This chapter looks at opportunities for vocabulary learning through the oral skills of listening and speaking. With careful thought and planning, listening and speaking can be important means of vocabulary growth.
What vocabulary knowledge is needed for listening?
Learning vocabulary through listening is one type of learning through meaning-focused input. Learners would need at least 95% coverage of the running words in the input in order to gain reasonable comprehension and to have reasonable success at guessing from context. Van Zeeland and Schmitt [In press] found that 95% coverage was adequate for listening to informal narratives. Staehr [2009] found 98% coverage was needed for academic listening. A coverage of 98% [one unknown word in every 50 words, or about two or three unknown words per minute] is not surprisingly better than less coverage [Bonk, 2000; Hu and Nation, 2000; Schmitt et al., 2011; van Zeeland and Schmitt, 2012]. Studies of spoken language, especially colloquial spoken language used in informal situations, indicate that a vocabulary of around 3,000 word families is needed to provide around 95% coverage [Adolphs and Schmitt, 2003, 2004; Webb and Rodgers, 2009a, 2009b]. Around 5,000–6,000 words are needed to get 98% coverage. More formal academic spoken language makes more use of the vocabulary in the Academic Word List, which provides around 4% coverage of university lectures. Typically, as vocabulary size increases, so does written comprehension [Schmitt et al., 2011].
How did you learn vocabulary when you were in school? You may remember long lists of complicated words and hours spent memorizing obscure definitions. As adults, you may now understand language as living, growing, and ongoing rather than having definite meanings and boundaries. We want students to have as many experiences as possible to appreciate and engage in rich language.
Understanding vocabulary is well-documented as important to school success and reading comprehension. Students’ receptive vocabularies, or what they can understand when listening, can be at least two grade levels higher than their expressive vocabularies, or what they use when speaking.
Using Listenwise provides the opportunity to stretch student language. Here’s how it works:
Instruction
In order to understand some lessons, there are precise, subject-specific words students need to know. Providing direct instruction of words in these subject areas is necessary for understanding the content. However, listening to read-alouds, discussion, and independent reading have all been shown to increase vocabulary growth.
Reading, listening to, and engaging in a high volume of language is very important to vocabulary development. So, the best practices include a variety of methods to teach vocabulary.
Transcripts
Our stories have interactive transcripts that progress in sync with the audio and highlight the words as they are read. Language subtitling is a powerful way to support literacy since it contributes to word recognition and word comprehension skills. This allows students to follow along and hear vocabulary words used in meaningful ways.
Context Clues
Learning new words in context can lead to deeper, more enduring understanding. It’s been shown that students can learn the meaning of unknown words through incidental exposure when listening.
To encourage students to take advantage of context clues, ask: Was there a restatement or a synonym in the sentence that help you find the meaning? How do certain phrases, like “for example” or “unlike,” help us understand unfamiliar vocabulary?
Listenwise lessons provide teachers with more than just words in context. Some lessons for example, come with vocabulary listening activities and others provide learners with information about idioms, revealing how language can be used in both literal and figurative ways.
Repeated Exposure
Vocabulary instruction should provide students with opportunities to encounter words repeatedly and in a variety of contexts. Listening multiple times and repeated reading demands additional instructional time, but research shows the increase in word learning makes a difference for students.
Academic Vocabulary
With Listenwise, vocabulary instruction does not only happen in ELA lessons. Instead, lessons across subject areas provide opportunities to discover new words. Our lessons identify and define tier 2 vocabulary words, such as those on The Academic Word List. These are high frequency words that students will see throughout their school career, such as predict, justify, evaluate, compare, and are critical for educational success.
When students focus on vocabulary from our audio stories, they learn how words may have different connotations depending on the sentence or situation. For example, the word reservation might mean “to book a room”, or “land set aside,” or “doubt” depending on the subject area in which it’s used.
Listenwise vocabulary activities encourage deep, meaningful engagement with new words. Take advantage of our lessons as you help your students build valuable and lasting literacy skills.
Vocabulary refers to the words we must understand to communicate effectively. Educators often consider four types of vocabulary: listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
Listening vocabulary refers to the words we need to know to understand what we hear. Speaking vocabulary consists of the words we use when we speak. Reading vocabulary refers to the words we need to know to understand what we read. Writing vocabulary consists of the words we use in writing.
Vocabulary plays an important part in learning to read. Beginning readers must use the words they hear orally to make sense of the words they see in print. Kids who hear more words spoken at home learn more words and enter school with better vocabularies. This larger vocabulary pays off exponentially as a child progresses through school.
Consider, for example, what happens when a beginning reader comes to the word dig in a book. As she begins to figure out the sounds represented by the letters d, i, g, the reader recognizes that the sounds make up a very familiar word that she has heard and said many times. It is harder for a beginning reader to figure out words that are not already part of their speaking [oral] vocabulary.
Vocabulary is key to reading comprehension. Readers cannot understand what they are reading without knowing what most of the words mean. As children learn to read more advanced texts, they must learn the meaning of new words that are not part of their oral vocabulary.
The scientific research on vocabulary instruction reveals that most vocabulary is learned indirectly and that some vocabulary must be taught directly. Thus, research supports using a combination of both indirect and direct approaches.
Indirect vocabulary learning
Children learn the meanings of most words indirectly, through everyday experiences with oral and written language. Children learn word meanings indirectly in three ways:
- They engage daily in oral language
- They listen to adults read to them
- They read extensively on their own
Direct vocabulary learning
Although a great deal of vocabulary is learned indirectly, some vocabulary should be taught directly.
Direct instruction helps students learn difficult words, such as words that represent complex concepts that are not part of the students' everyday experiences. Direct instruction of vocabulary relevant to a given text leads to better reading comprehension.
Direct instruction includes:
- Providing students with instruction in specific words that are important to students’ content learning or understanding of a particular text
- Teaching students more general word-learning strategies that they can apply to a variety of words, such as analyzing parts of words [e.g., root words]
To learn more about vocabulary, browse the articles, parent tips, research briefs, and video below.
When it comes to learning a foreign language such as English, many students spend hours working through textbooks, doing grammar exercises and perhaps even watching the occasional Netflix show in their target language.
However, many people don’t realise that working on vocabulary is just as important, if not more important when it comes to success in learning a foreign language.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at the topic of vocabulary and explore some of the reasons why it’s so important, and how it can help students achieve their language learning goals and achieve fluency faster.
In a nutshell, vocabulary is important because it’s the basis of all language. It’s the raw building blocks that we can use to express our thoughts and ideas, share information, understand others and grow personal relationships.
Even if we barely know a language and have zero grasp of grammar, we can still communicate [although we might end up sounding like cavemen!]
For example, pointing at a chocolate pastry in a French bakery and saying the few words ‘pain au chocolat’ with a friendly smile is just as likely to result in a tasty breakfast as uttering a grammatically perfect sentence. It would be nice to have both, of course, but it’s not essential.
As British linguists David A. Wilkins eloquently put it, “without grammar, very little can be conveyed; without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.”
If you’re not entirely convinced yet, think about how children acquire language. Before they ever attempt complex structures, they’ll utter single words such as ‘duck’, ‘ball’ and ‘teddy’ and are usually able to communicate what they want.
Again, as with ESL students, their ability to communicate becomes much more effective once their language abilities develop. But the point here is that they are still able to communicate using vocabulary alone.
A large vocabulary helps develop other language skills
When you have a wider vocabulary in your target language it also helps support all four language skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking. As Paul Nation [2015] noted in his paper on vocabulary learning: “Vocabulary is not an end in itself. A rich vocabulary makes the skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing easier to perform.”
Vocabulary knowledge is perhaps the most important factor when it comes to reading comprehension, both for native and non-native speakers.
For example, if you sit down to read a book and you don’t know the vocabulary used, you’ll struggle to understand the meaning of the text.
You might end up looking up the words in a dictionary, guessing the meaning of the words from their context, or you might simply give up and find something else to read.
This can be disappointing, disheartening and also shatter your confidence.
This connection between vocabulary size and second language attainment has been widely researched over the years.
One of the most interesting of these was a 2010 study that discovered that a surprising 64% of variance in the reading score was due to vocabulary size.
[See also van Zeeland [2013], Hu and Nation [2000], Schmitt, Jiang and Grabe [2011]
We see similar evidence when it comes to listening skills for the language student, for obvious reasons.
Clearly, if you have never seen or heard a particular piece of vocabulary in a second language, it will be much harder to recognise and decode the sounds and therefore extract the meaning.
If you’re an advanced language learner, you may be able to make sense of the word through context or by relating it to other words in the same word family, but this can be difficult.
As Hilde van Zeeland points out in her 2012 paper, Lexical Coverage in L1 and L2 Listening Comprehension: The Same or Different from Reading Comprehension?’, a student’s vocabulary knowledge isn’t the only factor when it comes to listening skills but it certainly plays an important role.
Speaking
If you’re a native speaker, you’ve probably experienced a time when a particular word is ‘on the tip of your tongue’ but you’re unable to remember it. It can be frustrating and often cut the conversation short.
It works in a similar way for a second language learner who hasn’t learned that particular vocabulary word in the first place. If they don’t know [or can’t remember] that piece of vocabulary, they will be unable to completely express their message.
For this reason, knowledge of vocabulary is widely considered to be perhaps the most crucial element when it comes to person’s ability to speak a foreign language
For example, in the 2013 paper, “Vocabulary Knowledge and Speaking Proficiency among Second Language Learners from Novice to Intermediate Levels”, Rie Koizumi asserted “…out of five factors [i.e., accent, comprehension, fluency, grammar, and vocabulary], vocabulary was the only one that affected level differences between learners at novice and intermediate levels. For learners at intermediate levels and above, all the five factors affected level differences, but vocabulary frequently appeared as the discriminatory factor.”
You’ll also find it much easier to express yourself in writing if you have a larger vocabulary. You’ll have a larger selection of words to choose from and you’ll be able to be more precise when you’re expressing a thought, feeling, event or idea.
Again, there’s significant linguistic research to support this idea. For example, in the 2008 study, ‘Vocabulary Size and the Skills of Listening, Reading and Writing. Language Learning Journal’, Lars Stenius Stæhr stated “Learners’ receptive vocabulary size was found to be strongly associated with their reading and writing abilities…”
The more words you know in any language, the better you can express yourself.
Put simply, the more vocabulary you know, the easier it will become to improve your language skills.
For starters, this knowledge will allow you to access a wider range of learning materials designed for both native and non-native speakers.
It will also help you understand these words from their context, naturally expanding your vocabulary and improving your language skills without needing to spend time looking the words up in a dictionary or asking someone for an explanation.
On top of this, the more vocabulary words you understand, the more you’ll be able to decipher the meaning of new words by breaking them down into their morphemes [smaller parts]. [See Nation, 2008].
A good example of this is the word, ‘unhappy’. If we break down this word, we have [un-] and [happy]. If we know that the prefix [un] is a derivational morpheme [i.e.. it inverts the meaning of the morpheme it’s attached to], then we can work out the meaning of the word itself.
All of this saves a significant amount of time, boosts the language student’s confidence and also helps support fluency. They feel able to tackle more complex texts or social situations, which exposes them to an even wider range of vocabulary and allows them to further their knowledge of the second language.
Without a strong foundational knowledge of vocabulary, this can’t happen.
A rich vocabulary is associated with greater academic performance
Many ESL students are studying English because they want to attend an English-speaking university, excel at higher level study and land a well-paying job. A large vocabulary can help them do just that.
As you have seen above, a wide vocabulary is associated with a greater performance across all aspects of foreign language learning, including speaking, reading, writing and listening.
It’s important to note that this applies to both native speakers and second language students. This is why we encourage children to read widely in their native languages- the wider their vocabulary, the greater their chances to perform well academically. This also applies to learners of a foreign language.
A recent study titled ‘Investigating the Relationship between Vocabulary Knowledge and Academic Success of Arabic Undergraduate Learners in Swansea University,’ highlighted this, saying; “[The findings illuminate] the importance of vocabulary knowledge, not just as a predictor of academic achievement but also as a predictor of both intelligence and foreign language aptitude.”
As Ivy Panda tell us in this article, a student’s vocabulary reveals their level of knowledge and willingness to learn. The more terms and expressions you’ve acquired, the easier it will be for you to study in your field.
Putting it all together – Why Text Inspector focuses on vocabulary
As you can see from the above discussion, there is clearly a strong link between a person’s understanding of vocabulary and an individual’s skill with language as a whole, whether as a native or a language learner.
This means that if we want to improve the overall standard of English language teaching and create better learning materials for our students we need to focus closely on vocabulary.
Using a vocabulary analysis tool such as Text Inspector is one of the most effective ways to do this as it provides greater insight into how common/frequently used or complex different vocabulary is, and also the CEFR level of those words.
This helps English teachers and curriculum developers to develop more effective learning materials for our students and improve our understanding of the English language as a whole.
Vocabulary is clearly important for language learning as it underpins all other language skills, can be a stepping stone to high level language use and can help the student to achieve fluency faster.
However, this isn’t the whole story. There are numerous other factors which influence language ability which we’ll be addressing in further blogs.
With this in mind, it’s important for the ESL teacher and student to dedicate a significant amount of time to developing this core language skill.