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Ease and Difficulty in Vocabulary Learning: Some Teaching Implications
Author(s) -
Laufer Batia
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
foreign language annals
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.258
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1944-9720
pISSN - 0015-718X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1944-9720.1990.tb00355.x
Subject(s) - linguistics , psychology , vocabulary , rote learning , meaning (existential) , vocabulary development , learnability , context (archaeology) , cognitive psychology , natural language processing , computer science , artificial intelligence , teaching method , mathematics education , cooperative learning , paleontology , psychotherapist , biology , philosophy
This paper discusses the relationship between ease/difficulty in learning particular words and some issues in the teaching of vocabulary. Some factors that interfere with learning a word are claimed to be the following: similarity of form between the word and other words (embrace/embarrass, price/prize); morphological similarity between it and other words (industrial/industrious, respectable/respective); deceptive morphological structure (infallible); different syntactic patterning in L1; differences in the classification of experience between L1 and L2 (one‐to‐many correspondence, partial overlap in meaning, metaphorical extension, lexical voids, multiplicity of meaning); abstractness; specificity; negative value; connotations nonexistent in L1; differences in the pragmatic meaning of near synonyms and of L1 translation equivalents; the learning burden of synonyms; the apparent rulelessness of collocations. It is argued that word learnability (ease/difficulty in learning a particular word) can serve as a guideline to the following: the selection of words to be taught; their presentation (quantity, grouping, language of presentation, isolation/ context issue); the facilitation of long‐term memorization (meaningful tasks, mnemonic techniques, rote learning, reactivation); the development of strategies for self‐learning; and the assessment of vocabulary knowledge.