How do Students Tend to Learn Vocabulary in English Language?
We can assume that they will intuitively favor a double-entry table presenting the word in the foreign language in one column and the translation in their mother tongue in the other.
To learn, they will read the words several times. Then they cover the foreign word and try to get them back. They say the words out loud or write them at the start of the translation.
Their process will take them more or less time depending on their concentration, the difficulty of the words or their ability to memorize associations in both directions.
1. Vocabulary learning process
To learn, they will read the words several times. Then they cover the foreign word and try to get them back. They say the words out loud or write them at the start of the translation.
Their process will take them more or less time depending on their concentration, the difficulty of the words or their ability to memorize associations in both directions.
At the end of the process, if we give them an immediate test, we can get a good performance.
However, can we consider that these students have learned this vocabulary? Not really, because they have not yet been stably integrated into their long-term memory. Their knowledge is likely to be forgotten and disappear quickly.
There is interest in a cycle of retrieval practice and feedback with re-study of forgotten words, spread over time over the days and weeks following initial learning. This will slowly but surely integrate these words into their long-term memory. Only then will the learning be better established.
But this process will not be sufficient for integrated learning. Using a flashcard system can already be more useful than studying lists. For vocabulary, digital tools such as Digital learning tools include a wide variety of applications, websites, and learning platforms that facilitate learning by connecting students, teachers, and sometimes even parent seem appropriate.
In addition, integrating vocabulary requires making it flexible. This process can only take place if the vocabulary is mobilized, retrieved, practiced and used in different contexts and during multiple tasks.
2. The four parts of a language course
The context of teaching a foreign language is characterized by a limited number of hours of student contact with it. It is therefore important to use them in the most meaningful way possible and to encourage pupils and students to also engage with the foreign language outside of class hours.
According to Paul Nation, an internationally renowned vocabulary specialist, a balanced vocabulary course consists of four components for which an equivalent distribution of available time should take place:
1) Exposure to the foreign language in the context of meaningful activities
Compared to our mother tongue, we are much less exposed to the foreign language we learn. Nevertheless, this exposure plays an important role in the language acquisition process. This involves exposure to the foreign language through television, radio, reading, the Internet or even computer games.
It is important that students read, listen and watch, consume content in the foreign language they want to learn.
2) Meaning-centered expression
Vocabulary must be used in oral and written expression activities, based on meaning.
Letting students speak and write forces them to use words and combine them. The goal is that the use of words also strengthens the trace of these words in their mental lexicon.
3) Language-centered learning
This is about setting up intentional vocabulary learning. This involves vocabulary exercises, lists, word cards, etc.
A student can learn vocabulary words by reading texts, listening to conversations, or watching television, but this process is slow.
This is not enough for students to quickly learn basic vocabulary and gradually enrich it. They cannot learn enough vocabulary just by speaking, listening and reading.
Targeted and intentional vocabulary practice is necessary to acquire high-frequency vocabulary.
4) Development of language proficiency
It consists of implementing activities aimed at developing fluency. It corresponds to the learning of new words and their repeated training so that they become automated.
The idea is to transfer vocabulary into long-term memory while ensuring that it will be easily accessible in the appropriate contexts. This process promotes fluidity of expression, but also fluency of reading.
Increasing the involvement of long-term memory frees up cognitive space in working memory for other aspects of language.
A balance between explicit teaching and occasional vocabulary acquisition
A teacher cannot have his students learn all the vocabulary words in class.
Nor can he achieve and build in his students a sufficiently large vocabulary in purely communicative tasks, such as reading and listening.
Therefore, it is helpful to also include explicit vocabulary teaching in the classroom. It is necessary to add new words from time to time through a process of intentional vocabulary acquisition based on the science of learning.
Intentional vocabulary acquisition has the following benefits:
It is faster in the sense that it will cover more words more quickly.
It is more sustainable and more likely to turn into long-term learning.
It is more adapted to certain words and their particular aspect and their specificity
However, it has a limitation: it is not possible to teach all the words this way, because this approach requires time and resources.
Alongside the explicit teaching of high-frequency words, a more diversified and random vocabulary is built through occasional acquisition. It corresponds to spontaneous learning of words during reading or hearing.
Occasional vocabulary acquisition has the following advantages:
It constitutes a necessary and welcome supplement, even if uncertain.
It allows contextual learning on different aspects of a word, in a situation.
It can boost motivation because we directly manipulate language in an authentic, meaningful context.
Occasional vocabulary acquisition also has disadvantages; the process is slow, uncertain and unpredictable in terms of its sustainability. What will actually be learned will be more dependent on the student and will present greater variability than intentional acquisition?
