Resumo de Best Practice In Vocabulary Teaching And Learning - Part1

At the beginning I would like to say that this is a summary of a chapter in a book, not an analysis. I am just presenting the information included in the chapter in an easier way, because of more clear graphic appearance of it . I also underlined more important things, which I guess will be a great help for those who want to get main ideas from this text. Talking most generally about the chapter , it' is a chapter from a methodological book = Methodology in Language Teaching = by J.C. Richards and W.A. Renandya written for teachers of english as a foreign language.
Here Paul Nation writes about different aspects of vocabulary teaching and learning. When it comes to the relationship between vocabulary and meaning - focused input, he mentiones that there is a quick DROP-OFF in occurence of frequent vocabulary beyond those 3,000 most frequent words. E.g in a text of 1,000,000 words , words less frequet than those 3,000 most frequent ones will occur not even 8 timesSo for the words thatare not so frequent, meaning -focused input is needed so that vocabulary increased at a reasonable pace.
?? 2nd reason why vocab learning through meaning -focused input is fragile is that ->-> it depends on how ss control their reading skill.(In native speakers-> when they r gaining the skill of reading - there is little vocab growth. But !! -> when natives can read well - > reading - > may be main source of vocabulary growth.L2 ss r in difr situation but with similar results. If ss r fluent readers in L1 then only major barrier to reading is vocabulary size.Because of this -> it's imp to give ss series of graded readings wiht careful vocab control. It allows ss to make use of their reading skill they gained in L1 to expand L2 vocab.
?? 3rd reason that this input is fragile is that the kind of reading influences vocabulary learning -> STRONGLY!
how? -> if ss read interesting for them ( have background knowl) text they will easily cope with unknown words in the context but !!! -> they will probably not learn them.If ss read text about unfamiliar things they will better learn words because they will focus on the language to get the meaning.

*** it's important in meaning focused input to pay attention to lang as a system, not only as a messages.If e.g. while reading or listening T interrupts briefly to comment on meaning of a word, write it on blackboard.. then there is bigger chance of learning this word.
So -> conclusion -> deliberately drawing attention to lang items as a part of lang system (LANG FOCUSED INSTRUCTION) -> makes learning more certain. Because if T relies on MEANING FOCUSED INPUT only -> then learning is not so much sure. It's a matter of chance then.
** Best practice in vocab teaching is yhe one that aims to reduce the fraility of meaning focused input ( reading + listening ) .How? -> by giving a lot of suitably graded input -> by providing it across difr kinds of genres & topics-> by giving LANG-FOCUSED activities to support it.

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