Vocabulary aspects of reading... with special attention to what the teacher can do

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Vocabulary aspects of reading... with special
attention to what the teacher can do

• Part 1 You need vocab in order to read

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• The learner needs to know vocab in order to
  read...
• ....but not only vocab.
• What other kinds of knowledge does a learner
  need in order to read? Aka What factors
  potentially affect readability of text?
• Is vocab the top problem?
• TASK

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• Factors affecting readability....
• Can we improve on this?...
• Ease-of-reading is the result of the interaction
  between the text and the reader.
• In the reader, those features affecting
  readability are 1. prior knowledge, 2. reading
  skill, 3. interest, and 4. motivation.
• In the text, those features are 1. content, 2.
  style, 3. design/format, and 4. structure
• (Gray and Leary 1935 style includes vocab and
  grammatical complexity design print font,
  layout etc. structure text organisation,
  paragraphing etc.)

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• Gray and Leary found
• Of the 64 countable variables related to reading
  difficulty, those with correlations of .35 or
  above were the following (p.115)
• Average sentence length in words -.52 (a
  negative correlation, that is, the longer the
  sentence the more difficult it is).2. Percentage
  of easy words .52 (the larger the number of easy
  words the easier the material).3. Number of
  words not known to 90 of sixth-grade students
  -.514. Number of easy words .515. Number of
  different hard words -.506. Minimum syllabic
  sentence length -.49
• .so words are the top problem with
  sentence length

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Can you spot what lexical items might be least
likely to be known in this FCE text?... So cause
vocab-related difficulty Is it just unknown
words? TASK
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• Types of vocab problem...
• Words you know you dont know
• Words etc. which you think you know but cannot
  retrieve
• Also unknown meanings and phrases with words
  that you know in other meanings
• Words etc. which you think you know but actually
  dont (Laufer 1997 mistaken ID)

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• What of words in a text actually does a reader
  need to know in order to read it successfully?
  (assuming the focus is on reading comprehension,
  not vocabulary mining)
• The coverage threshold

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Density of unknown words in relation to
comprehension
Comprehension figures based on Hu Nation (2000)
who had students read a text with differing of
nonsense words, no dictionaries allowed, followed
by a 14 item m/c comprehension test
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What coverage gives an appropriate
comprehension? It depends on..... What? TASK
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• The ideal lexical coverage ( of words known
  by the reader already) depends on
• type of text (fiction, academic... how clearly
  structured)
• length of text
• what comprehension score you regard as
  successful 55 (Laufer 1989) or 100?
• purpose of reading (intensive, extensive1,
  extensive2)
• amount of support (dictionary, teacher etc.)

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•  
• Hu and Nations answer on coverage
• 95 needed to read intensively, with support of
  dictionary, teacher etc. (level i 1)
• 98 needed to read extensively1 for pleasure
  without use of dictionary, for vocab expansion
  purposes (level i .5)
• 100 needed to read extensively2 for pleasure
  without use of dictionary, for fluency purposes
  (level i)

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What are the teachers (or textbooks) solutions
if a text has too many unknown words for specific
readers? TASK
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• Specific to the text
• Change the text for an easier one
• Simplify the text
• Preteach the vocab in the specific text
• Allow more resources to be available (e.g. ask
  teacher, peers, dictionary) when reading the
  text.
• More general solutions to implement, before
  expecting such texts to be read
• e. Train learners in WAS, incl. dic. use
• f. Raise the readers general lexical prof

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• a. Change the text for an easier one
• Often not an option in practice... e.g. required
  syllabus, textbook, exam. Fine with extensive
  reading.
• How to choose a suitable text?
• TASK

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Three ways of assessing the vocab level of a text
( of words likely to be unknown)

• Teacher judgment of text, based on knowledge of
  students and what vocab they are likely not to
  know
• Use of Compleat Lexical Tutor facilities to check
  text against general frequency (what frequency
  level of words do students need to know to attain
  95 or 98 coverage?) or a specific syllabus
  wordlist. Students vocab prof profile can also
  be measured to assess the match. Khim.
• Rely on learner judgment as to whether a text is
  at the right level for them? (Hu and Nation found
  2/3 students could predict their comprehension
  scores within 14)

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• b. Simplify the text, aka Input modification
• Often not an option either...
• But anyway how do people do it?
• TASK

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Methods of simplifying text

• replacing/removing hard words, so all vocab is
  within a certain frequency level (the usual
  choice of publishers). E M Forster example text
  TASK
• keeping them, but building in extra clues so
  they can be easily guessed (context enhancement)
• providing glosses along with the text (a common
  teacher choice).
• Danger of oversimplification so words are 100
  known triage

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Simplification by context enhancement

• Our uncle was a nomad, an incurable wanderer who
  could never stay in one place
• Ill take the money now before I leave
• Oh certainly, Professor Ruddle agreed. Of
  course you can have your cheque immediately.
• He wrote quickly across the green paper, and
  tore it out of his chequebook. Cartney looked
  hard at the number one hundred dollars. And the
  name of the bank the Farmers and Growers Bank.
  He pushed the cheque into his shirt pocket.
  (Longman Structural Readers Me Myself and I)

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• c. Preteach the vocab in the specific text
• Often done in practice
• A variety of possible ways of doing it. TASK
• But what are the disadvantages?
• Bright and Mcgregors objection
• Triage see again FCE text TASK

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• d. Allow more resources to be available (e.g. ask
  teacher, peers, dictionary) when reading the
  text.
• Again not a solution for exam reading typically
• but fine in other reading circumstances,
  arguably
• relies on availability of sources, dictionary
  skills

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a-d overall

• Beware making the text too easy if new vocab
  needs to be met and acquired
• Allow for some exercise of WAS such as
  inferencing alongside appeal

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• e. and f. Have received much attention recently
  to prepare students for reading harder texts is
  it better to teach...
• reading strategies (incl. WAS), or ...
• vocab?

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• e. Train learners in WAS, incl. dic. use
• Some WAS are not used in L1, so potentially need
  teaching. E.g....?
• Some WAS may occur in L1 so arguably dont need
  teaching. They can be transferred. E.g.....?
• Some WAS used in L1, however, may be only usable
  in L2 above a certain threshold level of lang
  prof (incl. esp. vocab prof) relative to the
  language level of the text. E.g...?
• ...so will not transfer or usefully be taught
  unconditionally

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• The language proficiency threshold hypothesis
  Is L2 reading a reading problem or a language
  problem?
• (Alderson 1984).
• L2 reading ability seen as L1 reading ability
  L2 language knowledge (incl. vocab)
• L1 reading ability, apart from L1 language
  knowledge, largely consists of reading strategic
  competence (incl. WAS) and relevant
  non-linguistic knowledge (content and formal
  schemata)

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• General conclusion on (e)
• No point in teaching certain reading strategies
  (incl. some WAS) that are above the threshold to
  students below (i.e. who would not know a high
  enough of words in the texts they have to read)
• Next week we will look more at teaching WAS and
  other VLS (e)
• Where students are below the language competence
  threshold for texts they need to read, teach
  vocab (f)!

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• f. Raise the readers general lexical
  proficiency
• What is the vocab size that may be the
  threshold for independent reading of general
  authentic texts?
• Test readers vocab size and, if it is below the
  threshold , teach the most frequent word families
  (f)
• Then WAS can kick in as per the threshold
  hypothesis (e).

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To read authentic novels and have coverage of
95-98 of the running words, so a chance of
adequate comprehension, a learner would need a
vocabulary size of 3000-5000 word families
(Nation and Waring 1997 or 5000-8000 words).
(Note Proper nouns, which typically account
for 4-5 of the running words, are counted as
known words that do not need to be learned before
reading a novel. A word family is a set of words
related by wordformation, such as happy, unhappy,
happiness, happily etc. as well as by inflection
happy, happier, happiest)
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What about ESP reading? To successfully read
authentic texts of the field of tourism (EOP), is
it more important to know frequent general
English words or words distinctively frequent in
tourism texts? Carlota
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Bibliography Alderson, J.C. (1984). Reading in a
foreign language a reading problem or a language
problem? In J.C. Alderson and A. H. Urquhart
(eds.), Reading in a Foreign Language. London
Longman. Bright J.A. and G.P McGregor. (1970).
Teaching English as a second language. London
Longman Gray, W. S. and B. Leary. (1935). What
makes a book readable. Chicago Chicago
University Press. Hu M. Hsueh-chao and P.
Nation (2000). Unknown Vocabulary Density and
Reading Comprehension Reading in a Foreign
Language, 13(1) Hirsh, D. and P. Nation.
(1992). What vocabulary size is needed to read
unsimplified texts for pleasure? Reading in a
Foreign Language 8, 2 689-696. Krashen S.
(1993). The power of reading. Eaglewood Colorado
Libraries Unlimited. Laufer, B. (1989) What
percentage of text-lexis is essential for
comprehension? In C. Lauren and M. Nordman (Eds)
Special Language From Humans Thinking to
Thinking Machines Clevedon Multilingual Matters.
Laufer, B. (1997). The lexical plight in second
language reading words you don't know, words you
think you know and words you can't guess. In
Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition a
Rationale for Pedagogy, eds. J. Coady and T.
Huckin. Cambridge University Press. pp.
20-34 Nation, P Waring, R. (1997). Vocabulary
size, text coverage, and word lists. In Schmitt
N, McCarthy, M. (Eds). Vocabulary Description,
Acquisition, Pedagogy. New York Cambridge
University Press, p. 6-19
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Vocabulary aspects of reading... with special
attention to what the teacher can do

• Part 2 You can learn vocab through reading

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• Where there is little reading there will be
  little language learning
• (Bright and McGregor 1970, p10)

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Basics

• The learner can valuably learn vocab from reading
  
• ... but the teacher may need to play a role in
  making sure it happens effectively
• And the reading materials have to have some new
  lexical material in (not Nations extensive2, or
  oversimplified)
• ... in fact in some countries the aim of reading
  classes seems to be actually more to learn lots
  of new vocab than to develop reading
  comprehension ability!

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What do we mean by learning vocabulary A Types
of lexical information that can be learnt

• There is more to vocab learning than just
  learning the meaning of a new orthographic word
  form that is met
• What other lexical things can / need to be
  learnt? TASK
• Can they all be learnt though reading?

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Types of lexical information
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Common tests of vocabulary learning

• What lexical information do they target?
• Identify the written form (yes/no test)
• Recognise/understand one meaning (m/c meaning
  test)
• Recognise/understand one meaning (supply
  definition in L2, translate into L1)
• Recall/supply word in one meaning (o/c gap fill,
  word translation into TL)
• e) Know how to use it in a sentence
  semantically correctly (sentence creation test
  scored for meaning)
• f) Know how to use it in a sentence
  grammatically correctly (sentence creation test
  scored for grammar)
• (Paribakht and Wesche)

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• Often researchers talking about vocab
  learning/acquisition have only measured (b)
• Often teachers/textbooks only teach (b) in
  association with reading

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What do we mean by learning vocabulary B Two
steps

• What is the difference between these?
• He finally learnt the truth
• He finally learnt the poem

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Two kinds of learning or acquisition

• a) He finally learnt the truth Discovery
• b) He finally learnt the poem Consolidation
  (Schmitt)
• When reading you only need (a) for immediate
  message comprehension / communicative needs
• To learn vocabulary in the usual pedagogic
  sense you need (b) as well
• Often researchers talking about vocab
  learning/acquisition have only measured (a)
• Often teachers mainly focus on (a)

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Three ways that vocab can be learnt from reading
text

• incidentally without teacher intervention or
  conscious activity on the part of the reader
• by teacher/textbook doing work with the learners
  on new vocab found in reading materials they read
  
• by the learners using conscious VLS on words
  found in reading materials, VLS which the teacher
  may also teach

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a. Learning vocab incidentally while reading

• What do we really mean by incidental?
  Terminological problem
• A) Unconscious, implicit , unaware (vs
  conscious, explicit) OR
• B) In a task whose focus is not on vocabulary
  (vs intentional, vocab-focussed)?
• (A) seems to imply (B) but (B) does not imply (A)
• So we have potentially two kinds of incidental
• 1 Non-vocab focussed and implicit/unconscious OR
• 2 Non-vocab focussed and explicit/conscious

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Incidental1 (incidental2 we treat as (c))

• The model of L1 reading and Krashens input
  hypothesis suggests all lexical aspects can be
  learnt incidentally
• Typically during extensive1 reading texts must
  have the right level of new vocab (2)
• Teacher role then would be to encourage extensive
  reading by selecting and providing interesting
  texts of the right level (Likely to be more
  effective if texts are interesting Huckin and
  Coady 1999)
• Often not realistic to expect a lot of extensive
  reading in EFL settings?

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Effectiveness of incidental1 How much can be
acquired?

• Clockwork Orange studies
• Malchick Boy
• Malenky Little
• Maslo Butter
• Merzky Filthy
• Messel Thought
• Mesto Place
• Millicent Policeman

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Clockwork Orange type studies
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Problems with Clockwork Orange studies

• The rate of new words looks suitable (under 1 of
  text), but we do not in fact know how many words
  other than those targeted were unknown
• We do not know how many words of those targeted
  (if not nadsat) were already known
• We do not know how many words not targeted by the
  test were learnt
• We do not know if all subjects actually read all
  the text in the time
• We do not know how often targeted words recurred

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Horst, Cobb and Meara 1998

• Pretested and posttested vocab and recorded
  gain of words available to be learnt that
  were learnt, from those pretested (m/c test)
• 34 Oman students read along, while the teacher
  read aloud, all 21,232 words of the simplified
  Mayor of Casterbridge
• Students not allowed to ask meanings or use
  dictionary texts not allowed to be taken home
• Around 5 words out of 23 available to be learnt
  were learnt on average 22
• Correl of text frequency with gain .49
• No correl of frequency in the language with gain
  .14
• People who scored higher on 5000 word level got
  higher gain scores more consistently than those
  who scored well at 2000 level

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Effectiveness of incidental1 What is the
process and why not very effective?

• If reading is message/communication oriented then
  no attention may be paid to new words even
  unconsciously. Can one unconsciously pay
  attention/notice?
• Nations paradox. If a word is easily guessable
  it may be less noticed if it is less guessable
  it may be noticed but its meaning cannot be
  learnt
• Incidental1 learning presumably depends on
  educated guesswork (?subconscious in L1) and thus
  can lead to imprecision, misrecognition, and
  interference with the reading process.

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Elliss claim about incidental learning

• Acquiring a words semantic properties and
  mapping word form to meaning result from explicit
  learning processes (incidental2)
• A words form, collocations and grammatical class
  information are learnt by implicit processes
  (incidental1)
• There is a complete dissociation of implicit
  (i.e. formal) aspects and explicit (i.e.
  semantic) aspects of vocabulary acquisition
• (N. Ellis 1997)

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The need for focus on form... Incidental1 gt
incidental2

• The vital shift from text to word meaning can
  either be triggered by
• learner-specific factors
• individual interest in a particular word,
• general motivation for vocabulary enlargement,
  etc.
• formal factors
• the prominence of a word form
• recurring encounters with a word (? How many)
• content-related factors such as the words
  centrality for the textual meaning
• (A Rieder)

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Modified input highlighting and incidental2
learning

• De Ridder, I. (2002). Does the highlighting of
  hyperlinks affect incidental vocabulary learning,
  text comprehension, and the reading process?
  Language Learning Technology, 6 (1), 123-146
• Are visible or invisible links more effective in
  getting students to check unknown vocabulary, and
  the effect of each on the reading process and
  vocab learning
• Highlighted links are clicked more often but
  without affecting speed, comprehension or
  learning of vocab.

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Modified input types of gloss and incidental2
learning

• Yoshii, M. and Flaitz, J. (2002). Second language
  incidental vocabulary retention The effect of
  text and picture on annotation types. CALICO
  Journal, 20 (1), 33-58. 
• Compared 3 groups for vocabulary acquisition
  during reading glosses with picture only,
  definition only, or both. Surprise vocabulary
  tests at end and 2 weeks later.
• Combination group outperformed others overall
  picture group was best on 2-week delayed
  posttest.
• Retention rate
• Immediate picture recognition 49 supply
  definition 21.4
• Delayed picture recognition 42 supply
  definition 14

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• Is modified input compatible with extensive
  reading?
• Forgotten issue...
• Maybe extensive reading is actually best for
  incidental learning of other lexical aspects
  than the meaning of totally new words... i.e.
  Extending knowledge of words where basic
  knowledge already exists

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b. Learning vocab by teacher/textbook instruction
associated with reading

• The teacher/textbook can do many things with new
  vocab that crops up in reading...
• Typically associated with intensive reading
• 1. We already saw that some items may be
  pre-taught in order to bring a text to the level
  of readability (95-98 known words) that is
  required
• Resembles the first part of classic PPP?

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• 2. We already saw that the teacher or textbook
  may provide while-reading support in the form of
  answering questions about vocab, providing
  glosses etc. , in order to bring a text to the
  level of readability (95-98 known words) that is
  required

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• 3. The deep end strategy / reverse PPP. Read
  first, and after the students have had a chance
  to tackle problems themselves with strategies
  (inferencing, dic use, appeal to peers etc.),
  then the teacher deals with the new vocab .

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• 1 2 3 all tend to focus on
• Receptive knowledge of one meaning of the word
  (the one in the text) rather than other aspects
  of word knowledge
• Discovery rather than Consolidation of that

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• Paribakht and Wesches study shows how a wider
  range of aspects of lexical items can be targeted
• Students read text with targeted words in and
  answered comprehension questions then EITHER read
  more text with targeted words in (reading only)
  OR did various exercises on the targeted words
  (reading plus)

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Exercise types in P and W

• Selective attention Make students
  identify/notice wordform (e.g. underline the word
  wherever it occurs in the text) a
• Recognition Make students show
  recognition/receptive knowledge of meaning (e.g.
  match word with picture) b
• Manipulation make students show wordformation
  knowledge (e.g. change word from noun to
  adjective)
• Interpretation make students show knowledge of
  collocation and syntactic properties (e.g. guess
  meaning from context, give grammatical function
  of word in text)
• Production make students show recall/production
  word knowledge (e.g. open cloze) c

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P and W result

• We do not exactly know whether the reading only
  students were told what the targeted words were
  there was a pretest of targeted vocab though
• We do not know if the reading only students
  obtained basic discovery information about the
  new words reading done at home
• Reading plus had about twice the vocab gain of
  reading only

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c. Learning vocab by use of VLS associated with
reading

• Associated with intensive or extensive1
  (incidental2) reading
• An autonomous solution, but teacher can be
  involved
• Three areas
• Discovery VLS Inferencing WAS
• Discovery VLS Dictionaries and their use
• Consolidation VLS Note-taking, mnemonics (not
  reading-specific)

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General approaches to VLS teaching

• Focus on learning the strategy not (just) the
  word
• Three general approaches
• Allow or encourage them (e.g. Use your
  dictionary, Try guessing it, Why not put that
  in your vocab notebook?)
• Teach them overtly as opportunities arise during
  a reading task, on specific instances
• Inductively e.g. What did/could you do here to
  get the meaning?
• Deductively e.g. Look at the phrase after the
  word and guess
• Teach them overtly and separately from reading
  task
• Inductively e.g. What do you do when you meet
  an unknown word?, What do you do to try to
  remember words?
• Deductively e.g. I am going to show you how to
  use your dictionary properly. Note examples
  used may be known words

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Teaching inferencing/guessing for reading

• What kinds of inferencing WAS (guessing) are
  there and how to teach them?
• TASK

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Teaching inferencing WAS for reading

• Method Talk about clues (both the clues and the
  possible meanings may be talked about in L1)
• Context/morphology based guessing of pos
• Context guessing of meaning (Allen TASK)
• Decomposition of wordformation... purely
  receptively
• Exploitation of polysemy... They boxed him in
  full board 100
• Cognate correspondence rules siop, silff,
  sialc, sialens
• Use of pictures/diagrams

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• Effectiveness of inferencing
• Both good and bad learners use it
• More successful discovery if number of unknown
  words is low
• Optimum discovery success rate maybe 50
• Consolidation effect / retention?
• Effectiveness of inferencing training Alseweed

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Teaching dictionary use for reading

• Method Talk about dictionaries and their use
  (maybe in L1, and maybe using known examples
  sometimes)
• When to look up
• Guess first
• What dictionary to choose
• Steps for finding a word and then the relevant
  meaning of the word and exploiting the
  information
• Pretreatment suffix stripping, choice in a
  phrase
• Alphasearch alphagame
• What to do if word not found
• How to select right homonym or sense use of
  partial guess
• Integrate meaning into text

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• Effectiveness of dic use
• Dic versus guessing
• Dictionary versus glossary m/c gloss more
  effective for retention than normal gloss
• Glossaries vs dic those reading with L1 marginal
  glosses could acquire eighteen percent of the
  target words and retain two percent those with
  electronic dictionary could acquire fifteen
  percent and retain four percent and, those
  without any assistance acquire three percent and
  retain less than one percent (0.6) of the target
  (Chang 2002)
• Effectiveness of dic use instruction

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Teaching consolidation strategies usable
associated with reading

• Method Talk about note-taking, self-memorisation
  and self-practice
• CALLA (Issariya)
• Effectiveness of consolidation VLS
• Effectiveness of consolidation VLS instruction

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Bibliography (incomplete)

• Ellis, Nick C. 1997. Vocabulary acquisition
  word structure, collocation, word-class. In
  Schmitt, Norbert Michael McCarthy (eds.).
  Vocabulary Description, acquisition and
  pedagogy. Cambridge C.U.P., 122-139.
• Krashen, Stephen. 1989. We acquire vocabulary
  and spelling by reading additional evidence for
  the Input Hypothesis. Modern Language Journal
  73 440-464.
• Thomas Huckin and James Coady (1999, SSLA, 21,
  190-191) based on their review of the literature

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