Rate of vocabulary learning (was Re: flashcard player)

[Bill Poser]

Greg,

Thanks. That is helpful. And, believe it or not, your NT curriculum document
is more specific than what passes for a language curriculum here in British
Columbia. All language curricula ("international" and "first nations")
contain "learning outcomes" that are so hopelessly vague as to be completely
useless. You couldn't use them to figure out how to set an examination, to
decide what you're supposed to cover in a given year, or to figure out what
you might expect your incoming students to know. The outcomes are things
like: "acquires new information using age-appropriate resources"! One of the
Integrated Resource Packages is (unintentionally, I assume) hysterical: it
has a section at the end that summarizes the learning outcomes in a format
in which each year is in a row, so you can see "progress" from year to year.
It has exactly the same "acquires new information using age-appropriate
resources" nine years in a row! You will not find anything like "knows the
names of the common domestic animals" or "can give directions", much less
"knows how to make the future of -er verbs". (The last is EXPLICITLY
FORBIDDEN in the guidelines. Specific topical outcomes are not forbidden but
are nonetheless absent.) Only one language IRP contains a list of vocabulary
to be covered - the one for Mandarin Chinese contains a non-standard
appendix which lists for the first two or three years Chinese characters
(not words, actually, though these are mostly ones that are often used
alone) suggested for that year.

Anyhow, your strictures regarding methods etc. are well taken, but
information about what people manage with various languages and methods and
class hours etc. will still be helpful, I hope.

Bill


On Sat, May 28, 2011 at 6:23 PM, Greg Dickson <munanga at bigpond.com> wrote:

> I may be able to directly answer that question, but it brings up an issue
> that I would have to address when working in language revitalisation
> programs that I think is pertinent.  I use a mantra (that I got from
> somewhere, not sure where!) that to properly and permanently acquire
> vocabulary you had to hear it "20 times in 20 contexts".  We found that by
> teachers holding up a flashcard of a kangaroo and saying "yija", young
> school kids would repeat and make all the right noises, so to speak, but not
> acquire the term.  If you only fed them this same context, they would not
> really click that "yija" denoted real-world entities - it was as though
> "yija" meant 'that flashcard that so-and-so always holds up that has a
> picture of a kangaroo on it'.  We introduced games that used say 4 kangaroo
> flashcards and made sure that they were all different pictures of kangaroo,
> we'd have puppets (a cut-out on a stick will do) and we'd do a range of
> language learning games.  It was only then that we would find students
> properly learning 'yija' as 'kangaroo'.
>
> So for mine, it's not just how many words can little kids learn but can you
> provide a range of learning activities and contexts in which they hear the
> word so that they can acquire vocabulary permanently.
>
> The answer to your question, as you acknowledge, would also depend on
> factors such as how long are the students in language classes per week.  How
> 'school ready' are young students and how well are they engaging in
> Western-style classroom learning (this is a factor for Aboriginal kids in
> remote communities).  The skill of teachers, attitudes towards the target
> language etc. etc.
>
> I facilitated a basic program of one half hour lesson per week and we had
> very modest goals where we'd focus on eight key nouns per 10 week term (in
> actuality, kids would get about 7 lessons, if they were lucky).  Students
> would also learn 'outside words' like basic verbs, demonstratives,
> questions, greetings etc. that we used during lessons - our way of sneaking
> in more vocab learning without students realising - but the focus was the
> acquisition of the 8 key nouns.  For little kids, we wouldn't introduce more
> than 4 new words in a single lesson.  The outcomes for average students who
> had average community language teachers were pretty good.  For better than
> average students with better than average community teachers, they did well
> and could have handled more.  At the community down the road, they'd get
> through about 16 vocab items in 2-3 weeks (4-6 lessons) because the students
> were more school-ready/school-engaged and the unqualified language teacher/s
> did a nice job.
>
> I've attached an extract of the Northern Territory curriculum framework
> which has a really nice section on Indigenous languages and cultures (not
> that it gets used much!).  It provides suggested benchmarks and areas of
> learning at 7 different school stages and suggestions of what vocab to use
> at each stage, but not the specific number of vocab items.  Although it
> sounds like you already have seen curriculum documents such as this.
>
> Unfortunately this still may not be specific enough information for your
> needs but hopefully it helps.
>
>
>
>
>
> Greg.
>
>
> On 29/05/2011, at 5:49 AM, Bill Poser wrote:
>
>  On a tangential topic, does anyone have information on the rate at which
>> children can be expected to learn vocabulary in second language classes? I'm
>> especially interested in situations where classes start in Kindergarten or
>> the beginning of primary school. At the end of the first year, how many
>> words is it reasonable to expect the children to have learned? How many at
>> the end of the second year, etc.? I understand that there are issues with
>> what counts as a word and that one expects variation from language to
>> language and situation to situation, but I'd still like to see figures. This
>> kind of information must exist since in at least some places there are lists
>> of what to examine and curricula specific enough to list the vocabulary that
>> is taught, but I have found it very hard to obtain this kind of information.
>> Thanks.
>>
>> Bill
>>
>>
>
>
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