Introduction

There are two basic sources for vocabulary: firstly, what I shall call 'vocabulary collectio44ns', e.g. vocabulary lists, dictionaries, and those collections of words in the heads of teacher and students; secondly, texts, be they written or spoken. Without wishing in any way to deny the importance of the former, it is on the latter that I shall concentrate.

Vocabulary can be the focus of attention both before the text itself is presented, i.e. 'pre-taught', or during work on the text itself, and in both cases we need to consider the following points: a why items might be taught before rather than after, or after rather than before presentation of the text b how much to teach c what kind of items to teach d how to teach the items

1 Pre-taught vocabulary

a Why pre-teach?
There are a number of reasons for pre-teaching vocabulary. Firstly, and most importantly, if words important to the meaning of the text are not understood, then the meaning and significance of the text will not be understood either. What will follow will be Listening/Reading Incomprehension. Furthermore, not only does the pre-teaching of important words enable comprehension of those specific words, but the mind subconsciously and even consciously begins to build up associations between the words, so that students can, to a degree, predict the content of the text they are going to listen to/read. The ability to predict the content is an important aid to comprehension.

Secondly, there may be good reasons for not wishing to teach vocabulary after the text has been presented. For example, a particularly beautiful or poignant text can be ruined by dissecting it afterwards. This is often the case with poetry. Clearly in such cases any vocabulary teaching should be done beforehand. On some occasions, too, there may in general terms be a lot of vocabulary to be got from a text (though if this becomes excessive, then the text is being used at the wrong level). To avoid teaching too much vocabulary later, some can be taught before.

b & c How much and what kind?
These two are inextricably interwoven, for the more kinds of things to be pre-taught, the greater total number of words will be involved. Correspondingly, any limit on the total number will limit the range of kinds of item. As we have seen, the main reason for pre-teaching is to aid comprehension and, provided the text is of the correct level, there should be few words central to comprehension that will not be understood. The number of pre-taught words should normally, therefore, be small, perhaps half a dozen at most.

When other reasons are involved, there may be many more words, and then additional considerations need to be taken into account. Firstly, is there a danger of overloading? The mind and the memory can only process so much research suggests 7 plus or minus 2 items or groups of items are the optimum for maximum efficiency. And if there are a lot of words, are they all going to be taught in one lesson or is there going to be gradual preparation for the text, with the vocabulary introduced little by little over several preceding lessons?

d How?
Here are some ways of teaching vocabulary:

a Definition
A lexical item may be defined by a student who already knows the word, the teacher, a monolingual dictionary, a textbook vocabulary list, etc.

b Exemplification and the reverse
To teach tool we might give the examples hammer, saw, spanner and screw-driver. To teach spanner we might describe it as a tool (i.e. an example of tool).

c Analogy
To teach venison (the meat of a deer) we might use the analogy that venison is from a deer as pork is from a pig and beef from a cow.

d Translation
coriander = coentros. This would avoid confusion with parsley (= salsa), which I defy any non-technical definition to distinguish adequately. Note that translation can be dangerous, leading to all kinds of overgeneralisation, inadequate matching of meaning, etc., but for concrete items where the meaning is straightforward, translation can save wasting a lot of time trying to explain something in the target language.

e Concept through situation
To teach disappointed give a situation such as: "If a child wants a bicycle for Christmas and gets a book he will be disappointed."

f Description
e.g. of the word thimble. "A thimble is like a little hat on your finger when you're sewing."

g Demonstration
Performing some action to show how it is done, e.g. leaning or kneeling to show what lean or kneel means.

h Acting
Like demonstration but it is not for real, e.g. acting a sneeze or yawn to show the meaning.

i Mime
Explanation through movement/gesture, e.g. scratching your head to show I'm thinking (action), as distinct from I think (mental state/opinion).

j Realia
Using real-world objects, e.g. bringing into class items of food to teach food words.

k Pictures - photos, magazine picture, illustrations
Visual representations of objects. The teacher's own drawings on the board are often as effective as photos and magazine pictures, sometimes even more so. Bad but recognisable drawing, because it is humorous, is especially memorable.

l Explanation
This is often necessary, e.g. for culture/language-specific words or phrases. One would need to explain bank-holiday, for example, as being a holiday recognised by tradition, occurring on Mondays twice a year (late spring and late summer - in 1998 they fall on 25 May and 31 August) because religious holidays, etc. don't give us enough holidays!

m Synonym
Giving another word meaning the same thing. This can, however, lead to confusion because true synonyms are very few indeed. Even such apparent synonyms as I and little tend in fact to be used in rather different contexts and with different shades of meaning.

n Antonym
Teaching by comparing words of opposite meaning. Dangerous because it often then becomes difficult to remember which was which, e.g. buy and sell, borrow and lend, bring and take, pull and push.

o Discrimination
Contrasting words of similar meaning, e.g. chair v. bench v. stool. Dangerous for the same reason as Antonym.

p Co-ordinates grid
Members of a set of words can often be separated well by looking at various elements in the meaning of the word. For example, words for ways of cooking imply elements such as use of water or oil, on the surface or in the oven, high or low heat. This can be represented in a grid:

q Generalisation of form
To teach waitress: if actress is the female form of actor, what's waitress? Answer: female form of waiter

r Word-building
Transforming one part of speech to another, e.g. deep > depth, high > height, hot > heat. Always check that students are fully aware of what parts of speech are involved. In this case the transformation is from adjective to abstract noun.

After teaching an item it is essential to check that it has been properly understood. There are various ways of doing this, many of them involving getting students, as it were, to 're-teach' the words back to the teacher, using one of the means described above. The teacher may ask for the word in Portuguese - much better than the teacher translating, as it requires the students to put in more effort. Or he/she may ask for a synonym/antonym. Then there are concept question, e.g. for the ways-of-cooking words "Would you boil a cake?" (In Portuguese you cozer urn bolo but you do NOT boil a cake in English - boiling is always in water), and the traditional, useful method of getting students to write a sentence using the new word in such a way as to show that they really have understood the meaning.

2 Vocabulary taught after presentation of the text

a Why work on vocabulary afterwards?
Principal among the reasons is the obvious one that once the broad context is understood, it is easer to concentrate on the detail of individual words. Large-scale vocabulary building is, in general terms, therefore better done after the text has been presented. Another important reason is that it is possible at this stage to exploit the new lexis in its own right, not just as a means to comprehension. If we are to bring new vocabulary into active use and not just passive understanding, it is not sufficient for us just to teach it. We must provide ways to make sure that it is learnt and used.

b How much and what kind?
In broad terms, many of the same factors apply as to pre-taught vocabulary. We have to be careful not to overload the student but choose items that are useful in terms of frequency of occurrence and appropriacy to the level. Importantly, however, we can at this stage go beyond the central items to items of detail, which will tend to be rather more numerous.

c How?
All of the techniques used for pre-teaching vocabulary can also be used subsequently, but there are a number of additional possible means.

Matching
A definition is given and the student has to find the word with that meaning in the text.

Inference + Definition
The student must guess the meaning of an item from its context and define it to show it has been correctly understood.

Use of monolingual learner dictionaries
It is important to encourage learners into the use of monolingual learner dictionaries at an early stage - they contain much valuable information on the contexts and uses of words that is not to be found in either bilingual or native-speaker monolingual dictionaries.

Categorisation
Students are given sets of words from the text and have to categorise them grammatically (into noun, verb, adjective, etc.) or semantically (e.g. words describing positive/negative characteristics, words associated with water, types of light). Or the reverse -the categories are given and students have to find examples in the text that exemplify them.

Information transfer
Students have to fill in some knd of grid, diagram, chart, map, etc. with vocabulary items from the text. As with pre-taught items, it is essential to check that new words have been properly understood.

Conclusion

I would like to end by posing and answering a simple but not always sufficiently asked question: Should ALL unknown words be taught? Central to this question is a further one:

Does the student need to be able to use the word or just to understand it, or indeed does the word really need to be understood at all?

I would like to suggest that even in our own language we often read/hear something without fully understanding every word. We only do something about it if we do not understand what is being said/written sufficiently for our purpose. Surely - and the lower the level, the more this is so - it is a waste of time and energy trying to learn words of limited use when there are many others of much greater importance still to be learnt.

What I am trying to say is this. There is no virtue in teaching words beyond what is sufficient to enable an adequate understanding of the text within the terms of what you want to get out of it; and there is no point in students' learning what they are unlikely to need and use in the reasonably immediate future. If it is sufficiently important, it will recure later ... and can be learnt then.