Clare Maas has been an EAP lecturer for 15 years now, having previously completed an MA in German and Translation and the Trinity College Dip. TESOL. Before moving to Trier University, she taught English at German secondary schools, and English for Specific Purposes at several language academies in the UK, France and Germany. She has co-authored student workbooks and coursebooks for German publishers, and writes for the English learners’ magazine Spotlight, based in Germany.

 

Introduction

There’s no shortage of vocabulary teaching going on in ELT classrooms and materials, but I sometimes wonder how much vocabulary learning is actually happening. Lists of words written on whiteboards, quick descriptions or translations of what they ‘mean’ - is that what it takes for language learners to really learn new words? What does it mean when we teach a word for someone to really know it? In all the resources on this topic, you find a very similar list, which can be summarised as: form, meaning and use (cf. Kerr, 2013). In this article, then, I want to explore each of those points in more detail.

 

Form and denotative meaning

I think that form is probably fairly straightforward. What does the word look and sound like? In other words, how do we spell it, and how do we pronounce it? Then, meaning is usually taken to be denotative meaning; the definitions we find in dictionaries. These two elements, the form and the denotative meaning, are usually what people think of when it comes to knowing a word, and these elements generally suffice for understanding a lexical item, so having it as part of your receptive vocabulary knowledge. That’s probably why they’re almost always covered when vocabulary is taught to language learners.

However, as language teachers or materials developers, we need to be aware of other elements of knowledge that need to come together before somebody can be said to really know a vocabulary item and be able to use it as part of their productive vocabulary - and then look for ways to demonstrate and practise those in our lessons and materials.

 

More meaning

In terms of meaning, then, it’s also important to know about the connotations a word has: What kinds of imagery or implied attitude does the word carry? Consider the examples of “famous”, “infamous” and “notorious”. In their basic meaning, they all convey that somebody or something is very well known. The latter two, though, add a rather negative connotation to this meaning, and anyone learning these terms would need to know about that in order to be able to use them appropriately.

 

Use

Moreover, in order to be able to use a certain word accurately and appropriately, we’ll need to know about its register and lexicogrammar.

Firstly, register refers to the tone and style of language suitable for the situation that it is used in. We often hear about technical or academic registers, for example, in contrast to colloquial or slang styles. Just think about contexts where you’d be likely to hear “look at”, “examine” or “scrutinise”, for instance. When might you say something is “a big ask”, and when “an onerous task”? It depends on the context and situation as to which register is expected and typical.

Moving on, lexicogrammar refers to the grammar of the lexical item itself. For example, is it a transitive verb? Or is it a mass noun? And sometimes we have to watch out, because words can have more than one denotative meaning and differ in their lexicogrammar, depending on which meaning is employed. A common example here is the word “paper”, which is a mass noun in its basic meaning that is taught at elementary levels. In academic contexts and at more advanced levels, though, we might encounter “papers” as a countable noun meaning ‘articles or presentations’.

Finally, then, we need to know about the patterns the word is usually used in, both lexically and grammatically. These are the item’s collocations and colligations. Collocations are combinations of words used together so frequently that they form expected pairings, such as “to make a mistake”, “serious issues”, or “to conduct research studies”. Colligations are similar, but refer to grammatical patterns that a word commonly follows, such as whether a verb or noun is followed by an infinitive or a gerund. Consider, for example, “a chance of doing something” in contrast to “a chance to do something”. As this example shows, different grammatical pairings can even change meaning, and thus are important to know when learning a new vocabulary item.

 

Conclusion

As we can see, there’s actually quite a lot more to knowing a word than it might appear at first glance - and more than is often covered in language lessons. This article doesn’t cover all of the many facets in detail, but aims to give a reminder of the main elements that need to be known about a word if it is to be used accurately and appropriately. Not all language learners will need to know all of these elements about all words - but if we want to aim to help learners with the challenge of really learning and knowing new vocabulary, we as teachers or materials writers should be aware of the points above, and use this knowledge to inform our work.

 

References

Kerr, P. (2013). How To Write Vocabulary Presentations And Practice. ELT Teacher 2 Writer.

Thornbury, S. (2002). How To Teach Vocabulary. Pearson Longman.

 

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