Teaching Vocabulary

The acquisition of vocabulary is arguably the most critical component of success­ful language learning. Until recently, however, it has been difficult to determine the most important words and phrases needed to establish a suitable vocabulary for conducting conversations most effectively. The Corpus' massive collection of texts has given us access to a wealth of information regarding spoken and written English that was previously unavailable.

The task at hand, therefore, is to take this new information and apply it in the classroom. Since there are so many things to learn about each piece of vocabulary (meaning, spoken/written forms, collocations, connotations, gram­matical behavior, etc.) it is important that we as teachers only introduce a little at a time, starting with the most frequent, useful, and learnable vocabulary, and returning later to more difficult vocabulary and less frequent uses of previously learned items. We need to repeat vocabulary often, because students must work with a word or phrase many times before acquisition takes place, and we must offer variety to keep the exercises fresh and to cater to different learning styles. Finally, we need to help students understand that learning is a gradual process that takes place in small, manageable increments over time, and to encourage them to seek additional information on their own, personalizing the learning experience and tailoring it to their own specific needs.

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