Extensive Reading Develops Vocabulary Acquisition

by Ratna Nur'aini

I do agree that extensive reading is considered to be a part of the way to increase the students' vocabulary. After reading the text materials, the students are asked to make discussion. In this case, the students automatically increase their vocabulary to express their opinion to reply their friends' ideas during the discussion.  Meaning that, the students will be challenged to read more sources to enhance their knowledge. Otherwise they will have limited information to get involve in discussion. As what Cahyono (1997) said that students limited vocabulary cause problems in expressing main idea and elaborating supporting ideas.When the students reading the text materials given several times, they will learn how grasp the meaning of the vocabularies from the context. It is expected that automatically the students build their vocabulary through a contact or context.

Vocabulary has essential role in learning a language. Kresen and Terrel claim that learning vocabulary should be focused to be more comprehensible, thus there will be more acquisition.

Based on these facts, I think that teachers may create class for vocabulary learning such as what I have ever done as follows:

 

 

• One in two weeks I give the students in group of 4 a kind of assignment or homework about a reading text.
• Asked the students at home or out of class to discuss the text material in group to find some unfamiliar words to be listed while understanding the content of the text.

Reading, Reading, and Reading..

Happy New Year! Well, my break was awesome and quite hectic as there were so many things to do. However, if we enjoy and love what we do, there will be a lot of happiness that we can get.

What can say about reading? Well, Bond et al. (1979) state that since our world is a reading world, it would be difficult to find any activity, whether in school, in the home, on the form of business, which does not require at least some reading ability. Often reading is an indispensable channel of communication with an ever-widening world. They also add that even a casual observation of people’s activities shows the important role of reading in their lives. By that it means, more people read today than ever before. People get a lot of benefits from doing this kind of activity. In general, people read to obtain information, to buy economically, to arrive at a decision, to provide pleasure, and for many other reasons.

While in more educational context, Brown (2003) states that reading is a skill that teachers simply expect learners to acquire. He adds that reading is the most essential skill for success in all educational contexts which remains a skill of paramount importance as we create assessments of general language ability. Moreover, most of scientific books and academic texts are written in English (Levine et al., 2000). In English as a Foreign Language, the emphasis of teaching and learning process tends to be on reading skills. Therefore, students need to learn reading skills in order to understand a lot of academic information provided at their school or some non-academic information in their surroundings such as magazines, newspaper, books, directories, pamphlets, catalogues, television, and internet.

One day, my friend from Poland said that the effective way to learn English is by reading a lot. It can improve the vocabulary size of everyone who does read.

Yeah, I agree, but not totally agree. As we know that English skills are always integrated each other. One cannot stand by itself, it needs the other skills to produce what is called “communication”.

Extensive Reading (ER) is not really useful if the learners do not know how to pronounce the words. It will be difficult for them to speak and be understood by other people if the pronunciation is wrong. Moreover, it will be difficult for them to understand what people say although they actually know the words.

I have a friend who teaches Japanese language. She teaches vocabulary at most. She writes a lot of words on the white board and then, in addition to tell the meaning of each word, she also asks the learners to repeat after her.

When I was a student, my English teacher often asked me and my friends to read aloud some English texts. Then, she also read again the text by herself so we knew the wrong pronunciation that we had just did. After that, we discussed the context of the text.

I think both examples are good, so sometimes I imitate and apply them at school. In the future, I have a plan to make ER as an additional task. So, the students who do and make report of what they read will get stars or some rewards. Cheers.

Response for Nation's Ideas

What a high quality article! Somehow it needs much effort to comprehend the whole Nation’s ideas. Well, in my opinion, I totally agree that vocabulary is an important component for constructing the four English skills (listening, reading, speaking, and writing). Without vocabulary, it will be difficult for someone to convey what in his/her mind is.

Based on my experience, the students still feel difficult in guessing the meaning of English words when they do not know what the real meaning is. Therefore, it can be a barrier for them to comprehend the next ideas. I think that learning vocabulary through reading is the most suitable solution to solve the problem because by reading a lot, the students will meet a lot of new words that they have to know the meaning to get the point of the ideas.

I remember when I was still a college student, my lecturer always gave me and my friends reading assignment that we usually called it extensive reading. Every week we should read English books as many as possible and make the written report at home. During the class, we made a small group and should retell what we had read. Time passed and we knew that it was very beneficial for our improvement.

I think there are also other ways to learn vocabulary. The key is the learners should feel happy when they do it. I am sure that they are very happy when they are asked to learn vocabulary through playing games, browsing Professor Google, chatting in Facebook instead of reading academic research articles just like what I did (haha.. just kidding :)

After learning vocabulary, the learners may measure their vocabulary size. I twice visited the link as mentioned: I did not finish my first try because it was break time and I did not have adequate time to answer all of the questions. A few days later, I tried again and committed to finish all of the questions and the result was not bad and not good (haha..) as there are so many unfamiliar words that I hesitated to answer, so I chose “I don’t know”. Frankly speaking, we are used to using common English words, not the complicated ones in class. It makes us easier in communicating with all levels of learners. However, perhaps later I will ask the students to visit the link and assure them that the purpose of this activity is just for fun instead of assessing them.

By the way, I think a bilingual or monolingual vocabulary size test does not make any differences. It depends on the need. The test may provide two or more sentences, so the test-taker who does not know the meaning can guess it from its context. Cheers.

BEING ABLE TO READ IS BEING ABLE TO LIVE

For thousands of years, human beings have realized that they need to communicate to get their needs. One way of communicating is language. 

People use different kinds of language, in various methods. Starting from the simplest one, using body gestures or making certain meaningless sounds accompanied by gestures or conveying in a meaningful utterances. How did they learn about the signs, the spelling, the sound, the spread of the language? Amazingly, people even could find the meaning of their language in other languages! The world travelers were to whom people indebted the most for the fast and vast spreading of a language. In acquiring new language which is not our mother-tongue, there are vocabulary items to learn and remember. That deals with our brain.

Brain is a part of our body acting like a library, as I wrote earlier. As living things, our brain will age as aging is a part of life, but there are plenty of things you can try to help keep your memory sharp.

1. Get Up and Go

Exercise regularly. It's one of the best things you can do to help prevent age-related memory loss. Moving boosts blood flow to your brain and helps nerve cells in the part of brain that controls your memory.

2. Eat Right for Your Brain

One of the best diets for your brain is also good for your heart, says aging specialist Tiffany Hughes, PhD. She is a research assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh.

"We know that if your heart's not healthy and it's not pumping blood and oxygen to your brain, that can have a negative effect on your brain health," she says. So, load up on vegetables and fruits.        

3. Work Your Mind

Whether it's crossword puzzles or Sudoku, computer games or mahjong, exercising your brain keeps it working, says Amy R. Ehrlich, MD. She is associate chief of geriatrics at Montefiore Medical Center in New York.

"I encourage people to find new activities that are stimulating, that engage them, that keep them using different parts of their mind than they used when they were working," she says.

4. Be Social

Try to be part of your community. It gets you engaged in conversations and activities, and keeps you thinking, talking, laughing, and planning -- all important ways to keep your mind nimble.

Reading extensively can eventually generate our memory and help us to be up-to-date in every angle in life. Language is an angle and language is part of culture of a country. If you want to learn a language you also should learn the culture. In terms of English, we can learn about a Royal tea party along with the language, or playing BINGO and find out what is the origin of the bingo the dog. Everything is connected. So, whether we have deliberate vocabulary learning and learning from reading, it doesn't matter. What does matter the most then? It is how we present them and know how much to be taken, not too little not too much. But, how much is too much? How interesting a presentation could be? Those are for other posts.

Thanks for reading.

Sincerely.

January 2014

Kia ora,

VUW building

We are now in the year of 2014. Happy New Year and may God shower us with His grace. New semester is about to come next week in Indonesia. How was your break?

This January I would like you to read (and listen to) an article about vocabulary: http://www.beeoasis.com/archives/15228. Please also read an online debate generated by the post. “Vocabulary acquisition, input, and extensive reading: A conversation”. Follow this link: http://jalt-publications.org/tlt/articles/3152-vocabulary-acquisition-input-and-extensive-reading-conversation and download the article.  

After reading both articles please share your views in a blog post. What do you think about deliberate vocabulary learning and learning from reading? Do you that extensive reading (ER) is enough to increase L2 vocabulary?

How do you teach vocabulary at school? Does the approach you use work well? Why do you think so?

I really appreciate to those who posted in December. It would be great to hear from the rest of you this January. I am looking forward to seeing your posts and comments on the readings soon!

Red Pohutukawa

Your active participation in this blog is essential for the study. You are also still in for the draw to win one of four autographed-books by Professor Paul Nation - a world-renowned TESOL scholar. The first book has been drawn at the end of November. The next draw is at the end of February 2014.

Cheers,

Anik

 

 

WRITING DESCRIPTIVE PARAGRAPH WHILE LEARNING NEW VOCABULARIES



Taking note

Academic vocabulary as Nation (2006) said is the learners’ academic purpose of English in Senior High School. To determine the level of vocabulary learners need to learn about the vocabulary level test. The result of the test is interpreted between the high frequency words and the low frequency words. The frequency word is one to plan a vocabulary program of teaching. The 2000 or 2570 high frequency words deserve classroom time because this classroom time can involve direct teaching of these words, doing activities designed to teach learning, and practice using the words. Low frequency words however, do not deserve classroom time because there are many learners who need to begin learning low frequency words. In this case, teacher should start teaching with the four useful strategies dealing with the words, which is the strategy of guessing words from context clues, deliberate learning using words cards, helping memory by using word part analysis, and dictionary used. 

Investigating

Nation in language education also said that vocabulary could be learned through listening, reading, speaking, and writing. In learning through listening or reading, the learners should be focused on understanding what they are listening to or reading. They should already know at least 95% of words and phrases in the input, so there are small numbers of unfamiliar language features that can be understood through the context clues. Another source of vocabulary learning through meaning focused input is through conversational interaction in vocabulary learning through speaking. Vocabulary learning in extensive reading program is suitable for the learners who can read already knowing about 98% of the running words in the text. Vocabulary learning can be done in class time but, sometimes it is done largely out of class when the learners have a few minutes of free time such as when travelling on the subway, waiting for a bus, or during TV commercials. Communication through the internet is a kind to increase the opportunity for learning vocabulary through writing. Vocabulary testing is used to monitor and encourage the progress of learning.

Describing the plant

In applying of teaching to the learners at SMAN7 Malang, I have done some teaching activities. One of them is writing activities. Through the writing activities, I ask the students of X IS3 class the year of 2013-2014 to write descriptive paragraph to describe the Indonesian local fruit trees, which are growing around the schoolyard. The class is divided into 7 groups of 5. The groups are asked to spread out around the schoolyard to find one local fruit tree. They are not allowed to describe the same object.

Mangoes

Therefore, they should make some negotiation if they have the same choice. When they feel sure that they do not have the same object, they may start doing their project. Every member should make some observation of their own based on the part that their captains of the groups give. The captains have a task to control their members’ work. The activities will be done well based on the captain’s attention. Every member should have the note to write the data dealing with the local fruit trees they have chosen during the observation. For example, when they find the tree, they should make some note such as the condition of the tree, leaf, branch, root, fruit, etc. The kind of fruit trees they choose are: Longman, Mango, Guava, Jack Fruit, Passion fruit, and Soursop. They should find the data in details within the time given before they change to another member of their own group. Thus, the students turn back to class to make a discussion about the data they have collected. While writing the paragraph, they make a list of the words they get from the outside of class during the observation. In finding the data, they are suggested to use their dictionaries and if possible, when they do not satisfied with the data they get from the real object – the local fruit trees, they may complete their data by browsing information from the internet. 

Soursop

To control whether they could finish doing their work on time, every group should show what they have done by presenting their paragraph in front of class through the LCD display. Therefore, everyone can read and may give some comment or some correction and criticism to build the good paragraph. The groups should submit the paragraph and display the amount or the list of the vocabularies they get during the observation from the object or browsing words from the internet. From the displaying new words, all the students can learn and use them in other opportunities or in conversational interaction among others in or out of class. By learning the new vocabularies from each of the groups and used them in their daily life is a mean of enrich the vocabularies.

Passion fruits