BABES AND BATHWATERS:
HOW TO TEACH VOCABULARY
Barry McLaughlin
University of California, Santa Cruz
One of the nice features about teaching at Santa Cruz
is that we get to teach broad liberal arts courses for our
undergraduates. At one point, I taught a course on
Psychology and Religion--a curious enterprise for a second-
language researcher, but a fascinating one. I want to begin
this paper with a bit of theology--specifically, I want to
discuss grace and predestination. These are issues that
brought about riots in the streets of Rome in the year 417.
The riots were between two groups: one group followed a
British monk, Pelagius; the other group consisted of sup-
porters of a North African bishop, Augustine. The Pelagians
were convinced that salvation requires good works--you save
yourself by the way you live. The Augustinian notion was
that you are saved by something that happens to you--
salvation comes about by the gift of grace freely given by
God.
We don't have much rioting over such issues these days,
but I think there is a very similar debate going on in the
second-language literature. It comes to the fore especially
when we start discussing language instruction. What I would
like to do in this paper is trace what I see to be the main
lines of this debate and discuss some of the implications
for teaching. My position may seem heretical--indeed the
position I tend to favor, Pelagianism, was condemned as a
heresy--but I hope my readers will have a more open mind
than did the Church in the fifth century.
Nature: Chomsky
I would like to begin with what for many is accepted
dogma in matters linguistic--namely, the ex cathedra state-
ments of Noam Chomsky. As you know, Chomsky argued that the
ability to acquire a human language is genetically deter-
mined. The theory postulates that the child faces a "pro-
jection problem" in that the language-learning task must be
accomplished with deficient input data. The only way to
explain how children succeed is to assume that they possess
a Language Acquisition Device endowed with a Universal Gram-
mar that comprises a rich set of innate principles that
govern the emergence of language. These principles of the
human mind are, to a degree, biologically determined and
specialized for language learning. As Chomsky put it:
Universal grammar is taken to be the set of proper-
ties, conditions, or whatever, that constitute the
"initial" state of the language learner, hence the
basis on which knowledge of language develops (1980,
69).
These abstract and linguistically significant principles
underlie all languages and comprise the essential faculty
for language with which all individuals are in general uni-
formly and equally endowed.
The Universal Grammar constrains the hypotheses that
children make and the child's language environment deter-
mines which principles of the Universal Grammar will be
accessed. Acquisition involves setting the parameters of a
particular language in a specific way.
Thus, the language properties naturally inherent in the
human mind are thought to consist of a set of general prin-
ciples that apply to all grammars and that leave certain
parameters open. Universal Grammar is seen to set the lim-
its within which human languages can vary.
The Chomskyan position views Universal Grammar as part
of the brain. Consequently, "learning" is not the correct
term to describe how language develops. To cite one commen-
tator:
A bulb becomes a flower; some cells become a lung.
We do not say that the bulb "learns" to be a flower
or the cells "learn" to be a lung, although in both
cases certain aspects of the environment such as wa-
ter and nourishment are necessary to the process.
Instead we say the bulb and the cells "grow." Their
growth is the realization of their genetic potential
in conjunction with "triggers" from the
environment...{Similarly} Universal Grammar present
in the child's mind grows into the adult's knowledge
of the language so long as certain environmental
"triggers" are provided....Language acquisition is
the growth of the mental organ of language triggered
by certain language experiences (Cook 1985, 3-4).
In other words, given the right environment, children natur-
ally acquire languages. It just happens.
Unfortunately, at this point in time, UG theory does
not have a great deal to say to teachers. There is simply
not enough empirical work that has been done in this frame-
work and much of the UG literature is terribly specialized.
Unless you are really into bounding nodes, pro-drop parame-
ters, and preposition stranding, the recent Universal Gram-
mar literature may seem to you to be a form of linguistic
scholasticism, where people are arguing over problems with
as much relevance to everyday concerns as the question of
how many angels can stand on the point of a pin.
Grace: Krashen
Now I would like to turn to second-language learning,
and specifically to the theory of Stephen Krashen. Like
Chomsky, Krashen believes that the human species is natur-
ally endowed with a Language Acquisition Device. Indeed,
Krashen has argued that adult learners have access to the
same Language Acquisition Device (LAD) that children use
(1982). Furthermore, Krashen goes beyond Chomsky in the
role he assigns input. Input for Krashen, I will argue,
serves the same purpose in his theory as grace in
Augustine's--it is the key to salvation.
Krashen's theory clearly represents the most ambitious
theoretical account of the second-language learning process
that we have. Indeed, Krashen has argued that his paradigm
provides a general or "overall theory" (1985, 1) of second-
language acquisition with important implications for
language teaching. And indeed, the theory has achieved con-
siderable popularity among second-language teachers in the
United States. This is due in large measure to Krashen's
ability to package his ideas in a way that makes them
readily understandable to practitioners. On the other hand,
the theory has been seriously criticized on various grounds
by second-language researchers and theorists (Gregg 1984;
Long 1985; McLaughlin 1978; Taylor 1984). Indeed,
"Krashen-bashin'" has become a favorite pasttime at confer-
ences and in journals dealing with second-language research.
Critics raise the following objections to Krashen's
theory and its five major hypotheses:
(1) The Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis. Krashen distin-
guishes "acquisition" from "learning." Critics argue
that this distinction is not clearly defined and that
it is impossible to determine which process is operat-
ing in a particular case. Hence a central claim of the
theory, that "learning" cannot become "acquisition,"
cannot be tested empirically. Nor is the notion of
acquisition that Krashen advanced seen to be consistent
with current linguistic theory.
(2) The Monitor Hypothesis. Krashen has been forced by
empirical evidence to place severe restrictions on the
conditions required for use of the Monitor. Because
the Monitor is so restricted in its application,
"learning," which is thought to involve the use of the
Monitor, can easily be dispensed with as an integral
part of gaining facility in a second language. Indeed,
Krashen argues that formal instruction is helpful only
because it is a source of comprehensible input. In his
most recent writings, Krashen gives little attention to
the Monitor notion.
(3) The Natural Order Hypothesis. The case for the Natural
Order Hypothesis is based largely on the morpheme stu-
dies, which, it is now generally agreed, are of ques-
tionable methodological validity and which, because
they focussed on final form, provided little informa-
tion about acquisitional processes. If the Natural
Order Hypothesis is to be accepted, it must be in a
weak form, which postulates that some things are
learned before others, but not always. Krashen has
provided no theory as to why this is the case, so this
hypothesis does not tell us much.
(4) The Input Hypothesis. The Input Hypothesis is unte-
stable because no definition is given of the key
concept, "comprehensible input." The argument that
effective input contains structures just beyond the
syntactic complexity of those found in the current
grammar of the acquirer leads nowhere, because it
assumes a non-existent theory of acquisition sequences.
The Input Hypothesis also fails to account for the
elimination of incorrect intermediate forms, and pro-
vides no way of distinguishing between different
instructional methods (each of which, if effective, can
be argued to provide comprehensible input).
(5) The Affective Filter Hypothesis. The Affective Filter
Hypothesis is also of questionable validity because
Krashen has provided no coherent explanation for the
development of the affective filter and no basis for
relating the the affective filter to individual differ-
ences in language learning. The hypothesis is incapa-
ble of predicting with any precision the course of
linguistic development and its outcome.
Obviously, these points require a longer treatise (see
McLaughlin 1987), but you can see that I believe that each
of Krashen's five hypotheses is open to criticism. Krashen
has made broad and sweeping claims for his paradigm, claims
that would be disputed by most researchers in the field
today. For instance, in advocating the Natural Approach to
second-language teaching, Krashen and Terrell argued that
this approach
is based on an empirically grounded theory of second
language acquisition, which has been supported by a
large number of scientific studies in a wide variety
of language acquisition and learning contexts (1983,
12).
This is, at best, a controversial statement. Many of
Krashen's critics would maintain that he has not defined his
terms with enough precision, that the empirical basis of the
theory is weak, and that the theory is not clear in its
predictions.
This is not to say that Krashen is wrong in all of his
prescriptions about teaching. I and many researchers work-
ing in the field agree with him on basic assumptions, such
as the need to move from grammar-based to communicatively
oriented language instruction, the role of affective factors
in language learning, and the importance of acquisitional
sequences in second-language development. But I and most
other researchers would stress the need for more research on
each of these topics. We are uncomfortable with general
all-inclusive theories at this stage of our knowledge.
In addition, I, and a number of other authors, find
that there are three unfortunate tendencies in Krashen's
writings: (1) to switch assumptions to suit his purposes
(Gregg 1984), (2) to make sweeping statements on the basis
of weak empirical data (Taylor 1984), and (3) to brush aside
conflicting evidence in footnotes (Takala 1984). The last
of these is especially disturbing, as the readers of
Krashen's works are unlikely to pore through densely printed
footnotes, which in many instances contain the most impor-
tant arguments against his theory.
Instead, many teachers accept the theory as the word of
God and preach it to the unenlightened. In their enthusiasm
for the Gospel according to Krashen, his disciples do a
disservice to a field where there are so many unresolved
theoretical and practical issues and where so many research
questions are unanswered.
Neo-Pelagianism
What Chomsky and Krashen have in common, I would argue,
is a view of the learner as someone to whom something hap-
pens. For Chomsky language develops like a flower from a
bulb; for Krashen the learner gets appropriate input from
the environment and language is naturally "acquired." These
are very Augustinian positions; the learner is essentially a
passive recipient to whom language learning happens natur-
ally or through the saving grace of "comprehensible input."
The learner is predestined to learn the language, given
appropriate input.
These positions contrast sharply with the view of some
of the Pelagians in the field. For example, I would consider
Lily Wong Fillmore to be, at least, a semi-Pelagian. In one
of her papers (1985) she made a number of important points.
The first of these is that:
Learners have to realize they need to learn the tar-
get language and must be motivated to do so.
Wong Fillmore argued that learning does not take place by
osmosis. It is not enough simply to place a learner in an
environment where he or she hears "comprehensible input."
Motivation is basic to language learning, she contended.
This leads to the second point:
Learners have to participate in interactions with
native speakers.
The reason this is important, according to Wong Fillmore, is
that the quality of their participation plays a crucial role
in getting native speakers to use the language in special
ways that make speech samples usable as language learning
data. Such interaction requires special strategies, and
this is a third point:
Learners must make native speakers aware of their
special linguistic needs and get them to make what-
ever accommodations and adjustments are necessary
for successful communication.
Thus learning is thought of as an active process where
learners have to engage in the enterprise, trying out the
language and giving native speakers the cues they need to
know that they must adjust their language and help make the
communication work. In other words, learning a language--
like being saved for Pelagius, requires effort. You can't
just sit back and wait for it to happen gratuitously. You
have to do something.
I would count myself on the side of the Pelagians--or I
suppose more accurately, as a semi-Pelagian like Lily Wong
Fillmore. You need all the help you can get, but you need to
work on it too. You need good input, and you need to put
out the effort to make sense of it and to use it. I believe
it is wrong to stress one aspect to the neglect of the
other--this where babes and bathwater comes in.
Consider, for example, Krashen's arguments about the
effect of instruction. He argues that formal instruction in
a second language is helpful only because it is a source of compre-
hensible input. Teaching students grammar is seen
merely to provide a topic for discussion and is effective
because it serves as a carrier of comprehensible input. As
we have seen, the main function of the second-language class
according to Krashen is to provide learners with good and
grammatical comprehensible input that is unavailable to them
on the outside, and to bring them to the point where they
can obtain comprehensible input on their own in the "real
world."
Such a position, however, ignores the advanced cogni-
tive development of adults and the advantages of formal
teaching and learning. Krashen argued that the best way to
learn a second language is to approach the language as chil-
dren do when they are acquiring their first language--rather
than focusing on form or memorizing vocabulary, the learner
needs to understand messages. But consider the time it takes
for a child to learn a first language: assuming that young
children are exposed to a normal linguistic environment for
at least five hours a day, they will have had, conserva-
tively, 9,000 hours of exposure between the ages of 12
months and 6 years. In contrast, the Army Language School in
California regarded 1,300 hours as sufficient for an
English-speaking adult to attain near-native competence in
Vietnamese (Burke 1974). Clearly, adult learners have cogni-
tive skills that enable them to take advantage of formal
instruction. To assert dogmatically that formal instruction
in the grammar is useless for more advanced learners is to
eliminate a valuable shortcut in the learning process.
Another problem for Krashen's theory concerns the elim-
ination of incorrect forms. If the learner has learned
incorrect intermediate forms, there is no way in Krashen's
system for these forms to be changed, except through more
comprehensible input. According to the theory, acquisition
is not affected by negative data or specific structural
teaching. Krashen acknowledged this problem:
The theory predicts that eradication of fossilized
forms that result from the acquisition of intermedi-
ate forms will be difficult.... The theory also
predicts that drill and conscious attention to form
will not be a permanent cure--using the conscious
Monitor will only cover up the error temporarily,
learning does not be come acquisition (1985, 48).
How then are such incorrect forms to be eliminated? The
answer is "large, fresh doses of comprehensible input:"
One possibility is that there may be a way 'around'
rather than a way out. While the acquirer may not
be able to forget, or 'un-acquire' acquired forms,
he may be able to acquire a new language, a new ver-
sion, a new 'dialect' of the target language (1985,
49).
The absurdity of this explanation is immediately apparent.
Would the correction of each incorrect grammatical form mean
that the speaker had acquired a new 'dialect'? What happens
to the old 'dialect'? Presumably old versions remain, and
the learner speaks a new version as well.
More important, how does exposure to more comprehensi-
ble input lead to revision? Krashen (1985) suggested that
to initiate change the learner must compare _ i, the present
state of the system, with any data suggesting that a new
rule is required. If there is a discrepancy, the new rule
becomes a candidate for acquisition. Unfortunately, there
are cases where the inconsistency between the present state
of the system and the input data will not be apparent from
an examination of the input. Lydia White (1985) has pro-
vided a number of such examples. For instance, a French
speaker, learning English, must learn that in English,
unlike French, an adverb cannot come between a verb and a
direct object. In English we cannot say "The dog bit
viciously the boy." Yet adverbial placement in English is
relatively free, so that sentences such as "The dog bit the
boy viciously," "The dog viciously bit the boy," and
"Viciously, the dog bit the boy" are all allowed. A native
speaker of French who assumes that English is like French in
adverbial placement will not receive positive input indicat-
ing that this is not the case. Nor will this information
come from extra-linguistic sources. In other words, they
will have to be told the rule.
Another example is a Spanish speaker learning English
who assumes that empty pronouns are allowed, such as "Is
very busy" for "She is very busy." In Spanish, lexical pro-
nouns and empty pronouns are not mutually exclusive, and the
learner is likely to think that the same is true in English.
Hearing sentences such as "She is very busy" does not pro-
vide the learner with information that "Is very busy" is not
allowed. One way people learn these rules is through formal
instruction, where the discrepancy between their intermedi-
ate forms and target-language norms can be pointed out.
Indeed, by learning such rules adult learners can greatly
reduce the time it takes to become proficient a second
language.
In short, I think that there is a place in the second-
language classroom for grammar instruction. Fortunately, so
do most teachers. Furthermore, there is research evidence
that formal instruction assists in the acquisition of new
structures (Ellis, 1989; Long, 1983). But what about voca-
bulary acquisition? Does the osmosis model hold for vocabu-
lary, or can vocabulary be taught?
Heresy
Here is where I become more drastically heretical.
First, let me give the currently orthodox position. I think
it can be summarized as follows. Although there are dif-
ferent estimates of adult vocabulary size, there is general
agreement that the typical adult has a vocabulary of tens of
thousands of words. Six-year-old children have vocabularies
estimated at from 6000 to 24,000 words. Thus, during the
school years, children acquire thousands and thousands of
new words.
How do they do this? They do it, the answer is, by
reading. Children learn words naturally through reading,
just as they have learned words naturally through speech.
It is the child's search for meaning that "drives" him or
her to understand printed words. Comprehension of new voca-
bulary is acquired through context. Explicit, direct teach-
ing of vocabulary out of context is not helpful and may lead
to reading difficulties (Smith 1979). Instead the focus
should be on learning from context. This is one of the
major tenets of such currently popular methods as the
language-experience or total language approach.
One important aspect of learning from context is that
not just any text is effective in developing word meanings
in children. Carol Chomsky (1972) reported evidence that
those children who were read to most and who read more for
their own pleasure, were highest on measures of vocabulary
development and reading comprehension. Further, her study
indicated that the highest scores in reading achievement
were made by those students who read or were read to from
books on higher readability levels than their own linguistic
development. That is, reading books with hard words and dif-
ficult syntax contributed significantly to the development
of reading vocabulary and comprehension.
This, of course, is reminiscent of Krashen's "I + 1"--
that is, that the input to the language learner should be
slightly in advance of the learner's ability. Indeed,
Krashen (1988) has argued that the Input Hypothesis applies
to reading just as it does to speech, and that the best way
to develop a vocabulary in a second language is to read in
that language, especially material slightly in advance of
where you are in that language. After all, this is the
natural way in which vocabulary is built up in the first
language.
Krashen argues further that direct instruction in voca-
bulary is not worth the extra time and effort, and that
research on direct instruction shows only modest effects.
His prescription: read, read, and read some more. Direct
instruction in vocabulary is ineffectual. Here I think we
are back to a babes and bathwater problem.
I think that Krashen and others arguing against direct
vocabulary instruction fail to make an important distinc-
tion: between (a) remembering what a defined vocabulary
item means given the meaning, and (b) inferring the meaning
from internal and external contextual cues. This distinc-
tion between remembering and inferring is important because
vocabulary-remembering strategies and vocabulary-inferring
processes are complementary and essential aspects of vocabu-
lary acquisition. Taking a strong (and perhaps heretical)
Pelagian line, I would like to argue that with all due
respect for the importance of the whole language approach
and the natural approach, there should be a place in the
language curriculum for the direct teaching of vocabulary.
Just as it is wrong to throw out grammar instruction, in my
opinion it is wrong--and at odds with a great deal of exper-
imental research--to discard the direct teaching of word
meanings.
What I would like to do now is review briefly some of
the experimental evidence, then conclude with a few remarks
about implications for teaching vocabulary. As you might
suppose, my argument will be that learning by osmosis is not
enough--it doesn't just happen to you-- you have to work at
it.
Salvation through Good Works
The distinction I just made, between vocabulary
remembering and vocabulary inferring relates to two dif-
ferent aspects of acquiring meanings. Learners can derive
vocabulary meanings from context, but this process does not
in itself foster retention of meanings. On the other hand,
techniques directed at remembering do not permit learners to
infer the meanings of undefined vocabulary words (Pressley,
Levin, & McDaniel 1987). Both processes are important and,
I would argue, both processes are involved in the child's
acquisition of vocabulary.
Obviously, we build up a great deal of our vocabulary
knowledge by inferring the meanings of words in context. We
are exposed to new vocabulary through textbooks, lectures,
newspapers, friends, and so on. Most of the words we learn
we learn from context, by inferring the meaning on the basis
of selective comparison of new and old information (Stern-
berg 1987). If we provide students with a rich language
environment, their vocabularies will develop and reading
comprehension will improve. Students in classrooms with
more varied and challenging materials show greater gains in
reading skills than students in classes where the books were
below the students' reading levels (Chall & Snow 1982).
But this is not to say that vocabulary cannot or should
not be taught directly without relying on context. Indeed,
for about 50 years research evidence has accumulated that
indicates that direct teaching of word meanings is highly
effective. In a study done in 1938, Gray and Holmes exam-
ined whether wide reading or a program of direct vocabulary
instruction was more effective for vocabulary development.
Using fourth graders as subjects, they found that direct
instruction resulted in significantly larger gains on tests
of vocabulary and reading comprehension and in greater
"interest and general command of ideas and words in group
discussions" (p. 56). The positive effects of direct
instruction were especially noticeable for children of lower
ability.
In a more recent study, Levin, Johnson, Pittelman,
Hayes, Levin, Shriberg, and Toms-Bronowski (1984) compared a
specific direct instruction method, the mnemonic keyword
technique, with a contextual-analysis strategy using fourth-
and fifth-grade children. The mnemonic keyword method is a
direct teaching method in which learners are trained to gen-
erate an image of the definition referent interacting with a
keyword. The keyword is simply a familiar concrete word
that resembles a salient part of the unfamiliar vocabulary
word. For example, the English word carlin means old woman.
Using the keyword car, a learner might generate an image of
an old woman driving a car. In this experiment, contextual
analysis required that the students search for clues con-
tained in short paragraphs, clues that enabled inference of
the meanings of unfamiliar vocabulary words contained in the
paragraphs. Students provided with keyword illustrations
later remembered about 50 per cent more definitions when
cued with the vocabulary words than did students in the
contextual-analysis condition. This held for both higher
and lower achieving students.
Similar results were found in a number of studies
involving children from fourth- to eighth-grade levels
(Levin, McCormick, Miller, Berry, & Pressley 1982; Pressley,
Ross, Levin, & Ghatala 1984). In these studies, children
using the keyword method recalled on the average 50 percent
more definitions than did subjects using context. Similar
findings have been reported in numerous studies with adults
(Pressley, Levin & McDaniel, 1987). Even when students have
been given extensive training in using context, the keyword
method is a superior vocabulary-remembering strategy.
What these findings indicate, it seems to me, is that
certain types of strategies can be used to learn and
remember vocabulary items apart from context and that this
learning and retention can be quite efficient and long-
lasting. Mnemonic techniques, such as the keyword approach,
are powerful strategies because they provide a direct link
between the vocabulary item and its meaning. In the keyword
approach there is a direct retrieval path: when cued with
the vocabulary word, the learner can proceed directly to the
keyword, then to the keyword interaction, and finally to the
associated definition.
Even proponents of the contextual approach concede that
the experimental evidence indicates that mnemonic tech-
niques, especially the keyword method, are faster and more
efficient than contextual approaches for learning specific
vocabulary. However, they argue that faster and more effi-
cient is not necessarily better. Sternberg (1987), for
example, raises the following objections to the use of
direct methods:
(1) The keyword method and other direct methods require
that the learner know in advance the meaning of the
words to be learned. Learning from context does not.
During the course of most vocabulary learning, one does
not have definitions readily available. Because most
of us are basically lazy, we prefer to derive the mean-
ing from context rather than looking up the meaning of
words in the dictionary and applying a mnemonic stra-
tegy.
(2) The keyword method is not natural. Sternberg (1987)
likens it to speed reading. It is more efficient, but
how many people continue to use it beyond the time they
learned it. Like speed reading, mnemonic techniques
require a great deal of mental effort. The assumption
again is that people are not likely to want to expend
all that effort to remember words.
(3) Finally, direct methods such as the keyword approach
are just not efficient enough. There is too much that
has to be learned--learning from context is the only
way whereby we can learn so many words.
Actually, these criticisms are very Augustinian. For
Sternberg, as for Augustine, human nature is basically cor-
rupt. People are lazy and unwilling to put out effort.
Against this notion of a degenerate human nature is the more
Pelagian view, which in the present context translates into
to contention that learners do, in fact, put forth a great
deal of effort to learn and remember words and their defini-
tions. This is the view expressed by Michael Pressley and
his colleagues:
Much of naturalistic vocabulary instruction involves
explicit presentation of vocabulary words and their
definitions. That is, vocabulary instruction is
aimed at getting children to remember provided mean-
ings rather than getting them to infer meanings.
For example, much of vocabulary teaching with young
children involves repetitive matching of a name with
its referent, such as "ball" with a picture of a
ball (Werner & Kaplan, 1952). Labeling of referents
is a prominent part of mother-infant interaction
during the first 3 years of life (Chapman, 1977;
Moerk, 1972; Ninio, 1980, 1983; Ninio & Bruner,
1978). Preschooler's picture books are filled with
objects that parents label for their children
(Pressley, Levin & McDaniel, 1987, p. 108).
In school, this direct training of vocabulary words and
their meanings continues:
Grade-school reading programs include exercises with
vocabulary items and their definitions presented to-
gether (e.g., Whyte & Shular, 1974). Lists of words
and their meanings are included in most second-
language curricula (e.g., O"Brien, Lafrance, Brack-
feld, & Churchill, 1970), even when the method of
instruction is principally language use in context
(e.g., Ray & Lutz, 1969). Many high school English
and college-preparation courses include lessons on
vocabulary, including texts filled with lists of
words and their definitions (e.g., Lewis, 1982).
These examples fly in the face of the claim that
real world vocabulary acquisition follows principal-
ly from people inferring meanings from context
(Pressley, Levin, & McDaniel, 1987, p. 108).
I think that these authors are essentially correct. In
spite of the opposition to direct vocabulary teaching
without context, many children are continually exposed to
instructions involving the explicit pairing of new vocabu-
lary words and their definitions. Children learn lists of
spelling words with their meanings or they memorize vocabu-
lary in the second-language classroom. I would argue that
this is not a bad thing--as long as students are taught
efficient strategies for remembering vocabulary.
I need to be careful to underscore the point that pro-
moting the use of mnemonic strategies does not preclude
teaching students more efficient strategies for inferring
meanings from context. I am arguing for both approaches.
Earlier I made a distinction between remembering and infer-
ring meaning. We want students to remember words and their
meanings so that they can understand them when they confront
them in texts and use them in their writing and in speech.
Even after students succeed in inferring the meaning of a
word from context, they need to remember the word and its
meaning so that they do not have to go through the same
inferencing process the next time they encounter the word.
I think we all evolve our own strategies to encode in memory
the meanings of words we have figured out. That is,
vocabulary-inferring processes and vocabulary-remembering
strategies are complementary operations.
Orthodoxy
I mentioned earlier that Pelagianism was condemned; a
few centuries later Augustine's position was also rejected.
The Church decided that both grace and good works are neces-
sary for salvation. Rather than "either-or" we have the "via
media."
Now that makes sense to me. And I think--to come back
to second-language pedagogy--that this "middle-of-the-road"
approach is what most teachers intuitively adopt. Even when
they have been firmly sold on the natural approach, teachers
are not likely to reject grammar teaching entirely. Nor do
I think most teachers are likely to reject direct teaching
of vocabulary.
The Zeitgeist is such that we are prone to favor more
natural and more open procedures in teaching. We believe
that such approaches lead to greater cognitive development
and greater satisfaction with school than more direct and
structured approaches. But the research evidence does not
always support this view (Chall, 1983; Rosenshine, 1979;
Stallings, 1975), and as we have seen from the research just
discussed, direct teaching methods can be more efficient and
produce greater long-terms effects than more natural,
wholistic, contextualized techniques.
However, I do not want you to give the impression that
I am arguing against experiential learning, wholistic learn-
ing, the natural approach, or any other currently sacrosanct
doctrines. I am simply noting that, historically speaking,
people who pushed particular doctrines to the extreme often
got burned--and not just figuratively. What is called for is
a healthy eclecticism.
Focusing attention occasionally on grammatical rules
and teaching techniques of memory management to facilitate
the acquisition and retrieval of words and their meanings
are not antithetical to a natural approach. Teachers who
train students to use learning and retention strategies are
not violating principles of the experiential or the whole-
language approach, but are providing their students with
higher level, metacognitive knowledge about learning
(Kohonen, 1989). Some students can acquire this knowledge
on their own; others profit from direct instruction.
I am calling for a more "catholic" approach and a
rejection of dogmatism. There is no denying that the dog-
matic insistence on grammar, pattern drills, and rote learn-
ing of vocabulary, reduced the language classroom to abso-
lute drudgery. But in our enthusiasm for what is natural,
spontaneous, and fun, we can fail to recognize that second-
language learning is hard work. For most of us, knowledge-
-unfortunately-- maketh a bloody entrance.
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