Linking Research and Practice:Effective Strategies for Teaching Vocabulary in the ESL Classroom

Jihyun Nam

學生 : NA1C0014 李羿霈

Vocabulary plays an important role in the ESL classroom.

Vocabulary can mediate between ESL students and content-area class.

If ESL teachers could teach vocabulary effectively, they will facilitate students’ proficiency in the four skills.

INTRODUCTION

Intentional and incidental vocabulary learning

Vocabulary retention Vocabulary learning through many activities

or tasks Vocabulary teaching strategies

L2 VOCABULARY TEACHING AND LEARNING

Read (2004) noted that in studies on L2 vocabulary learning, a distinction had long been made between incidental and intentional learning.

It is effective for teachers to provide students with target vocabulary items through tasks.

Hulstijn (1992) demonstrated that target vocabulary items were retained significantly longer when their meanings were correctly inferred than when explained by their synonyms.

Literature Review-Earlier Research on Teaching and Learning L2 Vocabulary

Hulstijn and Laufer (2001) showed that EFL students who participated in a composition task could retain target words better than those engaged in a reading comprehension or fill-in task, which suggests that students who were involved in higher levels of vocabulary production-processing remembered target words better than those who were not.

Plass, Chun, Mayer, and Leutner (1998) stated that students memorized the words better in use of both pictorial and written annotations.

Literature Review-Pictorial andWritten Annotations Assisted

Muncie (2006) showed that a post-reading composition task helped ESL students improve the productive use of higher-level target vocabulary.

Newton(1995) pointed out that students made more vocabulary gains when engaging in communicative tasks.

Wesche and Paribakht (2000) demonstrated that students learned vocabulary more effectively when they engaged in text-based vocabulary exercises.

Literature Review

text drawn from the NASA Web site; the five underlined words are the target vocabulary items

Applying Vocabulary-Teaching Strategies to an Authentic Text

What can you do to help save water?You can help preserve and protect water. Use these helpful tips at home andschool.• Don’t leave the water running while you’re brushing your teeth or washing the dishes.• Take shorter showers. Keep an egg timer in the bathroom and see who in your family can shorten their showers to 3 minutes.• Help your mom or dad fix a dripping faucet. Did you know that it can waste 20 gallons of water a day?• Fill a pitcher with tap water and put it in the fridge, rather than running the tap every time you want a cold drink.TESL

• Clean sidewalks and driveways with a broom. You can help save water by not using the garden hose.• Help your mom or dad water the lawn in the early morning to avoid evaporation, and place a layer of mulch around trees and plants to retain water.• Stop throwing away so many batteries. The mercury in old batteries caneventually leak out and poison the water it runs into. What can you do?Buy rechargeable alkaline batteries. They can be charged 25 times. Thatmeans 25 batteries you don’t have to buy and throw away!

Pictorial Vocabulary Teaching-Figure 1.

Pictorial Vocabulary Teaching-Figure 2.

Fraser (1999) also found evidence that L2 students could significantly increase retention rates for unfamiliar target words by using their L1 knowledge of semantic and linguistic structures as a touchstone against which to judge those of the target words.

Fill-in Task

Redesigned to a summary text

Hulstijn & Laufer(2001) pointed that fill-in task can contribute to students’ vocabulary retention.

The task of fill-in may better accommodate students’ linguistic competence.

Fill-in Task

Based on research findings (Hulstijn & Laufer, 2001; Lee & Muncie, 2006) that underscore the significant effects of students’ productive use of unknown words and their involvement in high vocabulary production processing, a composition task can be designed as follows.

Composition and retelling tasks may be more appropriate for advanced students at a high level of English proficiency level.

Post-Reading Composition Task

Reading and Retelling Task

Developing exercises that students can carry out

with new words to realize varied lexical features is necessary. A matching exercise and a crossword puzzle

can be designed with the target words in ESL classroom.

Vocabulary Exercises

Text-based Vocabulary Exercises

http://www.crosswordpuzzlegames.com/create.html

The use of pictures and drawings can promote vocabulary retention.

L1 translation equivalents, as in Figure 2, can promote L2 vocabulary-learning.

Higher involvement in vocabulary production processing, for example, a composition task or retelling a text, can contribute to vocabulary retention.

Task-based vocabulary-learning through various activities can promote vocabulary learning.

Conclusion

Conflicting perspectives on the role of L1 equivalents in L2 vocabulary-learning.

Vocabulary-teaching strategies need to be variably applied to ESL students according to their proficiency levels.

Conclusion-Limitation

• pictures and L1 equivalents

• controlled fill-in tasks

Beginning, intermediat

e • compositions• retellingsadvanced

Thank You for Listening