Event

Questions and Considerations for Teaching Vocabulary

Friday, October 21st, 2005, 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM

Speaker: I. S. Paul Nation, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

Recent writing on first language vocabulary learning (Baumann and Kameenui, 2004) has focused quite strongly on the value of teaching vocabulary, seeing teaching as being a very positive thing to do. This paper shows that teaching vocabulary has very limited value because of the very small contribution that teaching can make to overall knowledge of a word. Teaching can also have negative effects if it is not done well. Good teaching needs to:

• focus on high frequency words,
• avoid interference,
• involve rich instruction,
• involve thoughtful processing,
• take account of spaced retrieval,
• direct attention to underlying concepts, and
• provide learner training in vocabulary learning.

Direct teaching should only be a small part of a well-balanced vocabulary program which provides opportunities for learning through meaning-focused input, meaning-focused output, language-focused learning, and fluency development.

Paul Nation is a professor in Applied Linguistics in the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He has taught in Indonesia, Thailand, the United States, Finland, and Japan. His specialist interests are language teaching methodology and vocabulary learning. His latest book is Learning Vocabulary in Another Language, published by Cambridge University Press (2001).

This event is being co-sponsored by Temple University Japan.

Organization: Fukuoka Chapter of the Japan Association for Language Teaching (Fukuoka JALT)

Cost: free

Venue: Tsukushi Kaikan, Tenjin 4-8-10, Chuo-ku, Fukuoka-shi map in Japanese, click the word "map" in katakana)

Location: Fukuoka City, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan

Contact Fukuoka JALT

Trevor Holster