Penny Ur This session will begin with a summary of some interesting insights from the research and their implications for teaching. We shall then look at some practical ways in which we can help students acquire, consolidate and widen their vocabulary in order to communicate and read texts successfully in English.

1. 1
TEACHING VOCABULARY WORKSHOP
FACTS AND FIGURES
Vocabulary: a definition
Words and ‘chunks’ → ‘lexical items’
Grammatical vs lexical items
‘Knowing’ vocabulary
Form, meaning, use
Form: pronunciation, spelling, grammar (receptive and productive)
Meaning: denotation, connotation
Use: collocations (how it ‘goes with’ another word), appropriateness (formality level, domain, context)
Most important: pronunciation, spelling, meaning
Receptive before productive
Connotation, collocation, appropriateness – later.
The number of items a learner needs to know
Fact 1:
For advanced reading: about 8000 word families. For informal spoken discourse: 6,000 – 7,000
Fact 2:
In order to understand a text: you need to know about 98% of the words in advance.
Extract from a speech by Obama, with 15% of the items not known:
That is the work we began last year. Since the day I took office, we renewed our focus on the
__________ who __________ our nation. We have made substantial __________ in our
homeland __________ and disrupted _________ that threatened to take American
____________.
• What about ‘inferencing’? Guessing from context?
• Pre-teaching difficult items?
Conclusion: our students need to learn A LOT of vocabulary!
Selection
700 most common words make up 70% of any (unsimplified) text: mostly grammatical items
1500 most common words → 76%
2500 most common words → 80%
Most important to teach the commonest words, to enable students to cope with and produce meaningful
language as soon as possible.
Look at http://www.lextutor.ca/freq/lists_download/ to find basic frequency lists.
Other considerations: items we’ll teach because they are:
• useful for the classroom • easy to learn (e.g. cognates, easy to hear
and spell, ‘memorable’)
• relevant to students’ lives
• easy to teach?
• interesting to students

2. 2
How is vocabulary best taught?
Should you let students pick up vocabulary on their own through reading/listening, or have deliberate
vocabulary-teaching activities?
Krashen’s (2003) position vs Laufer (2005), Nation (2000), and others
Bottom line: you need both, but certainly extensive reading is not enough.
Because: need for selection; need for re-encounter (Zahar et al., 2001, Cobb, 2007)
PRACTICAL TEACHING ISSUES
1. How do I select which items to teach from a text?
Textbook lists? But these may not select most frequent / useful items, may neglect ‘chunks’
So you need to check through yourself.
A useful tool: http://www.lextutor.ca/vp/bnc/.
One problem with travelling is not knowing about local customs. If you’ve travelled a lot you probably
have lots of stories about having said or done the wrong thing when you met someone. So, in case you
don’t want to risk offending the locals, we’ve collected some tips on greetings from around the world:
Kissing is very popular here, between men as well as between women, and often when you say goodbye
as well as hello. (Alessandro, Italy)
Bowing your head is the normal way to greet others. (Michiko, Japan)
Hugging is common between men. But if you don’t fancy being hugged, shaking hands is fine too! (Luis,
Brazil)
The normal greeting is saying Namaste (‘I bow to you’), after touching hands with the other person.
(Krishnan, India)
When you want to greet people here, I suggest nodding your head, although shaking hands is common
as well these days. (Ming, China)
We usually give each other a kiss on the right cheek, but the kissing can be complicated near the border
with the Netherlands – kissing three times is quite common there! (Elise, Belgium)
Shaking hands is very important and we don’t mind spending ages on greetings. In fact, not greeting
everyone in the room personally is very rude. (Kinoro, Kenya)
We greet people by putting our hands together in front of our chest. This is a sign of respect for the
other person. (Chenda, Cambodia)
So, greeting people around the world is obviously more complicated than many people think! I don’t
know about you, but I’m looking forward to trying some of these greetings myself the next time I travel
somewhere new!
2. How many new items should I teach in a lesson?

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3. What items might I teach other than those that appear in the textbook?
• Ones that ‘happen to come up’
• Classroom language
Textbook, or classroom, instructions
Complete the sentences Circle the correct word / Delete…
Correct the sentences option Match…
Complete the table Complete the table Answer the questions
Use the words… …in brackets True or false
Underline the correct word / Read the text …in your notebook
option Turn … into …means the same as …
Put the words in order Add… more than one answer is
Write sentences possible
Useful teacher items for students to understand
Listen / Read / Write / Talk Are you ready? Work on your own
about … Raise your hands Write in your notebooks
Repeat … Open your books at page … Do you have a problem?
Do exercise … Sit down Can I help you?
Right / wrong Work with a friend Shall I say that again?
Do you understand? Get into pairs / groups
Useful interactive items for pupils to be able to say themselves:
I don’t understand How do you say …. in (L1)? Wait a minute, please!
Please say it again I don’t have (a pencil, a What’s another word for…?
What’s the meaning of… notebook, a book..) How do you spell…?
What page? I have a problem ..
• Ones deriving from vocabulary expansion activities:
1. ‘Word of the day’
2. Show and tell
3. How do you say… in English?
4. Other meanings
mean branch close act
bear root current
5. What other words with associated meanings? (thesaurus, or ‘Word’)?
think idea child ask
6. Greek-Latin roots
anthro homo form sense
auto medi sequ, secut graph
cosm mono man, manu log
dic, dict pathy pan audio
duc, duct scrib, script soci plen
geo trans fer leg‐ lect

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7. Prefixes/suffixes
Prefixes
auto ex micro over‐ out‐ semi‐
co‐ dis‐ in‐ (il / im mini post‐ tele‐
cyber / ir) mis‐ un‐ mis‐ pre‐, ante‐ trans‐
de‐ a‐ mono pro‐ under‐ sub‐
e inter‐ non re‐
e, ex mega out‐ self
Suffixes – making adjectives
‐able ‐ful ‐ive ‐ous
‐al ‐ic ‐less ‐y
‐en ‐ish ‐like
Suffixes: changing nouns or adjectives into verbs
‐ate ‐en ‐ify ‐ise
Suffixes: making a new noun
ant ent ess hood ist phobia
ar er or ful ism ology
8. Word-family tables
Noun Adjective Verb Adverb
exact ‐
grow ‐
finally
9. Can you find one word for…?
back up blow up bring about
bring back bring up fill in
get across give back give out
give up let down look up to
make up pay back put off
ring up set up take apart
take away take in think over
throw away try out work out
10. Google it!
4. How can I present the meaning of new vocabulary?
pictures mime examples
realia translation used in context
gesture definition hints
Task: How would you teach the following items:
yoghurt, cream, butter, milk; dog, animal, mammal; furniture, chair, wood, sit?
Question: What about using the dictionary?

5. 5
5. Is it a good idea to present items in semantic sets, like parts of the body, or colours?
No. Nor in any set of easily-confused items: synonyms (big/large/great) , antonyms (fast/slow),
homonyms (bear/bear), homophones (accept/except) or homographs (lead [lεd] /lead [lI:d]).
But it may be useful to practice them using such associations.
For example:
1. Classify. Divide these words into groups:
agree, hero, believe, blame, cartoon, cause, channel, comedian, computer, effects, expert, movie, play,
protect, solve, subject, program, violence, wife, respect, director, camera
2. Find opposites. Which of the above words have opposites? What are they?
3. Put in order. radio, laptop, cellphone, Ipod, television: expensive, useful, pleasure-giving,
4. Odd one out. potato, tomato, apple, grape, lemon, pomegranate, banana
Which is the odd one out? Can you find a reason for each?
6. What are some good vocabulary-learning strategies I can teach my students?
• Vocabulary notebooks.
• Word Cards: new words or expressions on one side and the L1 translation on the other.
• Keywords. When learning a new word, try to find a word or name in your own language that
sounds similar and invent a reason to connect the two.
• Ten minutes a day.
• Use a dictionary while you’re reading (paper or online).
7. Can I use translation when teaching vocabulary?
Yes. Not just ‘can’ but rather ‘should’! For presentation of meanings of new words, translation is at
least as accurate as most other ways of explaining meanings, and much quicker.
Translation is also a useful means of testing students’ knowledge of the basic form and meaning of new
items: if they can translate a mother-tongue item into English, or vice-versa, that’s a good indication that
they know it.
It is also something that students feel comfortable doing, and may enjoy.
The phrase ‘a born teacher’ is not usually meant to be taken literally. People who use it do not seriously
mean that someone is born with a certain teaching DNA configuration in their genes. They are, rather,
referring to stable personality characteristics, resulting from a combination of innate and environmental
influences, that the teacher brings to their professional practice and that produce something that looks
like a natural bent for teaching.
8. What are some ways of reviewing previously-taught vocabulary?
In principle: review activities provide students with lots of opportunities to encounter and use the target
items successfully. They do not ‘test’.
So usually start off any review activity by reminding them of the new items!
Some quick techniques:
• Just write up the items on the board; ask students if there are any whose meaning they don’t
remember, and tell them.
• Give students five minutes during class time to look through their notebooks / vocabulary cards
and review recently-learnt items

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• Dictate the items in L1, ask students to say the English equivalents; or vice versa.
• Ask each student to say one word or expression they’ve recently learnt, round the class. (It’s
often not necessary even to demand the meaning: the fact that they’ve remembered it is a good
indication that they also know what it means – we rarely remember meaningless noises!)
More extended activities
• fill in the vowels: e.g. r_sp_ns_bl_
• connect two words
• make up a story with words
• complete ‘personalized’ sentences: e.g. I respect people who… I laughed when …
• cloze using the target words, but with missing grammatical items: e.g.
I work in a restaurant. I am ___ waitress, and I am responsible ____ special guests ….
• Quick Bingo
• Recall and share
• Guess it …
References and further reading
Cobb, T. (2007). Computing the vocabulary demands of L2 Reading. Language Learning and
Technology, 11 (3), 38-63.
Coady, J & T. Huckin. (1997). Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Ellis, R. (2005). Principles of instructed language learning. System, 33(2), 209-224.
Krashen, S. (2003). Free voluntary reading: Still a very good idea. In Explorations in language
acquisition and use: the Taipei lectures (pp.15-29). London: Heinemann.
Laufer, B. (2005). Focus on form in second language vocabulary learning. EUROSLA Yearbook, 5, 223-
250.
Long, M. H. & Robinson, P. (1998). Focus on form: Theory, research and practice. In Doughty, C. &
Williams, J. (Eds.), Focus on form in Classroom Second Language Acquisition (pp.15-41).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nation, I. S. P. (2000). Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Schmitt, N. (2008). Instructed second language vocabulary learning. Language Teaching Research,
12(3), 329-363.
Zahar, R, T. Cobb & N. Spada. ( 2001). Acquiring vocabulary through reading: effects of frequency and
contextual richness. Canadian Modern Language Review , 57(4), 544-72.