The importance of vocabulary
Paul Nation (1994) wrote “Vocabulary is not an end in itself. A rich vocabulary makes the skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing easier to perform.” Generations of language teachers since have worked intensively with both incidental and intentional vocabulary development. This module offers some of Paul Nation’s work on vocabulary, as well as the work of Per Snoder and his collaborator Barry Lee Reynolds. Per is our colleague at the Department of Language Education at Stockholm University, and we are very happy to be working on an interview with him for this page.
Reading
Nation, P. (2014). How much input do you need to learn the most frequent 9,000 words? Reading in a Foreign Language, 26(2), 1-16.
Nation, P. (2015). Principles guiding vocabulary learning through extensive reading. Reading in a Foreign Language, 27(1), 136-145.
Snoder, P., & Reynolds, B. L. (2019). How dictogloss can facilitate collocation learning in ELT. ELT Journal, 73(1), 41-50.
Video
Compass Publishing shared this video of Professor Paul Nation talking in at a conference in 2013 about Dealing with Vocabulary in Class: Vocabulary and Intensive Reading
Reading and viewing questions
- In the above video, Paul Nation talks about both extensive reading and intensive reading and the difference between them in terms of a) vocabulary development and b) the Four Strands. What do you think about the claim that intensive reading belongs to the Language-focussed strand rather than to the Meaning-focussed input strand?
- Why is it important to focus on the most frequent words in the language, and how can this be done?
- Why is it interesting to look at collocations? How can knowledge of a word’s collocations contribute to learners’ vocabulary development?
- Dictogloss is a popular learning activity. Which of the four strands are involved in a dictogloss activity?
Interview
We had the pleasure of an interview with Dr. Per Snoder, first author of the article above. Enjoy the conversation, and please feel free to leave a comment at the bottom of this page.
Live conversation
Join us for a live conversation on this topic on Thursday 18 November at 16:00-17:00
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Discussion
Share your thoughts about the reading and the interview in the forum at the bottom of this page. Feel free to respond to others when you have posted your own text. Please try to build on others’ responses. The discussion is moderated, so your text will not appear immediately.
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I would like to say that I found your interview with Dr. Per Snoder most interesting. His comments on vocabulary learning from a practitioners point of view was like music to my ears. I have taught languages for 22 years in both monolingual and multilingual contexts and agree completely with what he said. The interview has inspired me to look further into his research. Thankyou😁