View Content #18547

by Julie Sykes, CASLS Director

Words form a critical component of communication and, as a result, play a key role in learning any language. Missing vocabulary and/or vocabulary errors are often seen as one of the most disruptive and salient gaps in communication (Gass and Selinker, 2001). In this week's InterCom, we highlight 10 design features for creating materials to build the lexicon. Originally published as a guide for online materials creation, Lafford, Lafford, and Sykes' (2007) design features apply equally across instructional domains. They are redistributed here as a guide for creating classroom activities.

DF #1: New lexical items should be introduced in authentic cultural, sociolinguistic, and pragmatic contexts.

DF #2: Learners use background knowledge to understand and access new lexical items.

DF #3: Learners are provided with multimodal input (dual coding of audio/video and written text/pictures) containing new lexical items to be acquired.

DF #4: New lexical items are made salient in the input.

DF #5: Learners are encouraged to use a variety of resources to help with the understanding of new words in context (e.g., dictionaries [L1 vs. L2], glosses, and pictures).

DF #6: Learners engage in deep processing of new lexical items:

a. New lexical items are introduced and repeated in several different contexts for learners' deeper processing of lexemes and collocations.

b. Learners engage in complex lexical access activities that require applying mental effort and making inferences, rather than just providing simple, discrete-point L1-L2 lexical associations.

DF #7: Learners focus on relations among L2 lexical items (synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms, items in same semantic field, etc.) for expanding depth of knowledge and understanding of L2 collocational possibilities in lexical access and lexical retrieval modes.

DF #8: Learners produce new L2 lexical items (in isolation and in context) in oral and written modes numerous times in various contexts for deeper processing.

DF #9: Learners receive feedback on hypotheses about new L2 lexical items to assist with noticing of learner lexical errors (the interlanguage-L2 gap) and error correction.

a. Learners need multiple chances to correct errors and to negotiate meaning.

b. Feedback is graduated, contingent, naturalistic, and varied.

DF #10: Learner engages in task-based activities to practice (access and retrieve), reinforce and integrate new lexical items into his/her interlanguage system.

-Adapted from Lafford, Lafford, and Sykes (2007)

References

Gass, S., & Selinker, L. (2001). Second language acquisition: An introductory course (2nd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Lafford, B., Lafford, P., & Sykes, J. (2007). Entre dicho y hecho...: An Assessment of the Application of Research from Second Language Acquisition and Related Fields to the Creation of Spanish CALL materials for Lexical Acquisition. CALICO Journal, 24(3), 497-529.