Several years ago I was looking through a catalogue of vocabulary-learning apps, searching for one that might work well for multilingual language learners. As I swiped through the demos, a familiar pattern emerged – and it was most clearly illustrated in an upbeat app that was basically a digital version of flashcards. I tapped the screen and the program sprang to life, an enthusiastic voice firing out vocabulary students were expected to repeat while looking at a picture of the word. I can’t remember exactly what the app said, but it was something not unlike this:
“Aardvark! …. Buttons! … Cheesecake! …”
I silently asked myself where I would ever hear those words again, and swiped away.
This unfortunately is the downfall of many vocabulary-learning apps: the words are random, or at best organized into broad categories such as “fruit” or “sports equipment”, but which are not usually the categories of words being used in class, that the student will need to understand lessons.
Going through these apps reminded me of the day I first realized the teaching and learning implications of this ubiquitous resource type. It was near the beginning of my career, and I was attending a teaching conference in Toronto. One of the presenters was a professor of linguistics and language acquisition, and as a newly-hired ESL teacher, I had signed up for her seminar. The presentation went as usual, the professor walking back and forth across the room, animatedly talking about her own experiences learning English as a child, and her current research focus for teachers of multilingual language learners. There were about 50 of us sitting in those old-style lecture chairs with the swing-out desktop, watching her as she paced back and forth discussing the topic she was so clearly passionate about. I was scribbling notes here and there when she stopped and directly addressed us, punctuating the importance of her statement with gestures:
“Students need to hear and use a word – speaking, listening, reading, writing – in context, at least ten times, for it to be committed to memory.”
This stark number slammed right up against the wall of ESL learning materials and workbooks I had encountered thus far: the picture flashcards full of unrelated words, the grammar-heavy ESL drill books, the word game packages … the kind of resources that saturate the market. And when we examine these resources, several questions arise. Where is the context in flashcards? Where is the authentic communication for real purposes in grammar drill workbooks? And perhaps most relevant to the professor’s statistic, what are the chances the student will naturally hear and meaningfully use these words at least ten times in the coming days and weeks?
Over the years I have heard adjustments to the number the professor quoted … 15 times to learn a word, 20 times … sometimes more. But the common takeaway in all of the studies is, quite frankly, “a lot”. Students need to interact with words meaningfully and repeatedly in order to retain them. And if there is one place students are going to hear words repeated and used for authentic purposes, it is the mainstream classroom. How many times will we say, read, and write words such as “cloud”, “evaporate” and “rain” in a science unit on the water cycle? Way more than ten, I’ll wager. Conversely, how many times will vocabulary like “cheesecake” come up? And what then is the chance of the student remembering that isolated lexical item and committing it to permanent memory? Words, words, words … we teachers may get that Hamlet-style reply from students, if we ask them what they learned on one of those popular vocab apps.
I have kept this guiding principle as one of the main starting points for ESL instruction over the years, identifying words students will need for learning and authentic communication, and being intentional about teaching, clarifying, and recycling them.
And on a positive note, there have been some changes in ESL resources in recent years. I have seen some new learning programs that have moved away from generalized word themes to more specific ones that students will encounter, grade by grade, according to curriculum topics. But there are still an overwhelming number of them that do not follow this model. So I will keep searching. And although this will never happen in any other context in my life, I think I’ll pass on the cheesecake.
