Learning and Teaching Second Language Vocabulary

LEARNING AND TEACHING SECOND LANGUAGE VOCABULARY
by Student’s Name
Code + Course Name
Professor’s Name
University Name
City, State
Date
Learning and Teaching Second Language Vocabulary
English is the most spoken language globally, with over 379 and 753 million native and non-native speakers. Just like Greek was a universal language between 500 BC and 100 BC and Latin in the Middle Ages, English is the universal language of modern society. With increasing globalization, cross-cultural interaction, and immigration, learning English is necessary for non-native speakers. Thus, acquiring English as a second language is an essential feature of the American education system. In the learning process, researchers agree that vocabulary skills are the basis of the foundation of English as a second language (Folse, 2012; Chou, 2018). Therefore, the vocabulary development area has attracted the attention of scholars and researchers in the education sector seeking to establish practical approaches for teaching and learning. The current paper aims to provide a critical appraisal of findings related to learning and teaching L2 vocabulary, highlight the main concepts and tools that inform L2 teaching and propose an approach to teaching vocabulary in a specific ELT context.
Literature Review
To gain proficiency in a second language (L2), students must face challenges in pronunciation, pragmatics, composition, syntax, and vocabulary. For English learners, Folse (2012, p. pp. 1) contented the most critical category in learning English is L2. This means that while learners can get by with even weak syntax, a lexical gap can bring any conversation to an immediate halt. Understanding approaches to learning and teaching vocabulary are key features among researchers and scholars.
Resources for Researching Vocabulary
Teaching and learning vocabulary has been the main focus of many researchers in education. As a result, there is an increasing need for resources to facilitate these research projects. According to Anthony (2018), the primary source of data in these types of research is corpus data, while world lists have mainly remained the secondary sources of data. Looking at the future, Anthony (2018) predicts that tools to visualize relationships between vocabulary items will be among the most likely improvements shortly. In agreement with Wright and Cervetti (2016), in their systematic review of vocabulary research, they emphasized that most contemporary research outcomes have relied on corpus data as the primary data source and word lists as the secondary data source.
Corpus data has been utilized to draw specific conclusions or compare with outcomes of ongoing primary research. Expanding on Wright and Cervetti's findings, Schmitt (2019) adds that among these resources, there are six main areas of vocabulary research; including developing practical models for the acquisition of vocabulary, understanding the development of vocabulary knowledge from receptive mastery to productive mastery, incorporation of lexical teaching, exploration of language exposure in extramural. Thus, contemporary research findings that rely on these data resources and approaches promise to be relevant, trustworthy, and valuable. However, these resources are not bound by the scope of Schmitt's outcomes.
Vocabulary Learning & Teaching
Researchers like Alghamdi (2019) have explored L2 vocabulary learning in ESL classes. The research explored how foreign language learners learn vocabulary in an English as a second language classroom setting. The study relied on questionnaires as the primary data collection tool among 11 participants. The participants were eleven international students purposefully sampled from a body of international students from an advanced ESL Reading class at Edmonds Community College in Lynnwood, WA. In the literature review, Alghamdi (p. 79) argues for the relevance of corpus data applied alongside primary data findings to arrive at logical conclusions. Corpus data, Alghamdi argues, shows contemporary research outcomes and provides a basis for discussion in new research projects. The findings suggest that learners are more motivated and engaged in group work activities and reading classes allow them to learn more activities. Further, Alghamdi recommends the introduction of new words using visual stimuli, keeping new words practical, and having students learn new words in groups.
Within Schmitt’s (2019) categories of research, Alghamdi’s work falls within the establishment of practical models for the development of vocabulary. The tools for data collection utilized are widely accepted in research, inclusive of the sampling and analysis of methods indicating that Alghamdi’s work is within the expected standards of scientific research. This shows the trustworthiness of the source and its relevance in the current project in the sense that, respectively, they rely on standard scientific methods concerning corpus data and expand on instructional strategies for teaching vocabulary in L2 learning.
In a similar study, Chou (2018) explored Taiwanese students' perceptions of active explicit vocabulary instructions. In this study, the author argued that insufficient vocabulary is the most consistently reported in the achievement of second-language learning. Studies focusing on this aspect have hardly touched on a learner-centered and interactive approach. Thus, Chou (2018) purposed to determine students' attitudes and perceptions of explicit vocabulary instruction in an English-medium course in Taiwan. The study involved qualitative and quantitative methods in which questionnaires and interviews were the primary data collection methods. Fifty-six junior students were involved in the study, which had three sets of data: attitude questionnaires, interviews, and online discussions. Key findings indicated that students have a positive attitude and perception of the learner-centered and interactive instructional approach conceptualized through Explicit Active Vocabulary Instruction (EAVI).
Like Alghamdi (2019), this study emphasizes the importance of corpus data and its influence on contemporary literature on the topic of vocabulary learning. In Chou's (2018) EAVI, contemporary teachers proved lexical collocation lists targeting single item words. This list reiterates the importance of word lists (as secondary sources) as established by Anthony (2018). According to Chou (2018), EAVI is learner-centered and interactive, and two aspects fall under Schmitt's (2019) category of getting lexical teaching/learning principles into vocabulary and language textbooks. Combined with the researcher's application of a systematic research methodology, these characteristics build a case for the validity and trustworthiness of Chou's (2018) work and its relevance in the current study. The relevance, for instance, is that it provides an alternative instructional approach to learning English as L2.
In a different study, Sonbul and Schmitt (2013) hold that little empirical evidence explains the relationship between explicit and implicit lexical knowledge (of collocation) in learning or teaching English as a second language. Thus, their research aimed to fill the research gap by conducting two laboratory experiments that evaluate the different conditions (enhanced, enriched, and decontextualized) under which native speakers and advanced non-native speakers of English acquire collocations. The study involved 35 native participants, undergraduates studying at a British university. In this study, the author relied on the British National Corpus (BNC) frequency of collocation. The study also assumed that the medical collocations were unknown to the sampled participants. Results from the study indicate...