Vocabulary Teaching Strategies Research Articles

An Empirical Study on the Role of Vocabulary Knowledge in EFL Listening Comprehension

Existing literature supports the positive effects of vocabulary teaching on students’ comprehensive English proficiency. However, there have been some imperfections in the research process such as the research framework being somewhat narrow and the statistical instruments being a little conservative, which makes it difficult to form differentiated instructional strategies aimed at different levels of students. Therefore, this paper, based on mature vocabulary testing instruments, incorporates vocabulary breadth, depth, listening comprehension into one study framework and conducts an empirical study by innovatively using quantile regression models, so as to analyse the relationship between the two vocabulary dimentions and listening conprehension at different levels of students. The study results show that both vocabulary breadth and depth influenced listening scores significantly, but the overall effect of vocabulary depth was significantly greater than that of vocabulary breadth; at three levels of listening scores, the enhancing effects of vocabulary breadth showed a gradual increasing trend, while the influence of vocabulary depth shows no significant increase.This study will offer important pedagogical implications to English vocabulary teaching strategies in EFL classes.

Effects of coaching on educators’ vocabulary-teaching strategies during shared reading

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate whether an emergent literacy professional development program enhanced educators’ use of vocabulary-teaching strategies during shared reading with small groups of pre-schoolers.Method: Thirty-two pre-school educators and small groups of pre-schoolers from their classrooms were randomly assigned to experimental or comparison groups. The 15 educators in the experimental group received four in-service workshops as well as five individualized classroom coaching sessions. The comparison group received only the workshops. Each educator was video-recorded reading a storybook to a small group of pre-schoolers at pre-test and post-test. The videos were transcribed and coded to yield measures of the vocabulary-teaching strategies and children's vocabulary-related talk.Result: The findings revealed that the children in the experimental group engaged in significantly more vocabulary-related talk relative to the comparison group. A non-significant trend in the data indicated that educators in the experimental group used more vocabulary-teaching strategies at post-test. The educators’ familiarity with children's authors and book titles at pre-test was a significant predictor of their outcomes.Conclusion: These findings suggest that an emergent literacy professional development program that includes coaching can enhance children's participation in vocabulary-related conversations with their educators.

The Impact of Using Explicit/Implicit Vocabulary Teaching Strategies on Improving Students’ Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension

This study aims at investigating the impact of a combination of both the explicit and implicit vocabulary teaching strategies on developing EFL learners’ vocabulary size and improving their reading comprehension skills. The sample of the study consisted of 55 second-year students studying in the College of Economy at Al-Imam University. The two sections were randomly selected out of 10 sections studying English as a basic requirement in this college during the first semester of the academic year 2013/2014. The two sections were assigned to both experimental and control groups. A vocabulary and reading comprehension pre-test was given to both groups at the beginning of the study to get sure that were equivalent and homogenous. The experimental group was taught vocabulary and reading texts explicitly and implicitly, while the control group was taught in the traditional vocabulary teaching method. Two English instructors with similar qualifications and experiences taught the two groups for one complete semester. The same vocabulary and reading comprehension pre-test was given as a post-test at the end of the treatment. The gathered data out of the Pre-post Test were statistically analyzed, and the findings were obtained. The findings revealed significant differences between the control and experimental groups in favor of the experimental one. The combination of explicit and implicit vocabulary strategies has proved to be effective in increasing students’ vocabulary size, and as a result, in improving their reading comprehension skills. The researcher reached some conclusions, implications and recommendations.

English

English

Teaching English Vocabulary to Elementary Mexican American Students in South Texas: Some Responsive Modern Instructional Strategies

Teaching reading and vocabulary to Mexican American children in the United States of America today requires an acknowledgment of historical social injustice that continues to affect many communities in South Texas. This article debriefs some vocabulary teaching strategies—such as mnemonics and game play under the learning centers perspective—that proved to be highly responsive to Mexican American elementary students' learning styles in South Texas according to our after-school reading practices. Discussion on basic sitz im leben for implementation is framed from the culturally responsive and anti-oppressive approaches.

Research on Learning Beliefs and Strategies of Freshmen's Vocabulary Based on Regression Analysis and Mathematical Statistics

The teaching goals of higher vocational college English courses require English workers to directly face the problems of students English vocabulary learning. The quantity of vocabulary directly affects the improvement of many language abilities of listening, speaking, reading and writing, and the vocabulary teaching is the basis and pivotal issue of English teaching. This paper firstly analyzes the current situation of vocabulary learning of higher vocational colleges freshmen, and it provides the urgently discussed problem and research methods of vocabulary learning of current higher vocational colleges freshmen. It uses linear regression to discuss and analyze the importance of vocabulary learning, and it has the corresponding empirical study. This paper uses the latest edition SPSS19.0 of the statistical package for social sciences to have statistical analysis of the survey data, and it puts forward the English vocabulary teaching strategy that is suitable for higher vocational colleges. In this way it can cultivate the cognitive thinking ability of students' vocabulary learning to improve the efficiency of learning vocabulary.

Modeling Learning Processes in Lexical CALL

To devise ways of tracking learning processes is one of the goals of current CALL research. However, the data collected must be able to account for the learner's approach as well as his/her performance. A study of a novice learner of Spanish using a CALL system designed for vocabulary enlargement, shows that introspective evidence may be used to validate performance data within a theoretical framework which characterizes the learning approach as "surface' or "deep," depending on the degree of the learner's engagement with principles of structure underlying the target language lexis. It is proposed that this framework offers a basis on which effective computer based vocabulary teaching strategies can be developed.

A RESEARCH ON VOCABULARY TEACHING STRATEGIES AND STUDENTS’ MASTERY

By means of questionnaire and quantitative research, this article aims at investigating the effects on students’ mastery of vocabulary by studying teachers’ adoption of seven kinds of common vocabulary teaching strategies and the usage of analyzing strategies in intensive English in order to improve vocabulary teaching strategies and to help enlarge students’ vocabulary.

A study of primary English vocabulary teaching strategies using content-based informational texts

A study of primary English vocabulary teaching strategies using content-based informational texts

Teaching vocabulary through collocations in EFL Classes: The case of Turkey

When vocabulary teaching is taken into account in EFL classes in Turkish state primary schools, teachers generally prefer to use classical techniques. The purpose of this study is to find out the effect of a relatively new vocabulary teaching technique; teaching vocabulary through collocations. Pre-test/Post-test Control Group Design was employed in this study. Fifty-nine (59) seventh (7th) grade students from two classrooms in a lower-middle class, suburban state primary school in Konya, Turkey participated in this study. The experimental group was taught new words using collocation technique; the control group was taught new words using classical techniques such as synonym, antonym, definition and mother tongue translation as it was in the previous reading classes before the study. The statistical analysis revealed that teaching vocabulary through collocations results in a better learning of the words than presenting them using classical techniques and enhances retention of new vocabulary items. Teaching vocabulary through collocations can be an effective factor in helping students remember and use the new words easily in primary school EFL classes. Therefore, teachers of English could be encouraged to attach more importance to vocabulary teaching rather than the acquisition of grammar and the use of current vocabulary teaching strategies in their classes.

Vocabulary Teaching in English Language Teaching

Vocabulary is one of the three essential components that constitute language knowledge, and vocabulary teaching is an essential part in English language teaching. In this paper, we discuss some vocabulary teaching strategies, so as to help the memorizing of vocabulary and enhance the efficiency of vocabulary teaching and learning.

Linking Research and Practice: Effective Strategies for Teaching Vocabulary in the ESL Classroom

Vocabulary plays a pivotal role in the ESL classroom. Whereas a considerable amount of research has examined effective ESL vocabulary teaching and learning, missing are studies that provide examples of how to put various research findings into practice: that is, apply them to real texts including target vocabulary items. In order to close the gap between research and practice, I reviewed a broad range of relevant literature addressing vocabulary learning. Drawing on an authentic Web reading text, in which I selected five vocabulary items as target words on the basis of my experience as a secondary English teacher in Korea, I applied vocabulary teaching strategies drawn from research findings reported in the literature to provide a model for ESL teachers when putting theory into practice.

Vocabulary teaching strategies and conceptual representations of words in L2 in children: Evidence with novice learners

A controversial issue in bilingual research is whether in the early stages of L2 learning, access to the conceptual system involves mediation of L1 lexical representations [Kroll, J. F., & Stewart, E. (1994). Category interference in translation and picture naming: Evidence for asymmetric connections between bilingual memory representations. Journal of Memory and Language, 33, 149–174] or a direct route from the L2 word [Altarriba, J., & Mathis, K. M. (1997). Conceptual and lexical development in second language acquisition. Journal of Memory and Language, 36, 550–568; Finkbeiner, M., & Nicol, J. (2003). Semantic category effects in second language word learning. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 369–383]. The main goal of this paper is to study, in a child population, whether the creation of conceptual representations for L2 words is possible, even after only one session of learning of the L2 vocabulary. Furthermore, we do so by examining the efficacy of two different L2 learning methods: L2–L1 association learning vs. L2-picture association learning. A translation recognition task was employed to test whether there was a difference between a semantically related pair and an unrelated pair across conditions (i.e., a semantic interference effect). Results showed a significant semantic interference effect—a conceptual effect—in children after just one vocabulary learning session. Importantly, the L2-picture method produced a greater semantic interference effect than the L2–L1 method. The implications of these findings for models of bilingual memory are examined.

Um olhar crítico sobre o ensino de vocabulário em contextos de inglês como língua estrangeira

Este trabalho resume os resultados obtidos em minha dissertação de mestrado, que tem por objetivo analisar a relação entre o ensino de vocabulário, as estratégias de aprendizagem e a produção oral de alunos de inglês como língua estrangeira. A princípio, foi feito um estudo com o objetivo de obter uma visão geral sobre o ensino do vocabulário em contextos diferentes. Com base nesse estudo, escolheu-se um grupo para participar de um estudo de caso, cujo objetivo era analisar o ensino de vocabulário e as estratégias de aprendizagem à medida que apareciam nas aulas, assim como seu efeito na produção oral dos alunos. Os resultados mostram que a abordagem usada pelo professor para ensinar o vocabulário, que era basicamente explicar o significado das palavras para solucionar as dificuldades de compreensão, não ajuda os alunos a adquirirem tais palavras para uso produtivo. Com o objetivo de melhorar a variação e o perfil lexicais dos alunos, faz-se necessário utilizar uma abordagem que trabalhe o vocabulário com objetivos produtivos e que enfoque a prática da língua, tanto em relação à produção quanto à compreensão orais.

Preservice Teachers' Selection and Use of Content Area Literacy Strategies

ABSTRACT Preservice teachers' selection and use of specific vocabulary and comprehension teaching strategies for a microteaching session in a field-based practicum attached to a required content area literacy course are described. Also, the degree to which these preservice teachers used their microteaching strategies in practicum assignments and student teaching is charted. Twenty-seven preservice content area teachers participated in the first phase of the study. They represented core content areas as well as art and music. The results revealed (a) substantial variability within and across disciplines in strategy selection, with 14 different strategies chosen for microteaching; (b) that 2 of 10 preservice teachers interviewed reported they continued to use the original strategy selected in subsequent practicum experiences; and (c) that 8 of 10 teachers interviewed reported using one of the content area literacy strategies from the course in subsequent practicums. Qualitative data from the interviews supported the conclusion that these preservice teachers had a clear sense of the sociocultural context of their practicum settings and the powerful influence of the cooperating teacher in selecting and using particular strategies.