© 2020 by Iowa State University.

Module 4 Vocabulary and Technology Lecture Transcript for the AE E-

Teacher Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State with funding provided by the U.S. government
and administered by FHI 360. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License,
except where noted. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Using Educational Technology in the English Language Classroom

Technology for Teaching Vocabulary

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlE2-ekUHe82vgWp1Bu5Vd3t1BMpG2yia

Carol A. Chapelle

Iowa State University

PART 1
Slide 1. In this lecture, Professor Carol Chapelle will explain how technology is used
for teaching second language vocabulary.

Slide 2. In this Lecture. In this lecture we’ll start out by looking at the connection
between technology and vocabulary today. We’ll then meet our vocabulary expert
professor Jim Ranalli. I’m going to ask Jim why vocabulary is so important for Prof. Carol Chapelle
students to learn and then we’ll ask him what teachers should know about
"Professor Carol Chapelle"
vocabulary in order to teach it well. We’ll also ask him for some specific advice about by Iowa State University is
how to teach vocabulary and finally we’ll look at how technology can help our licensed under CC BY 4.0

students who are trying to learn second language vocabulary.

Slide 3. The technology-vocabulary connection.

There are many important connections between
technology and vocabulary today. Technology
provides access to many different ways for students
to study vocabulary. Also teachers can find many
resources to help teach vocabulary on the Internet.
Let’s take a look at vocabulary teaching activities.
The first one comes from Voice of America’s section
called “News Words” and the second is the
vocabulary that is in the News Stories.

Slide 4. This page called News Words is one example

of vocabulary on the Voice of America webpages. In
Voice of America: News Words
this section the authors have taken words that are
found in news stories and they have created little “News Words” by VoA Learning English. This content is copyrighted, and
cannot be adapted in any way, or distributed after the end of this course.
mini lessons about each of the words. For example, It is not Public Domain or Creative Commons-licensed, and therefore not
for public use. Please do not save a copy for your personal use, and do
not use it after the course ends.
1
we see a number of words that students might find difficult in these new stories.

Slide 5. One of the news stories was about the Ethiopian Olympic Gold Medal athlete. She won the Gold
Medal and as part of the story they talked about how she had “obliterated” previous records. So on the
website what’s highlighted is the word “obliterated.” This is probably a word that most students wouldn’t
know. But in this section, it gives the students a chance to look at the word, see it in context, and also
hear it when they listen to the story.

Slide 6.

Watch the story at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EO9gzw7Qzc

“News Words: Obliterated” by VoA Learning English. This content is copyrighted, and cannot be adapted in any way, or
distributed after the end of this course. It is not Public Domain or Creative Commons-licensed, and therefore not for
public use. Please do not save a copy for your personal use, and do not use it after the course ends.

PART 2
Slide 7. In another section of the Voice of America website we see the actual news stories. This is one
example of a story about the day an asteroid hit Earth and killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
The title is “New Details on Asteroid Strike That Killed Off the Dinosaurs.”

“New Details on…” story

This work (New Details on Asteroid Strike That Killed Off the Dinosaurs), by VoA Learning
English ), identified by Iowa State University, is free of known copyright restrictions.

2
 Slide 8. Under the story we can see a text that has a number of words that may also be good targets for
vocabulary learning. Some of the words are in bold, such as in the middle of the text: It tells us about
impact processes.

“New Details on…” story

This work (New Details on Asteroid Strike That Killed Off the Dinosaurs), by VoA Learning English ), identified by Iowa State
University, is free of known copyright restrictions.

Slide 9. Following the story there is a list of those

words that were highlighted. Here “impact” is listed
and it’s defined as: “the force or action of one
object hitting another.” Ok, so the story is talking
about an impact by an asteroid. That is an impact
that’s responsible for the extinction of the Word definition
dinosaurs.
“Changing Presidents Can Be a ‘Very Stressful Process’” by VoA
Learning English. This content is copyrighted, and cannot be
Slide 10. A good strategy for the student is to look at adapted in any way, or distributed after the end of this course. It is
the definition; then look back at the news story to see not Public Domain or Creative Commons-licensed, and therefore
how it’s used in context. One of the things we want to not for public use. Please do not save a copy for your personal use,
and do not use it after the course ends.
teach when we teach vocabulary is how the words are
actually used in sentences.

3
Slide 11. Meet our vocabulary expert. So we’ve seen a couple of examples of the kinds of vocabulary
activities that we can find on the Internet. Let’s meet our vocabulary expert now: Professor Ranalli teaches
English at Iowa State University. He has taught English in Africa and South Korea and has also done
research to investigate how to teach vocabulary better by using technology. I asked Professor Ranalli how
he became interested in vocabulary and this is what he said.

Slide 12. My interest in second language vocabulary really started with my experience
as a Peace Corps volunteer in Namibia in Southern Africa. Having been frustrated in my
efforts to learn a second language when I was in high school and college, I really wanted
to use my immersion experience living in a rural village, where very little English was
spoken and where my target language, which was called Oshiwambo, surrounded me,
Prof. Jim Ranalli to finally help me develop a strong communicative ability in a different language. For
me, the most challenging part of learning this new language seemed to be getting a
"Prof. Jim Ranalli"
by Iowa State
handle on the lexicon because this was a Bantu language that has very little in common
University is licensed lexically with English, except for a fair number of loan words. Although I had pretty
under CC BY 4.0
good ability at pronouncing and discriminating the sounds of this new language and
reproducing the grammatical patterns of the language, my memory for vocabulary items wasn’t the best,
so I found myself putting a lot of effort and a lot of time into that aspect of my learning.

When I moved to South Korea and started working there and started trying to learn the Korean language,
I found a similar situation—a language very dissimilar to English whose vocabulary I basically had to start
learning from scratch. I really spent a lot of time thinking about how to make the very difficult, the very
daunting, task of second language vocabulary learning manageable for myself but also for my students.

Slide 13. Professor Ranalli tried to learn Oshiwambo when he was teaching English in Nambia and he really
had a hard time learning vocabulary. And then when he went to Korea he had the same problem; when
he tried to learn Korean, again, he had problems remembering the vocabulary.

Slide 14. Vocabulary learning is the problem. Professor Ranalli started in California. He then went to
Africa, and then South Korea. Wherever he went the problem was the same: he had trouble learning
vocabulary.

This work is a derivative of "World Map" by One World – Nations Online. This derivative is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by FHI 360
for use in the AE E-Teacher Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.

4
 Slide 15. Meet our vocabulary expert. Based on Professor Ranalli’s experience, he wanted to find better
strategies for learning vocabulary--strategies that he could use himself as well as strategies that he could
use to help his students learn better.

PART 3
Slide 16. But what are good strategies for learning vocabulary? Should students try to memorize words?
Should they read texts with words to learn? Do vocabulary drills help? Should they be learning more about
words? Professor Ranalli developed some technology tools to help students with strategies for learning
vocabulary.

Slide 17. Why vocabulary is important. I asked Professor Ranalli to tell us why he thinks that vocabulary
is so important for English learners to control. He said that we cannot say anything without vocabulary!
Let’s listen.

Slide 18. Vocabulary, in some ways, is the most important dimension of language that
learners need to master. There was a linguist called David Wilkins who famously said,
“Without grammar, little can be conveyed. Without vocabulary, nothing can be
conveyed.” I think that’s really true. Grammar helps us structure and refine and clarify
what we mean, but vocabulary really does the heavy lifting in terms of conveying
meaning. At the same time, vocabulary has traditionally been one of the most neglected
Prof. Jim Ranalli
areas of language instruction.
"Prof. Jim Ranalli"
by Iowa State As evidence, I can point to the curriculum in English as a second language that we have
University is licensed
under CC BY 4.0
here at Iowa State. We have courses in listening and reading and writing. In our intensive
English program, they teach courses in speaking and grammar. You can even find
specialty courses in pronunciation, but courses in vocabulary are very rare.

For some reason, it’s often considered acceptable to just assume that students will acquire the vocabulary
they need through exposure to the language, for example, through reading or through their own efforts
and intentional learning of vocabulary using notebooks or word cards or some strategy like that. The
problem with this assumption is that research shows learners really can’t get all the vocabulary they need
through incidental exposure. Learners also need to intentionally acquire new words as well, but the ways
they go about doing this may not be the most effective. Often, they have trouble selecting the most
appropriate words for learning, identifying those that will be most useful to them, and identifying which
aspects of new vocabulary they should focus on. Typically, they equate vocabulary learning with learning
the meanings of words, but there’s a lot of other information about words that they need in order to use
them well. Although it’s impossible to teach all the vocabulary that students will need in their classroom
because there’s just too much of it, we can’t neglect our duties as teachers with respect to vocabulary.
We need a principled approach to dealing with it in the classroom, and an important aspect of a principled
approach is giving students helpful strategies that they can use for learning and using new second
language vocabulary effectively.

5
Slide 19. Professor Ranalli pointed out that without grammar little can be conveyed. You can’t say much
without grammar but without vocabulary, nothing can be conveyed. You can’t say anything without
vocabulary. Vocabulary holds the meaning. Vocabulary is the stuff we talk about, so it’s really important.

He also pointed out that historically vocabulary has been a neglected area in language instruction and he
pointed out that learners need instruction to learn vocabulary because they cannot learn all they need on
their own.

Slide 20. He also said that students have trouble leaning vocabulary on their own. It is difficult for them
to select the appropriate words to study, identify words they need, and understand what aspects of the
words they should be studying.

PART 4
Slide 21. For Example. For example, let’s take a look at
the word “obliterated” that we saw earlier. In that
context the meaning was that the runner obliterated
the world record. And this means that she beat the
record so that it no longer existed. She obliterated the
record.

Slide 22. “Obliterated” means “beat” but how do

people use this word?

Slide 23. We need to see examples. We really need to

see examples if we’re going to understand how people https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EO9gzw7Qzc
use the word “obliterated.” It’s used in lots of different “News Words: Obliterated” by VoA Learning English. This content
contexts besides “obliterating the world record.” In the is copyrighted, and cannot be adapted in any way, or distributed
illustration we see a number of examples of sentences after the end of this course. It is not Public Domain or Creative
Commons-licensed, and therefore not for public use. Please do
or parts of sentences where the word “obliterated” has not save a copy for your personal use, and do not use it after the
been used. The first one says, "the lecture model will course ends.
be obliterated in academic circles." And the second one says, “the camp’s complicated social hierarchy
was obliterated.” “They were waiting to descend the now obliterated ladder,” is the third one. Another
says, “By doing this, the Greenpeaceniks damaged or obliterated marks and drawings on the ground.”
There are lots and lots of contexts in which things are obliterated and they don’t always mean “beat.”

6
 COCA output for the search for the word “obliterated”
This work is a derivative of "Search results for obliterated" by Corpus of Contemporary American English. This
derivative is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by FHI 360 for use in the AE E-Teacher Program, sponsored by the U.S.
Department of State.

Slide 24. COCA. Those examples of the word “obliterated” in many

different sentences came from the Corpus of Contemporary American
English or COCA, as we call it. We are going to use this Corpus more in this
course and learn more about it. We’ll also talk about how students can use
this resource to get examples for themselves. This is a large collection of
American English texts that are used for linguistic research. Because it is
available on the Internet you can use it, other teachers can use it, and so "Student browsing the internet"
can your students. by Iowa State University is licensed
under CC BY 4.0
PART 5
Slide 25. What teachers should know. I asked Professor Ranalli what teachers need
to know about vocabulary. He pointed out an important distinction between two
ways of learning vocabulary. Let’s listen.

Prof. Jim Ranalli
"Prof. Jim Ranalli" by Iowa
State University is licensed
under CC BY 4.0
Slide 26. One really useful distinction for teachers to keep in mind is that between
incidental vocabulary learning and intentional vocabulary learning. Incidental
would be where our students pick up new words without meaning to through
reading or listening. Research suggests that a great deal of second language
vocabulary can be learned this way. That’s why we need to be doing things like
encouraging our learners to do a lot of reading outside of class—reading for
pleasure, extensive reading--and also listening to English language radio programs
or English pop songs or English language movies or TV shows that provide some

7
form of comprehension support in terms of captions or subtitles or something like that. These aids help
them make connections between form and meaning and acquire new words incidentally.

We can’t just rely on incidental learning. Our students won’t learn all the vocabulary they need that way.
They also need to be learning words intentionally which means making a deliberate effort to identify
words that’ll be useful to them and also doing things that’ll help those words stick in their memories so
that they’re available to be used later. Intentional learning can involve things like at the very beginning
stages studying vocabulary lists which are just high-frequency words in the target language listed next to
their equivalents in the student’s first language. This is a perfectly acceptable way of trying to learn
vocabulary in the beginning stages--trying to memorize these lists. Later in their careers, students can use
vocabulary notebooks or word cards or flashcards which are paper-based or nowadays, there are a lot of
terrific web-based flashcard tools that are free.

Incidental learning and intentional learning—that’s an important distinction. One more important word
that teachers want to remember is incremental. Vocabulary is learned incrementally. We have to
remember that it doesn’t all happen at one time. You don’t learn all you need to know about a word in
the single meeting with that word. We learn what we need to know through repeated exposures to words
in different contexts of use so that our knowledge builds up over time. It’s important in our teaching to
find opportunities to give students those repeated exposures, and when they have done so, to draw
students’ attention back to those words and to try and find new things about them that we can point out
to our students.

Slide 27. Professor Ranalli said that there are two ways of learning
vocabulary: incidental vocabulary learning and intentional
vocabulary learning. Incidental vocabulary learning occurs when
students are working together in conversation or reading and
their focus is on what they are talking about or what they’re
reading about. The vocabulary may just be in the background.
They may be using it, they may not know it, and they may be
picking it up without really realizing it: they learn it incidentally.
"Students studying using a laptop" by Iowa State
In contrast, students can engage in intentional vocabulary University is licensed under CC BY 4.0
learning, meaning that they are focusing on the words. They are
there to look at the words; they are there to study the words and
they know that they’re trying to learn particular words. This
activity is intentional. Professor Ranalli points out that both of
these processes are very important for students to learn enough
vocabulary.

8
Slide 28. Students learn intentionally when they work on a vocabulary lesson. The Internet has lots and
lots of opportunities to find vocabulary for students to learn intentionally. They learn incidentally when
they participate in fun, interesting language-rich activities in English. And again the Internet is a great
source for these. One type of activity is called “fanfiction” and we’re going to call on one of our experts,
Shannon Sauro, to introduce to you what students can do when they work in fanfiction, such as fiction
about Sherlock Holmes, the novel.

PART 6
Slide 29. Fan practices and vocabulary learning. Hello. This is Shannon Sauro. In this
segment, I’ll introduce you to the concepts of fans, fandom, fanfiction, and other
fan practices for language learning. Then, I'll share research on a particularly
successful second language user of English who entered fandom with the deliberate
goal of developing her English, including her vocabulary, but first, it’s necessary to
Prof. Shannon Sauro provide the background on some key terms. I’ll start with “fans.”
"Prof. Shannon Sauro" bySlide 30. When I talk about “fans” and “fandom,” I’m often asked
Shannon Sauro is licensed
under CC BY 4.0
what it means to be a fan. Fan studies, a subfield of cultural
studies, provides a good source of definitions. Here’s one I
particularly like: “The term ‘fan’ now covers a wide range of ordinary people who [have]
a positive emotional engagement with popular culture. That engagement may take the
form of connection with the text, image, performance or creative signature of a public
figure. It might include love for a particular cultural form or genre.”

Slide 31. In his excellent ethnography about “fans” of the songwriter and singer Bruce
Springsteen in the late 1990s, Cavicchi provides another definition that highlights the
cultural component of being a fan, which “is actually a much wider social category, Bruce Springsteen
referring to a mode of participation with a long history in a variety of cultural "Bruce Springsteen on the
activities, including literature, sports, theater, film, and television.” screen" by Sake Jager is licensed
under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

9
Slide 32. Culture. In both definitions, there’s reference to culture which many might think of as the food,
clothes, and traditions a society has, but a more nuanced definition of culture also recognizes “the ideas,
customs, skills, [art] and tools that characterize a given group of people in a given period of time.” Culture
therefore includes high art as well as popular art and media, and the equipment and places associated
with sports, for example. By extension, it therefore includes the vocabulary needed to talk about these
things. This broader definition also recognizes that culture can belong to groups of people and not just
whole societies. This includes communities of fans.

Slide 33. Online fandom. Fans have been

around long before the Internet, but Web 2.0
technologies, including many social media sites,
have helped lead to the growth of online
communities of fans known as fandoms. Online
fandoms, therefore, are “the local and
international networks of fans that develop
around a particular program, text or other
media product and which foster the sharing of
responses to the source material, including the
production of novel fan-generated content.”

Slide 34. Within these online fandoms, fans

engage in a great deal of interaction and many
different, often creative fan practices, perhaps Archive of Our Own
the best known of which is fanfiction, also This work is a derivative of "Archive of Our Own" by Archive of Our Own. This
defined as “writing that continues, interrupts, derivative is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by FHI 360 for use in the AE E-Teacher
Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.
reimagines, or just riffs on stories and characters
other people have already written about.” However, fanfiction is only one of
the social media practices that engage learners and therefore, expose them
to new vocabulary. In this study of a fan, we’ll see other fan practices that
also lead to vocabulary learning.

Slide 35. Case study of Steevee. The purpose of this case study was to
explore the L2 language development and digital literacy practices of an
adult fan and second language learner of English. It consisted of a series of
structured and semi-structured interviews and email correspondence that
took place between 2014 and 2015. It also included analysis of specific social
media posts that the participant, Steevee, identified as illustrative of her
experiences and practices.
Steevee
Slide 36. Extramural English. This study builds upon prior work in online
"A fan" by Shannon Sauro is
fandom for language learning, which explored the identity and language licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0
development of young fans in online spaces, who were writing fanfiction or
created fan websites. It falls

10
within the category of extramural English, a term that describes “English-related activities that learners
come in contact with or are engaged in outside the walls of the English classroom, generally on a voluntary
basis.” Many studies of extramural English have documented, for example, learning as a result of online
gaming.

Slide 37. Sherlock Holmes. First, a little background on the fandom that Steevee was a part of. Sherlock
Holmes is a London-based, famous fictional private detective who was created by British writer Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle and appeared in detective novels and short stories
between 1887 and 1927. The detective stories of Holmes and his
colleague Dr. Watson have inspired a great many adaptations
over the years.

Slide 38. Sherlock. One such recent and extremely popular

adaptation is the British television series “Sherlock,” which
imagines Sherlock Holmes and John Watson living in 21st-
century London. This show first aired in 2010 and developed an
active fandom on social media sites such as Tumblr and Twitter.
Subsequent seasons are aired every two to three years, leaving
fans long periods to speculate the resolution to each season’s
cliffhanger. While the show is on hiatus, fans naturally write
fanfiction and speculation among other things, and when filming
begins, many like going to the filming sites to see if they can
Sherlock Holmes
gather information to guess the plot of the show. This practice of
going to and gathering information on the filming, referred to as "The pipe was still between his lips" by Sidney Paget
is licensed under CC BY 2.0
“setlock” by the Sherlock fandom, is relevant to Steevee’s case.

PART 7
Slide 39. Key moments in Steevee’s fan history.
Steevee is a fan from Eastern Germany in her early
30s. She’s always been a fan of things, especially
music. Growing up, she was a fan of the musical
group The Kelly Family and also of David Hasselhoff,
but she didn’t discover fandom until 2009 when a
convergence of personal and professional factors
came together. That year, shortly after she returned
to Germany from a few years spent in the United
States and was missing using English, a friend
introduced her to the American television show
“Supernatural” which Steevee began to watch and
enjoy. She soon joined Twitter and created her first
Set of the show “Sherlock”
fan Facebook page. She also began studying English
and other foreign language teaching at university, "#Setlock" by Shannon Sauro is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0

with the goal of one day living in London. In 2010, she

11
joined the fandoms for two British television shows, “Torchwood” and “Doctor Who,” and created a fan
Tumblr account. In 2012, she saw her first episode of “Sherlock” and joined the “Sherlock” fandom. In
2013, filming of the next series of “Sherlock” began in London and Cardiff, and Steevee began compiling
and reporting on updates coming out of setlock over Twitter and Tumblr. As a result, she found herself
developing fact-checking skills, brevity, and speed in English for posting up-to-date and accurate
information quickly for fans interested in following reports of filming or discovering leads about
speculation online.

Slide 40. At the time she entered fandom, Steevee was

highly motivated to develop her English skills. In
particular, she had a strong desire to shift her English
from American to British English, with the goal of one day
living in London. However, motivation is not just an
individual issue. As Ushioda explains, “As we have noted,
motivation is never simply in the hands of the motivated
individual learner but is constructed and constrained
through social relations with others.” This was something
Steevee had become aware of, which is why she had
shifted from fandoms based on a U.S. television show to
fandoms based on British television shows.
London
Slide 41. Steevee developed social relations with
"London Eye" by Shannon Sauro is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0
members of British English fandoms via social media
outlets as a way to gain access to and participate in social
communities of practice for the purpose of developing a new identity, proficient speaker of British English,
and for the purpose of mobility. In her own words: “I tried to shift my accent from American English to
British English. I tried to learn to write colour with ‘ou’ and so on. And I started to watch Doctor Who and
Torchwood. Those were my next two big fandoms.” Her decision to become active in online fandom was
also influenced by social factors, especially those she encountered in university: “It was the opportunity
to completely immerse myself in the English language. That was it for me. I was so stoked. I’m going to
get online and I’m going to talk to people and learn English. And I’m going to learn new words. And I used
to sit there with a notepad next to Twitter and write down words I’d never seen before, look them up,
learn them. Because that’s how I acquired language because I was in a German country going to university
where even the English classes were held in German. I wasn’t learning anything and I wanted to learn.”

12
Slide 42. Spoiling. Steevee developed her English
vocabulary and social media skills in online fandom, and
by 2013, after she’d been in the “Sherlock” fandom for
a year, filming on the next series and setlock had begun.
Steevee soon found herself engaging in a new fan
practice known as spoiling or “the purposeful discovery
of crucial developments in the plot of a fictional story
of a film or TV series before the relevant material has
been broadcast or released.” This began when she
gathered links to tweets from cast and crew about the
first day of filming and posted an update to Tumblr. In
response, she began attracting a high number of
followers, eager for daily updates and speculation Set of the show “Sherlock”
about where filming would be taking place next. "#Setlock in Cardiff" by Shannon Sauro is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0

Slide 43. Steevee explained that as her presence in fandom grew, mainly due to setlock, she began to
monitor her English more carefully for a wider audience. She observed that you could be attacked either
way by both native and non-native speakers of English due to misunderstandings, but in her experience,
the non-native speakers are really the loose cannon because they might understand something incorrectly
because of their own lack of knowledge of the English language or sarcasm or whatever is being used as
a metaphor, for example.” Steevee also found that more and more people began looking to her as source
of all kinds of trustworthy information and that this affected how much more careful she had to become
in her word choice and explanations.

Slide 44. As she explains it, “Due to the massive increase of hits and
followers due to setlock, I somehow became someone who was
consulted on various things and I realized that if I wanted to
help/give answers etc, I’d have to make myself understood in the
way I wanted to be – that’s when my answers got longer and more
in-depth, as I wanted to make sure my arse was covered.” What
Steevee began doing was writing longer posts that were divided
into two parts for two very different audiences. She would include
a barebones explanation of things, often in list form, with links and
illustrations that could be read by less proficient English speakers.
This would be followed by more detailed explanations that
included humor and insider jokes that could be understood by
more proficient English speakers with greater vocabulary and
cultural knowledge about the show, actors, and British society.

Slide 45. Steevee’s original motivation for becoming involved in

online British-based fandoms was to develop her English for the London
purpose of one day living and working in London. After completing "#SherlockLives" by Shannon Sauro is licensed under CC
BY-NC 4.0

13
her university degree, she was able to find work in London as a nanny, where she continued to seek out
more permanent jobs. She found that her involvement in online fandom helped her adjust to living in a
large international city. “I know I have those tools because of fandom. To think differently. To think
critically. Especially to try to see it from a different point of view. And fandom has provided me with so
many tools regarding my own everyday life and also accepting the other lives around me as part of the
whole.” Beyond this, fandom had also helped make her develop language and social media skills valuable
to different industries. In Spring 2016, Steevee came across a job announcement for a firm on London’s
South Bank seeking a bilingual German/English speaker for a position in online publicity and
communications. The job requirements included expertise working with clients from multiple countries,
social media skills, Internet research skills, and native writing skills in both German and English. She’s been
working there since June.

PART 8
Slide 46. Fun activities for incidental vocabulary learning are really important because they engage
students and they keep them motivated to continue to work in English. But remember students need
both, incidental vocabulary learning and intentional vocabulary learning. And it’s usually our job as
teachers to remind them of that.

Slide 47. Advice for teachers. Professor Ranalli has already provided some useful concepts about
vocabulary. I asked him specifically for some ideas about how to teach vocabulary and here’s what he
said.

Slide 48. The best advice I can give to teachers about teaching vocabulary is to first
familiarize yourself with all the aspects of word knowledge beyond basic meaning
that are important for accurate and appropriate use. I’m talking about things like
collocation—words co-occurring with other words. For example, in English, we say
“take medicine” instead of “eat medicine,” which would be the more likely
translation in many languages. Knowing what a word means also includes knowing
what other words typically go together with that word. Another aspect of word
meaning is register. Register has to do with the typical contexts—the social
Prof. Jim Ranalli
contexts, the usage contexts—of particular words. For example, a student should
"Prof. Jim Ranalli" by Iowa know the words “friendly” and “gregarious.” Although they’re very similar in
State University is licensed
under CC BY 4.0 meaning, they’re used in different contexts. We can use the word “friendly” to
describe someone in casual conversation, but the word “gregarious” is more
formal and much less common, so it would sound weird in conversation but would be okay in some types
of writing.

Another aspect of word knowledge is the spoken and written forms--in other words, how a word is spelled
and how it’s pronounced. All of these things are important for students to be aware of because they help
us to use words the right way. Most students still think vocabulary learning means learning the meanings
of words, so they neglect these other aspects of word knowledge. As a teacher, if you can first make sure
your students are aware of these other aspects of word knowledge, what they are and why they matter,
that’s a big part of it. The teacher can also help by consistently and frequently pointing out these other
aspects of word knowledge when introducing new vocabulary in class. When planning your teaching of
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vocabulary, try to anticipate what students may find challenging about a word in terms of usage and teach
to that. For example, if you’re teaching the word “medicine” to a group of beginners, and you know in
their native language, they say the equivalent of “eat medicine,” you can head off potential errors by
pointing out that in English, these two words aren’t used together. Instead, we say “take medicine” to
mean the same thing. I think that kind of awareness raising and that kind of targeted teaching is one of
the best ways that teachers can help their students come to grips with the vocabulary of English.

Slide 49. One of the most important things that Professor Ranalli pointed out is that there is more to
vocabulary than word meaning. Students need to learn all the aspects of word knowledge: collocation,
register, written and spoken form. In other words, students need to learn how words are used, with what
words they’re used, on what occasions they are used, and whether they will be used prominently in
writing or speaking or both.

Slide 50. Professor Ranalli gave us some examples of collocation, of words that go together. He pointed
out that in English we say that we take medicine, but we eat lunch. We “take medicine” rather than “eating
medicine.” In English you just don’t say “eat medicine,” even though you do eat it. We eat lunch and in
English we don’t say “take lunch.” That just doesn’t sound like English. If you say you’re going to take
lunch, I might think “take it where?” Teaching vocabulary includes teaching words that go together.

PART 9
Slide 51. Students should learn about register. They need to know vocabulary choice is contingent on the
register of language use. There are certain situations where words are used. Different words are used for
talking among friends than in a classroom or business meeting, for example. Teachers need to teach
students to be aware of the contexts where they find words, and provide students with words in a variety
of contexts, always with attention to the context.

Slide 52. Students should learn about all aspects of word knowledge: written and spoken forms, context
of use and collocations. And teachers should provide students with a lot of exposure to vocabulary while
raising their awareness of their important features.

Slide 53. How can technology help? Professor Ranalli’s insights into how vocabulary is learned are very
informative to us as we think about how technology can help. Based on what he said, I would suggest the
following: We can show students how to use vocabulary tools to look up words while reading. We can
teach students to search the Internet to find images and examples of vocabulary in use. We can use a
corpus to help show students word patterns. We can also encourage students to use spellcheckers to
learn correct spelling. And we can introduce students to online communities outside the classroom, such
as fanfiction communities. Let’s take a look at some examples of each of these types of technology uses
for vocabulary.

Slide 54. A vocabulary tool to use while reading… Here’s an example of one vocabulary tool that students
can use while they’re reading. It’s called “Lingro” and it allows students to attach the text they are reading
to the Lingro program. And the Lingro program becomes a dictionary for every word in the text!

15
 Lingro
This work is a derivative of "Lingro" by Lingro. This derivative is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by
FHI 360 for use in the AE E-Teacher Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.

Slide 55. Where the arrow appears is the place where the student can type in a website and the lingro
program will attach to that text in that website in order to provide definitions for the words. Let’s see
how it works.

The New York Times

This work is a derivative of "The New York Times" by The New York Times.
This derivative is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by FHI 360 for use in the AE E-
Teacher Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.

Slide 56. Here’s a story in The New York Times about Donald Trump’s tough talk on trade. The story is
about some of the things Trump said shortly after he was elected president.

16
Slide 57. The Lingro program makes the text look different.

Lingro view of article

This work is a derivative of "The New York Times" by Lingro. This derivative is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by
FHI 360 for use in the AE E-Teacher Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.

Slide 58. The Lingro program allows the students to move the cursor to any word that he or she want to
see defined and then click, and the dictionary definition comes up for each of the words. So there is
“secure” in the first sentence: “Donald J. Trump secured the White House in part with his vow to bring
manufacturing jobs back to America.” If we want to look up the word “secured,” we just move the cursor
there and click on it and then it gives dictionary definition of that word.

Lingro view of article

This work is a derivative of "The New York Times" by Lingro. This derivative is licensed under CC BY 4.0
by FHI 360 for use in the AE E-Teacher Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.

Slide 59. The dictionary definition of the word “deem” is shown on the slide.

Slide 60. There’s another example from the same text. In this case we clicked on the word “vulnerable”
and “vulnerable” then appears defined so that the student can see, literally, any word in the text defined.
It’s like having a mobile electronic dictionary with the text that the student wishes to read.

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PART 10
Slide 61. Search. Another way of
working with words on the
Internet is to simply search for
all the texts that have a
particular word. For example, if
we work with the word
“vulnerable” even farther then
we will see what we find if we
simply type it in the browser and
see what appears.
Lingro view of article
Slide 62. Search All. For many
words the first finding from a This work is a derivative of "The New York Times" by Lingro. This derivative is licensed under CC BY 4.0
search will be a dictionary by FHI 360 for use in the AE E-Teacher Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.
definition and so the student, literally, has a dictionary at hand whenever he or she is sitting in front of
the computer.

Google search
This work is a derivative of "Search results for vulnerable" by Google. This
derivative is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by FHI 360 for use in the AE E-Teacher
Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.

18
Slide 63. Search Images. Another interesting way to work with words on the Internet is to search for
images. Again we typed in “vulnerable” and take a look at the images that we find. There are some really
interesting ones that come up for this; some are abstract work.

Google image search for the word “vulnerable”

This work is a derivative of "Image search results for vulnerable" by Google. This derivative is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by FHI 360 for use in the
AE E-Teacher Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.

Slide 64. Here is what we get if we type the word “secure”.

Google image search for the word “secure”

This work is a derivative of "Image search results for secure" by Google. This derivative is licensed under
CC BY 4.0 by FHI 360 for use in the AE E-Teacher Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.

19
 Slide 65. And this works very nicely, of
course, with concrete nouns where the
images clearly make sense. And particularly
for nonconcrete nouns that are more
difficult or beginning level learners who
have a hard time working with the English
definitions. If we type the word
“Dalmatian” we get results that are very
clear as to what Dalmatian means.

Slide 66. There’s the results for Dalmatian.

Really no ambiguity about the meaning of
the word when you find images like that for Google image search for the word “Dalmatian”
students at any level.
This work is a derivative of "Image search results for Dalmatian" by Google. This
Slide 67. Word Patterns. Another example derivative is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by FHI 360 for use in the AE E-Teacher Program,
sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.
for the technology that is used for
vocabulary learning is the corpus. As I mentioned earlier the corpus of Contemporary American English
provides a great resource for teachers and students to use to look at how words are actually used in text.
We are going to call on our expert on COCA and our corpus man, Joe Geluso to describe a little bit more
about the corpus of Contemporary American English.

Slide 68. Here is the web page for COCA or the Corpus of Contemporary American
English, the corpus that we talked about earlier. I just wanted to give you a quick look
at the front page of the corpus so you have an idea of what we’re talking about with
the web-based corpus. So here we can see we have many different features such as
list, charts, collocates, compare and quick. These are features we’ll get into later, but
for now I just want to do one quick search so you have an idea of what COCA looks like.
So let’s say I want to look at the word “vocabulary”. I’ll just type in “vocabulary”, I have
list selected so this will just give me a list of the word “vocabulary” in context. And
here’s the word “vocabulary” after we search it, I click on that and now I will see a
number of what are called “concordance lines” that feature will target the word that
Joe Geluso we just searched, in this case “vocabulary”. So here we can see things like vocabulary,
"Joe Geluso" by Iowa development, reading experience aides, vocabulary development and just how the
State University is
licensed under CC BY 4.0
word “vocabulary” is used in context. And we have hundreds and hundreds of examples
of how it’s used because COCA is a really big corpus of about 5 hundred million words.

20
 Front page of COCA
This work is a derivative of "Corpus of Contemporary American English" by Corpus of
Contemporary American English. This derivative is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by FHI 360
for use in the AE E-Teacher Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.

Slide 69. Spell Checking. Another example of vocabulary tools that are available to everyone is spell
checking. Most word processing programs and many other programs on the Internet when they have an
editor they also have spell checking in the background. These spell-checking options allow students to see
words that they have misspelled and if we bring attention to those words, they can learn to use that
feedback to improve their spelling, thereby learning an aspect of vocabulary.

Spellcheck
"Spellcheck" by Iowa State University is licensed under CC BY 4.0

21
Slide 70. In this example we see how certain words were misspelled and students who attended to the
mark up on those words could then do the corrections to get the mark up to disappear. When the words
are spelled correctly they’re no longer underlined in red.

Slide 71. This lecture should provide good basis for you as you work on the other activities in this unit on
teaching vocabulary.

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