Teaching vocabulary and grammar

Teaching Vocabulary 

        Vocabulary is the knowledge of words and word meanings. As Steven Stahl (2005) puts it, "Vocabulary knowledge is knowledge; the knowledge of a word not only implies a definition, but also implies how that word fits into the world." Vocabulary knowledge is not something that can ever be fully mastered; it is something that expands and deepens over the course of a lifetime. Instruction in vocabulary involves far more than looking up words in a dictionary and using the words in a sentence. Vocabulary is acquired incidentally through indirect exposure to words and intentionally through explicit instruction in specific words and word-learning strategies. According to Michael Graves (2000), there are four components of an effective vocabulary program:

• wide or extensive independent reading to expand word knowledge
• instruction in specific words to enhance comprehension of texts containing those words
• instruction in independent word-learning strategies, and
• word consciousness and word-play activities to motivate and enhance learning

Components of vocabulary instruction

        The National Reading Panel (2000) concluded that there is no single research-based method for teaching vocabulary. From its analysis, the panel recommended using a variety of direct and indirect methods of vocabulary instruction. 

Intentional vocabulary teaching

Specific Word Instruction

• Selecting Words to Teach
• Rich and Robust Instruction

Word-Learning Strategies

• Dictionary Use
• Morphemic Analysis
• Cognate Awareness (ELL)
• Contextual Analysis

        According to the National Reading Panel (2000), explicit instruction of vocabulary is highly effective. To develop vocabulary intentionally, students should be explicitly taught both specific words and word-learning strategies. To deepen students' knowledge of word meanings, specific word instruction should be robust (Beck et al., 2002). Seeing vocabulary in rich contexts provided by authentic texts, rather than in isolated vocabulary drills, produces robust vocabulary learning (National Reading Panel, 2000). Such instruction often does not begin with a definition, for the ability to give a definition is often the result of knowing what the word means. Rich and robust vocabulary instruction goes beyond definitional knowledge; it gets students actively engaged in using and thinking about word meanings and in creating relationships among words.

Teaching grammar for young learners: children learn languages differently to adults

In spite of our criticisms, one of the confusing things to make clear is that we don’t discourage teachers from teaching grammar entirely.  Even though students may to an extent (especially in Hong Kong!) judge a teacher by how effective they think their grammar lessons are (or even how closely their teacher’s grammar lessons conform to the students’ expectations of what a grammar lesson should be), grammar does play an important role in language learning – especially in the early stages of the process where a new language can seem very contradictory, lacking structure and rules and disorganized.  In this situation, your “pattern-hungry brain” strives to make order from the chaos – and this is where grammar teaching comes into its own.

However, it is important to keep the needs and interests of your learners at heart: children learn very differently and process information (especially languages) in a very different way to adults – and so your grammar lessons ought to reflect this.

How is it different to teaching adults?

In many ways, the main ones we focus on here are motivation, processing language, analysis of “form” and the types of tasks that are useful.

Young learners have different motivations to learn

In the most basic sense, younger learners differ from adults in the reason they learn. Typically, but not always, adult are choosing to be in your lesson. There are of course exceptions to this: the learner who needs to pass an exam (the exam is more motivating than being in your class), or the student whose boss tells them that English study is a contractual obligation. However as a generalization, we might say that adults tend to be intrinsically motivated.

Whereas younger learners typically study English because it’s on their school curriculum or because their parents make them. I’m yet to meet a young learner to enrolled in an English course because that’s how they wanted to spend their Saturday mornings.

Young learners process language differently

We know from observations of children, whose brains and language processing centres continue to develop until into early adulthood, process language differently. Part of this is related to cognitive development: we know that a classroom activity based around the possible merits and disadvantages of building a casino next to a primary school isn’t going to generate much discussion with a group of 7 year old learners (they have a limited ability to engage in abstract thought and logical reasoning).  It’s also partly to do with language development too.  Children learn their first language by identifying the most relevant content words in the context of their own experience.  Mum, dada, outside…..these are often the most common words babies learn first. We also know that just before children reach puberty, they go through a lexical explosion as the brain shifts gears, preparing it for adulthood.  Children, especially young children, are repetitive learners – repetition in context is the keystone to making progress.

This suggests that children engage with language, and learn it best when it is meaningful and relevant, there are plenty of examples and opportunities to practice, the meaning of the message is the primary focus of any form of communication, and that lexical complexity (and our expectations of this) should be graded loosely on the basis of age.

In this sense, we say that communication in young learner classrooms needs to be meaning driven, in that the priority needs to be communication and negotiation of the message, and the anlaysis of the form and grammar comes secondary to this. This can be a challenge, especially in classrooms where declarative knowledge (e.g. This is the present perfect, or the noun form of procedural is procedure) tends to predominate traditional teaching approaches.

Young learners enjoy very different types of tasks

So how does this effect the types of tasks we choose for our young learners? Well, as a generalization we might say that activities should:

• Be meaning driven, with a secondary focus on form

• We reinforce a focus on grammar forms by maximizing repetition

• Tasks should be age appropriate

• Tasks should reflect what our learners might need to do/say/use in their daily lives

• That the tasks are enjoyable and challenging, relative to cognitive development of the learners