Practical N° 15 - Practice II -2014 UNLPam

1. Camila Roldán – Practice II 2014
Lynne Cameron, CUP (2008) Chapter 4: Learning words:
PRACTICAL N° 15:
1) What is the relationship between teaching vocabulary and grammar at Primary School
Level?
· No longer can we think of vocabulary and grammar as separate units to be learnt by
students, but rather much important grammatical information is tied into words, and
learning words can take students a long way into grammar.
2) What aspects are included in vocabulary development?
· Vocabulary development consists not only in learning about words but also in knowing
more about them. This means acquiring knowledge of their definition, spelling,
pragmatic use, phonological pronounciation, collocational use, connotation and
metalinguistic knowledge. It also involves being able to develop a capacity to make
more complex relations between vocabulary items through paradigmatic relationships
and the use of synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy and meronymy which go beyond the
basic level of meaning of words.
3) What is ostensive definition?
· Ostensive definition refers to the way children learn new words by seeing or touching
an object that a word refers to. (definition by pointing to examples)
4) What is Vygotsky's warning about the nature of concept development?
· Vygotsky warned that although children may use the same words as adults, they may
not hold the same meanings for those words.
5) How do the L1 and L2 interrelate in vocabulary learning?
· Our production races ahead our comprehension, and vocabulary development is a
continuous process, not just of adding new words but of building up knowledge about
words we already know partially. For children, many some of the foreign language
words will map on to words meanings that are already fully formed in the first
language. Many of the words, however, may link to first language words and concepts

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that they are in the process of learning about and have only partial meanings for.
Moreover, the first and foreign language words may not map straightforwardly one on
to another, but may have different underlying meanings because of cultural or other
differences.
6) Why is learning words a “cyclical process”? What are the implications for EFL teaching?
· Learning words is a cyclical process of meeting new words and initial learning, followed
by meeting those words again and again, each time extending knowledge of what the
words mean and how they are used in the foreign language.
7) Can you provide examples for the different areas involved in knowing about a word
(chart by Sinclair and Ellis (1990:99)?
· Receptive knowledge: in the word CHAIR this type of knowledge refers to the
understanding of its spoken and written form.
· Conceptual knowledge: this refers to the understanding of the meaning of the word
e.g. CHAIR = a seat, esp. for one person, usually having four legs for support and a rest
for the back. It also includes the knowledge of not confusing chair with armchair, sofa,
etc.
· Memory: this refers to the capacity of recalling the word when needed.
· Phonological knowledge: being able both to recognize the word when listening to it
and to produce it in the appropriate way with all its sounds. /’tʃeə/
· Grammatical knowledge: to use the word in a grammatical accurate way.
· Collocational knowledge: to know which other words can be used with it.
· Orthographic knowledge: to write it correctly, CHAIR not *CHEAR
· Pragmatic knowledge: to use it in the right situation.
· Connotational knowledge: to know its positive and negative associations and
associations with related words.
· Metalinguistic knowledge: to know that CHAIR is a noun
8) What does the syntagmatic-paradigmatic shift refer to?
· The syntagmatic-paradigmatic shift refers to the development of children’s

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comprehension of words. As they grow, they are able to understand more abstract
words (paradigmatic).
9) How does schooling foster vocabulary development?
· Schooling fosters vocabulary development because it introduces them to formal logical
thinking. Throughout their education children categorize, label and talk about words in
the language of the adult world. Schooling also moves children from the concrete to
the abstract as they no longer only work with what they can see and touch (tangible)
but they also develop skills for working with ideas and talking about what is not
immediately present (abstract). In this way, children deepen their world knowledge and
continue to develop the paradigmatic one.
10) At what age do the different components of word learning develop? (Lakoff, 1987)
· The basic level of words is mastered early in childhood whereas superordinate and
subordinate levels develop when children are a little bit older through their formal
education.
11)What is the use of schemas?
· Schemas or scripts are the networks of connections created by the different words and
meanings they have. When a word is encountered, the schema that they are part of will
be activated, and the network of activated meanings becomes available to help make
sense of the discourse and the words at a holistic level.
12) State the differences between younger and older learners in vocabulary acquisition.
(Summary, 4.2.7)
Younger Learners Older Learners
Concrete vocabulary (syntagmatic
associations)
More abstract ideas (syntagmatic +
paradigmatic relationships)
Use of basic level words (most frequent ones) Superordinate & subordinate vocabulary
linked to basic level words.
13)What is the difference between content words and function words? How are they

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taught?
· Content words are the words that carry a lexical meaning, even out of context. These
words form an open class of words because they can constantly incorporate new words
with new meanings. This category covers nouns, lexical verbs, adjectives and adverbs.
On the other hand, function words carry grammatical meaning and are a closed set in
which very rarely a new word is incorporated. Function words are articles, prepositions,
pronouns. These types of words need different teaching approaches. Children will often
learn function words incidentally because of frequent use of them in different contexts,
whereas content words may be taught in a more explicit way with a definition.
14) How do people relate word meanings to develop sense relations?
· We relate word meanings through what is called ‘semantic relations’ such as synonymy
(near or same meaning), antonymy (opposite meaning), hyponymy (example of
another) and meronymy (part of another).
15) Read through 4.4.2 and relate it to your teaching experience during your practicum.
Which of these ways of teaching vocabulary have you used? What is the problem with
translation?
· During my practicum, the main strategy I applied to teach vocabulary was the use of
pictures. They provide clear images the children can recall when thinking of the new
words. I also used gestures to help them remember.
· The problem with translation lies in that it takes away from the children the need or
motivation to think about the meaning of the foreign language word or to hold the new
word into mind. If we use it too much students will get used to it and their capacity to
deduce words from the context or with the help of clues will be hindered. It should be
used as the last resource.
16) How can we help children attend to form and make memory connections?
· Teachers can repeat the word isolated several times before putting it into context in a
text so that students are able to recognize it (its consonant and vowel sounds). When
children face the word in a written text, the teacher has to make them aware of its
shape, from initial to final letters, its spelling.

5. Camila Roldán – Practice II 2014
· In order to help children make memory connections, the teacher can use a wide variety
of strategies implementing different types of activities. Some of them are the following:
o Thematic organization of vocabulary: organizing vocabulary according to things
that go together or happen together. Children can build up a college of a
specific theme and at the same time include words they already know i.e.
recycle them.
o Organization of vocabulary through relations of wholes to parts: this strategy
to organize vocabulary exploits meronymy relations, for example, with learning
parts of the body they can move and touch the different parts saying the words.
It’s a good strategy to “listen and do”.
o Organization of vocabulary in general to specific hierarchies: it exploits
hyponymy relations in which activities to sort and categorise could be used to
practise vocabulary.
o Organization of vocabulary through words and antonyms: this type of
organization puts in practice the use of antonyms and of degrees in difference
between one word and another.
o Organizing of vocabulary in ‘ad-hoc’ categories: this is the name to collections
of things put together on the spur of the moment.
17)What is the importance of teaching stories?
· The use of stories with young learners seems to offer the same enriching opportunities
for learning vocabulary as when children learn their first language words through social
interaction with adults. Moreover, stories provide linguistic input in context which
informs students of grammatical and collocational use of words, and their
pronounciation.
18) How can teachers encourage the use of strategies for young learners acquiring
vocabulary?
· Teachers can model how to use strategies and draw children’s attention explicitly to
aspects of strategy use. They can also teach the sub-skills needed to make use of
strategies, for example, how to use a dictionary effectively. Besides, classroom
activities can include structured opportunities for using strategies. Independent

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strategy use can be rehearsed in classrooms and young learners can be helped to
reflect on the learning process through evaluating their achievements.

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strategy use can be rehearsed in classrooms and young learners can be helped to
reflect on the learning process through evaluating their achievements.