Teaching Reading & VocabularyTESOL programBrett Reynolds ( 브레트 )

Overview

• Introduction•Vocabulary•Reading

Overview

What’s a word?

•Senses•Tokens•Types•Lemmas•Families

What’s a word?

Word senses•Begin by teaching most common sense of a word•Good dictionaries LDOCE, Simple Wiktionary•Most common sense is usually overwhelmingly

so•Don’t teach other senses until the basic sense is

well establishedTokensTypesLemmasFamilies

What’s a word?

Word sensesTokens•any instance of a word• Vocabulary helps us and puzzles us. (6 tokens)

TypesLemmasFamilies

What’s a word?

Word sensesTokensTypes•all identically spelled words are one type• Vocabulary helps us and puzzles us. (6 tokens & 5

types)

LemmasFamilies

What’s a word?

Word sensesTokensTypesLemmas•all regularly inflected words sharing a stem and

belonging to the same category• jump, jumps, jumped, jumping, jumper, jumpers (2

lemmas)

Families

What’s a word?

Word sensesTokensTypesLemmasFamilies•all regularly inflected and derived words sharing

a stem and belonging to the same category• jump, jumps, jumped, jumping, jumper, jumpers, do,

undo, redo, doable, doing (6 lemmas, 2 families)

Goals of vocabulary learning

How much do learners need to know– How many words are there in English– How many words do native speakers know– High frequency vocabulary– Low frequency vocabulary

• Idioms

Korean curriculum guidelines

Goals of vocabulary learning

How much do learners need to know– How many words are there in English

• It depends on what a word is• OED has about half a million words• About 114,000 word families (Webster’s)

– How many words do native speakers know– High frequency vocabulary– Low frequency vocabulary

Goals of vocabulary learning

How much do learners need to know– How many words are there in English– How many words do native speakers know

• About 1,000 lemmas per year of life until finishing school (why does it slow down after that?)

• Average adult knows about 20,000 word families– High frequency vocabulary– Low frequency vocabulary

Goals of vocabulary learning

How much do learners need to know– How many words are there in English– How many words do native speakers know– High frequency vocabulary– Low frequency vocabulary

Word frequencies (first 100 lemmas)

Word frequencies (first 1000 lemmas)

Goals of vocabulary learning

How much do learners need to know– How many words are there in English– How many words do native speakers know– High frequency vocabulary– Low frequency vocabulary

Word Frequencies (first 6,300 lemmas)

Goals of vocabulary learning

How much do learners need to know– How many words are there in English– How many words do native speakers know– High frequency vocabulary– Low frequency vocabulary

• Idioms

Idiom frequencies

•hit the jackpot: 0.32 (2.0 in 1940s)•on a roll: 0.30 (2.21 in 1990s)•ace in the hole: 0.04 (0.08 in 1940s)•play(s/ed/ing): [somebody's] cards close to

[somebody's] chest 0.07 (0.06 in 1960s)•wild card: 0.54 (1.38 in 1990s)• shoot the works: 0 (0.80 in 1930s)•put(s/ting) * money down: 0.05 (0.11 in 1990s)•beginner's luck: 0.04 (0.32 in 1960s)•anathema: 1.42 (about the 23,800th most

common word in the British National Corpus)

Goals of vocabulary learning

How much do learners need to know– How many words are there in English– How many words do native speakers know– High frequency vocabulary– Low frequency vocabulary

Korean curriculum guidelines

Knowing a word

Learning burdenReceptive vs. productiveGrammatical functionsCollocationsRegister

Guessing vocabulary

Studying vocabulary

Key principles– Choosing useful words– Spaced repetition– Depth of processing– Motivation

Computer softwareWord cards

Teaching & explaining

Harmer chapterReasons for explaining a wordLower levels vs. higher levelsAnti-teaching

Testing vocabulary

Reasons for testingMotivation & reviewEvaluation

Overview

Reading• Reading & the brain

– The role of attention & automaticity– Human Information processing

• Beginning to read– Phonological awareness– Phonics– Aural input

• Reading & vocabulary• Purposes for reading

– Reading as a skill– Reading as language input

• Reading speed & skills• Testing reading

The role of attention & automaticity

•Humans have limited attention/memory•Reading is hard• Print is unnatural• Topics are unfamiliar• No opportunity for feedback• Language style is formal

•Non-automatic processes require attention•Understanding cannot be fully automatized

Human information processing system

Sensory store Visual – Iconic memory

↓ Auditory – echoic memory

Short-term memory (Also known as working memory)

↓

Long-term memory Including episodic memory & semantic memory

Phonological awareness

The understanding that words are made of smaller sounds

• In English• Syllable• Onset–rime• Phoneme

• In Korean• Syllable• Body-coda• Phoneme

Phonological awareness

English Korean

Syllable/koŋ/ /koŋ/

/k/ /oŋ/ /ko/ /ŋ/

Onset Rime Body Coda

Phoneme /k/ /o/ /ŋ/ /k/ /o/ /ŋ/

Phonological awareness

• In Korean, kindergarteners’ and second graders’ syllable and phoneme awareness predicted their real word reading skills.

•Korean has four syllable types: V, VC, CV, and CVC.• consonants in the onset (syllable initial position) and the coda

(syllable final position) are optional• consonant clusters are not allowed in Korean

•Children’s rhyming ability contributes directly and indirectly to reading and spelling development in English even after controlling for phoneme awareness.

•English allows very complicated syllables• syllables may begin with up to three consonants (as in string), • may end with as many as four (as in prompts).

Phonics

•Teaching children to connect sounds with letters or groups of letters • e.g., that the sound /k/ can be represented by c, k, or

ck spellings

•AND teaching them to blend the sounds of letters together to produce approximate pronunciations of unknown words.

Eye movement

• The distance the eye moves in each saccade (or short rapid movement) is between 1 and 20 characters with the average being 7–9 characters.

• Skilled readers make regressions back to material already read about 15 percent of the time.

Aural input

Reading and vocabulary

Interactive model of reading

Word activation

Purposes for reading

• Information•Entertainment•Language learning•Because teacher told me to

Reading for language learning

• Intensive reading•Extensive reading

Intensive reading

1. Vaguely identify general topic2. Read through to improve general

understanding3. Reread with various focuses, for example:

1. Focus on vocabulary2. Refocus meaning (overall organisation; listen &

follow)3. Focus on grammar4. Refocus on meaning (personal reaction/evaluation)5. Refocus on vocabulary (cloze)6. Refocus on grammar (sentence jumbles)7. Refocus on meaning (read-out-loud performance)

Reading Speed

Native speakers of English•Reading for memorization: under 100 words per

minute (wpm)•Reading for learning: 100–200 wpm•Reading for comprehension: 200–400 wpm•Skimming: 400–700 wpm

Non-native readers•Often half the speed, even for proficient

bilinguals

Reading strategies

•Reading for understanding•Pre-reading•During reading•Post reading

Testing Reading