Teaching the
vocabulary
of a text
by David Crammer
[This article originally appeared in The
Newsletter, Vol. VII N.° 2, March
1986. at a time when the magazine had
already published two articles on
vocabulary consolidation, but never
one on the actual teaching of
vocabulary. It was intended to fill that
gap. Ed]
5 8 The Journal
Introduction
There are two basic sources for
vocabulary: firstly, what I shall call
'vocabulary collections', e.g.
vocabulary lists, dictionaries, and those
collections of words in the heads of
teacher and students; secondly, texts, be
they written or spoken. Without
wishing in any way to deny the
importance of the former, it is on the
latter that I shall concentrate.
Vocabulary can be the focus of
attention both before the text itself is
presented, i.e. 'pre-taughf. or during
work on the text itself, and in both
cases we need to consider the following
points:
a why items might be taught before
rather than after, or after rather than
before presentation of the text
b how much to teach
c what kind of items to teach
d how to teach the items
1 Pre-taught vocabulary
a Why pre-teach?
There are a number of reasons for pre-
teaching vocabulary. Firstly, and most
importantly, if words important to the
meaning of the text are not understood,
then the meaning and significance of
the text will not be understood either.
What will follow will be
Listening/Reading /^comprehension.
Furthermore, not only does the pre-
teaching of important words enable
comprehension of those specific words,
but the mind subconsciously and even
consciously begins to build up
associations between the words, so that
students can, to a degree, predict the
content of the text they are going to
listen to/read. The ability to predict the
content is an important aid to
comprehension.
Secondly, there may be good reasons
for not wishing to teach vocabulary
after the text has been presented. For
example, a particularly beautiful or
poignant text can be ruined by
dissecting it afterwards. This is often
the case with poetry. Clearly in such
cases any vocabulary teaching should
be done beforehand. On some
occasions, too, there may in general
terms be a lot of vocabulary to be got
from a text (though if this becomes
excessive, then the text is being used at
the wrong level). To avoid teaching
too much vocabulary later, some can
be taught before.
b & c How much and what kind?
These two are inextricably interwoven,
for the more kinds of things to be pre-
taught. the greater total number of
words will be involved.
Correspondingly, any limit on the total
number will limit the range of kinds of
item. As we have seen, the main
reason for pre-teaching is to aid
comprehension and, provided the text is
of the correct level, there should be few
words central to comprehension that
will not be understood. The number of
pre-taught words should normally,
therefore, be small, perhaps half a
dozen at most.
When other reasons are involved, there
may be many more words, and then
additional considerations need to be
taken into account. Firstly, is there a
danger of overloading? The mind and
the memory can only process so much -
research suggests 7 plus or minus 2
items or groups of items are the
optimum for maximum efficiency. And
if there are a lot of words, are they all
going to be taught in one lesson or is
there going to be gradual preparation
for the text, with the vocabulary
introduced little by little over several
preceding lessons?
d How?
Here are some ways of teaching
vocabulary:
a Definition
A lexical item may be defined by a
student who already knows the word,
the teacher, a monolingual dictionary, a
textbook vocabulary list, etc.
b Exemplification and the reverse
To teach tool we might give the
examples hammer, saw, spanner and
screw-driver. To teach spanner we
might describe it as a tool (i.e. an
example of tool).
C Analogy
To teach venison (the meat of a deer)
we might use the analogy that venison
is from a deer as pork is from a pig and
beef from a cow.
d Translation
coriander = coentros. This would
avoid confusion with parsley (= salsa),
which I defy any non-technical
definition to distinguish adequately.
Note that translation can be dangerous,
leading to all kinds of
overgeneralisation, inadequate
matching of meaning, etc., but for
concrete items where the meaning is
straightforward, translation can save
wasting a lot of time trying to explain
something in the target language.
e Concept through situation
To teach disappointed give a situation
such as: "If a child wants a bicycle for
Christmas and gets a book he will be
disappointed."
f Description
e.g. of the word thimble. "A thimble is
like a little hat on your finger when
you're sewing."
g Demonstration
Performing some action to show
how it is done, e.g. leaning or
kneeling to show what lean or kneel
means.
h Acting
Like demonstration but it is not for
real, e.g. acting a sneeze or yawn to
show the meaning.
i Mime
Explanation through
movement/gesture, e.g. scratching your
head to show I'm thinking (action), as
distinct from / think (mental
state/opinion).
j Realia
Using real-world objects, e.g. bringing
into class items of food to teach food
words.
k Pictures - photos, magazine picture,
illustrations
Visual representations of objects. The
teacher's own drawings on the board
are often as effective as photos and
magazine pictures, sometimes even
more so. Bad but recognisable
drawing, because it is humorous, is
especially memorable.
/ Explanation
This is often necessary, e.g. for
culture/language-specific words or
phrases. One would need to explain
bank-holiday, for example, as being a
holiday recognised by tradition,
occurring on Mondays twice a year
(late spring and late summer - in 1998
they fall on 25 May and 31 August)
because religious holidays, etc. don't
give us enough holidays!
m Synonym
Giving another word meaning the
same thing. This can, however, lead
to confusion because true synonyms
are very few indeed. Even such
apparent synonyms as small and little
tend in fact to be used in rather
different contexts and with different
shades of meaning.
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n Antonym
Teaching by comparing words of
opposite meaning. Dangerous because
it often then becomes difficult to
remember which was which, e.g. buy
and sell, borrow and lend, bring and
take, pull and push.
o Discrimination
Contrasting words of similar meaning,
e.g. chair v. bench v. stool. Dangerous
for the same reason as Antonym.
p Co-ordinates grid
Members of a set of words can often be
separated well by looking at various
elements in the meaning of the word.
For example, words for ways of
cooking imply elements such as use of
water or oil, on the surface or in the
oven, high or low heat. This can be
represented in a grid (see fig. on the
next page).
cj Generalisation of form
To teach waitress: if actress is the
female form of actor, what's waitress?
Answer: female form of waiter.
r Word-building
Transforming one part of speech to
another, e.g. deep > depth, high >
height, hot > heat. Always check that
students are fully aware of what parts
of speech are involved. In this case the
transformation is from adjective to
abstract noun.
After teaching an item it is essential to
check that it has been properly
understood. There are various ways of
doing this, many of them involving
getting students, as it were, to 're-
teach' the words back to the teacher,
using one of the means described
above. The teacher may ask for the
word in Portuguese - much better than
the teacher translating, as it requires the
students to put in more effort. Or
he/she may ask for a
synonym/antonym. Then there are
concept question, e.g. for the ways-of-
cooking words "Would you boil a
cake?" (In Portuguese you cozer urn
bolo but you do N O T boil a cake in
English - boiling is always in water),
and the traditional, useful method of
getting students to write a sentence
using the new word in such a way as to
show that they really have understood
the meaning.
2 Vocabulary taught after
presentation of the text
a Why work on vocabulary
afterwards?
Principal among the reasons is the
obvious one that once the broad
context is understood, it is easer to
concentrate on the detail of individual
words. Large-scale vocabulary
building is, in general terms, therefore
better done after the text has been
presented. Another important reason is
that it is possible at this stage to exploit
the new lexis in its own right, not just
as a means to comprehension. If we
are to bring new vocabulary into active
use and not just passive understanding,
it is not sufficient for us just to teach it.
We must provide ways to make sure
that it is learnt and used.
b How much and what kind?
In broad terms, many of the same
factors apply as to pre-taught
vocabulary. We have to be careful not
to overload the student but choose
items that are useful in terms of
frequency of occurrence and
appropriacy to the level. Importantly,
however, we can at this stage go
beyond the central items to items of
detail, which will tend to be rather
more numerous.
c How?
All of the techniques used for pre-
teaching vocabulary can also be used
subsequently, but there are a number of
additional possible means.
Matching
A definition is given and the student
has to find the word with that meaning
in the text.
Inference + Definition Conclusion

The student must guess the meaning of I would like to end by posing and
an item from its context and define it to answering a simple but not always
show it has been correctly understood. sufficiently asked question:

Use of monolingual learner Should ALL unknown words be taught'.'

dictionaries Central to this question is a further one:

It is important to encourage learners Does the student need to be able to use

into the use of monolingual learner
dictionaries at an early stage - they
contain much valuable information on
the contexts and uses of words that is
not to be found in either bilingual or
native-speaker monolingual
dictionaries.
Categorisation
Students are given sets of words from
the text and have to categorise them
grammatically (into noun, verb,
adjective, etc.) or semantically (e.g.
words describing positive/negative
characteristics, words associated with
water, types of light). Or the reverse -
the categories are given and students
have to find examples in the text that
exemplify them.
Information transfer
Students have to fill in some knd of
grid, diagram, chart, map, etc. with
vocabulary items from the text.
As with pre-taught items, it is essential
to check that new words have been
properly understood.
the word or just to understand it. or
indeed does the word really need to be
understood at all?
I would like to suggest that even in our
own language we often read/hear
something without fully understanding
every word. We only do something
about it if we do not understand what is
being said/written sufficiently for out-
purpose. Surely - and the lower the
level, the more this is so - it is a waste
of time and energy trying to learn
words of limited use when there are
many others of much greater
importance still to be learnt.
What I am trying to say is this. There
is no virtue in teaching words beyond
what is sufficient to enable an adequate
understanding of the text within the
terms of what you want to get out of it;
and there is no point in students'
learning what they are unlikely to need
and use in the reasonably immediate
future. If it is sufficiently important, it
will recure later ... and can be learnt
then.

cook boil poach braise stew fry roast bake simmer*

in water x x x x i a i m i m i a imk-i x

in oil x x x

nothinu « x sin its x

own juice)

surface x x x x « x x

oven x xiiishi x \ x x

high heat x x x x x

low heat x \ x x (*) x x

*Note: simmer describes the liquid the food is cooked in, not the food itself

The Journal 61