Lexical Awareness in Second Language Learning
- PDF / 101,152 Bytes
- 11 Pages / 439.37 x 663.307 pts Page_size
- 48 Downloads / 216 Views
LEXICAL AWARENESS IN SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING
INTRODUCTION
Developing lexical awareness involves developing an interest and focus on consciously considering aspects of language, language learning, and language use. Lexical awareness can have a range of goals including helping learners gain a positive attitude toward vocabulary learning, improving their learning skills, developing an enduring interest in the analysis of the vocabulary of different languages and of vocabulary use, and increasing their understanding of the ways in which vocabulary is used for a whole variety of purposes. There has been very little written about lexical awareness in second or foreign language learning within the tradition of language awareness, although there has been a long history of giving deliberate attention to vocabulary learning and explicit analysis of semantic relationships and etymology. The major focus of this chapter is to look at the teaching of lexical awareness. E A R LY C O N T R I B U T I O N S
The whole language approach to learning, at first sight, would not seem to encourage the idea of lexical awareness because it might be seen as looking at bits instead of the whole: “language is a whole . . . any attempt to fragment it into parts—whether these be grammatical patterns, vocabulary lists, or phonics “families” destroys it. If language isn’t kept whole, it isn’t language any more.” (Rigg, 1991, p. 522). However, it is clear from pioneers like Ashton-Warner (1963) that there is a role for looking at the parts, if these parts arise from a whole language focus. Young Maori learners in Ashton-Warner’s class worked on their word cards, reading the words and tracing the letters, which contained keywords that carried immense power and significance for them. There has been a long history of giving deliberate attention to vocabulary and encouraging the growth of strategies such as word part analysis and using word cards. Nation (2001) sees the major vocabulary learning strategies as being (1) guessing from context, (2) deliberate learning using bilingual word cards, (3) using word part analysis to help remember words, and J. Cenoz and N. H. Hornberger (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd Edition, Volume 6: Knowledge about Language, 167–177. #2008 Springer Science+Business Media LLC.
168
P A U L N AT I O N
(4) dictionary use. Although the eventual application of the guessing from context strategy is seen as being below the threshold of conscious awareness, development and training in the strategy involve raising learners’ awareness of the various clues available and their combined application to make an inference that takes the learners forward in their knowledge of the word. Fukkink and de Glopper (1998) have carried out a meta-analysis of studies involving training in deriving word meaning from context. Their analysis supports the value of raising learners’ awareness of this very important strategy and the value of deliberate training. The classic study on guessing is Nagy, Herman, and Anderson’s (1985) st
Data Loading...
