Vocabulary Acquisition Strategies

Vocabulary acquisition is very important in second language learning. Without learning basic vocabulary we cannot achieve any level of fluency in a foreign language. A learner has to have a group of basic words to be able to start learning the grammar. However, one cannot just take a dictionary and start learning the words from there. A second language learner needs a strategy, but not just a randomly chosen one. A learner has to be committed to the process and they have to choose the strategy that is best for their individual characteristics, learning styles and one that makes them comfortable. There are a lot of possibilities to choose from for every learner, from every age-group. In my essay I am going to present some strategies that can be useful for children, adolescents and adults.

Sanaoui (2005) carried out research to shed light on the approaches to vocabulary acquisition of adult second language learners. According to her findings there are two types of students. The ones who do not use and organised approach belong into the first type, and the people who had an organised approach make up the second type. Second-type learners have a method to their studying and they usually have aims to reach. Research shows that they have a higher success-rate in vocabulary acquisition in every level of proficiency.

Firstly, let us look at children’s strategies. Roberts (2008) examined a group of children’s vocabulary growth before and after home-reading excercises. She found that their vocabulary grew considerably as a result of doing classroom reading and storybook reading at home. In addition to storybook reading in the second language, reading a storybook in their first language also helped to broaden both their first and second language vocabulary. This is caused by the fact that when children read in their primary language, their vocabulary broadens and they can use later this knowledge in second language learning. For this strategy, however, there is a need for parental help for the apprehension of new the new words, grammatical structures and pronunciation.

Fan (2003) made research about the vocabulary acquisition of high school students, who were accepted into university. She found that the ones who had the highest vocabulary-test scores did not use memorization skills (among many: association, which is a strategy where, for example, the learners come across with a new word and they try to find a word in their primary language that resembles that new foreign term) at all. However, they used and they also percieved guessing and known words strategies as useful. Guessing is when the learner meets a new word and, based on his or her previous studies, tries to guess the meaning of the word. After that he or she checks the actual meaning in the dictionary. With the ”known words” strategy, if one meets a word they already know in a sentence, they will try to understand the meaning of the other parts of the sentence using that known word. These two strategies proved to be very successful, since the students, who used these, achieved significantly better scores on vocabulary tests.

Adults are in the biggest need for strategies, since according to the Critical Period Hypothesis in Lightbown and Spada (2006), they are in the critical period in their lifes, where it is harder to learn a language and to achieve native-level proficiency. The most useful and mostly used strategies by adults are firstly, immediate repetition. This means that when they come across a new word, they say it again and again instantaneously, either in their mind, or out loud. Spaced repetition is almost the same as immediate repetition, but the act of repeating the word does not occur immediately. Another way of learning a new word is by using it in an actual situation or just making up a sentence with it that the learner can write down, say it out loud or just in their mind.

There are strategies that can be beneficial to every age-group and to learners on every level on the proficiency scale, but they are problematic or not widespread yet. One example is using cognate words in language learning. Language teachers acknowledge these as a useful trick, however, it is not commonly used in language books. This is caused by the fact, that these books are the works of native language-speakers, who write them for language groups all around the world, but cognates only work between languages that are similar. For instance, Morin (2006) found that listing terms that have the same root for the sake of examining their suffixes, won’t help by vocabulary acquisition.

Another strategy that is not widely used, yet, is the use of computer programs. Meara (1993) suggested two programs. One that can foresee what hardships a particular learner may stumble upon and finds their strengths so it can help by studying using these information. The other one is supported by teachers, but such a program never appeared. It also foresees a learner’s possible hardships and knows what words he or she should already know and it makes sure they are not forgotten by constant testing. At the time Meara wrote his paper, there was not such a program, but in 2011 Duolingo, a free language-learning site, was launched, and it has a big emphasis on vocabulary acquisition and making sure by constant testing the learner does not forget the already acquired words.

These were just a couple of the hundreds of vocabulary acquisition strategies, but they show that there are very useful ones, but not every single one is beneficial. It is always the learners who have to choose a convenient strategy for themselves, but the teachers can help by introducing them some useful ones. As Meara said, we have “to make students responsible for their own vocabulary learning, by whatever means they feel comfortable with” (pp. 288-289).

References

Fan, May Y. (2003). Frequency of use, perceived usefulness, and actual usefulness of second language vocabulary strategies: A study of Hong Kong learners. The Modern Language Journal, 87 (2), 222-241. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1193034

Meara, P. (1993). The bilingual lexicon and the teaching of vocabulary. In R. Schreuder & B. Weltens (Eds.), The bilingual lexicon (pp. 279-298). Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Morin, R. (2006). Building Depth of Spanish L2 Vocabulary by Building and Using Word Families. Hispania, 89 (1), 170-182. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20063269

Lightbown, P. M., & Spada, N. (2006). Individual differences in second language learning. How languages are learned (3rd ed.) (pp. 53-76). USA, Oxford University Press

Roberts, T. A. (2008). Home Storybook Reading in Primary or Second Language with Preschool Children: Evidenceof Equal Effectiveness for Second-Language Vocabulary Acquisition. Reading Research Quarterly 43 (2), 103-133. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20068334

Sanaoui, R. (1995). Adult learners' approaches to learning vocabulary in second languages. The Modern Language Journal 79 (1), 15-28. Retrieved from  http://www.jstor.org/stable/329390

Links:

Duolingo – “Free language education for the world”  http://www.duolingo.com/