how many new words per lesson

iain · Post by **iain** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 4:08 pm

Prompted by a discussion among colleagues in a recent training meeting, here's one of those questions that will raise all kinds of 'ifs and buts' but touches a very real point and a lot of students would be unimpressed by the classic "it all depends".
So: (ball-park figures off the top of your heads) " How many words would a learner expect to learn for each hour of a course?" (adult leaners on part-time courses in own countries).
Hope this is the appropriate forum.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 4:59 pm

Hi Iain, nice to see you're now posting here on the AL forum too. Welcome!

I suppose that if a student (rather than a teacher) really wanted to know how many words they'd be encountering at least (and immediately learning, mastering fully?!), then an indication of the absolute minimum could be gained by looking at the average number of genuinely new words introduced per coursebook unit, then dividing that by how many hours it might take on average to finish each unit. The student would then have the task of reviewing and consolidating those basics (e.g. by consulting dictionaries, KWIcs, doing related grammar exercises etc) until they added up to a fair hill of functional productive beans.

I know there is more to learning than what's in a textbook, but equally, there often isn't enough focus without one.

The essential learning load would likely be "highest" (with a decent text that introduces what are indeed essentials, that have to and ideally should be mastered quickly) in the elementary to pre-intermediate stages; after that the relevance of many items can trail off if the topic selection is a bit off (there is probably a reverse bell curve shape to what learners actually learn, with the beginning high mirroring the ending high - with the latter, they are at the point where they have enough language to acquire new items quicker, are probably more motivated to learn ESP, and where the items are more salient due to their rarity (despite there being less chance of encoutering these rarer items every day)).

Have you heard of the Gairns & Redman CELTA-ish recommendation of introducing on average 8 words (no more, presumably certainly not less) words per lesson? It probably makes sense from the point of view of memory limitations (STM), but I wonder how they arrived at that precise figure.

Macavity · Post by **Macavity** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 8:41 pm

Interesting to bring in the Gairns and Redman figure (working with words, CUP?) FH. My initial thought was about 10 - 12 or so, off the top of my head. I'm happy if I can get this many new words into a lesson

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 10:49 pm

Hiya Mac. Yup, it was Working with Words that I was alluding to (this seems to be their most - in fact only - theoretical work). Actually I don't think there should be an upper limit to the number of items that a student might like to at least make a quick note of, because they can always look things up in detail after class; we all probably wish that we could briskly mention every last thing that might be of use to students, but like you say, there's never enough time to prepare let alone teach as well as we'd like!

Sally Olsen · Post by **Sally Olsen** » Thu Jan 24, 2008 3:11 am

Just ran across an old page of a book on Chomsky about children's word learning and it said 200 a day once they get going. I counted yesterday's lessons for my Advanced Adult class and we had over 40 in the reading for the IELTS test including "extant" which I had to look up, plus an hour's discussion on "Culture Shock" when they get to Australia which had me writing on the board at least 50 words of North American to my Australian colleagues expression - chock for chicken. This in addition to a discussion on illness and the words associated and several words for the classroom - we got a new water heater. It seems to me that it gets close to 200 for anyone of my adult learners a day. Now how much they retain? That is the question.

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Thu Jan 24, 2008 3:37 am

Another question of course is how many lessons a week, or how many a day, do they have. If like our students they have four hourly lessons a day, five days a week, then the number of words per hour would have to be reduced.

and it said 200 a day once they get going.

I'd like to see the reference. It of course refers to first language acquisition which has little to do with second language learning. A child normally takes up to around the age of thirteen to learn his first language. If he's learning 200 words a day for more than ten years that's 200 x 3,6525 = 730,200 words. Even amongst New York Jews that sounds like rather a lot

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Thu Jan 24, 2008 10:36 pm

It's a very method school kind of question. I think using the Avalon/Callan type methods they maybe do about 12-20 per hour, 3 hours a day? And they will always ultimately revise thrice.

If I saw a class once or twice a week, or something like that, I would assume that I had so little control over their learning that it wouldn't be worth thinking about.

As to how many words kids get in one day, the stats are useless. I've seen 2 words a day mentioned, and estimates on ultimate attainment ranging from 5000 to many times that number. One problem probably is that there are a lot of items like Kermit and Frosties and J-Lo that you know and need to know but may not get counted.

iain · Post by **iain** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 8:05 am

It may be 'a method school kind of question' but at least so far it hasn't simply promted a list of 'method school official answers'.
Since we (the general public) often hear received wisdoms of the kind 'your average native speaker only really uses about 400 words', or 'you can get by in a foreign language with 200 words', 'words' would certainly seem to be broadly seen as an important indicator in terms of how successfully you can get by in a language.
As I said in the original post, the question does represent a simplification, but I was curious to see, despite all the inevitable important and interesting ifs and buts, what 'off the top of the head' response experienced teachers' instinct and intuition would prompt.
Maybe the response is that it is an illegitimate question. Students will maybe like being told that better than 'it depends'.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 4:48 pm

I don't think it's an illegitimate question for students to ask, and surely a teacher should have at least a rough idea of what the bare minimum in any given course(book) will be (like I said above).

What's more important I think is to impress upon the student the combinations into which words can and do enter (see for example the recent 'at the end vs in the end' thread. A student might know the general meanings of those prepositions, have a rough awareness of articles/determiners, and know 'end (n)', but there are phrases and idioms into which those words enter (of which 'at the end (of...)' seems the most flexible, unidiomatic and useful i.e. it doesn't have any immediately obvious substitute "grammatically speaking")), but then, most teachers nowadays are aware of lexical approaches to teaching.

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 10:29 pm

We're attempting to ensure that students who leave our Prep year have mastered the words on the Longman's 3,000 word list, and the words on a special academic words list.

As there are two Longman's lists; both for speaking and for writing, the total number of words from the three lists comes to around 3,700. Add to that the fact that we have found we have needed to add another 5-600 (of which at least half are common and necessary) and you can reasonably say that the basic vocabulary is around 4,000.

I find I can write material that runs within that list without too much of an effort, so it is not totally arbitrary. When I put stuff from the newspaper through the special spell checker I have designed I find about 15 words a page not in the list; enough to impair comprehension but not irretrieviably.

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 3:53 pm

Without wanting ot be too disrespectful to iain, it strikes me as the question a bean-counting senior manager would ask. A lot will depend on whether your one-hour lesson's aims are primarily lexical, structural, phonological, skills based or whatever. There's probably an upper limit to how many lexical items you can realistically get through in one lesson, but I wouldn't consider the students to acquire them until they'd actually seen and used them a few times.

In any case, the best way to widen your vocabulary is to read a lot. I'm increasing my range of French words simply by reading the free papers on the metro. The recurring lexical utems gradually etch themselves into my brain, and it's very satisfying to see a words and think "Oh yes, I recognise it now!"

Sally Olsen · Post by **Sally Olsen** » Sun Jan 27, 2008 5:19 am

I agree with expanding your vocabulary through reading but it is interesting to listen as well. I still haven't decoded the Cyrillic in Mongolian this time. I am much slower at 65 than I was at 58. But I have gained back my survival Mongolian and am picking up new words one by one, by situation. When someone says, "Ingot, ingot, ingot " to you over and over in reference to my new Mongolian felt and leather boots and demonstrates stamping in them to help to shape them to your feet, you get the idea that this word might mean something like, "Again, again and again." I have heard this word on the news many times and it stuck out because it sounds like English "ingot" so I was curious enough to ask the meaning. While this is a terribly slow way to learn, I won't soon forget it. Nor "OI" to get out of the way of fast moving carts in the market, nor the word for bathtub plug which I have been searching for for two months and finally found in this massive market. That plus the words for 50 tougricks and sheep meat came back to me although I can't always use them correctly. I get human meat and sheep meat mixed up to horror and sometimes delight of the venders - it is one of those one change in vowel words that get me in trouble, like dog and husband.

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 2:02 am

it is one of those one change in vowel words that get me in trouble, like dog and husband.

Pretty horrific. Call the dog and you get a man instead!

Sally Olsen · Post by **Sally Olsen** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 8:29 am

But somtimes useful. One night on the way home from yet another teacher's party, I encountered an inebriated man who was intent on blocking my path. I pointed to my dog and evidently said, "This is my husband." whereupon he lilted along his merry way scratching his head about these Russian big noses.

Matty · Post by **Matty** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 1:27 am

iain wrote: Since we (the general public) often hear received wisdoms of the kind 'your average native speaker only really uses about 400 words', or 'you can get by in a foreign language with 200 words', 'words' would certainly seem to be broadly seen as an important indicator in terms of how successfully you can get by in a language.

As far as I can see, the most popular course books seem to aim for a target vocabulary of around 2,000 words per year. You could divide this up into teaching hours if you like.

According to the major corpuses, the average native English speaker uses a list of around 200 words in 50% of speech and writing. This, however, doesn't account for use, collocation, different meanings, or lexical phrases.

Most native speakers have an active vocabulary upwards of 6,000 words. A good writer will have an active vocabulary upwards of 12,000 words. William Shakespeare had an impressive vocabulary of over 25,000 words!

Vocabulary tends to start with your immediate surroundings - classroom objects, household objects, personal details, etc. and gradually branches out into less and less familiar lexical areas. A course, at say Intermediate level, could quite rightly claim to 'cover' over 8000 words but that doesn't mean that the students learn 8000 new words - they'll learn 2000 new words at best and revise the other 6000 in a very cursory manner.

I'm also a little disturbed that teachers might want to have some kind of per class or per hour quota system for new vocabulary. This isn't realistic and underlines a fundamental misunderstanding of language acquisition. A student probably won't retain an active memory of any of the new vocabulary covered in a particular class. It's vital that students have repeated exposure to the target vocabulary in different contexts to really convince their brains that this is something they should remember. I heard a ball-park figure of recycling a word at least 7 times to make it stick.

This is why having a good course book or syllabus is essential to effective language learning. You have to define and limit the target vocabulary for a particular course so that you can ensure that they have enough time to cover it effectively.