Applying L2 Lexical Research Findings in ESL Teaching

Abstract

& English language learners face a debilitating lexical gap between the words they know and the words they need to know. Although educated native speakers of English know approximately 20,000 word families (Nation, 2001), or roughly 70,000 words, one estimate of ELLs’ lexical needs is approximately 2,000 words to maintain conversations, 5,000 to read authentic texts, and perhaps 10,000 to comprehend challenging academic materials (Schmitt, 2000). Unfortunately, even well-educated ELLs may know less than a quarter of their native counterparts’ vocabulary (Laufer & Yano, 2001). Within the last 15 years, this lexical gap has prompted a number of useful studies addressing issues relevant to both learners and teachers. Though much of this work has investigated reading (e.g., Cobb, 2008), lexical knowledge impacts all skill areas, including writing (Engber, 1995; Ferris, 1994), listening (Chang, 2007), and speaking (Joe, 1998). The purpose of this short article is to present several teaching applications from the current body of L2 vocabulary research. This information focuses on four key pedagogical questions. (Readers interested in research details should see the timeline of influential L2 vocabulary studies of vocabulary acquisition presented by Laufer [2009], the review of extant research on vocabulary instruction by Schmitt [2008], and the extensive vocabulary bibliography by year or topic at the Vocabulary Acquisition Research Group Archive [2011] at http://www.lognostics.co.uk/varga/.)