Foreword by Paul Nation I am pleased to be able to write an introduction to this book. I have been involved in research on vocabulary teaching and learning for many years and I am always pleased when I see textbook writers giving very careful thought to what learners should be learning. A great deal of thoughtful work has gone into the preparation of the word lists in this book. I am sure that both teachers and learners will find them extremely useful, and that they will see the benefits of using them in the planning of their courses and as a source of material for deliberate learning.
The second type of planning the vocabulary teacher should do is to make sure that there are opportunities to learn vocabulary across the four strands of the course. These strands are (1) learning through listening and reading, (2) learning through speaking and writing, (3) learning through the deliberate study of vocabulary, and (4) becoming fluent in using vocabulary in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. This book is useful for the deliberate learning strand of a course. It provides useful information about each word, which will take learners forward in their vocabulary growth.
Planning vocabulary instruction
Deliberate learning
The most important job of the vocabulary teacher is to plan. This planning is of two types. Firstly, the teacher needs to plan what vocabulary the learners need to be working on. That is, should they be working on high-frequency vocabulary, academic vocabulary, technical vocabulary, or low-frequency vocabulary? This planning is very important because the words of a language are not all equally useful. Some words occur very frequently and in many different kinds of texts and uses of language. Clearly this is true for words like the, of, and, and when, but it is also true for words like ground, walk, sometimes, trade, except, and special. It is important to learn these very frequent and useful words before learning the less common words of the language. This book contains lists of these very useful words. The words are arranged in order to show their usefulness. That is why the lists in the book are not alphabetical.
Deliberate study is very important for the learning of vocabulary. There has been published research on deliberate vocabulary learning for well over 100 years, and it shows that the deliberate rote learning of vocabulary is efficient, results in the kind of knowledge that is needed for normal language use, and results in knowledge that is remembered for a long time.
Let us look at some data that shows the usefulness of these words. The most frequent 100 words of the language cover around 50% of the running words in any spoken or written text. That means if you know these 100 words, then you will be familiar with half of the words in every line of a text, and half of the words on every page of a book. Unfortunately this does not mean that you will understand half of the book. Many more words are needed for that. If you know 1000 words, then you will be familiar with at least 80% of the running words on any page, and around 90% of the running words in a friendly conversation. If you know 2000 words, then you will be familiar with close to 85% of the running words on any page, and around 95% of the running words in a conversation. Learning these very useful words is a very important goal for a learner of English.
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Let us look briefly at each of these three features of deliberate learning. Deliberate learning is efficient because by using word cards, learners can learn the meanings of a large number of words in a fairly short time. Knowing the meaning is only one step towards truly knowing a word, but it is a very important step. Knowing a word well involves knowing its spoken and written forms, knowing its related inflected and derived forms, knowing its meaning and its range of senses, knowing how to use it in a sentence, knowing the other words that it typically goes with, and knowing any restrictions or limitations on its use. This book will provide very useful help with all of these aspects of knowing words. There has generally been a belief that the deliberate rote learning of vocabulary is not a good thing to do. There is no research evidence to support this belief, and plenty of research evidence to show that the belief is not true. The deliberate learning of vocabulary can result in a large number of words being learned in a very short time. Learners differ in the speed with which they learn words, and words differ in difficulty. However, the deliberate learning of vocabulary can be very efficiently done if a few simple guidelines are followed. These guidelines are best applied through the use of