Article by Allison Tylor Adams: About Vocabulary Acquisition and Extensive Reading in an

Intermediate Classical Greek Class. The article drew upon second language acquisition=
( SLA), personal observations, and student feedback to inform her discussion.

She concludes that the most fruitful strategies in terms of language acquisition and
vocabulary acquisition are those in which the learners themselves are able to take
ownership..

How did she comes to this conclusion?

Allision was a a final year masters’s student in applied logistics doing a fourth semester
Classical Greek course at a US private university. Intermediate course – which met twice a
week.

Allison makes reference to B/ Laufer who argues that by far the greatest lexical obstacle to
good reading is insufficient number of words in the larner’s lexicon.

Therefore their tutor whose pseudonym was Professor athena, DUE TO HER DESIRE TO
IMPROVE READING CONMPRESION OF HER INTERMEDIATE STUDENTS HAD DECIDED TO
MAKE VOCAB ACQUISITION THE PRIORITY FOR THE FINAL SEMESTER

Athena located a list of the 500 most common words through textual frequency and divided
this list into 5 sections of 100 words with each set of 100 being introduced to the class and
tested in one of five quizzes throughout the semester.

The article focuses on 2 main questions??

Is focusing learner attention on frequent vocabulary a worthwile method of improvinh

reading comprehension?

What are the practical ways that the teacher and the students can improve the acquisition
of Greek Vocabulary?

The Greek Corpus and fREQUENCY LISTS.

Interestingly Greek corpus is a closed set- ranging from 8th century Homeric Greek to
premodern Greek. – including philosophical texts from Classical Atens and Hellenistic
Christian nEW Testament ( Koine) o “ high style of Byzantine” empire.
studies of Ancient Greek relate to 2 millenia of literature.

Interesting fACTS.

In ORDER TO OBTAIN A COVERAGE OF 80% OF ANY GIVEN TEXT- A READER OF ENGLISH

MUST COMAND ROUGHLY AROUND 2,300 WORDS.

This threshold is significant because according to studies of Milton 80 perecent is the

threshold below which comprehesnions and communications become almost impossible

Q.How much do you think this is for Latin- ans. Same

Q. So for a reader of Greek spanning from Homeric to Chrystosom. ( golden-mouthed

religious author) would you suspect a range of voc`Bulary higher or lower than that of
English to obtain a similar coverage?

Interestingly by analysing the Thesaurus Linguae Grecae and Perseus which host all Greek
texts from there until the fall of Constantinople in 1453 Classicaists etermiend that the
number of Greek words a nreader needs to achieve the same ratio of text coverage is fewer
than 1,100 less than that of half for Enlglish.

Therefore W. Major observes that while areas of morphology, semantics and sytanx can
prove more difficult for students of Greek than in other languages- core vocabulary
represents a topic where tudents can feel Greek will be easier than other languages.

Most beginning Greek language books however only cover some of these 1,100 words
therefore intermediate students begin advancing past textbooks into the reading of real
passages and authentic Greek might want to pay deliberate attention to these most
frequent words.

B. Observations from SLAR..

SLAR Research.
`( Second Language Acquisition research supports the goal of a deliberate focus on target
vocabulary items with meanings given, based on a text frequency list.

Nation and newtoN CONCLUDE “ FOCUSING LEARNERS” aTTENTION ON HIGH FREQUENCY

WORDS of languages gives good return for learning effort.
Beck, Perfetti and Mckeown argue for strong support vocab instruction for increased
comprehensions.

Beck, Perfetti and McKeown argue semantic process require accuracy (knowing word
meaning),
fluency (speed of lexical access)
and richness ( semanic netweok connections) ,

attempts to improve reading comprehension by improving vocab may be influencing two or

three of these processing components.

SLA studies demonstrated effectiveness of repeated texual exposure supports the technique
of focusing learners on most frequently encountered Greek Vocab.

So its important to know these frequent but her research sought to look at the

whether or NOT LONG TERM ACQUISITION IS best achieved throug _ INCIDENTAL

encounters with Vocabulary i.e. (words frequently encountered through reading)

OR

DELIBERATE TARGETED VOCAB.

Incidental:

Krashen arues INCIDENTAL..

MONDRIA SAYS MEANING GIVING METHODS WERE MORE EFFECTIVE.\

WHAT DOES EVERYONE HERE THINK IN THE LEAD UP TO HER RESULTS?

Allison Taylor argues that individual learning styles and strategies plays a role in the relative
successs of INCIDENTAL VS DELIBERATE VOCAB STUDY//

ISSUES IN A WORD LIST STUDY.

CONFUSION IN A WORD LIST COMPILATION:

In text words Semantic grouping can be confusing and a detriment to long – terms
acquisition.. Mondria)

Allison thought this would not be the same for corpus analysis but encountered function
words seen in a corpus list as opposed to a semantic grouping could often be
orthographically , semantically similar as well as functionally related making it confusing.

One student pointed out that there were four words meaning * for in enlish
Therefore learning from this kind of list could be problematic as in the list of singlr words
equivalencies cannot tease out complexities in Greek.

ALSO CONGISION WORD LISTS ARE ORTHOGRAPHICALLY SIMILAR BUT SEMANTICALLY

DIFFERENT.

One of the students observ d that on the list of 500 words there were four that meant for.

RESEARCH INTO SPACE REPETTION SOFTWARE . ANKI WAS SUGGESTED, A PROGRAMME.

SHE CREATED A LIST OF 100 WORDS .

VERY HARD WORDS WERE REPEATED. HER TECHNOLOGY INTRODUCTION FAILED

After 2 weeks students didn’t use this and were using perseus or other Greek language
software. They complained of not seeing it on blackboard / I not being compsyiblr.

It wasn’t technology holding students back from this- one student reported using flashcards
which she aways did but if Anki repeats this process of throwing way flashcards why wasn’t
it used. Peopple prefereed to to make their own- she was in a class full of Kinetic Learners.
She disovered that it was important to take indivual learners strengths for effective
pedagogy.

Adjustment.

She found that learning words from list was problematic because students were being
asked to memorise words without contexts therefore she assigneed the tasts of asking
students to find four examples of our target vocabulary in the passages. In preparation
for the leasson she found 31/100 targets in assignment reading.

Her lesson consisted of three related activites.

1) Discussed examples and found took notes and jogged collective memory as to how
they translated passages.

2) Second Activity hhe conducted fil in the blank exercise with target words taken out
of excertpts asking students to think about grammatic and and stylistic information
contained in each words .

3) 3rd asked students to discuss only non semantic information in each word.

She hoped that her lessons strengthened congnitive networds associated with assigned
vocabulary words.

Students

She noticed that some of her students would revise VOABulary flashcards and did a lot of
independent study whereas others she suggested who had a photographic memeory would
just look over word list day before quiz and was still really proficient in translation
suggesting that his mental lexicon was quite rich. Xenophon used persues and thought
that it was a way of circumnavigating the kind of work needed to push proficiency forward?

This was her initial thought do we think so.

So what are the advantages of Perseus?

Mulitple different options desfinitions so the lexicon puts you on right track so you still
have to look it up yourself. This lead to look into research and two important studies back
this up. hUSTIJN, hoLLANDER, gREINADYS AND s Knght displayed positive effects for
dictionary learners for more proficient L2 LEARNERS.
. She suggested students might require instructional attention to stragegies of use before
hand to avoid processing aversion.

ISSUES WITH DIFFERENT TYPES OF TEXTS.

She also observed that there were issues with dirferent texts. Attic Dialect Herodotus e.g.
uses a lot of different ccovab e.g. the attic definite article and specific military vocabulary
and dialect choices and students were not able to see target vocab needing to rely on
marginal glosses.

She found that found that three or four word on every page very distracting.

Reading Diodorus.

PROFESSOR GAVE FOUR DIFFERENT TEXTS TO PREPARE OT THEN ASKED THEM TO CHOSE.
THE COICES WERE PLUTARCH, PLATO , GOSPEL OF LUKE.

Some observed that Plato whilst being linguistically straight forward the ideas were complex
therefore they didn’t choose this or Herodotus due to frutrations with marginal glosses.

This left DIODORUS AND LUKE. Diodorus on therompylae and gospel of luke. People chose
diodorus because whils the grammar was the simplest it contained a lot of specialized
vocab.

DIODRUS WAS uNadapted, unedited and unglassed.

fROM A PEDAGOCIAL PERSPECTIVE THIS CHOICE WAS INTERESTING AS IT MIMICED THE

KIND OF FREE VOLUNTARY LANGUAGER READING THAT SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
READRDING AND ACQUISITION research ADVOCATEs.

REFLECTIONS.

THE PROFESSOR REFLECTED THAT DIODORUS was an exemplar of a resource that was useful
for the promotion of incidental vocabulary acquisition

Unadapted and uglossded.

Survey in the last month of CLASS. SHE ASKED APPLICANTS TO RANK 6 ITEMS ACCORDING
TO HOW EFFECTIVE THEY WERE IN ACQUIRING NEW WORDS

A. MEMORISING LISTS OF NEW WORDS

B . READING ENJOYABLE TEXTS OF ONE’ OWN CHOICE
C.READING REQUIRED TEXTS FROM CLASSES
D. PARTICIPATING IN CLASS LESSONS WHICH THE TEACHER PROVIDES THE OPPORTUNITIES
TO USE NEW WORDS
E. STDING THE DICITOJNARY
F.STUDYING GREEK AND LATIN ROOTS AFFIXES.

Most enjoyable
ONLY TWO STUDENTS RESPONSED BUT BOTH STUDENTS AS CLASS LESSONS WHERE
PROFESSOR ATHENA SPOKE SPECIFICALLY ABOUT THE WORD AND CONSTRUCTION.

oNE Student said most effective was assigned readings and the other said looking at
fllashcards.

Neither said looking up things in dictionary or memorising TLG frequency vocab lists as
enjoyable but the second said the latter as effective.

OVERALL. SHE FOUND BASED ON UNDERSTANDING OF RESEARCH AND OF THE LEARNING

PROCESS- READING COMPREHENSION AND VOCAB ACQUISITON ARE INEXTRICABLE
PROCESSES- CHICKEN AND EGG RELATIONSHIP.

STUDENTS AGREED ANSWERING THAT BOTH LEARNING VOCAB AND READING TEXTS
IMPROVED LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND TARGETED VOCAB AND EXTENSIVE AUTHENTIC
READING WERE COMPLEEMENTARY – MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL ACTIVITIES.