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Teaching
Learner Strategies for Vocabulary Acquisition by Darron Board
- 5
Practical
application
Having looked at the theoretical considerations, attention
must be focused on actual activities for the classroom, to
develop strategies for my learners to learn vocabulary. One
main problem with vocabulary acquisition is that learner need
to work independently of the teacher and classroom to learn
lexis outside the classroom. Therefore what is needed is independent
learning strategies. This is something mentioned earlier,
since SI is linked to learner autonomy development. Part of
the sub-skills as change agent is to train and coach students
in SI and to co-ordinate their on-going individual learning
programme. As said, earlier, no two students are alike and
the key to success is getting learners to recognise their
own particular learning style. Graves (1987) suggests that
by doing a range of different vocabulary activities in class,
students will be exposed to possible strategies that might
be suitable for their style. Graves continues to argue that
since vocabulary learning is a major out of class activity,
it is an important area where individual study programmes
are needed, again an important sub-skill of the teacher as
change agent.
In their well-known book, Learning to Learn English, Ellis
and Sinclair focus on the process of learning rather than
on the lexical content of the exercises, since,
"Learner
training aims to help learners consider the factors that affect
their learning and discover the learning strategies that suit
them best. It focuses their attention on the process of learning
so the emphasis is on how to learn rather than on what to
learn" (1989:2)
As a result, the book provides realistic goals for students
to accomplish self-assessment tasks and awareness raising
strategy work.
Metacognitive SI could take the form of learning different
learning ideas for vocabulary and practising them in a variety
of ways. Schmitt and Schmitt (1995) suggested keeping on-going
vocabulary files where initially basic information can be
written (e.g. an L1-L2 translation) and gradually more information
added until there is an extensive range of lexical, phonological
and semantic information. An important issue with this idea
is to spend time in class to remind learners to go over their
notes and to try to add new information.
Another idea, from Sökmen's Common Threads: An Interactive
Vocabulary Builder (1991) is to ask students to provide "seed"
words which may not be known by the whole class. From these
seed words the words can be built up and expanded and hence
students learn new words and broaden understanding by relating
them to others. This work is then followed up with review
activities.
Action
Plan
To become a successful strategy instructor (an assimilator
to use Nyikos' terminology), I need to consider a variety
of factors and this will take some time to put into practice.
For the SI programme to be consistent I therefore need to
consider:
· timing: should it be short or long term, over a class,
term, school year, at regular intervals….?
· should the treatment of strategies be implicit, explicit
or both?
· should I try to cover a comprehensive list of different
strategies or focus on a limited range?
These questions have to taken into consideration according
to group and level. With reference to this advanced group
of learners, I will need to first get them aware of the strategies
they use as well as introduce strategies implicitly. Since
they come from such a wide background of learning experiences,
aged between 17 and 53 I will need to focus on a wide range
of learning strategies. Finally I will need to implement short-term
goals over a long period of time if the SI is to be effective.
Conclusion
From the research available, and teaching materials developed,
there does not seem to be an exact consensus on exactly what
strategies learners should be taught or what is the most effective
way to do it. However, there is a consensus that SI for learners
is beneficial in general. I now have a clearer idea of how
to approach SI in the classroom and some idea of what is available
for me to introduce more effective SI to my learners. My task
now is to devise ways in which I can integrate these ideas
successfully into my teaching.
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