferred. Also called discovery learning or learning through experience. Using preselected language data to encourage learners to work out rules for themselves, to offset weaknesses of deductive approach (e.g. lack of learner initiative).

People say it’s great to learn through immersion. That’s true for some but not all. Induction requires, it seems, more than random exposure: “it needs the intervention of either the syllabus designer, the materials writer, or the teacher, or all three.”

Generative situation (sometimes related to Situational Language Teaching) is a “direct method”: the teacher sets up the lesson in order to generate several example sentences of a structure. Unlike the original Direct Method or Audiolingual approaches, explicit rules are tolerated as supplementary, as a result of Chomsky’s influence. He talked about language learning being “rule-governed creativity” which led in pedagogy to “discovery learning.”

In these discovery exercises students use trial and error to infer the rule. Sometimes teachers lead learners “up the garden path”: tricking them into misapplying their newly hypothesized rule. The negative feedback makes them rethink their hypothesis and find the real one. This is a “guided discovery approach” and is pretty much standard in SLA now.

What makes success is not only how the data are organized but the quality and quantity of data.

Pros of inductive approach

• Learners discover rules for themselves, fitting them to their existing mental structures
• Mental effort ensures greater cognitive depth
• Active involvement leads to more attention and motivation
• Good for learners who like pattern-recognition and problem-solving
• If done collaboratively in the target language, gives extra language practice
• Working out things on one’s own gives the learner greater self-reliance and autonomy

Cons of inductive approach

• Time and energy spent guessing rules may make Ss think rules are the objective of language learning, rather than a means
• Time spent working out a rule can take away from time that could be spent in productive practice
• Students may hypothesize the wrong rule, or come up with a version too broad or narrow (overt testing of their hypotheses is essential)
• Heavy demands on teacher’s lesson-planning
• Many language areas resist easy rule formation
• Some people just want to be told the rule

There’s a spectrum of approaches, from passive and non-intellectual to cognitively demanding. These are listed from least to most demanding.

Teaching through actions (borrows from TPR)

Attempts to stimulate the experience of L1-learning. No pressure on learner to speak. Limited range of language items that lend themselves to physical demonsyration (imperatives, prepositions of place, demonstratives (this, that), present progressive (I am walking…), functional areas such as commands, requests, offers. Further, some learners consider this approach somewhat infantile.

Using realia

Circumvent the need for translation, and can communicate greater range of means than can actions. May require pre-teaching of vocabulary. Only a limited number of grammatical structures lend themselves to this. Takes a lot of prep but engaging learner attention is a benefit. Some adults think it’s too elementary. Good for lower levels and younger learners.

Generative situations

Designed to overcome problems of relying solely on demonstration (as in two approaches above, which are limited in number of structures they can teach). Rather, this gives learners a context. Example (pp 59–62) of guy getting lost in Australia: what he should do, what he should have done… That exercise had scope for many variations. The chosen situation generates several examples of the target grammar item. No attempt made by teacher to elicit statement of rule.

Generally easier to pick up grammar and lexical info from writing than speech, so may be good idea not to withhold written form for too long. Probs: what if students don’t get the rule, or get the wrong one? Easier to explain from the start? What if students don’t even realize it’s a grammar exercise and miss the point entirely? Also, this kind of presentation takes more time so it’s not very economical. Or easy. Given its relative inefficiency it should be used cautiously with learners in a hurry or are at a level where such lengthy and elaborate presentations might seem patronizing.

Minimal sentence pairs

Easier to make sense of concept when contrasted with closely related concept. Minimal sentence pairs are different in one or two particulars. As with all rule-explicit presentations, aspects demand a basic command of grammar terminology. Drawback: absence of context can leach meaning. The semantic difference between “They’ve been painting the kitchen” and “They’ve painted the kitchen” are obscure unless you add context: “What a mess!” “Yes, they’ve been painting the kitchen.” and “The flat is looking nice.” “Yes, they’ve painted the kitchen.”

Using concordance data

This one seems really complicated to me as a way to teach. I had a hard time understanding what he wrote about how to conduct the lesson, leave alone the grammatical points it illustrated. In this exercise (designed for high-intermediate students), groups are given samples of concordance data for a particular form and asked to infer rules for correct usage (e.g. “Remember to listen” and “I remember seeing them.”) And in fact, Thornbury acknowledges a difficulty with this approach is the challenge of extracting usable meaning from the data (concordance lines).