1 Tom Cobb Université du Québec à Montréal Professional Development Workshop & Seminar Series 23 August 07, CNA-Qatar What has the Arab learner taught.

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Tom Cobb Université du Québec à Montréal

Professional Development Workshop & Seminar Series 23 August 07, CNA-Qatar

“What has the Arab learner taught us?”

…Words are important

A deceptively simple idea

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Look familiar?

OK students – you win!

Vocab IS important

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EFL and ESP in the Gulf in the 1980s

Working without a plan Seemed to be no research

Yet research there was First action, classroom, piecemeal Then sustained, empirical, theory based

… which led to The New Vocabulary that we here celebrate

Thesis: The Arab learner forced us to invent the New Vocabulary

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Wot new vocab?

Lexical knowledge is the strongest predictor of reading ability (and inability) 

Lexis is not a filler for syntactic slots but rather syntax is an emergent property of lexis 

Some zones of lexis are more important than others for different tasks

Different degrees are lexical knowledge are needed for different tasks

Lexical knowledge does not come for free in L2 as in L1

Lexical acquisition in L2 requires more exposures than natural input can possibly provide

Lexical processing and acquisition are not identical across orthographies

Some principles we now take for granted

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So what was the old vocab?

Modern versions of applied linguistics emerge 1960s/70s

Burgeoning ESL industry needs a rationaleAfter supposed demise of audio-lingualism

A.k.a. Behaviorist learning theory

This early idea-borrowing from quasi-related disciplines(1) General Linguistics(2) L1 reading theory

Neither with much space for vocabularyBoth with strong assumptions about it

Principles more implicit than explicit

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(1) General linguistics

Child acquisition of L1 syntax is the great human achievement

While extensive vocabularies can be learned by animals

- chimpanzees (3000 items)

- dogs (200 items)

9http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Vines/4451/HeTalksToAnimals.html

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Early applied linguists, naturally, attempted to “apply linguistics”

Signs of “universal grammar” and “the language acquisition device” were dutifully unearthed in the FL classroom by researchers…

Vocab book publishers took a 20-year break

No big classroom vocab book between Barnard (1972) and Redman/Ellis (1991)

Reading was demoted to an uninteresting speech add-onBut a problem:

EFL/ESP learners are mainly here for reading!Solution:

So borrow reading rationale from L1Big error – a dark hole we are still climbing out of

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(2) L1 reading theory1970s - one dominant L1 theory

- reading-for-meaning- holistic- top-down - “psycholinguistic” guessing game

Kenneth Goodman (1967)

Frank Smith (1971)

All the needed vocabulary can be pleasurably acquired through inference from context

There is no need, it is even wrong, to teach it

These ideas got imported into L2 “somewhat uncritically” (Grabe 1991)

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(2) L1 reading theoryGuessing Game is clearly an idea for young, high-

SES L1 learners

If you look close, no very convincing evidence for it even in L1

Stanovich 1980, 1991RaynerDecades of phonics v. whole-language wars

Nonetheless Reading-as-Guessing was quickly imported into L2 thinking 1970s and 1980s

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(2) L1 reading theoryGoodman (1973) extends guessing game to L2

2006 – these ideas remain dominant

Every TESL teacher training program has a teaching grammar course, while few have a teaching vocabulary course…

“Universals” of readingReading in a second language = reading in first

Transfer of reading ability from L1 to L2 is automatic

Vocabulary will grow through guessing, in L2 as L1

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(2) L1 reading theory…despite >50% of class time invariably spent explaining words!

Emperor's clothes syndrome?(See what you are told to see)

Fortunately it was not shared by our learnersWho sensibly annotated every text they couldn’t read

Admittedly overdoing it…

And ignored our advice to “loosen up & take chances”

Or by independent L2 research that soon emerged developed within specifically L2 terms borrowing carefully from L1 thinking

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1990s - L2 gets its own reading theory!

First question: Is there really auto-transfer of L1 reading skills to L2?

Alderson (84) takes the trouble to investigate

Finding: Transfer is not automatic

L1 abilities + skills are inactive…(e.g., guessing of new words in context)

Until a threshold of L2 knowledge has been crossed

The main plank in threshold? L2 vocabulary knowledge.

So prior teaching is needed to enable guessing

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1995-2005, more and more evidence for importance of lexis

Syntax itself shown to require a lexical baseBates & Goodman (2001). On the inseparability of grammar and the lexicon

Knowledge of syntax now seems rooted in properties of words

A plank in the ‘lexical approach’

“Language is grammaticalised lexis not lexicalised grammar” – Lewis (1993)

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How odd, in retrospect…To be teaching “word guessing skills” to folks with a only a handful of lexis

To be working a class through a grammar points conveyed via unknown vocabulary

To hand learners a reading text with every second word a look-up

Alderson (84) began the spade work to get us out of this tunnel

Had taught Arab learners for years

Any coincidence?

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Gulf learner & old vocab

What did vocab look like to the learner when vocab was not part of the plan?

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Reading task for intermediate learners – seem OK?The Observer newspaper recently showed how easy it is, given a suitable story and a smattering of jargon, to

obtain information by bluff from police computers. Computer freaks, whose hobby is breaking into official systems, don't even need to use the phone. They can connect their computers directly with any database in the country. Computers do not alter the fundamental issues. But they do multiply the risks. They allow more data to be collected on more aspects of our lives, and increase both its rapid retrievability and the likelihood of its unauthorized transfer from one agency which might have a legitimate interest in it, to another which does not. Modern computer capabilities also raise the issue of what is known in the jargon as 'total data linkage' the ability, by pressing a few buttons and waiting as little as a minute, to collate all the information about us held on all the major government and business computers into an instant dossier on any aspect of our lives.

 Headway (Soars & Soars, 1991, p. 74)

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Vocab levels of the learners

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Vocab level of the text

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Vocab level of the text

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Putting text and learner together

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What can be learned from the Observer text?1. Vague sense of the topic2. Unuseful tolerance of low comprehension3. Strategy of over-relying on dictionary4. A little random vocab pick-up

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Where will the missing vocab come from?

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What blew the gaff on all this? Arrival of standard testing

IELTS, even PET Students in droves fail simplest reading

tests

But with benefits Action research projects

E.g. Informal vocab testing Evaluate teaching against test Observe / listen to students

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From a learnerDear N.,I heard that you are going to join the College of Commerce and Economics after you finish your high school. I have

a lot to tell you about this college. The first and important thing is the PET test. You must pass this test so you can continue your studies in the College. The PET test is not easy as it seems. It is so difficult and we have to do a lot to pass it.... The English that we learned at school is too easy and it's nothing compared with the English in the University. Let me tell you about myself as an example.

I thought that I knew English and really in the school I was from the three best students in the class in English. But here my English is nothing, then I thought I learned nine years English in the school but I don't have any knowledge and I don't know anything about real English. I really don't know the fault from who. ...

Your friend, F.  

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From a teacher Watching a biology lecture

Biology lecturer teaching about hybridization

The first time I gave a hybridization analogy, I talked about dogs, and then I switched to goats; and then it even dawned on me

that some of them aren't going to be in touch with the fact that if you mix two different kinds of goats they come out looking in

between, and I didn't know all the specific terms there, what their two different breeds of goats are called. You can talk about

[mixing] colours, but a lot of them don't know their colours yet

(Arden-Close, p. 258).

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From piecemeal action-researchto sustained programs of research involving the Arab EFL learner

VOCAB SIZEAl-Hazemi (1993)

PhD study validates vocab size instruments in GulfStill true? - see Al-Gazette

LEARNING FROM CONTEXTLaufer et al (1985)

Investigates supposed ease of contextual inferenceHorst et al (1998)

Investigate contextual learning in an extended taskLaufer (1989)

Investigates conditions of successful contextual inference

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From piecemeal action-researchto sustained programs of research involving the Arab EFL learner

UNIVERSAL READING PROCESSES

Koda (1989)Investigates reading in a new orthography

Abu-Rabia & Seigel (1995) Investigate unequal roles of context in reading English v. Arabic

Randall & Meara (1988)Investigate differences in how Arabic and Roman words are perceived

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Randall & Meara

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So the old vocabulary crumbles

But in all this research into the Arabic-English interface…

Do students get no benefits from their experience with Arabic?

Haynes (1983)

- Inferencing study- Clues in local v. global contexts- Four language groups

Only Arabic group using globalcontext

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But didn’t Laufer find Arab learner is poor inferencer?

Yes, but also that 95% comprehension is the condition of inference

Do our learners get anywhere near that in what we give them to read?

Not so much

So a vital strength never comes into play

Even so, here is an extra twist on this one

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Headway text global VP

Is not the same as local VPs

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Local inferencer will find an occasional useful context in this text

E.g., New word embedded in 95%-known context

Global inferencer will get no chance to use this skill in this text

Materials and approaches need to

compensate for difficulties of Arab learners

but also build on their strengths

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Homegrown Solutions (1)

Compensating and building on strengths

AWL (2001) has its roots in vocab needs of Arab learner

Jean Praninskas (1972) Mohsen Ghaddesy (1979)

AUB - American University of BeirutNeed for post-2000 vocab courseConcern for coverage

Now a big hit worldwide(Shows up as UWL=>AWL)

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Homegrown Solutions (2)

Lextutor has its roots in needs of Arab learner

www.lextutor.ca

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So returning to the point of departure

Thesis: The Arab learner forced us to invent the New Vocabulary

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In conclusion

The Arab learner helped us break out of a fairly un-useful approach to vocab inherited from linguistics and L1 reading

And in retrospect, the Arab learner was just a high-profile representative of most EFL learners

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In conclusion

L2 vocab will not happen by itself up to 95% coverage

Textbooks alone cannot be relied on

Sufficient coverage and and repetition of high frequency words must be planned for at ground level

Tools for doing this1. Testing2. Computational analysis of

materials

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www.lextutor.ca

[email protected]