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9,000
Words: Are Your Students Ready?
John
Brezinsky, Higher
Education
Marketing Manager
Students must understand 8,000 to 9,000 word families to read in
English. That's the conclusion given in a review of research which challenges teachers,
students, materials writers, and researchers to work together so every student can achieve this goal. This month's article
summarizes the review with concrete examples. It also describes how
Pearson Longman supports student learning with Focus on Vocabulary, Vocabulary Power, and Reading Power.
What Students Need to Know
Schmitt (2009) analyzes several studies on how many words students
need. He concludes that students must understand 8,000 to 9,000 word
families for successful reading and 5,000 to 7,000 word families for
oral communication. In addition to a large vocabulary, learners must
also understand how and when each word is used. For example, students
need to know the words acquire and acquisition, but they also need to
know get and when to use one or the other.
What Teachers and Publishers Can Do
Schmitt tells us that we must ensure that students work with each word
many times before they learn it. Teachers and writers should also
provide opportunities for incidental learning and exercises in which
students actively engage with the target words. Some examples of these
exercises include:
- Seeing target words in a text, and then retelling the story using those words
- Negotiating a picture story using the target words
- Using the words in new sentences
Focus on Vocabulary and Vocabulary Power
provide a 4-level series in which students explicitly interact with the
most common words in everyday and academic English. Reading Power
targets specific word learning strategies as part of an overall reading
skills course.
For more information, contact your Pearson Longman ESL Specialist today.
Or request a sample copy online now.
Reference
Schmitt, N. (2009). Review article: Instructed second language vocabulary learning. Language Teaching Research. 12(3): 329-363.
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