Interviews.

November 2006.

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Professor Paul Nation.

I am a professor in the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Among the many programmes our School offers, our MA programme in TESOL and Applied Linguistics are of most interest to readers of the Asian_efl_journal. Our MA is offered by distance as well as on-campus and we have several teachers who are working in Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and Hong Kong enrolled in our programme (www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/).

What positive developments have you seen over the recent years in SLA teaching and theory?

One of the major movements in recent SLA research has been a revival of interest in the value of form-focused instruction (what I would call meaning-focused input). In vocabulary studies there has always been an interest in the deliberate learning of vocabulary and the deliberate learning of multi-word units. There is still a belief that words should not be learned in isolation, that is, they should be always learned in context. The research however does not support this – there is a role for deliberate decontextualised learning as well as learning in context.

A second major movement which has been occurring since the 1980s has been a revival of interest in vocabulary teaching and learning. Since that time, marked by Paul Meara’s landmark article “Vocabulary acquisition a neglected aspect of language learning” ((Meara, 1980), there has been an explosion of research, theory and practice on vocabulary teaching and learning. For example, my own database of vocabulary articles contains almost 2,400 references. XX

Do you believe we are in a post-method era, and if so what doe this mean for teachers trying to develop their teaching approach?

I hope we are as I have never had much time for particular methods. The growth of research in form-focused instruction and vocabulary studies has also been accompanied by a decline in an interest in methods such as the communicative approach, grammar translation, oral-aural and so on. I welcome this as I believe that teachers and students are better served by a focus on principles of teaching learning and course design rather than a global method.

My approach is to language teaching is to ensure that there is a balance of opportunities for learning.  This is really a course design consideration rather than a method. The activities in a language course can be classified into the four strands of meaning-focused input, meaning-focused output, language-focused learning, and fluency development. In a well designed course there should be an even balance of these strands with roughly equal amounts of time given to each strand. The research evidence for the strands draws on the input hypothesis and learning from extensive reading, the output hypothesis, research on form-focused instruction, and research on speaking and reading fluency. These are called strands because they can be seen as long continuous sets of learning conditions that run through the whole language course. Every activity in a language course fits into one of these strands. If a teacher wants to check if their course is a well balanced one, then they should classify the activities in their course into the four strands and see how much time is spent on each strand. If there is an imbalance they need to replace some activities with others from different strands.

Do you believe that the so-called “lexical approach” based on insights from large scale corpora such as the Bank of English is going to make a significant contribution to language teaching?

The main message of Lewis’s lexical approach is that learners should be learning multi-word units. Lewis takes the position that this should be the main kind of learning. I am happy about the focus on multi-word units but would like to see them more clearly defined. I also see a very important role for the deliberate learning of single words. There are interesting issues in each of these focuses. Does learning words in multi-word units mean that learners will have difficulty in using the individual words creatively, in new patterns? Does learning words in isolation mean that they will be used incorrectly from a grammar and collocation perspective?

The next most useful step in the study and teaching of multi-word units will be the development of clear and reliable definitions of the different types of multi-word units. These criteria are likely to include those that look at the frequency of the multi-word unit, how the meanings of the parts relate to the meaning of the whole, the grammatical completeness of the unit, and the size of the unit. Recent work by Grant and Bauer ((Grant & Bauer, 2004) found that there are just over 100 true or core English idioms where the meaning of the parts do not provide access to the meaning of the whole. The most frequent of these core idioms are as well (as), by and large, so and so, out of hand, and take the piss. There is a very large group of multi-word units we can call figuratives where with some effort a relationship can be seen between the parts and the whole. These include multi-word units like at the end of my tether, give the green light,  and just what the doctor ordered. These multi-word units have both a literal meaning and a figurative meaning and the connection between these two meanings can be found through teacher explanation, or by the learners applying an interpretation strategy. The third type of multi-word unit can be called literals. Examples include weak tea, late arrival, naughty boy and the following ideas. Some of these may have word-for-word translations in the learners’ first language while others may be unpredictable from the learners’ first language.

Each of these three types of multi-word units need different learning approaches – core idioms need to be learned unanalysed by finding out their meaning from other sources, figuratives need to be approached by a learning strategy where the literal meaning is related to the figurative meaning, and literals should not need any special learning for receptive purposes, but for productive purposes learners will need to give some special attention to the unit especially where there is not a first language equivalent.

Research using large corpora can thus play a valuable role in determining what is worth teaching.

What recent developments in vocabulary learning do you find most interesting?

Computer-assisted vocabulary learning can be an effective way of getting help with vocabulary. Computer-assisted vocabulary learning covers a wide range of possibilities. Firstly, it can include computer-based analysis of vocabulary which has resulted in the creation of frequency-based word lists (Nation, 2006), the Academic Word List (Coxhead, 2000), and procedures for determining technical vocabulary (Chujo & Utiyama, 2006; Chung & Nation, 2004). Secondly, it can include the analysis of texts to determine their suitability for particular learners or to indicate how they should be adapted or sequenced (http://www.lextutor.ca/vp/). Such analysis can also be used as a way of monitoring the lexical richness of texts produced by learners for research and assessment purposes (Morris & Cobb, 2004). Thirdly, it can include programs designed for the deliberate learning of vocabulary (Cobb, 1999; Horst, Cobb, & Nicolae, 2005; Mondria & Mondria-de Vries, 1994). Fourthly it can include the use of text-linked aids such as spoken support, hyper-text, glosses, concordances, dictionary look-ups and electronic dictionaries, which support reading (Cobb, 1997; Cobb, Greaves, & Horst, 2001). Fifthly, it can include the use of word processing tools such as highlighting, track changes, comments and hyper-text links to provide feedback on electronically submitted written work (Gaskell & Cobb, 2004). Not surprisingly, there has been an increasing amount of research and the development of applications in each of  these areas as computer technology has developed.

Computers and vocabulary learning are very well matched, - Tom Cobb describes it as a marriage made in heaven – and his work has shown us some of the exciting possibilities.

References

Chujo, K., & Utiyama, M., (2006). Selecting level-specific specialized vocabulary using statistical measures. System, 34, 255-269.

Chung, T. M., & Nation, P., (2004). Identifying technical vocabulary. System, 32(2), 251-263.

Cobb, T., (1997). Is there any measurable learning from hands-on concordancing? System, 25(3), 301-315.

Cobb, T., (1999). Breadth and depth of vocabulary acquisition with hands-on concordancing. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 12(4), 345 - 360.

Cobb, T., Greaves, C., & Horst, M. (2001). Can the rate of lexical acquisition from reading be increased? An experiment in reading French with a suite of on-line resources. In P. Raymond & C. Cornaire (Eds.), Regards sur la didactique des langues secondes (pp. 133-153). Montréal: Éditions logique.

Coxhead, A., (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly, 34(2), 213-238.

Gaskell, D., & Cobb, T., (2004). Can learners use concordance feedback for writing errors? System, 32(3), 301-319.

Grant, L., & Bauer, L., (2004). Criteria for redefining idioms: Are we barking up the wrong tree? Applied Linguistics, 25(1), 38-61.

Horst, M., Cobb, T., & Nicolae, I., (2005). Expanding academic vocabulary with an interactive on-line database. Language Learning and Technology, 9(2), 90-110.

Meara, P., (1980). Vocabulary acquisition: a neglected aspect of language learning. Language Teaching and Linguistics: Abstracts, 13(4), 221-246.

Mondria, J. A., & Mondria-de Vries, S., (1994). Efficiently memorizing words with the help of word cards and "hand computer": theory and applications. System, 22(1), 47-57.

Morris, L., & Cobb, T., (2004). Vocabulary profiles as predictors of the academic performance of Teaching English as a Second Language trainees. System, 32, 75-87.

Nation, I. S. P., (2006). How large a vocabulary is needed for reading and listening? Canadian Modern Language Review, 63(1), 59-82.