Author: ucunn

While language teachers are generally very aware of the importance of vocabulary development for learners, there is not much consensus about the way vocabulary should be learned and taught, or indeed which vocabulary items to focus on. We have been struck by the research of Professor Averil Coxhead at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, ever since she presented the Academic Word List as her MA work in 1998 (see Coxhead 2000 below).

She has more recently continued to examine the use of word lists and vocabulary testing in language teaching and learning. We are delighted to present here a video of our conversation with Averil. We have divided it into two as it is almost an hour in total because there was very little we wanted to omit in editing!

Part 1 of our conversation with Averil, on vocabulary testing and teaching, and the importance of word frequency for prioritising what vocabulary to teach and learn.

Part 2 includes a beautiful idea for working with a class to select the vocabulary that is worth learning.

Here is a transcript of the entire interview with Averil.

Reading

Dang, T. N. Y., Webb, S., & Coxhead, A. (2020) Evaluating lists of high-frequency words: Teachers’ and learners’ perspectives. Language Teaching Research.https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1362168820911189

Skjelde, K. & Coxhead, A. (2020). Mind the gap: Academic vocabulary knowledge as a predictor of English grades. Acta Didactica Norden 14(3): 1—20. https://doi.org/10.5617/adno.7975

And further reading

Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly, 34(2), 213-238.

Coxhead, A., Parkinson, J. & Tu’amoheloa, F (2020). Using Talanoa to develop bilingual word lists of technical vocabulary in the trades, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 23(5), 513-533, DOI: 10.1080/13670050.2017.1374329

Norberg, C., & Nordlund, M. (2018). A corpus-based study of lexis in L2 English textbooks. Journal of Language Teaching & Research, 9(3).

Averil mentions these websites:

1. Just the Word
2. Compleat Lexical Tutor
3. Academic vocabulary lists
4. AntConc
5. EAP foundation website

Other resources

Advanced learners’ dictionaries help you in many ways. Look at the Oxford learners’ dictionary pages and the 3000 and 5000 word lists as well as advice on how to work with them.

Other dictionary publishers offer resources too, such as this vocabulary checker from Longman.

The Swedish Kelly list is also useful with resources for Greek, Arabic, Chinese, English, Italian, Russian Norwegian as well as Swedish.

We have now come to the end of the first year of CIRCLE. We have very much enjoyed the conversations with researchers and the live conversations with those who have been able to join us to discuss the material. Now we are considering how to proceed in 2022. Please take a look at this survey and let us know what you would like to see in the CIRCLE in 2022.

https://survey.su.se/Survey/44338

Look at this Padlet which was started during our live conversation. Comment in the field at the end of this page if you would like to discuss or add anything.

My colleague, Mara Haslam, who joined me in the live conversation about Teaching Fluency on 7 June, has prepared some material on Teaching Listening Fluency Through Structured Input. She says she was inspired by my difficulty distinguishing between ele [he] and ela [she] in Portuguese (see my conversation with Tore in the Teaching Fluency page). You can download Mara’s material here, and be inspired or use it as is!

During the live conversation, someone wondered how you can establish the vocabulary size of your learners in order to work with fluency at an appropriate vocabulary size level (Nation tells us that in fluency work, 98% of the words learners encounter should be familiar). Fortunately, Nation has left us many resources to establish our learners’ vocabulary size, at least if the target language is English. Take a look at this website about vocabulary tests.

I am currently developing a course on vocabulary and fluency development for teachers of English. Hopefully, it will run as a summer course in 2022. Let me know if you are interested in this! Always happy to discuss!