Learning Words

By : Rendyza Nancy
Vocabulary Development in
Children’s Language Learning
• The Word as Unit
Word is a key unit in building up skills and knowledge.
The role of words as language units begins with the early use of nouns for
naming objects in first language acquisition, and of use of other words to express
the child’s wants and needs, e.g. ‘more!” or ‘no’.
Infants go through a period of rapid vocabulary growth as they start to name, as
well as interact with, the world around them.

• Vocabulary Size
Vocabulary size is usually measured to the nearest thousand, and counts ‘word
families’, in which a base word and all its inflected forms and derived forms
counts as one e.g. the word family is the base form walk plus walking, walked,
walks, a walk.
Researchers suggest that a realistic target for children learning a foreign
language might be around 500 words a year, given good learning conditions.
 • What it means to know a word
Knowing about a word involves knowing about its form (how it
sounds, how it is spelt, the grammatical changes that can be made
to it), its meaning (its conceptual content and how it relates to other
concepts and words), and its use (its patterns of occurrence with
other words, and in particular types of language use).

• Developing meanings in childhood

Conceptual knowledge grows as children experience more and
more of the world in their daily lives.
• Categorisation and word learning
In the foreign language classroom, basic level concepts are more
likely to have been mastered than superordinate and subordinate
levels that develop through formal education. When teaching
vocabulary around a topic or lexical set, e.g. food or rocket, moving
over time to superordinate or more general vocabulary (such as
vegetables or vehicles), and downwards to more specific words
(sprouting brocli or moon landing module).

• Cultural content in word meanings

When foreign language words are learnt, they are likely to be
mapped on to first language words and to thereby enter schemas
that have already been built up.
Organisation of Words in a
Language
 • Function and content words
Content and function words need different teaching approaches. While the
meaning of content words can be explained and talked about, it is very difficult
to do this with function words. Children will learn function words incidentally,
through continued use in a range of different discourse contexts, rather than
through direct teaching or explanation. Content words can be taught in more
planned and explicit ways.

• Sense relations
Content word meaning in a language can relate to each other in a range of ways,
called ‘sense relations’ (Lyons 1995), also labelled ‘semantic relations’ or
‘lexical relations’. The types of sense relations that hold between words include:
Antonymy, Synonymy, Hyponymy and Meronymy.
• Organisation of words in the language:
summary and teaching principles
Content and function words work differently in the language, and
will be taught and learnt differently. Function words will be
acquired through repeated use in different contexts. Content words
can be taught more directly.
Learning and Teaching Vocabulary
• The dynamic nature of vocabulary learning
There is a lot to be learnt about a word and that children’s capacities for learning
change as they get older. So the learning of words is a process that continues, but
that changes in nature as it continues.

• Learning the meaning of new words

Sometimes a new word is first explained in the foreign language or with
pictures, but is then immediately translated in the first language.

• Attending to form
Form – how a word is pronounced and how it is written – is a key part of word
knowledge. For young learners, the spoken form should have priority, but written
forms can be introduced either soon after, for learners who are literate in the foreign
language, or some time later as reading and writing skills are developed.
• Making strong memory connections
Having met and understood a new word, and paid attention to its form, the
pupils’ vocabulary learning process has begun. The word has entered the
learner’s short term memory, and the next teaching issue is how to build up the
memory of the word so that it is available for use in the longer term.

• Extending children’s vocabulary beyond the text book

Text books do not help because pupils only meet new words briefly and there are
insufficient recyling and consolidation activities. Extra recyling and
consolidation activities need to be added.
Children’s Vocabulary Learning
Strategies
• Empirical evidence on the usefulness of strategies
Much empirical work has been done on vocabulary learning strategies, although
again unfortunately very little with young language learners. Schimtt (1997)
contains an overview and a taxonomy of strategies. Some studies though have
investigated strategy use by secondary level pupils just slightly older than our
age group (Ahmed 1988, Schimtt 1997, schouten-van Parreren 1992). These
show that strategy use changes with age and that successful and less successful
learners vary in what strategies they use and in how they use them.

• Strategies and young learners

The evidence is somewhat inclonclusive as to whether it is useful to train young
learners in strategy use and, if so, which strategies are most helpful. Schmitt
(1997) suggest intriducing children to a range of strategies so that these are
available for learners to choose from as suits their individual learning styles.
Certainly, many of the strategies used by older learners can be seen as having
their roots in what happens earlier. It is clear too that learners may not adopt
strategies automatically, and thus some explicit training may be helpful.
CONCLUSION
Vocabulary has been seen as a major resource for language use. Early foreign
language learning offers the chance for learners to build up a solid core of words
useful for further learning, together with words that are learnt because they
interest or excite young kearners at the age. However, early vocabulary learning
may be ineffective if words are not consolidated and used regularly. Children
entering secondary education will have varying amounts of words, some they
have mastered really well, some only partially learnt and some that they have
met once or twice but not remembered. It should not be assumed that children
know what they have been taught, i.e. the content of their course books or
syllabus. They know what they have learnt.