Vocabulary Teaching in an EFL Context:
Selecting the Appropriate Words
A Thesis
Presented to
The Faculty of
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Education
by
Tsutomu Umamoto
January 1989
Contents
Introduction
It has been a long time since 'Communicative Language Teaching'
was introduced to
Fundamental Command of English =
( Fundamental Judgment of Grammaticality + Creativity of New Sentences ) ×
Fundamental Vocabulary × Command of Functional Use of Language
= Fundamental Command of English for Communicative Purposes
The dated idea of 'basic command of English' regarded as being tantamount to
the ability in grammatical accuracy is denied here, and some new concepts are
adopted in this model. Among them is 'fundamental vocabulary'. Theoretically,
as is shown above, 'vocabulary' is counted as an indispensable aspect of
'fundamental command of English for communicative purposes'. According to Sano
et al., vocabulary should be more emphasized as the central element for
meaningful communication, and, unlike the audiolingual approach, content words
should not be neglected any more (9). The idea of 'fundamental vocabulary',
therefore, implies the necessity of more content words than before.
As regards the practical aspect, on the other hand, vocabulary has received
"unfair treatment" (Takefuta, Nihon-jin 95), especially in 'school
English'. Take textbooks used in shools, for example. Indeed more pages have
come to be given to dialogues in junior high textbooks, and, at a glance, they
might appear to be making a gradual progress concerned with communication. But
a textbook with many dialogues does not necessarily bring students a good
communicative ability. Communication by means of a language, in a natural
sense, should be an activity of exchanging information between senders and
receivers, using their own self-expressions. It is desirable, too, that the
topics be concerned with their everyday matters, and that words and sentences in
teaching materials be related closely to the learners' real lives.
Nevertheless, textbooks used at present do little to create an atmosphere of
real life. In this respect, they leave much to be desired, and thus require
critical reexamination. Since they are organized with an overemphasis on
grammatical and structural items, vocabulary items associated with situations
appear to be of secondary importance. Also, strictly limited content words in
textbooks are no more than tools of presenting structural items.
In fact, there are a number of learners of English who have very poor
vocabulary needed for daily communication. As might be expected, they cannot
say a single word in English, in spite of having considerable knowledge of
grammar. As Wilkins points out that "while without grammar very little can
be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed" (Linguistics
111), getting grammatical knowledge itself is far from sufficient. All the
learners have to learn a considerable vocabulary items for the purpose of
exchanging information. And, what is more important, the items should be
properly provided. Now is the time to improve the present system by
reconsidering vocabulary as a component of 'communicative competence', and
teaching materials should be compiled including appropriate vocabulary items
selected from this standpoint.
The aim of this thesis is, therefore, to reexamine selected vocabulary for
teaching materials in the light of the principles of selection, especially for
the learners in an EFL context. It is certain that 'communication' should be
the ultimate goal for most of the learners of English in
It is hoped that this will make a point of departure to look at vocabulary
teaching from a different angle for the sake of the improvement of ELT in
Chapter Ⅰ
A
Historical Sketch of Vocabulary Selection
1. The aim of vocabulary selection
It seems that memorizing a large number of words is a burden to most learners.
It is impossible for even native speakers of a certain language to learn all of
the words, to say nothing of for learners who intend to master it as a foreign
language. In The Practical Study of Languages, now considered one of the great
classics in the field of language teaching, Sweet mentions that "the real
intrinsic difficulty of learning a foreign language lies in that of having to
master its vocabulary" (66). Judging from his words, we can easily imagine
that the effort to relieve the pain is--or at least should be--necessary for
effective language teaching. It is not perfectly true that if you master a
certain number of vocabulary items of a language, you can use this language as
a tool of communication. A person who has been learning for several years, for
example, may be required to use the language in a natural context for the first
time and find that he lacks the very vocabulary that he most needs. This would
be remedied if 'selection' was adequately conducted.
Fries and Traver quote West's view on the aim of vocabulary selection as
follows:
The aim of vocabulary selection amounts to this, that, instead of teaching a
large number of relatively useless words, we try to teach a small number of
useful words, or else that we try to teach a small number of words well rather
than a large number badly. (168)
In brief, a selected vocabulary enables teachers to give learners only useful
words, and moreover, it makes the learning process a more efficient one. It can
be safely said that 'maximum effect' is achieved through 'minimum effort'.
Here arises the question of how we can distinguish 'useful' words from
'useless' ones. Jespersen states that "the most everyday words" are
more necessary than the vocabulary of poetry or even of more elevated prose
(19). However, the term 'everyday words' is as ambiguous as 'useful words'.
Hornby shows how the solution to this problem was attempted initially by word
frequency. In his opinion, extensive word counts, or frequency lists,
"appeared to provide an answer" (16). But problems with this approach
were soon revealed. Those will be discussed below. The problem of defining
usefulness of words will be gradually made clear during the following
discussion on principles of selection.
2. Principles in selecting vocabulary
Most of the existing word lists are constructed based on at least one or more
criteria. The selectional criteria, or principles taken as a standard in
choosing, are decided by the aims of teaching, and various kinds of criteria
can be perceived. However, they might be briefly characterized. Mackey (176)
and Kelly (184), for example, both characterize these under the following five
principles: frequency, range, availability, coverage, and learnability
(facility).
We will examine these five criteria with some examples which represent the
major characteristics of each criterion. For the sake of convenience, however,
'range' is discussed together with 'frequency'. Frequency counts, as Kelly
points out, are necessarily bound by range (188).
Some criteria are often combined together and, consequently, a prominent word
list can be established. One good example is Interim Report on Vocabulary
Selection provided during the 'vocabulary control movement' in 1930s. It is
dealt with separately from the discussion of each principle. This section is
thus divided into five heads; frequency/range, availability, coverage,
learnability, and 'Interim Report on Vocabulary Selection'.
2.1. Frequency / Range
Selection by frequency, which is made by counting the number of items that
occur in materials, appears to give us a guarantee of usefulness. It is because
the items occurring the most frequently are those which the learner is most
likely to meet. Howatt demonstrates the usefulness of frequent words as
follows:
The general assumption was that, if the original texts were varied and general
enough, the frequency of the words in the texts would reflect their frequency
in 'the language as a whole'. And frequent words were held to be useful words
for foreign learners to know. (Background 8)
Word lists based on frequency have been conducted and used throughout the
world. Probably the best known of these is Thorndike's work. Stern evaluates
Thorndike's The Teacher's Word Book (1921) as "a landmark in word count
studies" (100). Although this work was intended as a basis for the reading
curriculum in the teaching of English as the first language, it was
influential, Stern states, as "a prototype" for similar
investigations undertaken in the interest of foreign language teaching.
According to Fries and Traver, Thorndike selected 41 different sources,
including nearly 4,000,000 running words, in compiling his original list. The
actual sources were as follows:
1. 10 chapters of Black Beauty.
2. 3 chapters of Little Women.
3.
4. One issue of Youth's Companion.
5. 30 school readers.
6. 2 arithmetics.
7. 2 histories.
8. Vocabularies of 25 high school texts in foreign language.
9. Concordances of the Bible, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Cowper, Pope,
and Milton.
10. The Constitution of the
12. Newspapers, private and business correspondence. (125)
Based on credits for both occurrences and sources, Thorndike reported 10,000
words in serial numbers, '1a' for the commonest 500, '1b' for the next
commonest 500, and so on to 10 for the words that ranked 9,001 to 10,000.
Besides the huge number of running words, his contribution to the technique of
word counting was the addition of the range credit to the frequency credit
(Fries and Traver 125). 'Range' is counted by the number of samples or texts in
which an item is found, and, by using a special counting system, Thorndike gave
each word a credit number. The relationship between the credit number and the
position of the word can be illustrated as follows:
(Faucett and Maki 3)
After publishing in 1931 a list of 20,000 words as an extension of the original
list, Thorndike published The Teacher's Word Book of 30,000 Words in 1944 with
the help of Lorge. This volume is a greatly improved extension of the previous
works. In the latest list, adding the Lorge magazine count, the Thorndike count
of 120 juvenile books, and the Lorge-Thorndike semantic count to the Thorndike
general count, the total number of running words has swollen to 18,000,000.
Thorndike himself explains the advantage of using this list.
The list tells anyone who wishes to know whether to use a word in writing,
speaking, or teaching how common the word is in standard English reading matter.
(x)
But he does not regard this book as a final frequency count of English reading.
He points out that new words, the vocabulary of modern fiction and new war
terms, for example, will become important and the list will need to be extended
and amended in the future (v).
A lot of works afterward are influenced by Thorndike's frequency count. The
list conducted by Faucett and Maki is one of them. They combined the Thorndike
list (based on reading texts) and the Horn list (based on writing vocabulary),
for Faucett and Maki considered both of the two lists are far more thourough
and complete than any previous counts (1). Their purpose was to decide the
universally indispensable and essential words by means of the statistical
method. In order to combine two lists compiled on different plans, they
invented the method as follows:
(1) to put the derivatives in Horn [Horn's list (1926)] under the primacy form
as done by Thorndike, and to work out the new credit-number for the primary
plus the derivatives;
(2) to work out a new method of giving credit- numbers on a common basis. (3-4)
One of the greatest contribution of their work is that they found the so-called
'turning point'. Studying closely the graph of frequency-range credits of words
in the Horn and Thorndike lists (8, See Fig. 1), they reached a significant
conclusion that after about 1,500 words, wide-range words rapidly give way to
narrow-range words. Faucett and Maki states about this 'turning point' as
follows:
It seems to the compilers of this book that the most useful result that has
come from the Thorndike and Horn word-counts is the fixing with a fairly high
degree of accuracy of the dividing line between wide-range words and
narrow-range words. (11)
It needs to be explained here why the principle of 'range' is important.
According to Hornby, a word is said to have a wide range if it is found to
occur once in each of fifty different texts and to have a narrow range if it
occurs perhaps fifty times in one particular text and not at all in the other forty-nine
(18). Needless to say, wide-range words as a whole have more possibility to
present themselves to a student. Regarding this point as important, Faucett and
Maki provide a list of wide-range words, consisting of 1,534 words
(credit-number 1 to 34), which are "almost 100 per cent authentic and
reliable" (7). The 24 words with a final credit-number of 1 are enumerated
below. They are words of unusually high frequency and wide range and may be
looked on as words of maximum usefulness and of first importance for practical
language learning and teaching purposes:
a and are as at be but for have in is it not of on that the this to we will
with you your (Appendix 1)
Fig. 1.
Modern computer-based techniques, which have recently developed, make it easier
to get information of word frequency from a multi-million-word corpus. As Meara
mentions, the use of computers to carry out simple statistical analyses of
texts is a development which is likely to be of some importance to language
teachers, because it has considerable implications for the preparation of
teaching materials (102). Carrol et al., for example, have compiled a
computer-based word count. Their Word Frequency Book (1971) provides both the
alphabetical and the rank list of the 86,741 different words (word types) found
in the 5,088,721 words of running text (tokens). Texts are chosen to represent
the range of required and recommended reading to which students are exposed in
school grades 3 through 9 in the
In
Unlike Thorndike's counting method, which was carried out by hand and
accordingly both expensive and slow to reach completion, the computer-based
counting method has enabled us to get such information much easier and faster.
However, although the way to count has advanced, the same problems seem to
remain. One of the unavoidable limitations of word frequency is pointed out by
Mackey.
Although a passive vocabulary can be based on frequency, an active vocabulary
must take other sources into account. For while it is possible to predict what
a person will have to read, it is impossible to know everyting he may want to
say. (181)
Since a passive and an active vocabulary are two sides of the same coin,
frequency lists provide us with only one-sided information for communicative
purposes. Carter and McCarthy mention the same point by saying that high
frequency words are not automatically those which the learner needs (9). It is
clear that all the lists based on frequency, including the four lists shown
above, have this limitation. If the textbook was tried to compile based
entirely on the high frequency words, its content would be dull and not
motivating, because most of them are what we call 'function words' which are
used to establish grammatical relations, and very polysemous common words.
Therefore, if we intend to construct an appropriate teaching materials for
production, some lower frequency items must be included. The principles of
selection other than frequency should be adopted for the purpose.
2.2. Availability
As was already discussed, high-frequency words are not always the most
appropriate and necessary, whether for production or for recognition,
especially in certain situations. Take the words 'pint' and 'petrol', for
example. Although these words would not come very high on a frequency-count of
'the language as a whole', the first one is useful in a pub and the second is
available in a garage (Howatt, History 258). It is said that this conception
was initially developed in
Given 16 'centres of interest', more than 900 French schoolchildren were asked
to write down the twenty words that they thought would be most useful to them.
There was apparently a large measure of agreement as to what constituted the
most disponible or available items and the results were used to supplement
frequency scores in establishing a word list. (117)
One of the most noticeable characteristics of this research is that the focus
was put on concrete nouns. Although they exists independently of frequency of
occurrence, people obviously know a great many words of this kind. These words
are regarded as available for use and as easier to recall than non-concrete
items. It is considered, therefore, that some concrete nouns should not be
excluded from the basic teaching vocabulary. Since the use of such words
depends very closely upon the situation in which the speech is taking place,
the most relevant situations for the foreign learners are chosen by the
research team. The following sixteen are regarded as a minimum list for the
researchers' purpose:
parts of the body clothing
the house furniture
food and drink the kitchen
things put on the table at mealtimes
heating and lighting
the school and the classroom the city
the country town transport
farming animals
games occupations
(Halliday et al. 194)
The conception of 'availability', or the criterion of social need, has been
working for communicative purpose. Two vocabularies listed according to topics
are discussed below; one is West's Minimum Adequate Speech Vocabulary, and the
other is the lexical content of van Ek's Threshold Level. Their selection is,
however, done by intuition, rather than statistics.
Under the term 'The Minimum Adequate Speech Vocabulary', West chooses about
1,200 words as "a usable first stage" (Teaching 38). In order to
discover and select the minimum vocabulary for speech, he adopted the following
method:
I took an obviously inadequate initial vocabulary (from the reading course) and
deleted from it all words of merely reading value. . . . The list was then
classified in order to show up gaps: thus one might easily have all the numbers
except Eleven, all the colours except Grey. . . . The principle of Negative
Selection was employed: a word or item should not be included unless it was
such as to be useful to boys and girls, in town and country. (Teaching 39)
The vocabulary items are classified under the following topics. These topics
are divided into the following bracketed topics respectively.
A. The Earth
(1.geographical features, 2.time, 3.the weather 4.agriculture and farming,
5.animals and living things, 6.trees and flowers)
B. The Self
(7.the body, 8.the care of the body, 9.health and illness, 10.dress, 11.colour,
dyes and paint, 12.the emotions, 13.religion and morality)
C. The Home
(14.houses and buildings, 15.furniture, domestic duties and staff, 16.domestic
electricity and radio, 17.food and cooking, 18.the family and facts of life) D.
The Intellect
(19.the intellect, 20.education, 21.arithmetic, 22.geometry, 23.grammar)
E. Business
(24.business, shops, trades and professions, 25.money, banking and accounts,
26.materials and forms of matter, 27.the motor-car, tools and machinery, 28.
receptacles, packing and despatching, 29.travel, 30. peoples and places)
F. Relaxation
(31.games, athletics and sport, 32.entertainments, sociability, visiting,
33.communication and publicity, 34.literature, 35.sound and music, 36.art and
photography)
G. Public Life
(37.government, law and taxation, 38.rank, 39.defence and fighting, 40.history)
(Teaching 113-14)
Several words and phrases are listed in each topic. The items selected under
'food and cookies' (C.17), for example, are 'bad', 'to go bad', 'bake', 'bell',
'bite', 'bitter', etc. In West's opinion, a minimum adequate vocabulary is not
a caravan which can be lived in but cannot be added on to, nor a set of
foundations in the ground which may be built on later but cannot be lived in
now (Teaching 38). This means that it is complete and workable in itself and
that it can be amplified while being used by learners.
Howatt refers to the establishment of the lexicon for Threshold level English
as "much the same approach" as Le Fran〓ais Fondamental (History 258).
'Threshold level' (T-level) stands for the minimal level of language
proficiency which is needed to achieve functional ability in a foreign language
(Richards, et al. 293). And the aim of establishing this level is to make the
free movement of men and ideas in the European area easier by increasing the
scale and effectiveness of language learning (van Ek ix). van Ek, one of the
experts charged with the development of this project, draws up topics and
notions, and determines the actual vocabulary items on the basis of the
characteristics of T-level learners. However, unlike the research conducted by
Mich〓a, the method for the selection is to a very large extent subjective; it
is based on introspection, intuition, experience (van Ek 41). The list of
topics van Ek has drawn up are as follows:
1. Personal identification
2. House and home
3. Trade, profession, occupation
4. Free time, entertainment
5. Travel
6. Relations with other people
7. Health and welfare
8. Education
9. Shopping
10. Food and drink
11. Services
12. Places
13. Foreign language
14. Weather (21-23)
Each topic has sub-topics. Under the topic of 'personal identification', such
headings as 'name', 'address', 'telephone number', etc. are enumerated. Words
and phrases selected for T-level learners under the heading of 'telephone
number' are 'telephone (P)', 'phone (R)', 'to telephone (P)', 'to call (R)',
'to ring up (R)', 'to make a call (R)', 'telephone number (P)'. The total
number of vocabulary items is about 1,500. In addition to selecting items, van
Ek distinguishes the words for both productive and receptive use (1,050 items)
from the vocabulary for receptive use only (450 items). The words marked (P)
above are meant for receptive and productive use; those marked (R) are words
which the learners will have to be able to understand when others use them.
West and van Ek, the two proponents of topic-centered selection we have seen
above, are both contented with their own works. As van Ek's selection
"will suit the needs of the average man rather better than any competing
equivalent selection" (xi), so the Minimum Adequate vocabulary is, West
believes, "a fairly satisfactory piece of work" (Teaching 93). These
two lists might be useful for communicative purpose just as they believe, for
the topic-centered selection can provide learners for social reality. However,
it is doubtful to what extent the learners' individual needs are taken into
consideration.
More than half a century before West and van Ek, Jespersen had already
mentioned the subject-centered approach to vocabulary teaching as follows,
though there had been no direct suggestion about selection.
The teacher may give the pupil a certain subject (the human body, war, a
railway journey) about which he is to collect all the words and expressions
which he can remember--or which occurred in the last narrative read--and he may
also arrange them in various subdivisions. (137)
An idea of this kind can also be found in Palmer's 3,000 words established for
teaching English in Japan. As a starting point, his list was based on such
frequency word lists as Thorndike's. However, he was not satisfied these lists
for the following reasons:
(1) the literature analyzed for the counts is chosen subjectively
(2) semantic varieties are not determined
(3) "environmental" terms are lacking
(4) at best, they represent only a limited amount of material
(Fries and Traver 164)
'Environmental' words are the vocabulary items which are useful in a specific
situation, even though they are far less frequent. 'Blackboard', for instance,
is useful only in a classroom situation, while students might scarcely meet the
word elsewhere. Such words should be included in the teaching material for
learners to use in the classroom. Based on this idea, Palmer added many
environmental words to the list by means of subjective and empirical
approaches. Afterward, he divided the 3,000 word vocabulary into five lists of
600 words. They were based on word frequency supplemented by classroom
requirements. In the first 600 list, we can find 242 items which do not appear
in the first 500 most frequently used English words (Fries and Traver 165).
It might be wrong to say that 'environmental' words are identical with
'available' words. But certainly, both of these ideas will make up for the
neglected aspect of word frequency. And this dimention can be valued as a more
"sophisticated" approach to vocabulary selection (Halliday et al.
198).
2.3. Coverage
Kelly states that while availability deals largely with the utility of a unit
in a social situation, coverage is rather a linguistic issue (201). To start
with, we will see definitions of 'dictionary' from two dictionaries. One is
West's The New Method English Dictionary and the other is The General Basic
English Dictionary by Ogden.
(1) a book containing a list of words in A.B.C. order, with their meanings
(this book is a dictionary).
(New Method 89)
(2) Book in ABC etc. order, giving the sense of words, or their parallels in
another language.
(General Basic 101)
Even though statements are given to the same word, we can observe a gap between
them. They are provided by means of different sets of limited vocabulary,
namely 'definition vocabulary'. They can be used to talk about other things.
For the purpose of definition, words of wide coverage are selected. Words which
have 'coverage' are common or central enough to stand for other words. West
includes 1,490 words (not including 'parallel') in his definition vocabulary,
while Ogden uses only 850 items (not including 'contain').
Mackey classifies the ways to displace other words into four groups. These are,
1) inclusion, 2) extension, 3) combination, and 4) definition (184). The four
principles are embodied in the notion of 'coverage', which can be measured by
the number of other items that a certain word can displace. We can make out
what 'coverage' means through Mackey's examples as follows:
(1) Inclusion
'Seat' includes 'chair', 'bench', 'stool', and 'place'.
(2) Extension
'Branch' and 'arm', whose meanings are easily extended metaphorically, can be
used to eliminate a word like 'tributary' (of a river).
(3) Combination
'Journalist' can be made unnecessary by the combination 'news'+'paper'+'man'.
(4) Definition
As is shown above, certain words can be replaced by simple definition.
'Breakfast' can be difined as the 'morning meal', for example.
(184-85)
As Mackey points out, rigid application of these principles of coverage through
a logical analysis of a language can result in a small self-contained or island
language, the best known example of which is BASIC English (185). The term
BASIC does not mean 'basic'. It is an acronym which stands for British American
Scientific International Commercial. Fries and Traver cite the basic priciple
of BASIC English from Ogden as follows:
. . . a careful and systematic selection of 850 English words which will cover
those needs of every day life for which a vocabulary of 20,000 words is
frequently employed. These words are not the words most commonly used as
determined by word counts; but all of them are common, and more than 600 of
them are constantly used by any English or American child. (158)
The items of the BASIC English vocabulary are made up of 200 names of
'picturable objects', 400 'general' names, 150 'qualities' and 100 'words that
put these names and adjectives into operation' (Fries and Traver 159). One of
the remarkable characteristics of this system is that only sixteen verbs and
two modal verbs are included. They are 'come', 'get', 'give', 'go', 'keep',
'let', 'make', 'put', 'seem', 'take', 'be', 'do', 'have', 'say', 'see', 'send',
and 'may', 'will'. However, using other items especially the rest 82 operation
items, BASIC can represent a great deal of meanings of English verbs. Although
'ask' and 'want' are excluded, the meanings of them can be expressed like 'put
a question to' and like 'have a desire for'. The relationship between 'ask' and
'put a question to', for example, is somewhat akin to the Chomskyan contrast
between the surface structure and the deep structure (Howatt, History 252).
The advantages of BASIC English, as stated by Ogden, are summarized by Fries
and Taver as follows:
(1) An elimination of sound confusions.
(2) Simple grammatical structure.
(3) Analytical nature resulting in "high translatability."
(4) Great flexibility (intelligibility is the only criterion).
(5) Many European language affinities.
(6) Basic carries forward to a further analytic stage the habits of the past.
(7) It is specially designed for mechanical transmission. (8) There are no supersigns
(accents).
(9) The spelling difficulties of English are eliminated because the vocabulary
is small.
(10) There is no case system.
(11) The vocabulary consists of short words. Only 16 have more than 3
syllables. (161-62)
It appears that learner's memory burden of words can be lightened, but BASIC
has widely been criticized in that the systems often produce unnatural English.
Such phrases expressing social interaction as 'good-bye' or 'thank you' cannot
be used, and wordy phrases can possibly make communication a clumsy affair.
On the other hand, as is illustrated above, West established the different
system of definition vocabulary. This contribution is based on his text-writing
work. Using Thorndike's Teacher's Word Book, West constructed readers with a
controlled vocabulary and regular repetition of new words (Stern 460). The
1,779 word vocabulary used in his New Method Readers was taken as a starting
point in preparing the dictionary. Then he added desirable words to and
excluded words with lower value from the original list (Fries and Traver 175).
As a result, the number of definition vocabulary settled 1,490. His theory was
that in order to survive in a foreign language environment, a person needs to
ask questions about a very broad range of necessities of daily life, not merely
to make remarks about the commonplaces at the head of the frequency lists
(Kelly 29). Therefore, a set of vocabulary of this kind can make a useful
instrument.
West's notion of a limited defining vocabulary is one of the main informing
design principles of the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (1978)
(hereafter LDOCE). As we shall see below, West's idea of defining vocabulary
underlies A General Service List of English Words (1953) (hereafter GSL). And
GSL has laid the foundation for LDOCE. Procter, the Editor-in-Chief of LDOCE,
explains the use of defining vocabulary as follows:
All the definitions and examples in the dictionary are written in a controlled
vocabulary of approximately 2,000 words which were selected by a thorough study
of a number of frequency and pedagogic lists of English, particular reference
having been made to A General Service List of English Words by Michael West.
(viii-ix)
Defining or restricted vocabularies, however, are not without problems. Carter
points out the following three problems. First, there is no guarantee that
'definition words' will be known by the learner, and some words, such as
'arch', 'bitter', 'determine', for example, are not particularly common.
Secondly, defining vocabularies can achieve simplicity at the expense of
accuracy. Without the pertinent words, definitions would sometimes result in
the use of a large number of unnecessary words to express an idea needing fewer
words. Thirdly, defining vocabularies work better in the explanation of
concrete words than abstract ones (127).
2.4. Learnability
Words which can be easily learned might be selected for beginners. While the
term 'learnability' is used by Mackey, Kelly calls the principle 'facility'
(205). This principle can be subdivided into the following five headings; 1)
similarity, 2) clarity, 3) brevity, 4) regularity, 5) learning load (Mackey
187).
It is difficult to identify a certain word list based only on this principle.
These five factors might be somehow taken into account in the subjective,
empirical approach of selection. Instead of presenting a word list, we shall
see the examples Mackey takes as follows:
(1) Similarity
English 'mother' is similar German equivalent 'Mutter'. It can, therefore, be
remembered easily. (2) Clarity
A name of a thing, such as 'radiator', seems to be easier to teach and to learn
than an abstract word, because we can point to it and make the meaning clear.
(3) Brevity
Even though 'enemy' is more frequent, 'foe' might be selected because a short
word is considered easy to recognize or to pronounce.
(4) Regularity
Regular verbs, for example, might be preferred to items which follow the
irregular pattern.
(5) Learning Load
The learners who already know the words 'hand' and 'bag', for instance, can
easily learn the word 'handbag' without much learning load. (187-88)
One of the drawbacks of this criterion is that facility and utility do not
often coincide (Kelly 205). Take the word 'hound', for example. It is true that
this word is easy to learn for the German student because German 'Hund' is
similar to it in form and meaning. But 'hound' is not so useful as 'Hund', and
the German student has to learn the word 'dog' in order to use English
correctly. What we have to recognize in adopting this principle is that trying
to ease the student's burden may result in falsifying the language.
2.5. 'Interim Report on Vocabulary Selection'
In 1930s, during the period of activity called 'vocabulary control movement'
(Carter and McCarthy 1), a lot of groundwork on vocabulary selection was done.
As we have already seen, several principles were adopted in the construction of
word lists in several ways during this period. But the works were chiefly
private achievements. The time had clearly come for co-ordinating the efforts
of individual workers, evaluating results so far achieved, and for exploring
the possibilities of a joint discussion in a field of work (Palmer et al. 2).
On West's initiative, a co-ordinated enterprise started in 1934 under the
auspices of the Carnegie Corporation. The main workers concerned, other than
West, were Thorndike, Faucett and Palmer. All of them were well-known as
experts of vocabulary selection. At first, the following nine purposes or
standpoints were stated in connection with the preparation of limited or
selected vocabularies.
(1) The Vocabulary "Island."
(2) The "Foundation" Standpoint.
(3) The "Standardised Examination" Standpoint.
(4) Purification of Style.
(5) The Standpoint of the Practical Teacher.
(6) The Standpoint of the Educationist.
(7) Standpoint of the Textbook Simplifier.
(8) The Standpoint of English as a Lingua Franca.
(9) The Tourist and Traveller Standpoint.
(Palmer et al. 9-11)
Each of these was considered carefully, and in the course of discussion, these general
attitudes became crystallised into detailed principles in regard to certain
criteria of word valuation as follows:
(1) Word-frequency.
(2) Structural value.
(3) Universality in respect of geographic area.
(4) Range of applicability to varieties of subject, or subject-range.
(5) Value for purposes of definition of the meaning of other words.
(6) Value for word-building.
(7) Stylistic function of a word (its suitability for colloquial, common,
ceremonial, or the types of discourse). (Palmer et al. 13)
In compiling the actual word list, the several previous word lists were taken
into consideration as the basis of selection. These are:
(1) The 1,500 words of highest rating in the Faucett- Maki-Thorndike-Horn word
list.
(2) The First and Second Interim Reports on Vocabulary Selection (Palmer's
3,000 words).
(3) West's Defining Vocabulary.
(4) Ten other selected word lists
(Fries and Traver 177)
According to Fries and Traver, the BASIC words are said to be included in the
other ten lists. These lists shown above laid foundation for the choice of
words. Careful selection aiming at basic use of English, both for production
and for reading, had been made, and the tentative word list was compiled. The
outcome was called the Interim Report on Vocabulary Selection for English as a
Foreign Language (1936), usually referred to as 'The Carnegie Report'.
The list consists of 2,060 entries representing a foundation vocabulary for
school use in the teaching of English to non-English-speaking pupils from
twelve to eighteen years of age (Palmer et al. 30). It is claimed that knowing
these words gives access to about 80 per cent of the words in any written text
and thus stimulates motivation since the words acquired can be seen by learners
to have a demonstrably quick return (Carter 163). Another advantage is that the
headwords are sub-classified according to their grammatical status and their
semantic meanings. These sub-categories were a major advance on previous word
lists and greatly increased the pedagogical value of the work (Howatt, History
256). And also the headwords are briefly defined by means of illustrative
sentences shown as follows:
(Palmer et al. 395-96)
It is also said that although the list suits its basic purposes very well but,
it is less appropriate for other purposes such as the words needed by visitors
to England or new residents, for example, for use in everyday situations
(Howatt, History 256). This point has already suggested in the list itself like
this; a learner speaking within this list would tend to be coulourless (Palmer
et al. 87).
The Interim Report on Vocabulary Selection, which was revised in 1953 by West,
eventually became A General Service List of English Words. The improved list
made particular use of the semantic count conducted by Thorndike and Lorge, and
consequently West's revision makes a volume that gives the vocabulary of the
Carnegie Report plus semantic frequencies. Each headword is provided a number
of occurrence in five million words and the percentage of each meaning, if it
has more than one meaning:
(West, General Service 412-13)
As Howatt points out, GSL is not a frequency list as is sometimes supposed,
though the evidence from frequency statistics was available to the team (256).
It is the flowering of vocabulary selection at that time based on both
subjective and objective selectional criteria.
Jeffery looked up to West for the energy and experience he had brought to the
task (vi). His GSL was regarded as a 'culmination' those days. But it is not
without disadvantages; the list is to some extent outdated. Such common 1980s
words as 'television' and 'computer', for example, do not appear in the list
based on a written corpus in 1930s or earlier. However, it remains one of the
most innovative examples of foreign language pedagogy and lexicometric research
this century (Carter and McCarthy 9).
3. Summary
We have so far discussed the characteristic of each principle with some
examples. A historical sketch like this has revealed that no word list is
without drawbacks. In order to compensate for each weakness, there seem to be
two types of solutions.
One of these is that more than one list should be provided according to the
aims of instruction. Fries and Traver, for example, suggest that there should
be two distinct lists for two fundamentally different purposes; one for the
productive use of the language and one for the receptive use (202). In order to
do so, different criteria have to be taken into consideration. Mackey suggests
that we should adopt the principle of selection according to the purpose. If
the course stresses comprehension, frequency and range within the sort of
material used will take precedence. If it is mainly for expression, coverage
and availability take precedence (189).
Another solution is the integration of word lists. According to Fries and
Traver, it is taken for granted that two vocabularies, one for production and
the other for reception, should be made to overlap as far as is practically
possible (202-03). One of the lists which seem to have made progress in that
direction is Interim Report on Vocabulary Selection. The investigation shows
that the 2,060 items in the list contains 93 percent of the Basic English
vocabulary and 98.4 percent of Thorndike's first thousand, i.e. both a
vacabulary chosen on logical grounds (based on coverage) and one determined by
frequency and range. At a glance, this selection appears to be crystallized by
the fusion of principles both for productive use and receptive use. However, such
a list compiled by 'eclectic approach', tends to be rather 'colourless'. This
problem was noted by Eckersley in 1940s when he came to prepare his Essential
English textbooks. He intended to include everyday dialogues with the language
needed to talk about English, and aimed at a more relaxed and livelier
atmosphere than the dull, pedagogical texts. Eckersley was not satisfied with
the Carnegie Report, and the choice of words was not restricted to the list;
his textbooks contained such everyday items as 'bacon', 'beef', 'cabbage', and
'luggage', which were ignored by Interim Report (Howatt, History 216). This
problem has also pointed out by Carter and McCarthy. They mention that GSL can
be criticized for not giving adequate consideration to the notions of the
'availability' of words, though no current research was available to West at
that time (9).
These statements have an implication that even the most sophisticated-looking
list still leaves something to be desired, however carefully the words may be chosen.
If we intend to construct a textbook suitable for learners, it is absolutely
unavoidable to come up against the lack of certain vocabulary items.
Finally, the present author would like to conclude this chapter by saying that
each of the above-mentioned principles seems to be sound on vocabulary
selection, but not sound on vocabulary limitation. The list in limited number
could be possibly attacked, no matter how perfect it may seem, if a certain
item was not included. It is true that such a list is indeed useful for foreign
learners, but learning should not be confined to these items. Wilkins asserts
that if the textbook writer was simply aware of such notions as frequency,
range, usefulness, teachability, etc., the mistakes of uncontrolled introduction
of vocabulary could be avoided, and that it is unnecessary to draw up an
inventory of lexical items beforehand (Linguistics 118). For the most part,
this idea can be accepted.
One more comment should be added here. Howatt mentions that such criteria as
frequency, coverage and availability are all useful, but we should not be
unaware of the most important idea, i.e., the idea of 'appropriate' language
(Background 10). The following example will illuminate this idea:
For example, the language of winter sports is not going to appear high on any
numerically determined list of 'useful words in English'. But to a Norwegian or
a Swiss learner, it is especially important to their interests and to the
situations where they are likely to use their English, e.g. talking to foreign
visitors at ski resorts and so on. (Background 10-11).
Therefore we need to teach language that matches the interests of the pupil and
the situations in which he might possibly use his linguistic knowledge.
A similar point is suggested by Sinclair and Renouf. They state that to base a
selection of words on a study of native-speaker usage is not to imply that
there is an identity between the worlds of the learner and the native speaker
(150). As we saw, the word lists so far conducted seem to have been
native-centered selection. This means that the items are mostly selected by
native speakers of the language or counted on the basis of English texts, and
they result in being reflected more by American or British society than the
learners' circumstances. As far as 'everyday words' in the lists are concerned,
they are just the words for native speakers' daily use. No doubt that these
words are not completely useful in expressing the learners' real lives. The
specialized corpora should therefore be established to provide appropriate
language for learners in the particular ELT communities. The notion of
'appropriateness' will be discussed later in the last chapter.
We shall now move on to the problems of vocabulary in the textbooks in the
following chapter.
Chapter Ⅱ
Problems
of Vocabulary Selection in Japan
In the TEFL context of Japan, one of the most well-known vocabulary controls is
prescribed in the present Course of Study. As is shown below, the number of new
words are restricted in each grade:
[ Junior High Level ] [ Senior High Level ]
Grade 1 300 ～ 350 EnglishⅠ 400 ～ 500
Grade 2 300 ～ 350 EnglishⅡ 600 ～ 700
Grade 3 300 ～ 350 EnglishⅡB 400 ～ 700
total 900 ～1,050 total 1,400 ～1,900
Among the total of 900～1,050 junior high level words, only 490 items (See
Appendix A) are clearly designated, while there is no stipulation of compulsory
items at senior high level. Four hundred and ninety words are prescribed as the
most fundamental and indispensable items, and as the words which should be taught
in any of Grade 1, 2, and 3 (Monbu-sho, Chugakko 57-58). Textbooks used in
junior high schools are therefore compiled using 900～1,050 items including
these 490. In Japan six kinds of lower secondary textbooks, all of which
consist of Book 1, 2, and 3, are approved by the Ministry of Education. There
are more varieties of textbooks at senior high level. In any case they are, as
it were, based on their own vocabulary selection.
Thus regarding the words employed in the textbook as selected vocabulary in
itself, we will examine the problems of the selection. The problems which are
discussed in this chapter consist of two aspects: one is the total number of
vocabulary items, and the other is the way to select these items.
1. Vocabulary limitation in textbooks
Vocabulary items are strictly limited at both junior and senior high levels. It
is true that memorizing a number of words inconsistently may be of no use, but
strictly controlled vocabulary brings about some problems in a classroom
situation. First, structural drills impose an unnatural limitation on
vocabulary selection. Secondly, it proves to be impossible to use a mastered
structure in an actual discourse. Thirdly, students have to pay the penalty for
having neglected vocabulary in the earlier stages; later they must struggle
with a large number of new words (Sano et al. 107). These three problems are to
some extent derived from the textbooks influenced largely by structuralism.
The problems of vocabulary selection entailed by the structuralist approach are
discussed in Fries' Teaching and Learning English as a Foreign Language (1945).
Fries believes that the problem of learning a new language is not learning its
vocabulary, but mastering its sound system and its grammatical structure (3).
It is not, of course, that he does not have any interest in vocabulary. He
classifies English words into four groups: 1) function words, 2) substitute
words, 3) words with negative and affirmative distribution, and 4) content
words. At the beginning, Fries remarks, the first three groups of words should
be emphasized to the point of mastery (50). The three groups--function words,
substitute words, and words with negative and affirmative distribution--play an
important role for the structural operation. At the same time learners must
master the fundamentals of the sound system. Content words, on the other hand,
should be strictly limited until the mastery of structure and sound has
completed. The only items that operate the structures and that represent the
sound system are introduced in this stage. Fries' attitude toward vocabulary is
somewhat similar to the exponents of 'the structural school' (West, Present
Position 435) of vocabulary selection, whose theory is that non-structural
words do not matter. West points out the problem of their attitudes as follows:
In actual life we tend, in the earlier stage of learning a foreign language, to
pick up a large number of naming words together with an absolute minimum of
structure. Indeed in the earliest stage the tourist merely points and names; he
speaks without structure. Later he adds a little structure, but the acquisition
of content words tends for a long time to go ahead of the learning of a
structural vocabulary fit to contain them. Whereas the exponents of this school
of thought follow an opposite procedure--a linguistically correct but
psychologically wrong word-order. (Present Position 435)
West regards content words, which tend to be neglected under the influence of
structuralism, as "the major problem" in a reading and a speaking
vocabulary (Teaching 38-39). Like Wilkins, one of the exponents of
Communicative theory, West puts emphasis on content words as the indispensable
component in communicating with others.
One can express oneself using content words only, but it is not possible to
speak using structures only. . . . One cannot be realistic and speak language
(not mere words) without an adequate set of names of things to talk about.
(Teaching 48)
In Japan, such experts of ELT as Ogawa (91) and Shimizu (241) agree with West's
idea and state that content words should be more emphasized in the Japanese ELT
situation. In fact, however, their assertion seem to have so far never been
given any consideration. The present textbooks still seem to cling too much to
the following belief as stated in Suggested Course of Study in English for
Lower and Upper Secondary Schools Ⅰ (1951).
The grading vocabulary items (e.g. from concrete to abstract) is of particular
importance in the lower secondary school, because in the beginning and the
early stages any over-burdening of pupils in the acquisition of a vocabulary
will hamper the learning of English as "speech" in which emphasis is
laid on the learning of structural patterns. (Ohmura et al. 454)
As a result, in order to avoid 'over-burdening' of students, textbooks for
junior high students must be compiled using only about 1,000 items. What is
worse, declensional and conjugational forms should be counted separately. For
example, 'man' and 'men' are regarded as two words, so are 'write' and 'wrote'
(Monbu-sho, Chugakko 55-56). Textbook compilers are therefore forced to write
stories and dialogues within a very small vocabulary, which might result in
poor content. As for senior high level, the problems are not much different.
Textbooks of higher secondary English Ⅰ, for example, should be written within
only around 1,500 words.
Limited vocabulary sometimes brings about strangely troublesome phenomena.
Compared with learners' mental development, vocabulary items in junior high
textbooks are rather low level. Paradoxically, especially at higher secondary
level, learners have to stuff themselves with intellectually high level,
abstract words including some items useless for daily conversation.
More serious problems can be observed in regard to learners' self-expression.
Because of the lack of vocabulary items, especially those used to talk about
daily life, learners cannot discuss their experiences in English. In the next
section, we will examine the failure of textbooks to address this issue,
drawing on experimental research.
2. Problems as seen from the communicative perspective
In English classrooms, students often ask questions about English vocabulary.
Most of the questions are, in fact, about daily words which occur in students'
everyday conversation in Japanese. "Tell me the English words for shapen
no shin (lead)," for example. It can be easily seen from this example that
students are interested to know the English equivalents of everyday Japanese
words. As a matter of fact, judging from the writer's experience, students do
not have sufficient knowledge of vocabulary to utter anything which relates to
their everyday, personal matters in English. Although this fact is likely to be
overlooked in a classroom situation, it is a serious problem in respect to the
facilitation of communication.
This fact motivated the present writer to undertake research into the
'mismatch' between the words provided by the authorities (i.e. textbook writers
sanctioned and controlled by the Ministry of Education) for learners and the
words the learners themselves felt they needed. What follows is a report on
this research.
A questionnaire survey of first-year male students at a certain high school was
conducted in June, 1988. The total number of subjects was 108. They were asked
to write ten Japanese words which they wanted to express in English on each
topic. From a previously conducted pilot survey, four topics had been derived:
1) school life, 2) clothing, 3) food, and 4) living. The total number of words collected
amounted to 4,320. The words which were specified by five or more students are
listed in Table 1, and the number of students is shown in parentheses. As will
be seen, various kinds of words are listed. It can be guessed that this is
because students vary largely in their communicative needs.
Roughly speaking, the words listed in Table 1 derive from the students' daily
life. 'Kokuban', 'bushitsu', 'jipan', 'T-shatsu', 'misoshiru', 'okonomiyaki',
'benjo', 'gomibako', for example. These L1 words seem to be familiar to the
learners.
However, there are some other words with little relationship to their real
lives. Words peculiar to Japanese 'traditional' clothes (e.g. 'fundoshi',
'suteteko'), historical objects (e.g. 'tateanashiki-jukyo'), and words reflected
by their interest in sexual matters (e.g. 'love hotel', 'brassiere') are also
observed. They might not be related directly with their everyday lives as a
matter of fact. But it can be easily guessed that not every student has
interest in expressing his world in English. Indeed some boys listed 10
required words on the assumption that they use them in writing and
conversation, but others may have filled the blank with words only reflected by
their interests. This is probably one of the weak points of such analyses of
needs expressed by learners' themselves, since the hierarchy of interest is not
revealed. Nevertheless, it is the learner's interest that is the first step of
his self-expression. In this sense taking account of the words listed in Table 1
is worthwhile.
Table 1.
These Japanese words were put into English by the present author, using several
English-Japanese and Japanese-English dictionaries. With some native speakers'
help, the most suitable corresponding English word or phrase was chosen. As is
shown below, in the case of words peculiar to Japanese culture, some are
translated like definitions in a dictionary, others remain in their original
form, but written in the Roman alphabet.
Tables 2, 3, 4 and 5 show these translations and how they are dealt with in
Japanese textbooks. Take 'blackboard', at the top of the Table 2, for example.
Under column (J), '1' means that among six junior high textbooks approved by
the Ministry of Education, one of them use this word in the body of the text and
in the tables of the target sentences. The words in exercises and the other
appendant pages are neglected. The bracketed word like '(board)' indicates that
a certain textbook deals with this word as the English equivalent for 'kokuban'
in Japanese. In this case, the number '1' means that only one textbook lists
'board' in this meaning. These numbers are given on the basis of computer-based
text research work by Miura et al.(1987).
Column (S) is given based on the word list at the back of English Ⅰ textbook which
the subjects use at school now. Here two kinds of symbols are seen. (-) means
that the word is treated in the textbook as already learned at junior high
level. (*) means that the textbook introduces this word as a new word. For
example, 'socks' in Table 3 is one of new words for them, while 'tie' is
treated as a word students already know. A blank implies that the word is not
listed.
As these tables show, a lot of words the students want to know appear rarely in
textbooks. Take 'tap' or 'faucet', for instance. In Japanese conversation, we
usually use 'suido' instead of 'jaguchi', which is installed in almost all the
houses and schools. We use it every day. However, the Enlish equivalent can be
seen in only one textbook at junior high level. Also the higher secondary
textbook of English Ⅰ, which the students are using now, deals with neither as
a new word nor as a already learned word. Another example is 'bicycle shed'. In
their school life they have much opportunity to use the Japanese equivalent 'jitensha-okiba'.
Nonetheless, students can never find the English counterpart in their textbooks
for at least four years. In addition to these two examples, such daily words as
'trousers', 'trash can', 'closet', 'noodles' seem to be made little of. We can
find a lot of words like these in Tables 2, 3, 4 and 5.
This problem is so serious that it cannot be neglected from the standpoint of
communication. Thus far the fact has been pointed out that English textbooks
are short of everyday words (Takefuta, Tango-ryoku 53; Kyokasho Kenkyu Center
194). These previous suggestions have been made by so-called the top-down
research. It can be also asserted by the present research, which is conducted
by the bottom-up method, that the daily words drawn by the learners' needs are
lacking in textbooks.
In fact, learners may find rather little satisfaction in learning English
through the present textbooks. We can therefore conclude by saying that as far
as vocabulary items are concerned, there exists a gap between the learners' needs
and the input they receive from textbooks. In order to fill the gap, the
'vocabulary selection' of textbooks should be taken into reconsideration.
3. Summary
In this chapter we have seen the problems which our textbooks hold with respect
to vocabulary. The main problems, which can be briefly stated, are:
(1) Vocabulary load is too light, especially in the early stages.
(2) Learners' communicative needs cannot be served by the words provided by the
authorities.
From the standpoint of TEFL in Japan, we should seek for a key to solution of
these problems. In the next chapter we will go on to make some proposals
concerning appropriate communicative vocabulary.
Chapter Ⅲ
Appropriate
Vocabulary in the TEFL Context of
As was pointed out in the previous chapter, the fact that students cannot
express themselves using daily words in English should not be dismissed as a
trivial issue. It is obvious that the intellectual level of teenagers is
considerably high, and that they have a great stock of L1 vocabulary. It is
also obvious that they have much need to express themselves as a matter of
course. That is why we should not neglect the lack of daily vocabulary in
textbooks. Without a large vocabulary, it would be impossible to satisfy their
communicative needs with the teaching material (Ozasa, Notional Syllabus 25).
Nevertheless, the limitation by the authorities is still in full force, which
may result in the glaring discrepancy between restricted textbooks and
learners' needs. The outcome of the experimental research which has been
discussed before is only the tip of a huge iceberg of problems. The more we aim
at serving learners' needs, the more lively vocabulary we should fill the
textbooks with. And also, instead of haphazard expansion, good design criteria
should be taken into consideration. We shall make some proposals in this
chapter for the solution of these problems.
1. Increasing Vocabulary Load
From the communicative point of view, it is clear that more words are necessary
for textbooks to meet learners' needs. But we will immediately have to run
against another problem; that is, the learning burden of students. As we have
discussed in Chapter Ⅰ, the history of vocabulary selection started aiming at
lightening learners' heavy burden. If so, enlarging vocabulary in textbooks
might decrease the learning efficiency. The question here is, therefore,
whether or not the learning efficiency would be certainly cut down by
increasing the number of vocabulary items.
In the light of mnemonic aspect, Meara expresses doubts about the figure of
limited vocabulary. He indicates that a vocabulary of 2,000 words could be
learned in 11 months if new words were acquired at a rate of six per day and
that this figure does not appear to be wildly excessive (103). Nevertheless, he
complains, most teachers would undoubtedly consider 2,000 words to be well
beyond the capacity of many learners, even over a five-year course of
instruction. This figure is said to be set up based on experience without any
clear theoretical basis for this agreement.
As for the limitation of vocabulary in Japan, 2,950 words, which have been
calculated by multiplying the number of words recommended to teach an hour and
the number of hours, is the upper limit of six-year course. The establishment
of the upper limit by including all the words would be open to question. At
junior high level, teaching three words per hour is considered reasonable based
on experience (Monbu-sho, Chugakko 54), while the number of words which should
be taught in an hour goes a little up to three or four on average at senior
high level (Monbu-sho, Kotogakko 31). No clear basis of these numbers, except
'experience', can be found in the present Course of Study. This is obviously an
area in which further research would be most useful, and attention should be
paid to the psychological aspects of learners in establishing the upper limit.
Needless to say, each of the words has different function from others. Words
classification can be done into two; words we talk with and words we talk about
(Morris 40). The former words are called 'structure' or 'function words', the
latter are 'content words'. These two lexical subclasses made by contrasting
conceptual categories are lucidly charted by Bowen et al. as follows:
[ Structure Words ] [ Content Words ]
few (some two hundred) many (well over a million) closed category open category
part of the grammar pure lexicon
reflect language structure reflect culture
mostly high frequency mostly low frequency
need for grammatical elegance need for linguistic survival (200)
These two kinds of words cannot be dealt with equally, nor can we consider that
they give pupils the same learning burden. Hornby discusses this problem by
taking such structure words as 'already', 'yet' and 'still', for example. He
states that the student of English can learn a score of content words in much
less time than it will take him to learn the correct use of these three (20).
Generally speaking, as Morris suggests, structure words call for the most
extensive practice (44), and learning structure words is probably a more
complex process than learning content words. It might be unreasonable,
therefore, to count these words equally and place a restricted upper limit on
the number. If students can learn three structure words in an hour, for
example, they might be able to memorize ten or more content words within the
same time-frame. Besides, it is said that learning burden of words can be
lightened by teaching them with synonyms (Tsuboi 56). And if a certain student
has to learn 10 words, giving him 100 word input seems to be more correct
psychologically, and it would reduce his learning load (Horiuchi 5). It is
doubtful whether learning burden is proportional to the number of words, and
thus the upper limit is full of question.
Judging from the discussions above, it is safe to say that the number of
words--especially content words--could be, or should be, increased drastically
in the textbooks. However, as a matter of course, the consideration of learning
burden requires circumspection to much extent.
There is one more point which we should discuss here; that is the distinction
between active and passive vocabulary. Thus far, the restriction by the
authorities has been influenced by the structuralist idea that at the beginning
stage vocabulary items should be strictly limited and include only the most
useful items for practice. As a result only three or four words on average can
be recommended to be taught within one period, so that students could master
all of them both actively and passively. Naturally, however, native speakers of
English (and presumably speakers of all languages) respond to a wider range of
vocabulary than they themselves use when speaking. This condition should
therefore be quite acceptable linguistic behavior for foreign language speakers
from the beginning. In Japanese EFL context, however, it is only accepted later
at senior high English ⅡB, whose purpose is concentrated on improving reading
proficiency.
Bowen et al. suggest how teachers should deal with the distinction between
active and passive vocabulary as follows:
She [a teacher] introduces the vocabulary in meaningful contexts, but leaves
the students to make their own active/passive choices. This procedure is
consistent with the assumption that the words in a student's passive
vocabulary, when the need for them arises, will move into the active
vocabulary. (200) This procedure may be out of step with the philosophy of the
Course of Study. But without this tolerance, the number of students suffering
from 'English phobia' would continue to increase (Kitao 7). If it is true that
passive status is one route to full acquisition, giving learners a lot of words
is necessary for improving their productive skill.
The purpose of this section has been to seek for possibility to increase the
number of vocabulary items. We can assert that the number of content words can
be increased if we do not force learners to use these immediately as part of
their active vocabulary. We need not adhere to perfectionism from the
beginning. However, expanding content words through making a random selection
will do more harm than good for students. We should adopt a sound principle in
choosing these items, keeping our eyes firmly fixed on communicative purpose.
2. The way to select appropriate vocabulary for learners in Japan
In the Japanese schooling system, most of the learners begin to study English
after acquiring Japanese language almost thoroughly. Mastering L1 seems to be
equal to formulating their concept in their native language world. It is
doubtful, therefore, whether the EFL learners in Japan can think everything in
English (Oka 63). And thus one of the moderate goals for learners might be to
acquire the ability to say in English what they conceive in their own language.
For students at junior high and senior high level, it is desirable to master
the target language to express at least what they usually say in their daily L1
conversation. Nevertheless, because of the strict limitation of vocabulary,
English equivalents for Japanese everyday words are seriously lacking. In this
section, therefore, we shall seek for a key to the appropriate vocabulary from
the viewpoint of the learners who speak Japanese and already have various
concepts in the language. As Sapir suggests, what we first need is words in a
limited range of meanings, not all the senses in which these words may function
for the native's use of the language (Fries and Traver 200). This statement has
an implication, especially for productive use, that we need to learn some words
which function for expressing our L1 concepts. It does not mean that a certain
Japanese-English dictionary is sufficient as a teaching material. Instead, what
the present authour would like to say here is that learners in an EFL context
must have their own brand of logic in learning English. In this sense, Japanese
words and concepts already acquired by them might be useful for the decision as
to which vocabulary items should be included.
2.1. Selectional Criteria
In discussing principles of selection and expansion, the distinction between
structure words and content words may be effective. Fries and Traver suggest
that a word list should contain primarily the symbols for things and next the
symbols for qualities by citing Sapir's words as follows:
What, then, are the absolutely essential concepts in speech, the concepts that
must be expressed if language is to be a satisfactory means of communication?
Clearly we must have, first of all, a large stock of basic or radical concepts,
the concrete wherewithal of speech. We must have objects, actions, qualities to
talk about, and these must have their corresponding symbols in independent
words or in radical elements. No proposition, however abstract its intent, is
humanly possible without a tying on at one or more points to the concrete world
of sense. (200)
They also mention that it would seem sound to separate all structure words from
the list of content words (representing things and qualities) and treat them
not as vocabulary matter (202).
Taking the idea of Fries and Traver in account, we shall now discuss what is to
be considered in selecting content words. No particular principles, other than
frequency and range, seem to be necessary for structure words as almost all of
them appear with high frequency in any of the frequency-range list from the
outset.
We shall reexamine some of the principles already discussed in Chapter Ⅰ, and
try to adopt them as selectional principles for content words. The criteria
discussed below are 'availability', 'coverage' and 'learnability'.
2.2. Availability
'Availability' is the very criterion that the present writer has adopted in
undertaking research already dicussed in Chapter Ⅱ. The basic idea of this
criterion seems to be identical to selectional principles of lexical items of
'notional syllabus'. This position coincides with that of Wilkins, who remarks
that the lexical content of learning can be largely derived from an analysis of
the topics likely to occur in the language use of a given group (Notional 76).
The notion of availability can make practical sense to both teachers and
learners, and provide them with more realistic and more motivating word lists.
It is true that they seem to be sophisticated word lists, but at the same time
they provide no sufficient guarantee of success, especially in the ELT
community of Japan. The following comparison, made between the list established
in Europe and the result of the experimental research in the previous chapter,
will reveal some keys to appropriate vocabulary for the particular learning
situation.
From the ESL standpoint, van Ek's list is influential in the field of material
development of CLT. The items are selected for Threshold level learners to
achieve a reasonable degree of communicative poficiency. As has already
explained in Chapter Ⅰ, the items are enumerated under several topics. For
example, van Ek selected the following nouns under the topic of 'types of food
and drink':
meal, food, soup, meat, bacon, sausage, steak, beef, pork, veal, lamb, fish,
chicken, omelette, ham, mushrooms, vegetables, cabbage, peas, beans, potatoes,
chips, salad, tomato, egg, spaghetti, rice, salt, pepper, mustard, bread,
butter, cheese, dessert, sweet, fruit, apple, pear, strawberry, nut, orange,
ice-cream, vanilla, chocolate, cake, pastry, jam, coffee, tea, cream, milk,
sugar, wine, beer, mineral water, fruit juice, water, sandwich (105-07) All of
the items seem to be quite basic, and they have to be learned by all the
learners of English. The problem is, however, whether or not we should apply
these items directly to the threshold level students in Japanese schools.
First, naturally, there is a very large gap between these items and the
previously listed items in Table 4 (See Chapter Ⅱ). Compared these two sets of
vocabulary, some questions have been arisen. Are 'veal' and 'lamb' more useful
for the learners in Japan than 'octopus', 'squid' and 'tuna'? Is not
'watermelon' more available than 'pear'? In addition, some might insist that
'rice cracker', rather than 'pastry', be more realistic in the learners'
circumstances. It goes without saying that such gaps are derived from the big
difference of the dietary habits. These provincial characteristics, however,
should not be ignored to select a more appropriate vocabulary, for, in terms of
the actual communication, the particular items might be reflected by the
learners' real needs. That is one of the biggest reason why the items in van
Ek's list cannot be most suitable for our learners' productive use.
There is another problem to be discussed. As we already saw, the list of
T-level lexicon was conducted by van Ek's intuition. Although Wilkins states
that the lexical need is predicted from the situational analysis (Notional 76),
what items learners really want to use cannot be easily seen in a crystal ball.
Needless to say, the use of questionnaire techniques to establish what learners
want from their language courses is a useful departure, but, as Howatt points
out, it is largely a matter of local initiative (History 284). However, unless
we adopt this selectional procedure, we will never escape from the
native-centered teacher-provided materials.
It is certain that 'availability' has been somewhat neglected in textbooks in
Japan thus far and that it should be taken into consideration. Such
topic-centered selection combined with learners' needs will provide
appropriateness for the word list.
2.3. Coverage
This criterion was established to cover the meanings of other words. Words
which cover a wide range of meanings are useful and helpful if the learner do
not know the pertinent word in a particular situation. For example, if the
leaner wants to find a 'faucet' to survive in a foreign language environment,
he will ask for 'something that water comes out of when you turn a handle'
(Kelly 29). This principle is suggestive not only to vocabulary selection but
also to how we should explain the meanings of other words.
One of the appropriate ways to adopt this principle is to explain the daily
words peculiar to Japanese situation. There are a large number of words which
have no English equivalent and which we use almost everyday. While we are
talking to foreign people, these words usually creates nuisances. If they could
easily defined, the conversation would become lively. And also it would become
easier for learners to give self-expressions in English.
As is shown in Table 4 (Chapter Ⅱ), the Japanese common word 'onigiri' is put
into the English phrase 'rice ball'. Although 'rice ball' is given in most of
the Japanese-English dictionaries as the definition of 'onigiri', Yamagishi
deplores such translation. He says that it is misleading because the shape of
an onigiri is not always like a ball. In his opinion, 'onigiri' should be
explained like this: Onigiri is cooked rice pressed into the shape of a
triangle, a ball or a rice bale and it is often seasoned with a sprinkling of
salt (46).
Another example is 'oshiire'. This word has been replaced with 'closet' in
Table 5. However, according to Yamagishi, there exists a large gap between 'oshiire'
and 'closet'. He recommends such definition as follows: Oshiire is a kind of
(built-in) cupboard used chiefly to store bedding during the day (47). He also
states that such definitions are useful for both learners and foreign people
living in Japan.
Since ELT in Japan has recently attached more importance to sending message in
English than before, more research should be conducted to provide the
appropriate vocabulary for the correct definition of Japanese words. In this
way, the principle of 'coverage' demands more serious consideration.
2.4. Learnability
The principle of 'learnability' can be adopted for the purpose of expanding
vocabulary in textbooks. Two factors among five of Mackey's classification,
'similarity' and 'clarity', are discussed here.
1) Similarity. It is not too much to say there is such a flood of loan words
that we can not live without them. Most of them are reported to be from the
English language. By the time learners begin to learn English at school, they
have already learned a considerable amount of words which are of English
origin. In this respect, these loan words form a set of rather 'learnable'
words.
West points out that one of the most effective solutions of the problem of the
dearth of content words in the initial stages is to make use of the adopted
words. These are very numerous and have the added advantage of emphasizing the
difference between the phonetic system of the mother tongue and that of English
(Teaching 49). Igarashi makes a similar suggestion to West, when he states that
textbooks should include more loan words whose pronunciation and spelling are
relatively easy to master, especially as passive vocabulary at junior high
level (Gaikoku-go 178-79). Spelling similarity to Japanese words refers, of
course, to similarity between the original English spelling and the Romaji
spelling of the same word. Igarashi also asserts that in order to improve
learners' ability both in production and recognition, the total number of
vocabulary items should be increased.
Although the usefulness of loan words has been widely discussed, textbooks have
yet to respond to the suggestions put forward by experts in the field of ELT.
Osa lists words which are well known but made little use of in textbooks. These
are given below:
gram, clarinet, caffeine, lens, anchor, antenna, unbalance, ear-phone, ace,
escalator, etiquette, elete, stereo, vinyl, macaroni, mascot, baton, doughnut,
toaster, popcorn, trophy, lettuce, manicure, yacht (10)
All of the words are often used in learners' daily conversation and learners
would find it easy to understand these items. But such disregard means that
students can never learn the accurate spellings and pronunciations of these
words in their school days.
One of the more recent research reported by Nation suggests that similarities
in sound, morphology or etymology can assist word memorization (Carter 156). He
also says that more memorizable still would be words which are international
loan words such as 'telephone', 'radio', 'television', which have many close
cognate forms in other languages. In actual teaching circumstances, teachers
have to pay attention to interference of L1, but, on the contrary, the very
difference, however slight, between the two forms may stimulate the interest of
the learners.
2) Clarity. Names of things, as Mackey points out, seem to be easier to teach
and to learn than abstract words, because we can point to them and make the
meanings clear (188). Nevertheless, learners in Japan usually, and sometimes
teachers, have little knowledge about these English concrete nouns. Asao says
that most Japanese, despite six years of English education, do not know 'easy
words', such as concrete nouns, which any English-speaking child would know
(iv). A lot of examples can be found in Tables 2, 3, 4 and 5 (See Chapter Ⅱ):
'eraser', 'corridor', 'pillar', 'ceiling', 'trousers', etc. One of the reasons
which we can imagine is the strict limitation of words at the beginning stage.
Textbooks rarely employ these items. Similarly, teachers only teach a few names
of things which students can see around them. Traditionaly, introduction of new
words ostensively is one of the most popular methods of vocabulary teaching
since a cornucopia of objects can be found in the immediate environment. Should
we not, then, make better use of naturally-provided teaching materials? In
addition to their ability to be represented visually or demonstrated simply,
concrete items always have L1 equivalents. For the purpose of explanation of
meanings, translation can often be a useful shortcut (Gairns and Redman 68). In
this respect, concrete nouns are also 'learnable' and deserve to be selected.
3. Summary
We have dealt with problems pointed out in the previous chapter and tried to
make some proposals. In the discussion, some guidance has been provided.
For the purpose of increasing vocabulary to be taught, some classifications
will be effective in deciding what words are to be learned with lighter load.
For example, as was stated, content words give less learning burden than
structure words. Another example is the distinction between active and passive
vocabulary. Since it is obvious that words are normally known passively before
being actively used, students should not be expected to master every word
completely. According to Krashen and Terrell, learners, while being able to
acquire more than fifty new words in an hour as passive vocabulary, will
experience a sharp drop in the number of words they have learned if they are
forced to use them immediately as active vocabulary (198). It can be
considered, therefore, that a lot of content words can and, perhaps, should be
given as input from the beginning.
Some of the sound principles discussed in Chapter Ⅰ should be taken into
account so that these content words might be chosen to meet the learners'
communicative needs. To provide an appropriate vocabulary, the following
criteria can be adapted to the Japanese EFL context in ways which meet the
needs of the students.
1) Availability
Available words for particular daily topics should be really 'available' for
learners. L1 can be used to determine what words are available for learners'
real lives. By this principle, a lot of concrete items familiar to learners
will be selected.
2) Coverage
Knowing how to replace or paraphrase other words is helpful for us to
communicate with others. When learners want to express themselves, some of
daily Japanese words, as well as unknown English words, might be desired to be
explained by means of other defining words. For this purpose, some items with
utility and power (i.e. coverage) should be provided.
3) Learnability
Similarity. Since a large number of English words have been imported into
Japanese as kata-kana words, students can probably learn them with less
difficulty.
Clarity. Generally speaking, students have very little knowledge of concrete
naming words. These items can be dealt with more economically than abstract
items, and more of them should be included in our teaching materials.
These proposals, related as they are to vocabulary selection, should be taken
up in conjunction with other proposals which stem from empirical research, and
which deal with other aspects of language teaching.
Conclusion
If we now finally return to the history of vocabulary selection, it will be
clear that the previously-conducted word lists as a whole have been based on
the pedagogical standpoint of teachers and text writers. The object of
compilers was to determine what words are to be taught, not to find out how
words were actually learned (Meara 103). It is true that the criteria discussed
in Chapter Ⅰ are all sound in a sense. However, most of the lists based on
these principles cannot escape criticism from the users' point of view.
Textbooks in Japan, as sources of vocabulary input, also appear to be problematic,
if examined in the light of learners' needs. As was mentioned in the second
chapter, vocabulary controlled by the authorities is far from sufficient. The
very problem that should be taken seriously is the inappropriateness of
selection in terms of the interests or needs of the leraners.
It is expressly stated, in the report submitted by the Curriculum Council in
1987, that keeping up with the internationalized society is one of the main
problems of Japanese education. The authorities are working on a plan to
introduce 'Oral Communication' at senior high level in response to new trends
in ELT, and, at the same time, the three hours per week allocated to English in
junior high schools will increase to four hours. There is every indication that
efforts might be made to improve learners' communicative proficiency. Clearly
the social needs seem to be somewhat changing in Japan from pedagogical virtue
to communicative usefulness. Therefore, as Wilkins suggests, proper
consideration will have to be given from the beginning to the appropriate
vocabulary, whose appropriateness will depend on the social needs of the
learners (Linguistics 112).
However, if we think about when and where learners have opportunity to 'use'
their L2 communicative ability, we will immediately find these difficult to
specify. More often than not, learners' communicative needs will vary with the
individual, and also they will be ambiguous. Indeed, as far as 'school English'
is concerned, it might not matter whether they have specific purpose or not.
But, if school pupils do not learn English for living use, they can never
acquire it as a 'living' language. Therefore textbooks should not be too
'colourless' even for beginners. That is why the present writer has suggested
that daily items concerned with particular learners should be included in
teaching materials. These items are indispensable not only as a component of
their communicative competence but also as a motivating factor. Learning words
in another language connot be easily divorced from motivational factors such as
how important or useful lexical items are perceived to be by learners
themselves (Carter and McCarthy 17).
A caution is needed here against the idea that learners should study the
language for a few years at school and learn only about "jolly outings to
the seaside" (Howatt, Background 11). We also have to see to it that too
much cultural ethnocentricity will not cause an inappropriate selection. We
should pay attention to the balance between pedagogical and motivational aspect,
and some compromise must be sought as a matter of course.
In this thesis, the author has adopted the technique of 'needs analysis' to do
the experimental research. The research had to be conducted within severe
limits, and thus leaving much to be desired. Nonetheless, it is believed, the
results of such research have an important implication for the assessment of
learners' real needs and interests. In this respect, further research properly
connected with sound principles is needed so that we can decide what words are
to be learned by the learners in the particular EFL context.
Works Consulted
Appendix
A. The Compulsory vocabulary items
Four hundred and ninety items designated by the Ministry of Education, which
are provided in the Attached List 1, can be classified into the following
headings (Monbu-sho, Chugakko 58-64).
[Attached List 1]
a. Article (3)
a an the
b. Personal Pronoun, Demonstrative Pronoun (34)
anyone anything both everyone everything he her hers him his I it its me mine
my our ours she someone something that their theirs them these they this those
us we you your yours
c. Interogative Pronoun, Relative Pronoun (9)
how what when where which who whom whose why
d. Auxiliary Verb (9)
can do does may must shall should will would
e. Quantity, Degree (16)
about all any each enough every few half many more most much only so some very
f. Conjunction (6)
and because but if or than
g. Time, Position, Relationship (63)
across after again ago along already also always among another as at away back
before between by down during early either ever far for from here in into just
late near never next not now o'clock of off often on once other out over past
same since sometimes soon still such then there through to together too under
until (or till) up with without yet
h. Noun (196)
(a) Person (30)
ear eye face foot hair hand head mouth nose aunt boy brother child daughter
family father friend girl man Miss mother Mr. Mrs. people sister son student
teacher uncle woman
(b) Family Life (25)
breakfast dinner lunch bread food milk box chair desk picture table cup glass
door garden home house kitchen room wall window yard letter newspaper paper (c)
School Life (18)
book classroom dictionary library notebook pen pencil school class club name
page question word game sport music story
(d) Social Life (10)
boat bus car plane building money park shop station store
(e) Numeral (41)
one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen
fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen twenty thirty forty fifty
sixty seventy eighty ninety hundred thousand first second third fourth fifth
sixth seventh eighth ninth tenth eleventh twelfth
(f) Season, Month, Week, Time (40)
year season spring summer fall winter month January February March April May
June July August September October November December week Sunday Monday Tuesday
Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday day today yesterday tomorrow holiday morning
noon afternoon evening night time hour minute
(g) Country, Area (10)
English Japan Japanese city country street town village way world
(h) Nature (22)
animal bird fish flower fruit tree moon sky star sun cloud rain snow wind farm
ground hill lake mountain river sea water
i. Quality (50)
bad big busy cold cool dark dear easy fast fine glad good great happy hard high
hot interesting kind large last left light little long new nice old poor pretty
quickly ready rich right short sick slowly small sorry strong tall warm well
young black blue green red white yellow
j. Action (100)
am are be is has have answer arrive ask become begin break bring build buy call
carry catch clean close come cook cry cut draw drink drive eat find finish fly
forget get give go grow hear help hope invite keep know learn leave lend let
like listen live look lose love make meet need open play please put read ride
rise run say see sell send shout show sing sit sleep smile speak spend stand
start stay stop study swim take talk teach tell thank think throw try turn
understand use visit wait walk want wash watch work write
k. Others (4)
colo(u)r goodby(e) no yes