Literature 1

Why do English language learners need explicit teaching of strategies for developing their vocabulary?
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1. English language learners need to learn strategies for rapid learning of vocabulary. They particularly need to learn how to identify words that they must recognize in print but will not encounter in conversational language to learn the academic vocabulary of content areas. English language learners can have a gap of 6000 words between them and native speakers. Successful vocabulary development for native speakers in the classroom teaches 300 words in an academic year, which is not sufficient enough for English language learners.
2. English language learners may find using context to learn unknown words unreliable. Because a greater number of words in the text are unknown to them, they have less information to work with in determining meaning.
3. Because English language learners are less able to use context to learn unknown words, learning vocabulary incidentally as they read is not effective. For these children the probability of learning a word incidentally while they read is 15%.
How do children learn incidentally from context while they read?
4. Knowing a word means knowing many things about the word including:
o A word’s literal meaning and its multiple meanings;
o The connotations of a word;
o The various ways a word can work in a sentence; and
o The synonyms, antonyms, homonyms of a word
5. Learning a word from context over many encounters means learning a word’s various meanings. The first time readers see an unfamiliar word they learn general information about the word’s meaning and its use in a sentence.
As children encounter a word more frequently in context, they learn when there is more than one meaning. They develop knowledge of the depth of a word, its connotations, various uses, is subtleties. Comprehension breakdowns can occur when the reader does not have the knowledge of a word’s depth.
See in Bibliography of Tapestry Set on Vocabulary Development
Closing the gap: Addressing the vocabulary needs of English-language learners in bilingual and mainstream classrooms
Percentage of unknown vocabulary words in text as function of the relative function of the relative difficulty of the text: Implications for instruction.

Annotations of “Why do English language learners need explicit teaching strategies for developing their vocabulary?”
In the article, “Why do English language learners need explicit teaching strategies for developing their vocabulary?” the author attempts to find answers for teaching strategies for learners to develop their vocabulary. He points out five reasons for doing this. Firstly, with possibly a huge gap of 6000 words between them and native speakers, English language learners need to learn strategies for rapid learning of vocabulary. They need to learn how to identify words that they must recognize in print but will not encounter in conversational language to learn the academic vocabulary of content areas. As an EFL student, I find myself and my tutoring stuents as well always experiencing memorizing countless vocabulary during the long English learning Journey. I agree with the author and believe that teaching stretegies for developing words learing is necessary for most students in Taiwan.
Secondly, the author mentioned that using context to learn unknown words might be unreliable for English language learners, given too more words unknown and less information to guess in the text. And, thirdly, for most leaners who are less able to use context to learn unknown words, incidental vocabulary learning is not effective. Under this condition as the author mentions, I agree with him that learning strategies of words need to be explictly taught to help students acquiring vocabulary more efficiently. Knowong the fact that incidental vocabulary learning only occupies 15% of the whole in this article, I realize the importance of intiontional vocabulary learning for students and get the awarness of sharpening my vocabulary teaching skills in order to facilitate others to learn effectively. These two reasons also remind me of suggestting my students to do extensive reading or listening according to their current proficiency level, neither too hard nor too easy. In my interview, I also found out that two of my tutoring freshman really love to do extensive reading and they both won the rewards in the activity of English self-learing held by the Language Center in NCU. I encourage them to do more readings there as I think the materials there can desirably match their language proficiency as well as their intrests. One of them(Ming-Jin Wu) even told me that, “ I just read them for pleasure because reading novels is really interesting and I really learns a lot from it.” Since she is intered in it, I assume that she choose her reading with the sppropriate level to read and get feedback from readinf and learning. In addition, she also mentioned that “ I think that most of the words in the blank of the tests occurs with high frequency in common reading materials or any kind of easily accesible articles. Since I am not familiar with them, I just cannot write them down correctly in the given test time. I guess the exact reason why I cannot get high scores on the filling blank tests of the vocabulary part is because I don’t have plenty access to and familarity with the words which frequently occurs in the contexts. Therfore, I believe doing lots of extracurriculum reading will benefit me to a large degree in learning English vocabulary.” From her words, I think that doing extensive reading might really help a lot in learning English as long as the learner has high motivation in doing so and choosing materials according to the desired prociciency level. She also told me that she goes there for novel reading once or twice a week and one to three hours each time. I can see that she indeed owns very high intrinsic motivation in extensive reading and I believe she will undoutedly benefits from this extensive readinf in learning English.
Moreover, the authors mentions the fourth reason, which indicates that knowing a word includes knowing not only its literal and multiple meanings, but also its connotations, synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, and so on. And finally, the fifth reason reveals that learning a word from context over many encounters means learning a word’s various meanings. I assent to the above two ideas of the author. As to the fourth one, I think a through understanding of a word implies that we have to learn its connotaions, synonym, antonyms, and son on in addtion to its literal meaning. I will thus encourage the learners to use monolingual dictionaries and try to provide words with similar or opposite meaning When introducing new lexical items. To avoid the problem causing misleading meanings by bilingual dictionaries, my tutoring students use monolingual dictionaries now. I also find out that, in the short response writing of one of my tutoring student (Chiung-Yi Hung), she mentioned that she often memorizes “vocabulary and other words associated with it.” When she sees a word, she will “memorize more similar words with the same meaning.” I guess she tries to use the synonyms of a new word to learn it and it’s really a good way to remember a new word because, even after a period of time, the words with similar meanings can be easily retained and retrieved for latter use. As to the fifth reason, I agree with the author that the more frequently readers see an unfamiliar word in the context, the more likely they can know its various meanings and thus able to see its use for different functions or representations. And I think knowing varying meanings of a word in certain specific contexts is crucila when learning vocabulary since context helps us to learn and identifying different meanings of a word in unique situations enable us to get the multiple significance of a word.