In order to understand and interpret the results, it is essential to clarify some terms used in this study
1. Tokens: Tokens mean running words counted by occurrences (Nation, 2001). As the example given by Nation, in the sentence “It is not easy to say it correctly”
would contain eight words, even though two of them are the same word form, it.
Words which are counted in this way are called “token” and sometimes “running words” (p.7).
2. Types: Types, or graphic word types, refer to running words excluding repeated occurrences (Nation, 2001). According to Nation, we can count the words in the sentence “It is not easy to say it correctly” another way. If we see the same word again, we do not count it again. Thus, the sentence of eight tokens consists of seven different words, namely “types” (p.7).
3. Word Families: A Word family consists of a headword, its inflected forms, and its closely related derived forms (Nation, 2001). Due to the complexity of the problem in deciding what should be included in a word family and what should not and the fact that not all members of a word family are introduced at the same time in high school textbooks, the following study will mainly focus on types, instead of word families.
4. Entries: An entry could refer to an item written in a dictionary. In this study,
entries refer to the headwords listed in the vocabulary lists. For example, the word, disappoint, could only be one entry in the vocabulary list of the textbooks with several derivations, such as disappointing, disappointed, and disappointment.
There are totally four types, but only one entry.
5. Listed new words: Listed new words refer to those words listed in the vocabulary lists, inclusive of Words for Production, Words for Recognition, Idioms and Phrases, Words for Conversation. There might be more than one listed new words, such as derivations, under one single entry. For example, the entry “disappoint”
could contain “disappointing”, “disappointed”, and “disappointment”. There is solely one entry but there are three listed new words.
6. Unlisted new words: Unlisted new words refer to the words which are neither included in SH/VH vocabulary lists nor taught in the JH teaching materials, namely the 2000-word lists by the MOE.
7. Word size: The amount of vocabulary or the vocabulary load is addressed as
“word size” in this study.
8. Consistency: The consistency between junior high school vocabulary and senior or vocationally high school refers the overlaps of the teaching materials between these two educational stages. Lack of consistency means there is a gap of
vocabulary between junior high school and senior/vocational high school textbooks, and vice versa.
9. Frequency: Even though the frequency of a certain word could be viewed as an index of its commonness and familiarity, the “frequency” of a certain word mainly represents the times of exposures.
10. Threshold:
a. All-or-Nothing Threshold: Around 80% vocabulary coverage of a certain text (Nation, 2001). In other words, if there is more than one word in every five words, no adequate comprehension is achieved.
b. Probabilistic Threshold: At least 95% vocabulary coverage of a certain text for minimally acceptable comprehension (Nation, 2001).
c. Exposure threshold: As suggested by Saragi, Nation, and Meister (1978) and
Rott (1999), six encounters of a certain word in a certain text should be located as the watershed of successful learning.
11. JH: Junior high school.
12. SH: General senior high school.
13. VH: Vocational high school.
14. MOE: The Ministry of Education.
15. NICT: The National Institute for Compilation and Translation.
16. Word-JHA: The vocabulary list of the old centralized Junior High School Required English Course (Book one to Five).
17. Word-JHB: The vocabulary list of old centralized Junior High School Elective English Course (Book one to Six).
18. Word-JH1000: The 1000 productive vocabulary for JH students.
19. Word-JH2000: The 1000 receptive vocabulary for JH students.
20. Word-SHP/VHP: The headwords in the vocabulary lists of Words for Production for the reading texts in the SH/VH textbooks.
21. Word-SHO/VHO: The headwords in the other vocabulary lists, including Words for Recognition, Idioms & Phrases, listed Derivatives, and Words for
Conversation in the SH/VH textbooks.
22. Corpus-SHA/VHA: Corpus-SHA/VHA contains merely the reading texts in the SH/VH textbooks.
23. Corpus-SHB/VHB: Corpus-SHB/VHB contains both the reading texts and the section of conversations in the SH/VH textbooks.
24. Corpus-SHC/VHC: Corpus-SHC/VHC contains the reading texts, the section of conversations and the example sentences of vocabulary in the SH/VH textbooks.
25. Corpus-SHD/VHD: Corpus-SHD/VHD contains the reading texts, the section of conversations, the example sentences of vocabulary and the English explanations
of vocabulary in the SH/VH textbooks.
26. FE: Far East Book Company 27. LT: Lungteng Cultural Company 28. SM: Sanmin Book Company
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
The review of literature in this chapter focuses on the issues of vocabulary
related to this study. This chapter first discusses why, what, and how a learner learning English as a Foreign Language (hereafter as EFL), should put effort on vocabulary since we are in the EFL environment. The relationship among vocabulary, textbooks, and EFL learning is also covered. The last part presents the findings of some current studies related to the vocabulary learning in the EFL learning environments of Taiwanese high schools.
2.1 The Importance of Vocabulary
It seems that vocabulary has always been treated as the mainstream or at least as one of the major components of language teaching and learning. Passing through decades of neglect from 1940 to 1970 (Fries, 1945; Lado, 1955; Carter, 1998; Laufer, 1986), vocabulary is now recognized as central to both native language acquisition and non-native language learning ( Allen, 1983; Carter & McCarthy, 1998; Harvey, 1983; Laufer, 1997, Nation, 1990).
This section discusses the status of vocabulary in language teaching and learning.
According to the current English education in Taiwanese high schools, the focus of attention is placed on teaching and learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL), and reading, the most emphasized skill in Taiwanese classrooms and examinations.
2.1.1 The Role of Vocabulary in EFL Learning
The rapid growth of English as an international language of communication has stimulated its worldwide popularity in language teaching and learning for decades. In
many non-English-speaking countries, such as Taiwan, English is even a requested subject in the compulsive education system, six-year education in elementary school and three-year education in junior high school. However, the status of English, either ESL or EFL, varies along with different sociocultural contexts. Brown (2001), one of the most reputable experts in language teaching and learning, defined the two statuses as follows.
(1) ESL: to refer to English as a Second Language taught in countries (such as the US, the UK, or India) where English is a major language of commerce and
education, a language that students often hear outside the walls of their classrooms (p.3).
(2) EFL: to refer to English as a Foreign Language taught in countries (such as Japan, Egypt, or Thailand) where English is not a major language of commerce and education and students do not have ready-made contexts for communication beyond their classrooms (p.3; p. 116).
Due to the significant differences between these two statuses, Brown (2001) also cautioned that distinct pedagogies should be applied in the two contexts respectively.
Thereby, comparing with ESL, language teaching and learning in an EFL context, as Taiwanese English Education, is clearly a different and greater challenge for both learners and teachers.
In EFL learning, vocabulary is always deemed as an important element. Under the huge pressure brought by the backwash effect, namely the effect of testing on teaching and learning (Hughes, 1999), in Taiwan, the focus of English teaching mainly depends on how to expand the vocabulary size of the students and therefore to enhance their English ability in reading and writing. Many English teachers start their lessons by introducing new words before thy go further to the reading and students tend to review vocabulary first while preparing for their tests. That prevalence
conveys the messages that increasing the size of vocabulary has become the priority for EFL learners in Taiwan (Liu, 2002).
In addition to the backwash effect and the status of vocabulary as the priority in teaching and tests, the importance of vocabulary in EFL learning could also lie in the roles as the significant indexes of learning difficulty, learners’ errors, and language proficiency.
2.1.1.1 An Index of Learning Difficulty
As Nagy (1989) claimed that “lack of adequate vocabulary knowledge is already an obvious and serious obstacle for many students,” plenty of language learners not only consider vocabulary responsible for their frustration and as a serious obstacle (Nation, 1990) but also view vocabulary as an index of learning difficulty.
While probing into the core of communication problems, Nation (1990) pointed out that the breakdown of communication attributed to the fact that “learners feel that many of their difficulties in both receptive and productive language use result from an inadequate vocabulary” (p.2). In speaking another language, Wallace (1982)
emphasized that the most frustrating experience was the failure of finding proper words to express oneself. As for reading, Klare (1984) proclaimed that vocabulary had drastic effects on the readability of texts. Gorman’s study (1979) also showed that for the ESL learners, 68% of the difficulty in academic reading resulted from insufficient vocabulary. In the survey conducted by Leki and Carson (1994), the L2 college students acknowledged vocabulary as the difficulty-maker in academic writing tasks.
Thus, it is obvious that the more limited a learner’s lexical competence is, the more difficulty he or she may encounter during the process of language learning.
2.1.1.2 An Index of Learners’ Errors
As mentioned above, inadequate vocabulary, namely lexical errors, could seriously hinder communication. The result of Kelly’s (1991) experiment illustrated
that among the errors made by the advanced EFL learners in Belgium while listening to excerpts from British radio broadcasts, 60% of the errors were lexical. What was more shocking was that the lexical errors could cause complete misunderstanding of part of the texts and then made up about three-fourths of listening comprehension obstruction.
Comparing with grammatical errors, lexical ones still play a more influential role in language learning. Angeli (1974) attested that 48.5% of lexical errors impeded listening comprehension, much higher than 13% of syntactical errors. By the same token, Meara (1984) figured out the ratio of lexical errors to grammatical errors was as high as 3:1 or 4:1. Besides, Widdowson (1978) manifested that for native speakers, well-structured utterances with inaccurate vocabulary brought more difficulty in comprehension than ungrammatical utterances with accurate lexis.
2.1.1.3 An Index of Language Proficiency
It is out of question that a learner’s lexical ability correlates with his or her language proficiency, inclusive of four basic language skills, listening, speaking, reading, and writing. For oral and aural aspects, Washburn (1992) calculated 2,000 most frequent words were necessary for daily conversations while Kelly (1991) evaluated 5,000 most frequent words were prerequisite in order to understand 95% of a news report broadcast.
As for non-verbal aspects, lexical knowledge is definitely one of the most
dominant determinants of readability of a text (Simic, 1990). Particularly for language learners at lower levels, like Taiwanese high school students, vocabulary knowledge plays a more significant role in reading comprehension (McQueen, 1996). From Read’s (2000) points of view, if a learner’s vocabulary is under a certain threshold level, he or she could suffer from decoding the basic elements of a text and
discouragement from advancement of reading comprehension. In order to read
unsimplified texts effortlessly, Bamford (1984) suggested that a lexicon of at least 3,000 headwords be required. When it comes to writing, learners have to enlarge their productive vocabulary (Nation, 1990).
Based on the strong correlation between vocabulary and EFL language learning discussed above, the important role of vocabulary as indexes of learning difficulty, learners’ errors, and language proficiency should be apparent. The significance of vocabulary in EFL language learning could be concluded with Laufer’s (1986) advocacy that “without adequate lexis there is no proper language competence or performance” (p.70).
2.1.2 The Role of Vocabulary in Reading
Liu (2002), whose research exploring the vocabulary acquisition through reading of the EFL senior high school students in Taiwan, pinpointed out that the focus of the English teaching in Taiwan “all hinges on how to expand the vocabulary size of our students and thereby enhanced their English ability in reading and writing (p.8).”
Despite the fact that the stipulations of the high school curricula of English by the Ministry of Education (1994, 1996) covers four basic skills, namely reading, writing, speaking, and listening, reading is still the main focus in most of English classrooms in Taiwanese high schools, and more influentially in most of examinations, such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test and the Appointed Subject Test for senior high school students. Due to the backwash effect, therefore, it is reasonable and inevitable to consider the role vocabulary plays in reading.
2.1.2.1 The Predictor of Successful Reading
It could be accepted that both linguistic and metalinguistic components are required for successful reading. Many researchers (Alderson, 1984; Grabe, 1991; Lee
& Schallert, 1997; Schulz, 1983) presented evidence suggesting vocabulary and grammar, namely the linguistic components, be important to the comprehension of
foreign language texts. However lexical knowledge will be the major concern in this study because many other researchers, in fact, have found an evident correlation between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension and therefore considered vocabulary as a more crucial factor in reading and comprehending text and the best predictor of successful reading (Huang C.C., 2001; Huang, T.L., 2001; Laufer, 1997;
Lin & Hu, 2002; Luppescu & Day, 1995; Nation, 2001; Ryder & Hughes, 1985;
Ryder & Slater, 1988; Yang, 2002).
Alderson’s (1984) review of research on foreign language reading also showed that the lexical difficulties were greater than the syntactic difficulties. Furthermore, from Laufer’s (1997) study, “students also tend to regard words as main landmarks of meaning” (p.21). Taiwanese EFL students may hold similar opinions. Most of the senior high school students in Huang’s (2002) research considered that unfamiliar words caused reading difficulty. Even the college students in Taiwan still encounter plenty of difficulties in reading English textbooks and many of them accuse the lack of English vocabulary for their comprehension failure (Liu, 2002).
If students lack a certain amount of vocabulary, which was viewed as the most clearly identifiable subcomponent of the ability to read by, they might not be able to understand the English texts in their textbooks (Nation and Coady, 1988). Then, they will have to read slowly and not enjoy reading. Finally, they could be trapped into a vicious circle to give up English and to have lower and lower English capability (Nuttall, 2000). That is also echoed by Young (1999) that for second language readers, texts which are lexically complex may make the process of reading too challenging and lead them to experience frustrations and to lose interest in reading.
2.1.2.2 The Threshold of Feasible Reading
It is undeniable that if a text contains too many unknown words, they could create gaps in the meaning of a text, and if there are too many gaps, it could be very
difficult for readers to construct meaning (Beck, Perfetti, & McKeown, 1982).
Consequently, the key to make the vicious circle into a virtuous one is the threshold level, which represents the feasibility of reading. 3000 word families or 5000 lexical items would be the threshold level proved in Laufer’s (1997) research. Obviously it is beyond the English proficiency levels of most Taiwanese high school students.
Instead, the more suitable threshold for them could be Nation’s (2001) “all-or-nothing threshold,” which is around 80% vocabulary coverage of a certain text. Beneath the level, no adequate comprehension is achieved. In Nation’s study, almost all learners could have a chance of gaining adequate comprehension with 98% vocabulary coverage. 95% coverage is likely to be the “probabilistic threshold” of for minimally acceptable comprehension.
In brief, reading texts for meaning should be an important source of the vocabulary growth for intermediate language learners, like Taiwanese high school students. The reasons lie in that reading not only provide the repetitions necessary for consolidating new words in the learner’s mind but also supplies the different contexts necessary for elaborating and expanding the richness of knowledge about those words (Liu, 2002, p. 26). Moreover, as Wilken’s (1971) comment that “without grammar, very little was conveyed, without vocabulary, nothing could be conveyed” (p.111), vocabulary, as the predictor of successful reading, should be regarded as the priority element in foreign language teaching.
2.2 The Nature of Vocabulary
Since vocabulary knowledge plays such a significant role in language learning and comprehension, it is necessary to clarify what is involved in word knowledge.
2.2.1 Knowledge of Knowing a Word
As everyone knows, the basic knowledge of knowing a word should be the recognition of its aural and visual forms at least (Kelly, 1991). Nevertheless, the knowledge of a single lexeme could be much ampler. It should also be related to syntactic, phonological, semantic, or orthographic information and be concerned with pragmatics, psycholinguistics, and sociolinguistics (Yule, 2001).
As a scholar specializing in vocabulary teaching and learning, Nation (2001) categorizes it into three main aspects: form, meaning, and use. Knowing the form of a word includes its spoken form, written form, and word parts. Knowing the
meaning of a word involves form and meaning, concept and referents, and
associations. Knowing the use of a word not only consists of grammatical functions and collocations, but also constraints on use, for cultural, geographical, stylistic or register reasons.
Chang (2002) summarized the views of a few linguists (Carter, 1989; Laufer, 1997; Nation, 1990; Richards, 1976) regarding the knowledge of knowing a word, and the synthesis is as follows.
(1) Form—both spoken and written, namely pronunciation and spelling.
(2) Word structure—the basic free morpheme (or bound root morpheme) and common derivations of the word and its inflections.
(3) Syntactic pattern of the word in a phrase and sentence.
(4) Meaning—referential, affective (connotation), and pragmatic (suitability).
(5) Lexical relations of the word with other words—synonyms, antonyms, or hyponyms.
(6) Common collocations.
(7) General frequency of use.
(8) Generalizability (pp.20-21)
2.2.2 Receptive Vocabulary and Productive Vocabulary
For language learners, knowing a lexeme may not include the entire world of its related knowledge but simply be partial. In other words, there are words learners merely know receptively or in certain contexts, but they cannot use them productively (Carter & McCarthy, 1988). Briefly speaking, receptive vocabulary refers to passive vocabulary recognized or understood in reading and listening while productive vocabulary refers to active vocabulary utilized in speaking and writing. The differences could be clearly demonstrated from the table illustrating the aspects of word knowledge provided by Nation (1990).
Table 2. Aspects of Word Knowledge by Nation (1990, p.31) Form
Spoken form R*
P
What does the word sound like?
How is the word pronounced?
Written form R P
What does the word look like?
How is the word written and spelled?
Position
Grammatical patterns
R P
In what patterns does the word occur?
In what patters must we used the word?
Collocations R P
What words or types of words can be expected before or after the word?
What words or types of words must we use with this word?
Function
Frequency R P
How common is the word?
How often should the word be used?
Appropriateness R P
Where would we expect to meet this word?
Where can this word be used?
Meaning
Concept R P
What does the word mean?
What word should be used to express this meaning?
Associations R P
What other words does this word make us think of?
What other words does this word make us think of?