SLA – Session 6

Second language development

Common processes and influences
Lateral transfer (ex: learn English and then learn another language => English impact the later
one)
L2 Vocabulary Teaching

What do students need to know?

1. Meaning
2. Word use
3. Word formation
4. Word grammar

Selecting vocabulary

 General principle in the past: more concrete words >> more abstract
 2 main criteria:
 Frequency (used frequently)
 Coverage (covering a lot of things)
 Cobuild computer-based corpus
 Questions to ask when choosing a word to teach:
 Do the students need to know the word yet?
 How useful is it for them?
 How well does it fit into the topics, functions, structures and situations that we want to teach?

Search for collocation: look for the concordances in the dictionary >> use of word in context