The Importance of Fostering Heuristic Strategies in Advanced L2 Learners to Develop Vocabulary
The Importance of Fostering Heuristic Strategies in Advanced L2 Learners to Develop Vocabulary
James Badger Jilani
Warsi
North Georgia College & State
University Queensborough
Community College
Georgia City
University of New York, New York
Abstract: A survey was conducted in an American[IT1]
university to identify the strategies advanced L2 learners employ to integrate
new lexical terms. Schmitt and Oxford’s taxonomy of learning strategies and
Henrickson’s theory of lexical competence were adopted to classify student
responses. Findings from the study consider the learners’ reliance on low-level
approaches to integrate lexical items and reflect on the role classroom
instruction can occupy to develop heuristic strategies in L2 learners. The
authors argue for pedagogical approaches that evince clear strategies for
vocabulary development in L2 learners.
Research
devoted to Second Language (L2) vocabulary acquisition is growing (Cook,
2001; Gass & Schachter, 1989; Jiang, 2002;
Long, 2007; Paribakht & Wesche, 1999; Read, 2004). There is, however, a
relative paucity of study devoted to understanding the strategies advanced
L2 learners adopt to develop their lexical competency. This study sought to
survey the strategies these learners use to integrate new words into their
English language. The discussion first reviews
research devoted to L2 acquisition (SLA) as it pertains to implicit and
explicit learning, inferring, and the distinction between receptive knowledge
and productive knowledge. Analysis of the learner’s stated strategies were then
classified through Schmitt (1997) and Oxford’s (1990) taxonomy of learning
strategies and Henricksen’s (1999) theory
of lexical competence. The conclusion considers particular heuristic strategies
to develop L2 learners’ vocabulary competence, and maintains that they master
vocabulary typically encountered in academic, authentic texts, and in
standardized English as a Second Language (ESL) exams administered by
educational institutions.
VOCABULARY ACQUISITION
The acquisition of English vocabulary
for adult learners is an issue of significant importance in their linguistic
development. The literature suggests that L2
learners are often acutely aware of their ignorance of vocabulary in
a way that they are unaware of their ignorance of grammar and phonology (Cook,
2001; Gass & Schachter, 1989). Vocabulary acquisition is a process that
involves meaningful encounters with a previously unknown word and continues
through the successful integration of key features of that word into their
mental lexicon (Paribakht & Wesche, 1999). First language (L1) and L2 research supports the conclusion that most
vocabulary acquisition occurs largely through explicit learning and implicit or incidental learning (Lightbown & Spada, 1999; Paribakht & Wesche,
1999; Schmitt, 2000; Singleton, 1999). Gass (1999) explains the
process of incidental learning as encountering the newly acquired lexical term
in various contexts repeatedly until it becomes fully internalized. Learning
new vocabulary is incremental and multistage because word meanings are not
neatly contained in concise definitions, rather conglomerates of associations
with other words and collocations of words situated at different points of
several related continua at any given time (Gass, 1999).
Ellis (1995)
developed four hypotheses that framed implicit and explicit vocabulary learning
models, incorporating explicit vocabulary learning into a framework that
recognized most vocabulary learning was implicit. The first hypothesis –
implicit-learning model –states that words are acquired largely by unconscious
means. The second hypothesis – weak implicit-learning model – contends that
words cannot be learned without at least some consciousness or observance that
a new word is being learned. The third hypothesis – weak explicit-learning
model – holds that learners are active processors of information and that a
range of strategies are used to infer the meaning of a word, usually with
reference to its context. The fourth and final hypothesis – strong explicit
model – holds that a range of metacognitive strategies such as planning and
monitoring are necessary for vocabulary learning. It is in the fourth
hypothesis that a more secure and explicit, long-term learning is likely to
occur if the learner engages in greater depth of processing. Ellis (1995)
states that this process involves metacognitive strategies “for inferring the
meanings of words, for enmeshing them in the meaning networks of other words
and concepts and imagery representations, and mapping the surface forms to
these rich meaning representations.” (p. 16). Ellis’s fourth model suggests
that successful vocabulary acquisition occurs when learners employ cognitive
strategies to internalize unfamiliar words.
For those
new lexical items that L2 learners attend to, inferring is the main strategy
employed. Inferring results in higher rates of acquisition than do
appeals to direct definitions, because learners have to do some problem solving
to make inferences, which in turn strengthens the cognitive associations
between the word and its meaning (Gass, 1999). Increasing L2 students’ volume
of reading has been found to produce significant gains in vocabulary knowledge
and other aspects of linguistic proficiency (Nagy, 1997). [IT2]
Guessing meaning from context is much
more difficult in an L2 than in an L1. Paribakht
and Wesche (1999) found that L2 learners seemed to ignore a large proportion of
new words they encountered while reading. The difficulty for L2 learners relying
solely on inference – or context learning – is that it can be a very slow
process, dependent on linguistic and extra-linguistic knowledge, and
susceptible to arriving at a wrong conclusion, especially for students with
low-level proficiency (Read, 2004; Sokmen, 1997). Nagy (1997) explains some of
these complexities in relying on inference as a learning strategy: [IT3]
Inferring the meaning of a word
from context involves a relationship between the situation model (the
reader/listener’s model of meaning of the text) and the text model, as well as
knowledge of the nature of the possible mappings between the two. These, in
turn, draw on the learner’s world knowledge, his or her theory about the way in
which the word belongs, and knowledge about the way in which the relevant part
of the lexicon is organized. (p. 83).
Nevertheless, Sokmen
(1997) acknowledges that inferring may be especially helpful for L2 students
with higher proficiency when used in combination with explicit instruction or
when learning highly complex words.
A word can be distinguished in terms of
a learner’s receptive use (listening or reading) and use of the word for
productive purposes (speaking or writing). Studies have shown that learners are able to demonstrate a much larger
receptive vocabulary than a productive vocabulary, and one’s receptive
knowledge precedes production as much as the productive knowledge of a word
extends the receptive knowledge of it (Nation, 1990; Schmitt, 2000; Singleton,
1999). Expanding a learner’s vocabulary is part of that agenda to
meet their receptive and productive communication needs. The dichotomy between reception and production may
seem a convenient notion for vocabulary teaching; however, some scholars have
advanced the claim that the distinction should be avoided while others have
investigated the combination of receptive and productive learning to facilitate
better receptive retention than receptive learning alone (Mondria &
Wiersma, 2004). Melka (1997) contends that the gap between the
dichotomous relationship of receptive and productive vocabulary is a difference
of degrees of knowledge shifting along a continuum that evolves in accordance
with “various linguistic or extra-linguistic factors” (p. 99).
Acquiring word meaning is a complex
process that involves syntactic
information and, in particular, the subcategorization of words – that is, the
syntactic frames that words fit into. Gass (1999) states that it is possible
for a learner to have completely accurate semantic associations with a given
word and yet have a deviant syntactic sub-categorization frame for it. Jiang
(2002) considers whether L2 lexical forms are mapped on their own to the
existing semantic content of their L1 translations rather than to new semantic
specifications, finding strong evidence in support of the presence of L1 semantic
content in L2 lexical entries. Cook (2001) claims that the words of two languages are stored in the L2
learner’s mind as separate, dependent, or single stores.
The process of mapping meaning onto
form was considered by Henriksen (1999) who set out to understand the learners’
ongoing process of constructing and reorganizing their interlanguage semantic
networks. According to Henriksen, language learners face at least three
different but related tasks when acquiring word meaning: (a) labeling, (b) packaging,
and (c) network building. Network building refers to the process of discovering
the sense relations or intentional links between words – fitting the words
together in semantic networks, which mean extending the word’s meaning
potential through processes of categorization, abstraction, and generalization
in varying contexts and situations. This process is described by Henriksen as
the semantization process
in order to emphasize the learners’ “ongoing and simultaneous process of
developing semantic (i.e. definitional, referential, or extensional links)
understanding of a word and working out its semantic relation to other lexical
items in the complex structure of mental lexicon or semantic networks (i.e.
“intentional links)” (pp. 307-308).
Vocabulary Acquisition Strategies
There are a number of strategies for acquiring unfamiliar
words, including directing students to recognize clues in context, inferring
word meaning from context, dictionary use, word unit analysis, mnemonic
devices, semantic elaboration, collocations and lexical phrases, and oral
production (Cook, 2001; Qian, 2004; Sokmen, 1997). Of these, learners often use
multiple sources of information while processing a word and employ various
strategies as they mature or become more proficient in the target language. Strategies for understanding and learning
vocabulary have identified the learner making deductions from the word-form or
resorting to the language they already know and link cognates that are similar
in form, particularly if the languages are closely related.
Strategies for acquiring new words
can be categorized into two areas: strategies for the discovery of a new word’s
meaning and strategies for consolidating a word once it has been encountered
(Schmitt, 2000). Under each category, approaches adopted by L2 learners to
acquire the lexical terms include repetition and memorization, writing in
margins, taking notes, organizing
words in a word map or in groups by common morphology linked to meaning, and
linking a word to existing knowledge through mental imagery (Cook,
2001).
Effective acquisition of vocabulary can never be just the learning of
individual words and their meaning in isolation – nor is it just linking a form
with a translated meaning. The
acquisition of words – or the attention to words in a written text or spoken
context – involves learning the range of semantic and syntactic information
that goes with acquiring vocabulary and the associations with other
words and collocations of words in a discourse environment. According to Cook (2001), internalizing a
new word includes “acquiring a complex range of information about its spoken
and written form, the ways it is used in grammatical structures and word
combinations, and several aspects of meaning” (p. 62).
Deeper vocabulary learning
strategies such as forming associations can be effective, especially if they
are employed by advanced L2 learners (Schmitt, 1997). This stance is echoed by
Long (2007) who stresses[IT4]
the importance of elaboration of listening and reading comprehension materials
to enable the learner to comprehend new lexical items through clarification
requests, comprehension checks, and confirmation checks. He further emphasizes
that exposure to unfamiliar vocabulary is essential to enable the learner to
make the link between meaning and use for successful retention.
Finally, classroom instruction differs
in terms of its overall focus, and the type of input and corrective feedback:
recasts, elicitation, clarification requests, metalinguistic feedback, explicit
correction, repetition (Lightbrown & Spada, 1999). It is generally believed
that authentic text-based language teaching whereby L2 learners are exposed to
speeches given by native-speaking politicians, telephone conversations between
native speakers in natural speech, and academic lectures facilitates the
acquisition of new vocabulary. However, Long (2007) cautions us not to simplify
so-called authentic text, as he believes that “elaborate input” is more
conducive to language learning in general and vocabulary acquisition in
particular. He recommends Task Based Language Teaching (TBLT), which focuses on
pedagogic tasks rather than on using language as an object for communication
purposes. Others (Doughty & Long, 2003) contend that by engaging learners
in problem-solving tasks, teachers can raise the L2 learners’ level of
consciousness and hold their attention.
METHODOLOGY
A survey was distributed to
189 adult L2 learners enrolled in an advanced ESL remedial writing course in a
large, public university in the northeast of the United States to plumb their
strategies for integrating vocabulary. The student-centered writing course
emphasized the production of regularly written essays in the context of
responding critically to authentic and academic texts. Students in the
fifteen-week course were provided with content-based instruction in rhetoric,
grammar, usage, and
introduced to college reading skills such as identifying main and implied
ideas, recognizing supporting details, inferring, and understanding the thesis
statement. The course also prepared the ESL students for a standardized writing
test that many had difficulty passing in the university they were enrolled.
A survey (see Appendix A), consisting of eight
demographic questions and six open-ended questions related to vocabulary
acquisition, was distributed to ten sections of the writing course. In order to assure a higher response rate
than if the survey was mailed or distributed on-line, the researchers
distributed the survey at the end of each class that participated in the study.
Students were told their participation was voluntary, not connected to
individual grades or course performance, and their responses anonymous. In
accordance with the university’s minimum age requirement for participation in research,
it was stated that students under the age of 18 years were not allowed to
respond to the survey.
The majority
of the participants were between the ages of 18-25 (77%); 13% between the ages
of 26-25; 7% between the ages of 26-45; 1% between the ages of 46-55; and one
participant over 55 years. Many of the participants were enrolled as full-time
students (79%). A small percentage identified themselves as part-time students
(21%). A sizeable percentage of the participants were engaged in part-time (39%)
or full-time (19%) employment; others were non-employed (37%), self-employed
(2%), or identified as ‘other’ (3%). There was an almost equal distribution of
male (46%) and female participants (54%). Many lived in the U.S. for more than
three years, and most received at least 5 years of ESL classroom instruction.
The largest number of participants identified their L1 as either Spanish or
Chinese. Fourteen other L1s[IT5]
were selected (see Appendix B).
Students in
the advanced writing course identified “communication” as the principle reason
to develop their vocabulary, followed by academic motivations, personal
reasons, and job-related incentives. All but two participants stated that
increasing their vocabulary was very important for their L2 development, and
declared they devoted time improving their knowledge of English vocabulary.
Factors that caused difficulties for L2 participants integrating new vocabulary
included the spelling and pronunciation of a word, guessing meaning from
context, using new vocabulary in context, determining parts of speech, and
socio-emotional factors such as linguistic insecurity, inaccessibility to
native English speakers, and interacting with non-native speaking compatriots,
to name a few. The strategies identified by the L2 participants as contributing
to and facilitating their vocabulary development were classified under five
themes: Memorization – remembering and repeatedly writing a word; Inference –
reading books, newspapers, magazines, poetry, and novels; Receptive-productive
– class participation, language laboratory use, pronunciation exercises,
interacting with peers, course lectures, essays, grammar exercises, quizzes,
debates, and discussions; Morphological, semantic, and syntactic knowledge –
stem, derivational affixes, grammatical inflections, and cognates between L1
and L2; Dictionary use – mono-bilingual, pictorial, and electronic; and
Individual strategies – employing index cards and vocabulary sheets,
underlining unfamiliar words, seeking information from native speakers,
utilizing the Internet, and actively listening to new words communicated on
television or through music. This categorization of student
strategies for learning new lexical terms was instructive but prevented
discrete and sophisticated linguistic analysis. The strategies classified below
allowed for more precision and clarity of interpretation and analysis.
Classification and interpretation of learners' strategies
Oxford (1990) and
Schmitt’s (1997) taxonomy of learning strategies provided a useful classification
for organizing and compressing the students’ stated lexical items into five
discrete categories. Schmitt’s Determination strategy was added to Oxford’s
Memory, Cognitive, Metacognitive, and Social strategies. The logic that
dictated this choice was that there was no category in Oxford’s taxonomy which
highlighted the actual strategies used by the L2 learner to decipher meaning of
unfamiliar words without resorting to an external source. The five categories
are described below:
Memory (MEM) (Oxford,
1990): reflects simple principles and approaches that relate new material to
existing knowledge, such as arranging, making associations, and reviewing.
Cognitive (COG) (Oxford,
1990): essential in learning, with varied strategies such as repeating, analyzing,
and summarizing – approaches that exhibit manipulation or transformation of the
target language by the learner.
Metacognitive (MET)
(Oxford, 1990): allows the learner to coordinate the learning process through
centering, arranging, planning, and evaluating. It involves a conscious
overview of the learning process and making decisions about planning,
monitoring, or evaluating the best ways to study.
Social (SOC) (Oxford,
1990): strategies used in interactions with other people to improve language learning.
Determination (DET)
(Schmitt, 1997): used to describe the kind of strategy utilized by the learner
when faced with discovering a new word’s meaning without recourse to another
person’s expertise.
Both Oxford
(1990) and Schmitt (1997) observe that the classifications are not without
questions surrounding what strategies are, how many strategies exist, whether
some strategies should be classified as memory strategies or cognitive
strategies, and the inadequacies of some categories with strategies that could
fit into two or more groups. Furthermore, while the categories are fluid and
open to debate, Schmitt (1997) cautions us that they are not comprehensive.
Indeed, there is a degree of subjective judgment determining which strategy
fits in a particular classification.
Strategies used by the participants in
this study to internalize new words through rote learning, writing down the new
word, and remembering the spoken word in context were classified as MEM,
because they involved a conscious process of memorizing information. In
contrast, the largest number of strategies reported by these participants
involved mental processes to think, perceive, and recognize unfamiliar lexical
items. These strategies were employed by the participants to accomplish language-learning tasks, and were
classified as COG. It should be noted that the participants reported using Co[IT6]gnitive
strategies for academic purposes and, to a large extent, relied on technology
such as on-line monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, and computer software
to decipher the meaning of new words. For this reason, those strategies
pertaining to academic purposes and the use of technology were also classified
as COG. This decision was based on Cummins’s (1980) Cognitive Academic Language
Proficiency (CALP), which describes the special types of strategies learners
frequently use to perform academic tasks. Moreover, following Schmitt (1997),
strategies without recourse to external informational sources such as another
native speaker’s knowledge or a language teacher’s expertise were classified as
DET. Finally, strategies reported by the participants to improve Basic
Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) were classified as SOC. BICS refers
to skills required for interpersonal and social communication (Cummins 1980),
which is cognitively undemanding and depends on guessing meaning from context.[IT7]
Table 1
lists the participants’ reported strategies to integrate new lexical terms. In
the first column, the participants’ strategies are identified. The percentage
of participants who cited the respective strategy as part of their cognitive
processing is shown in the second column. The third column equates the
participants’ strategies to Oxford and Schmitt’s classifications.
Henriksen’s (1999) three dimensions of lexical competence, which are described
after Table 1, are represented in the fourth column.
Table 1
Strategies
used to expand vocabulary
|
% Identified
|
Classification
|
Dimensions
|
While the spread of strategies
classified as NEM, COG, DET, or SOC comprises[IT8] a
rich variety of approaches, the wide range of lexical strategies does not,
however, indicate an evaluative component of each strategy identified in the
data. Another framework to assess the classified strategies was sought.
Henriksen’s (1999) theory of lexical competence provided a clear and rigorous
theoretical construct for describing lexical competence, and presented a
theoretical model to evaluate and interpret the learners’ strategies.
Henriksen’s (1999) three dimensions of vocabulary development does not
overemphasize one phase or aspect of learning but can be used to interpret and
analyze learners’ strategies of vocabulary development along different
continuums, with an interrelationship between dimensions of lexical competence
and processes of learning and use.
The first dimension of lexical
competence, partial-precise
knowledge, relates to learners who may or may not reflect on meaning
of a term, and may use a number of inferential strategies, sorting tasks, and
translation. In this low lexical knowledge dimension where meaning is applied
onto form, learners’ understanding of a certain lexical item moves from mere
recognition through degrees of partial knowledge. The development in this
dimension is associated with mapping or fitting words in semantic networks
(Henriksen, 1999).
The second dimension, depth of knowledge,
pertains to the complexity of vocabulary knowledge, and the many types of
knowledge that comprise full understanding or representation of a word. In the
second dimension, there is knowledge of a word’s referential meaning, as well
as its different intentional or sense relations to other words in the
vocabulary, such as paradigmatic (autonomy, synomy, hyponymy, gradation) and
syntagmatic relations (collocational restrictions). The learner acquires
knowledge of syntactic and morphological restrictions, and features of a
lexical item. The development in this dimension is primarily associated with
network building or developing an understanding of sense relations. According
to Henriksen, acquiring word meaning (i.e. labeling and packaging) and
developing understanding of sense relations (network building) in Dimension 1
and 2 are “basically knowledge continua, in which levels of declarative word
knowledge may be tapped or operationalized as levels of word understanding or
comprehension” (p. 314).
The third dimension, receptive-productive,
conveys the division between receptive and productive vocabulary, and relates
the substantial difference in how well different lexical items are mastered in
terms of the L2 learner’s ability to comprehend and produce the words
accurately. In this dimension, receptive and productive vocabularies are
distinguished in order to emphasize that the two are not dichotomous (i.e.
completely distinct sets of vocabularies) but operate on a continuum: “Dimension
3 is essentially a continuum that describes levels of access or use ability,
which may be operationalized through different types of receptive and
productive knowledge” (p. 314).
When the three dimensions of lexical
competence were applied to the strategies reported by the participants in this
study, a more comprehensive and evaluative picture emerged. In column 4 of
Table 1, the learners’ strategies are interpreted according to Henriksen’s three
dimensions of lexical competence. In this analysis, there is a relatively equal
distribution of strategies amongst the three dimensions.
The chart below tallies the three
dimensions, revealing the preponderance of learners’ strategies that are
aligned with Dimensions 1 and 2 and the relative paucity of strategies in
Dimension 3.
|
Dimension of Lexical
Competence
|
Number of strategies used
to expand vocabulary
|
% Identified
|
|
1
|
15
|
32%
|
|
2
|
20
|
43%
|
|
3
|
12
|
25%
|
Two conclusions are revealed from the
classification of the participants’ reported strategies in terms of percentage
distribution within the three dimensions of lexical competence. First, a
strategy is not restricted to a particular dimension: it may occupy a first,
second, or third dimension of lexical competence. A strategy classified as ‘Determination,’
for example, may relate to a first or third dimension of lexical competence
depending upon the strategy identified. Second, a large number of the
strategies identified by the learner to expand their vocabulary were situated
in the lower dimensions. The prevalence of lower level strategies employed by
advanced L2 learners is revealing when set against the relatively small
percentage of more advanced and sophisticated heuristic strategies in Dimension
3. While the L2 learners are employing a variety of learning strategies, the
overwhelming distribution of these strategies in Dimension 1 and 2 suggests
that they are not integrating more sophisticated heuristic approaches
characteristic of Dimension 3.
DISCUSSION
This study began by
asking what learning strategies advanced L2 students are employing to acquire
vocabulary. The discussion in this section shifts to focus on what L2 educators
and ESL students should be doing to facilitate their vocabulary development.
Findings from this research support conclusions drawn in other studies that
sought to explore reasons why vocabulary development occupies an important role
in the L2 learners’ acquisition of English. Measures to facilitate and develop
ESL English learners’ fluency, confidence, competence, and literacy for social,
sociopolitical, economic, familial, educational, and cultural integration
agendas need to be considered.
Our first conclusion is that the
higher the academic level, the greater the vocabulary mastery needed for understanding
advanced, authentic texts. Some advanced L2 learners who participated in this
study are aware of diverse approaches to assist their integration of lexical
items and may be using them. This was not the case, however, for many other
learners. This study found that a significant percentage of advanced L2
learners are relying on strategies indicative of Dimension 1 and 2. The
assumption that a strategy is equally useful at all stages of one’s lifetime is
called into question, as many strategies taught to young learners are abandoned
as they mature (Schmitt, 1997). Different strategies are needed at different stages of linguistic
proficiency and cognitive maturity. It may be that some learning
strategies are more beneficial at certain ages than others, and that learners
naturally mature into using different strategies. If this is true, then L2
educators must take the learners’ cognitive maturity and language proficiency
into account when recommending strategies. Many of the strategies that become
more important with age entail a deeper, more involved cognitive processing and
manipulation of information to promote more effective learning.
The second conclusion we
draw is that L2 learners seem to lack effective strategies to acquire
vocabulary – relying on lower level cognitive strategies in Dimension 1 and 2 that may reflect an
awareness deficit of more advanced approaches. Results from this study point to L2 learners’
reliance on strategies and heuristic devises that exhibit a lack of diverse
approaches for acquiring vocabulary, and reveal strategies positioned at a
stage that is packaging vocabulary – i.e. low level strategies – rather than
building networks. L2 teachers and teacher training programs need to become
more familiar with the potential role of pedagogy in providing heuristic
strategies to students who
need to advance their L2 vocabulary. The results indicate that those
participants who reported a greater degree of success in their language
development used a mixed, hybrid approach that incorporated several vocabulary
learning strategies. It is, therefore, important that communicative-based
instruction integrate explicit and diverse heuristic strategies in the
classroom. By doing so, one is exposing the assumption that advanced L2 learners
possess sophisticated approaches for acquiring vocabulary, and critiquing the
position that inferring alone will allow the learner to acquire new and
discipline-specific vocabulary. Indeed, students may not know alternative
methods of vocabulary acquisition. Nation (1990) and Schmitt (1997) advocate
introducing vocabulary strategies that learners can use independently of a
teacher. It is a position that acknowledges Ellis’s (1995) fourth hypothesis related to the explicit-learning
model, underscoring the range of metacognitive strategies such as planning and
monitoring which are necessary for the L2 learner’s vocabulary acquisition.
The importance of evincing clear
strategies for L2 vocabulary development cannot be stressed enough. Nation
(1990) contends that incorporating effective strategies is pivotal to acquiring
low-frequency vocabulary items in that the learners can be equipped with tools
necessary for processing unfamiliar words. There are a wide variety of ways for dealing with L2 vocabulary: recycling
(active manipulation) – integrate new lexical items into a journal; mnemonic devices (thinking strategy) –
identifying syntactic structures, parsing the root and derivational affixes;
and academic word lists (active manipulation) – highlighting words with
frequency/occurrence, for example (Nation, 1990). In particular, academic word
lists are difficult to acquire because most L2 students are more familiar with
their discipline-specific jargon and because the lists contain low-frequency
lexical items. As Coxhead (2000) points out, “an academic word list should play
a crucial role in setting vocabulary goals for language courses, guiding
learners in their independent study, and informing course and material
designers in selecting texts and developing learner activities” (pp. 213-214).
For this reason, teaching students strategies to improve their academic
vocabulary is especially important when it comes to dealing with low frequency
words. To communicate diversity in vocabulary acquisition is to focus on context
and emphasize network building. To impart active strategies for students to
increase lexical competence is to move beyond passive methods – for instance,
dictionary reliance and memorization – and integrate strategies that
incorporate productive, semantization approaches. Opportunities for indirect vocabulary learning should occupy much more
time in a language-learning course than direct vocabulary learning activities.
Strategies should not be considered
inherently good but dependent on the context of language proficiency level,
task, text, language modality, background knowledge, context of the learning,
target language, cultural background, and learner characteristics (Schmitt,
1997). At all levels, classroom
instruction needs to introduce learners to diverse, research-based vocabulary
strategies that enable learners to integrate into their existing strategies,
incorporate a diversity of higher order strategies (for example, strategies
that build networks), and become independent learners (in class and on their
own: within and without class).
Based on the results of this study,
a third conclusion can be drawn regarding testing and assessment implications.
Vocabulary is a discrete area assessed in ESL students through standardized
tests in higher education. It seems imperative, then, that L2 instructors
provide ESL learners with heuristic strategies to advance their vocabulary for
discipline-specific tests and state assessments that measure their
understanding of lexical terms in isolation and in context. Ongoing monitoring,
assessment, reflection, and activities in class are crucially important for
measuring the L2 learner’s vocabulary development. In the context of many multilingual universities in the United States
where a growing number of freshmen are non-native speakers of English,
exhibiting advanced communicative competence is particularly significant for
university students seeking to successfully maintain their academic performance
in college courses, and critical for those L2 learners preparing for entrance
examinations into professional programs. This raises the question as to
how L2 instructors should prepare ESL students for standardized university
qualifying examinations which assess the learners’ knowledge of words.
The following questions are
suggested for pedagogical and research consideration as they relate to the
teaching and learning of L2 vocabulary. First, does the extra knowledge of
strategies help students in their vocabulary acquisition, or does the extra
knowledge simply reinforce natural strategies rather than provide new ones?
Second, in what ways are students’ heuristic strategies changing over time? If
they are not changing, then why are they remaining relatively static despite
the L2 learner’s unsuccessful attempts at internalizing unfamiliar words?
Moreover, how sophisticated are learners in their application of metalinguistic
cues – i.e. morphological, semantic, syntactic, and inferring (Gass, 1999)?
Finally, how do students use dictionaries, and how do these references
facilitate vocabulary learning? While there may be some advantages to using a
bilingual dictionary, the disadvantages such as a low reading speed, relatively
inferior performance on a timed examination and consistently misinterpreting
lexical items in a dictionary far outweigh the advantages (see Bensoussan,
1983; Grabe & Stoller, 1997; Luppescu & Day, 1993; and Nesi &
Meara, 1994 for details). The last question is particularly important for an
empirical investigation in that these studies have reported adult L2 learners
misinterpreting dictionary entries, necessitating clear instructions in
optimizing dictionary use.
As a final
point, unlike the native speaker who takes several years to master vocabulary,
adult L2 learners are faced with the tedious and daunting task of learning and
incorporating new words in speech and writing in a relatively short period. It
is, therefore, essential that they be taught effective strategies for enhancing
their vocabulary learning skills. Systematic vocabulary instruction facilitates
learning more than simply deciphering meaning of unfamiliar lexical items from
contextual clues. It is clear that L2 learners will be the ultimate
beneficiaries of such research-informed instruction.
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APPENDIX A
A SURVEY INVESTIGATING HOW SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNERS ACQUIRE
AND DEVELOP ENGLISH VOCABULARY
- Are
you?
(
) male
(
) female
- Are
you between the ages of?
(
) 18 – 25
(
) 26 – 35
(
) 36 – 45
(
) 46 – 55
(
) 55 and over
- What
is your first language? ______________________________________________
- Are
you a?
(
) part-time student
(
) full-time student
- Are
you?
(
) employed part-time
(
) employed full-time
(
) self-employed
(
) non-employed
( ) other ______________________________________________
- List
any other language in which you feel confident communicating.
- How
long have you been studying English?
- How
many years have you received formal English instruction?
- How
many years/months have you lived in the United States?
10. Approximately how many hours
do you speak English each day (as opposed to
your first language)?
(Circle one) 0-4 hours 5-8
hours 9-12 hours More than 12 hour
- On a
scale of 1 to 5, how important is it for you to expand your vocabulary?
(not very
important) 1 2 3 4 5
(very important)
- Briefly
describe why it is important to improve your vocabulary.
- List
the methods, techniques, or strategies that you experienced in your
English language class that have helped you to expand or develop your
vocabulary.
- What
have you found to be the best method or most effective strategy for
developing your vocabulary?
- How
has your approach to acquiring vocabulary changed over time?
- When you encounter a new word, concept,
or term, what do you do to remember or internalize the word?
- What
factors create difficulty for you in learning a new word?
- What
techniques or approaches do you use to integrate new vocabulary into your
spoken or written English?
APPENDIX B
FIRST LANGUAGE OF PARTICIPANTS (N=182*)
(*6 participants identified English as their first language;
one participant did not answer this question.)
[IT1]...in a U.S. university?
[IT2]There is a repetition of “word
knowledge” in this sentence.
[IT3]Should this go in the next
section - ‘vocabulary acquisition strategies’ – because this quote is
introduced as a “learning strategy”?
[IT4]“stresses” in this sentence,
“advanced” in the previous one, and “notes” in the last sentence of this
paragraph – are these tenses parallel?
[IT5]Is this usage correct in this
sentences?
[IT6]Capitalize “Cognitive” as it
is a heading that we capitalized in the first paragraph of this section. (Do we
want to capitalize these headings?)
[IT7]New paragraph?
[IT8]Does the spread of strategies
“reflect” a rich variety, or does the spread “suggest” a rich variety since we
don’t actually know what the participants do; the strategies were identified on
our survey? OR does the spread of strategies reflect a variety of approaches?
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