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CHERYL BOYD ZIMMERMANCalifornia State University, Fullerton

NORBERT SCHMITTUniversity of Nottingham, England

Lexical Questions to Guide theTeaching and Learning of Words

I While most teachers of ESOL recognizethe importance of vocabulary, many are

unfamiliar with vocabulary researchand unsure about how to best addressword-learning needs. This article pre-supposes that word learning is a com-plex task requiring more than formula-ic methods. To prepare teachers toaddress the dynamic and oftenunwieldy nature of word learning, wepropose several central questions

designed to help teachers reflect onfundamental issues such as word selec-tion (e.g., Which words should be target-ed?), word knowledge (e.g., What does itmean to know a word?), and word teach-ing (e.g., What should be included in thedefinition, instruction, and practice thatI provide?). Each question is followed byinitial answers based on vocabularyresearch that teachers are encouragedto apply to their own situations. Thegoal is to enable teachers to applyresearch findings to the development oftheir own principled and effectiveapproaches to vocabulary instruction.

Word learning in any second language isan enormous task. Every new settingbrings new demands for specialized words or

new meanings and uses for familiar ones. InEnglish, this task is even more daunting,because words that are related are not alwaysevident from their form. For example, happy,delighted, cheerful, and joyful are all syn-

onyms but are all spelled completely differ-ently. Likewise, a person who steals thingsfrom a house is not a house thief, but rather aburglar, a word that has no formal similarityto either house or thief. In other languages, therelationships between these words are often

highlighted by some spelling similarities. Thelearning load is made even higher in Englishby the fact that English has one of the largestvocabularies of any known language (Schmitt& Marsden, in press).

The lexical learning burden is compound-ed by the fact that mastering words entailsmore than just knowing about their meaningsalone. For example, learners of the word

neighbormust be able to recognize and use itspronunciation and spelling. They must knowit is a noun, that its plural form is regular(neighbors), and that related forms includeneighborly, un-neighborly, neighboring, andneighborhood. They need to know that it isused to refer to both men and women, andthat its use is sometimes extended beyondones home to include some settings (neigh-boring nations) but not others (neighboringsoil). The outcome is that in learning English,the most difficult challenge is probably mas-tering a sufficient amount of vocabulary tobecome functional in the language. Nationand Meara (2002) go so far as to describe thislexical hurdle as a lexical bar,which studentsstruggle to clear.

The vocabulary-learning challenge is sogreat in English that many students will not

be able to master enough words without helpand clear guidance from their teachers.Unfortunately, many teachers do not haveclear ideas about how to teach vocabulary,and many are not even aware of the scope ofthe vocabulary challenge. Many seem tobelieve that vocabulary is easy to learn andwill simply be absorbed during the process oflearning all of the other elements and skills of

language, such as reading (Coady, 1997).While it is undoubtedly true that somevocabulary will be learned in this manner,the extent of the vocabulary-learning chal-lenge means that this incidental learning isall too often insufficient.Vocabulary learning

The CATESOL Journal 17.1 2005 1



is a big task and requires a principled, dedi-cated approach.

Effective vocabulary teaching begins withthe recognition of word learning as a complextask requiring more than formulaic methodsor static approaches. Hunkins (1989) suggests

that questions can help organize and reorgan-ize knowledge to solve perceived difficultieswhen facing complex problems: To see aproblem is to see something hidden that mayyet be accessible (pp. 31-32). In this article,we propose that teachers use guiding ques-tions to respond to the dynamic and unwieldynature of word learning, helping them toreflect on the key lexical issues in their own

teaching contexts. Some initial generalanswers to these questions have been provid-ed based on vocabulary research, but allteachers must adapt these answers to theirown teaching situations to come up with thesolutions that are specifically suitable forthem. By facing the word-teaching taskthrough questions rather than assumingthere are universal teaching truths, teacherscan gather facts and information, tailor theirinstruction to a given group, and positionvocabulary teaching within the bigger pictureof language learning (Chuska, 1995).

Questions for the Vocabulary Teacher

1. Vocabulary Size: How Many Words DoMy Students Need to Know?

A good first question deals with the scopeof the vocabulary challenge in English.Although exact figures are impossible todetermine, we do have a good general idea ofhow much vocabulary is necessary to dothings in English. If the goal of your studentsis to be able to converse in English on gener-al, everyday topics, it seems that about 2,000-3,000 word families should be sufficient(Adolphs & Schmitt, 2003). If the goal is read-ing, then 3,000 word families should provide

the lexical resources to begin reading authen-tic texts (but probably still requiring teacherhelp), while 5,000 word families would pro-vide the resources to read these materialsindependently (Nation & Meara, 2002). Five

thousand word families can be considered theend of general vocabulary, and once thesewords are learned, it is probably best to focuson the technical vocabulary students need fortheir respective fields (Nation, 2001). A goodballpark figure for a wide-ranging vocabulary

is 10,000 word families, which should enablestudents to do whatever they wish to do in thelanguage, including attending an English-medium university (Hazenberg & Hulstijn,1996).It should be noted that these figures arefor word families,i and that each word familycontains several words (e.g., the word familyfor system includes systematic, systematically,systematize, etc.).

2. Word Selection: Which Words Should BeTargeted and Taught?

Given the above general guidelines, thevocabulary teacher still faces the issue ofword selection, as these are still too manywords for a classroom teacher to teach. Ofcourse the principle of student need has pri-ority. If your students need to know certain

words that are relevant for classroom man-agement (book, page, pencil, and eraser areobvious words beginning students need toknow) or to read a certain passage (e.g.,scalpelorforceps if they are reading about sur-geons), then those particular words bearteaching. Likewise, once students have a gen-eral vocabulary of 5,000 word families, itmakes sense to work on the technical vocabu-lary of whatever field they are learning.

However, beyond these principles, it is diffi-cult to say that any particular word will bemore useful than any other word.

The best criteria we have for vocabulary ingeneral is the notion of frequency. In short,more frequent words are more useful thanless frequent words. As such, the more fre-quent a word is, the more it can be argued thatit should be explicitly taught. The reason for

this is easy to see: Frequent words are fre-quent simply because they occur a lot in lan-guage in a wide variety of situations. Thismakes them valuable in a broad range ofcommunication tasks in many environments.

2 The CATESOL Journal 17.1 2005



When learners know the basic 2000 head-words (as seen in the classic list by MichaelWest, 1953), they will know 85% of the wordson any page of any book no matter what thesubject matter (Nation & Newton, 1997, p.238). Instructional time spent on these words

is very important at all levels, not onlybecause of their frequency, but also becauseof their range (the number of different typesof texts in which they occur) and their cover-age (the capacity of words to replace otherwords). That is, learners will see these wordsbeyond the classroom and are likely to devel-op their ability to use them. Thus the benefitto the student is well worth whatever costs are

accrued in teaching such high-frequencywords (Nation, 2001). Conversely, low-fre-quency words are generally not used oftenenough to be worth the cost of teaching,unless they are prominent in a particular con-text, such as a reading passage the studentswill be reading.

3. Word Knowledge: What Do My StudentsNeed to Know About the Words TheyWant to Use?

Learning a sufficient number of wordfamilies is a challenging task in English, butequally daunting is the amount of informa-tion that students need to know to mastereach word. Consider everything that youunderstand about the words you know well.You know their meanings, collocations,gram-matical features, morphological characteris-

tics, register traits, spelling, pronunciation,associations, and so forth. (For a completediscussion of these and other features of wordknowledge, see Nation, 2001.) Though someexamples of word knowledge are primarilyrule-governed (e.g., the past tense of walk iswalked), most are not. You cannot reliablyknow the noun form of imagine from anygeneralizable rule (e.g., it could be imagine-

ment, or simplyimagine), and even the rulesare not foolproof (the past tense ofgo is went,not goed). Yet the various kinds of wordknowledge must be mastered if our studentsare to use their words well.

Four kinds of word knowledge will be dis-cussed below. It will be seen at the end of thisquestion that all of these traits can beaddressed through practice involving richcontext and multiple repetition.

A. Meaning: How can we help students

learn the sometimes complex and oftenpolysemous meanings of words? Whatdoes it mean to knowthe meaning of a word?Word meanings are not as predictable as wemight think. For example, blackboards areoften green, silverware can be made of plastic,and a worrywart has nothing to do withwarts.In addition,the dictionary definition ofthe word paint is to cover the surface with

paint. But if you knock over the paint bucket,have you painted the floor? Another difficultywith meaning concerns polysemy (the multi-ple meanings of words). For example, a basicword as simple as the word run has 67 defini-tions in the Random House Websters CollegeDictionary (1992, pp. 1176-1177).

Given the multiple meanings of mostwords in English, it would seem impossible toteach each one. Explicit teaching and inten-tional learning can definitely facilitate quick-er learning (Zimmerman, 1997; Nation,2001), but only so many bits of knowledgecan be explicitly addressed. This brings up theimportance of adding a complement toexplicit vocabulary teaching: maximizingexposure to language beyond the classroom.This is important for several reasons. First, itis obvious that not all words can be explicitly

taught, and so many will have to be learnedincidentally through exposure. Second, nei-ther intentional nor incidental learning canaddress all of the word-knowledge aspectsthat are required for full vocabulary use. Wecan explicitly address lexical features relatedto word meaning, grammatical characteris-tics, collocation, register, or intuitions of fre-quency, but these are likely to be mastered

only through extensive exposure to the targetword in many different contexts Third, theword-knowledge aspects that can be explicit-ly taught still need to be consolidated throughrepeated exposures for them to be perma-nently acquired. Thus any vocabulary pro-




gram needs two strands: an explicit strand topresent the teachable word knowledgeaspects of high value words and an incidentallearning strand where (a) those words areconsolidated and more is learned about them,and (b) a multitude of other new words are

met (Schmitt, in press).B. Collocation: What other words or

ideas does this word go together with? Wecan say, The woman is blonde but not Thechicken is blonde. That is, color words arerestricted in respect to the words they com-bine with; collocation refers to words thatoften occur together. Most languages havecollocational pairs and collocational appro-

priateness is an important part of vocabularycompetence. Without it, learners produceawkward combinations such as:

There were large sums of people present.They made their homework after school.

Teachers need to raise their awareness of theway certain words occur together and the waynative speakers naturally use ready-madechunks of language.

The existence of collocational ties in lan-guage is uncontroversial; the real question ishow to teach them. Unfortunately, this is anarea where pedagogy has not yet caught upwith theoretical research. On the negativeside, it is clear that, just as with meaning, it isimpossible to teach every possible colloca-tion for every word. Furthermore, effective

teaching techniques for collocation have notyet been developed and proven. However, thepicture is not all gloom. On the positive side,corpus evidence can indicate the mostprominent collocations, and it is probablyworth making students aware of these. Withthe price of corpora and concordancing soft-ware now becoming much more affordable(e.g., the 100 million-word British National

Corpus is available on-line for about 50),

2

increasing numbers of teachers can investi-gate collocation data for themselves. Even forteachers unable or unwilling to do this, collo-cation information is finding its way intovocabulary textbooks (e.g., Focus on

Vocabulary), and some collocation referencesare now available (The BBI CombinatoryDictionary of English and the LTP Dictionaryof Selected Collocations). A number of collo-cation exercises are proposed (e.g., Lewis,2000), but it must be said that little research

has been carried out on the effectiveness ofsuch explicit collocation teaching. Perhapsthe best rule of thumb we have at themoment is to use vocabulary (and language)exercises that present words in strings ratherthan individually and to point out thesequential relationships to students. Explicitcollocation teaching should include strategyinstruction that trains students to notice

words that frequently co-occur with targetwords they are learning. Complementing thisexplicit approach, it seems essential to maxi-mize student exposure to language, as this isprobably the only way that they will trulyacquire reliable intuitions for which wordscollocate with one another.

C. Grammatical Features: What gram-matical information might help the stu-dent avoid problems when using thisword? The idiosyncratic nature of Englishvocabulary causes difficulties with manygrammatical features such as parts of speech(e.g., the nouns breakfast and lunch can beused as verbs, but not dinner), verb transitiv-ity (e.g., we would talk to her, but not *inter-view to her), and countable/uncountablenouns (e.g., some nouns are countable withone meaning and uncountable with anoth-

er, as demonstrated by the errant sign thatread *Any kind of dopes at the school areprohibited). Verb transitivity and preposi-tion choice are patterns that are often over-looked by learners and lead to many errors.The grammatical features of vocabulary areproblematic to word learners and warrantclassroom attention.

As teachers select which grammatical fea-

tures should be pointed out to students, theyare advised to remember that words are nottruly learned in isolation or with single expo-sures. Teachers often learn through experi-ence which features are problematic to learn-ers, and then they help learners identify




selected features that may be useful in worduse. For example, experience taught the firstauthor that many students make the error*They discriminated me. Now, when introduc-ing the verb discriminate, she briefly pointsout that this verb is intransitive and is usually

followed by the preposition against(e.g., Theydiscriminated against me). She hopes her stu-dents can more accurately produce discrimi-nate, but also that they be more aware of thegrammatical behavior of this word when theycome across it in their listening and reading.Again, however, a great deal of exposure isnecessary to build solid intuitions about themany grammatical features teachers do not

have time to teach and to reinforce the fea-tures that have been taught. Thus, explicitteaching and increased exposure can onceagain be seen to reinforce each other.

D. Morphological Characteristics:Which members of this words familyshould be introduced to students?Derivative formation is more important andless systematic than many teachers realize.Without the ability to use derivatives (i.e., tochange a member of a word family to anotherword class in the family: selfishselfishness),the learner can use a word only in the wordclass he or she knows, and no other.Conversely, the ability to use all members of aword family with accuracy will greatlyincrease a learners fluency. However, to formderivatives, one needs to know how to dividea word into parts, how to identify the mean-

ings of the parts, and how to connect themeaning of the parts and the meaning of thenew word. The difficulty of this last step isdemonstrated by student errors such as:

People wear one kind of clothing for workand another kind for socialism.There is great bondage between mygrandmother and me.

Learners who combine word parts inlogical but inaccurate ways (as above)should be commended for their intelligentguesses because they reveal partial knowl-edge of both the root and the affix. In a great

number of cases, derivative formation isregular, and students can benefit from usingtheir knowledge of derivatives on unknownwords. It thus make sense to teach some ofthe more common word roots and affixes tostudents. Unfortunately, however, deriva-

tives are arbitrary in many cases. Whileteaching word parts and providing opportu-nities for classroom practice, teachersshould also instill a certain amount of cau-tion in their studentsto have them checknew derivatives they are not sure of, both forword form and meaning.

4. Word Teaching: What Should Be

Included in the Definition, Instruction,and Practice That I Provide?

Word learning is incremental anddependent on repeated exposure to targetwords (Nation, 2001). Therefore, each timelearners encounter a word in reading or lis-tening or when they use it in writing orspeaking, they can learn something newabout the various constraints that govern its

use. Opportunities to encounter words in avariety of natural contexts contribute toincremental word learning. Teachers need toconsider instruction and practice as part of along-term ongoing process.

Effective Definition:

Proficient language users know manywords without being able to define them, yetteachers often feel responsible for composingspontaneous, comprehensive definitions forevery word that puzzles students. In fact, themost effective definitions are often very briefand very clear and are focused on examples,gestures, realia, or pictures if possible.Students will not learn the full precise mean-ing of a word in the first instance anyway, so itis perfectly acceptable to start the learningprocess with more concise definitions that

cover the key aspects of the words meaning,but not necessarily all of them. The refine-ment of meaning can then occur in the manyfollow-up exposures the learner will have.




Effective Instruction:

The teacher faces many choices whendeciding about the type and quantity ofinstruction for a given word. The choicesinclude a number of factors, such as the typeof initial exposure to provide (e.g., pronounc-ing the word, showing a picture), ways tobuild upon the partial knowledge learnersmay already have about the word (e.g.,semantic mapping,translating),ways to max-imize continuing exposure to the word (e.g.,setting up an extensive reading program,using the word in games and examples in theclassroom), and the role of learner autonomy(e.g., the use of vocabulary journals/note-

books and study groups).One of the teachers primary jobs in the

classroom is to provide and optimize the useof a rich context for students as they developword knowledge. Several tips designed to helpteachers create a context rich environment forword learning are:

Select topics about which students have

considerable background informationwhenever possible.Stay within one content area for as long asit is interesting and relevant. Make use offamiliar vocabulary, repeated themes, andvisual information.Provide many clues and use a variety oftechniques to make use of the context andrelate it to the learners backgroundknowledge: (e.g., the use of synonyms,

realia,examples,pictures,references to thefamiliar).Point out the clues that are available andshow students when they are already prac-ticing the effective use of context: (e.g.,using knowledge of word parts, checkingcontext to see if guesses about anunknown words meaning make sense).Know your audience; frequently ask for

feedback from the learners so you arefamiliar with their background knowledgeand their ability to optimize the context.

Effective Practice:

Word learning is incremental, and it takesmultiple exposures to a word to learn it. Thus,opportunities to practice using target wordsare critical for word learning. Although it isimpossible to precisely control the exposurefor each of the many words teachers introduceto their students, there are some general tipsto help teachers organize their vocabularypractice in a principled way.

Whenever you introduce a word, makesure to recycle it in subsequent classes.Recycle target words in natural classroominteraction, explanations, sample sen-

tences focused on new target words, andso forth. Use the words as naturally as pos-sible, drawing explicit attention to themonly when it seems helpful. The first recy-cling needs to happen when the word isstill fresh in the students minds, prefer-ably the next class. Generate a list of wordsyou have taught and that you would like torevisit.

During recyclings, focus on features thatcan be naturally exploited by the example.Some sentences will allow you to drawattention to various derivatives, while oth-ers will introduce register variation or agood example of a collocation.Explain the value of independent readingand encourage students to read for pleas-ure as well as for school (for a discussionfor reading and word learning, see

Zimmerman, 1997).To use a word means to hear it, read it, sayit,or write it; all types of use should be fre-quently practiced with target words in theclassroom.

By asking themselves guiding questionssuch as those in this article, teachers cancarry on a dialogue with themselves that will

result in a greater awareness of the vocabu-lary task their students face, leading to moreprincipled and more effective vocabularyinstruction.




Authors

Cheryl Boyd Zimmerman is an assistant pro-fessor in the MS TESOL Program at CaliforniaState University, Fullerton. Her research inter-ests include incremental word learning, deriva-tional knowledge, the relation of vocabularyknowledge to high school writing success, andother issues of particular relevance to Englishfor Academic Purposes.

Norbert Schmitt is reader of AppliedLinguistics at the University of Nottingham,England. He is interested in all aspects of sec-ond language vocabulary and is exploring thepercentage of vocabulary required for good

reading comprehension and the psycholinguis-tic processing of formulaic sequences. His forth-coming book focuses on vocabulary researchmethodology.

Endnotes

1 A word family includes a word (admire) withits inflections (admired, admiring, admires)and its derivatives (admiration, admiringly).Thus each word family includes severalmembers.

2 BNC is available for purchase at http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/getting/ordering.html. This information was correct as ofOctober 13, 2005.

References

Adolphs, S., & Schmitt, N. (2003). Lexical cov-erage of spoken discourse. AppliedLinguistics 24(4), 425-438.

Benson, M.,Benson, E.,& Ilson,R. (1986). TheBBI combinatory dictionary of English. Aguide to word combinations. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.

Chuska, K. R. (1995). Improving classroomquestions. Bloomington, IN: Phi DeltaKappa Educational Foundation.

Coady, J. (1997). L2 vocabulary acquisition.InJ. Coady & T. Huckin (Eds.), Second lan-guage vocabulary acquisition (pp. 273-290). Cambridge, England: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Hill, J., & Lewis,M. (Eds.) (1997). LTP diction-ary of selected collocations. Hove, England:Language Teaching Publications (LTP).

Hazenberg, S., & Hulstijn, J. H. (1996).Defining a minimal receptive second-lan-guage vocabulary for non-native universi-

ty students: an empirical investigation.Applied Linguistics 17(2), 145-163.

Hunkins, F. P. (1989). Teaching thinkingthrough effective questioning. Boston:Christopher-Gordon.

Lewis, M. (Ed.). (2000). Teaching collocations.Hove, England: Language TeachingPublications.

Nation, I. S. P. (2001). Learning vocabulary in

another language. Cambridge, England:Cambridge University Press.Nation, P., & Meara, P. (2002). Vocabulary. In

N. Schmitt (Ed.), An introduction toapplied linguistics (pp. 35-54). London:Arnold.

Nation, P., & Newton, J. (1997). Teachingvocabulary. In J. Coady & T. Huckin (Eds.),Second language vocabulary acquisition,pp. 238-254. Cambridge, England:Cambridge University Press.

Random House Websters college dictionary.(1992). New York: Random House.

Schmitt,N.(in press).Current perspectives onvocabulary teaching and learning. In J.Cummins, (Ed.), Kluwer handbook ofEnglish language teaching. Norwell, MA:Springer.

Schmitt, N., & Marsden, R. (in press). Why is

English like that? Historical answerstohard ELT questions. Ann Arbor:University of Michigan Press.

Schmitt, D., & Schmitt, N. (2005.) Focus onvocabulary: Mastering the academic wordlist. New York: Longman.

West, M. (l953). A general service list ofEnglish words. London: Longman, Green.

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