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By Julie Sykes, CASLS Director

Words have the power to to shape history, heal relationships, cause conflict, connect families, and facilitate negotiations. We should not underestimate their power. However, in language teaching and learning, words themselves are often relegated to one-to-one relationships with an image or translations or placed in long lists for students to memorize. Take, for example, the many popular self-study language applications that focus on translation or the numerous vocabulary quizzes in which learners are required to recall a list of words based on a picture. While none of these practices is necessarily detrimental, they are not reflective of the power words can have when approached from a meaning-based (i.e., pragmatic) perspective.  In addition to learning “what words mean,” a meaning-based approach adds the perspective of "what words can mean," thereby emphasizing that word meaning can be dynamic and is always shifting based on the experience of interlocutors themselves. 

For example, the word "coffee" often appears in a textbook with a picture of a brown beverage with steam. But the reality is that when two friends decide to go for “coffee,” they might order tea, or scones, or a full meal. Thus what coffee means is a hot brown bean-based beverage, but what it can mean is time set aside with a friend. A learner who replies, “I don’t drink coffee, but thank you anyway” is missing out on the extended meaning, in which coffee is used to frame a friendly invitation.

A meaning-based approach enables learners not only to match a word with a definition, but also to use that word in alternative ways for humor, to create inside jokes with people they are close to, and to shift their understanding of a word when it is used in a professional setting instead of a vernacular domain. This skill also helps limit frustration that often arises with the occurrence of too many unknown words by enhancing decoding skills and encouraging students to understand meaning as it directly relates to the context in which it is used.  A meaning-based approach does not require a drastic shift, but rather a subtle movement towards the dynamic nature of human language.

Here are some ideas for learners to expand their understanding of the extended meanings of words:

• ask learners to make a list of words they have used as inside jokes and then have them explore ways in which words they need to learn have been used in other ways.
• ask learners to observe the way language is used over the course of a week, while making note of any time they notice a word used in a way that does not fit with its typical definition.
• ask learners to think of any words or phrases that have a unique meaning in the specific shared culture of their classroom environment.

Regardless of the approach one takes, understanding the value of words as active tools is fundamental to long-term language success.