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Is Explicit Vocabulary Focus the Reading Teacher's Job? - Coggle…
Is Explicit Vocabulary Focus the Reading Teacher's Job?
Background on EVF in English language classrooms
Experts in education agree that reading is an important skill in academic success
With this, it is imperative that learners have a useful amount of vocabulary knowledge. This is so they may read and comprehend texts
Unfortunately, ELLs are at a disadvantage as they have a low vocabulary knowledge
A reader needs to know 95%-98% of the words in a text to understand it
After the 1990s, the amount of studies on L2 vocabulary has increased.
Dobinson (2001) found that words that are explicitly focused on have a higher chance of being remembered by the students. Additionally, the nature in which the vocabulary is acquired is unique to each learner
Conclusions
Because ELLs only know a fraction of words that a native English speaker has, it is important that English Language teachers teach as much vocabulary as possible
Based on the data, the student-initiated EVF was low, so the researcher states that leaners should be more active in their vocabulary acquisition
The course does not matter in terms of vocabulary teaching. Instead, it is up to the teacher to employ strategies to explicitly teach new vocabulary to ELLs
Results
Communication Skills Course- Highest # of EVFs
Teacher used the whiteboard throughout the class to make students more aware of vocabulary
Teacher used unique memorization strategies so that students may more easily comprehend the vocab
Composition Course- Lowest # of EVFs
The researcher states that as a writing teacher, they should have worked to promote more advanced vocabulary
The teacher's EVFs mostly came from a poem analysis
Research notes that it was good that the teacher acknowledged the students' use of vocab but recommends that this vocabulary use could have been pushed further
TOEFL Preparation Course- Second highest of EVFs
Teacher discussed Latin/Greek root words. This was helpful; however, the researcher noted that students whose first language was not a romance language had trouble with this
Teacher directed new vocabulary to the whole class
Teacher used the first ten minutes of class to discuss a current event. During this, used new vocabulary words and wrote them on the board
Results
Grammar Course- Middle in EVF usage
Grammar textbooks typically do not introduce new vocabulary, so the researcher notes that the grammar teacher had many instances of EVFs
Two factors for this:
The teacher built off of the grammar book's activity to promote new vocabulary acquisition
That week's grammar topic was gerunds and infinitives. Gerunds typically include more complex verbs such as deny, dread, involve, resent
Reading- Few EVFs
Researchers notes that the reading teacher should have directed the students' attention to specific vocabulary words and phrases rather than stating, "Do you understand the vocabulary"
The teacher uses vocabulary in their explanations that may be too complex for the level that they are teaching
Researcher recommends providing an example using the focused vocabulary word