How do we select vocabulary to teach Appendix 4

 How do we select vocabulary?

Though the way coursebooks deal with vocabulary varies, there are several considerations that they use and we can use to
help select vocabulary to teach. (For more depth see McCarthy Chapter 6 – selecting what to teach.)

Frequency – The frequency of the words makes an obvious starting point, especially given that corpora can easily provide a
list of the most frequent words. However, bear in mind that corpora are of different sizes and this can affect the data as to
which are the most frequent. Furthermore, the most frequent words tend to be function words rather than content words.

Surrender value – The best example of this is perhaps in beginner coursebooks; think of the first vocabulary that tends to be
introduced (countries, everyday objects such as pen, notebook); this is because of the immediate usefulness of the language.
It can be said that this type of language has a high surrender value (surrender value is a term taken from the world of
insurance – a life insurance policy which has low surrender value is one which you must pay into for a very long time before
it acquires a reasonable value. Therefore words with a low surrender value are less likely to be of immediate use to the
students).

Range – We should consider the range of use and the needs of the students. For example, technical or medical terms might
have a limited range for a general English student; however, for a doctor the words will be essential. Range can also cover
the variety of contexts in which a word appears.

Quantity – Avoid introducing too many words in one go. Remember new words go into the short-term memory and this can
only hold a limited amount of new words. Some say lower levels may not be able to handle more than seven new items
whereas higher levels could manage up to fifteen.

Learnability – As mentioned earlier, not all words are easy to learn due to spelling, phonology, false-friends or other L1
interference (e.g. make and do are often the same word in many languages). On the other hand, English is so prevalent that
most learners, even so-called beginners, may come to the classroom with some vocabulary. This will include international
words (borrowed) like football, video, taxi and we can build on this by introducing cognates.

Teachability – Some words are far easier to teach than others. Lexis which can be easily demonstrated, shown in pictures,
taught in lexical sets or is thematically linked (e.g. using hyponymy or meronymy) is usually easier to teach.

There is of course one further factor, which is perhaps the most important and can influence all the above factors, and that is
the needs of the learner(s) and we should consider:

 Which words must students know in order to talk about people, things and events in the place where they work / study
and live?
 Which words are needed in connection with the students’ particular interests?
 Which words must the learners know to respond to routine directions and commands in their context?
 Which words are required for certain classroom experiences e.g. describe, compare, underline, tick….

Taken from the IH CAM Course