The development of vocabulary is an interesting area of concern for the following reasons:
- It is the one aspect of language most subject teachers talk about and usually the one aspect of their students’ language they complain most about.
- It is a misunderstood aspect of language and perhaps requires a different perspective, so that vocabulary development is linked to learning and real success happens for a greater number of students.
In this article, the focus is on the kind of vocabulary that construes the increasingly technical and abstract meanings that schooling is concerned with. The concern here is not with the vocabulary that construes every day or common-sense meanings, and which can be developed outside of educational institutions.
First, whose role is it to develop vocabulary?
If vocabulary and thought are developed concurrently, then both are developed in a meaningful context and the most meaningful are the classroom activities in which the teacher and the students are engaged in teaching and learning the subject. The more technical and abstract the meanings become, the more the answer to this question is one in which we could all easily agree on – it is the responsibility of the teachers with the expert field knowledge to develop the field-specific vocabulary. The issue, therefore, is not who but how, given all the constraints of time.
Using semantic webs to develop vocabulary in the classroom
In the following suggested method for vocabulary development, it is the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ that is crucial, that is:
- the tasks that the subject teacher has organised and how they are structured
- what questions the teacher asks
- how the class engages with the texts (spoken, written and visual) and activities.
It is the tasks and methods and interactions that shape how and if vocabulary is learned. And all of this should happen as an integral part of learning the content in any lesson.
One way of understanding the ‘what’ and ‘how’ about vocabulary development is to understand how they function in a text. Vocabulary in texts form intricate webs of meaning, or semantic webs, which provide a text with the cohesion it needs for it to be considered a well-structured text. These webs are based on words that:
- have similar meanings (synonyms)
- have contrasting meanings (antonyms)
- form classifications
- are components of something.
These webs determine the kinds of questions we ask students.
Let’s use the following extract to illustrate what can be done:
‘… Acid rain is a chemical phenomenon caused by the dissolution of nitrogen oxides and sulphur dioxide in rainwater to form nitric acid and sulphuric acid, respectively. The oxides are released during the combustion of fossil fuels by cars, factories and power plants. Acid rain has multiple adverse effects on ecosystems, where plants and soils are degraded, and on humans and property. Some of the ways acid rain afflicts people are, for example, the irritation of the human respiratory system and corrosion of human constructions such as buildings and car bodies.
The greenhouse effect is the name given to the phenomenon where the atmosphere behaves in the same way as a greenhouse, which allows certain radiation to enter the glasshouse but prevents other radiation from escaping. In the earth’s situation, objects on the earth absorb UV light and then in turn emit low-energy infra-red radiation, which is then trapped within the earth’s atmosphere, resulting in increasing temperatures. The effect is worsened when the atmosphere is concentrated with air pollutants that are the result of combustion, such as water vapour, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and methane. …’
Rather than simply listing technical words in the text, for example, our suggestion is that learning the technical words is more efficient if the teacher and students focus on the function of the technical and abstract words in the text. For example:
- Ask students to identify and list all the items in the extract that deal with chemical compounds in some way. Students might identify words that represent a major outcome (acid rain, greenhouse effect), others an abstract representation (a chemical phenomenon), while others name the chemical compounds participating in the reactions (nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide, …).
- Which words used in the extract classify (acid, chemical, nitrogen, …).
- Identify all the words in the text that realize negative meanings (adverse, degraded, irritation, corrosion, afflicts, …).
- Which words in the text express causal relationships (caused by, effect, allows, resulting in).
By doing the above tasks, the students, of course, will be including words they already know, but it is the different relationships between the words they know and the new words that allow the student not only to develop the vocabulary but learn the content of the text they are reading.
Because every well-written text is lexically cohesive, then it does not have unlimited semantic webs. Generally, there are around 4 to 5 significant semantic webs in a text, and this makes the task of reading and understanding a text manageable.
This example highlights that vocabulary development happens during interaction with texts, constructing and processing them. As such, they are integral to the classroom. A teacher who engages with texts in the suggested ways is acknowledging that language has an important role in developing the concepts and knowledge of their subject. In fact, they are developing the students’ knowledge more efficiently by using their understanding about how language construes the meanings, i.e. the knowledge of their subject.
To sum up
So, as we’ve just seen, the issues that might be raised by teachers about insufficient time to focus on language because of a tight syllabus or lack of opportunities for effective oral interaction in class, for example, could be tackled successfully by using alternative methods. These methods are then taken up by the students so they carry them out ‘implicitly’ and are independent of the teacher, which means that new, deeper questions can be discussed in the class as the students spiral upwards in their understanding.