Teaching Vocabulary
Lessons from the Corpus
Lessons for the Classroom
Jeanne McCarten
cambridge university press
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo
Cambridge University Press
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© Cambridge University Press 2007
This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
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no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2007
Printed in the United States of America
isbn-13
978-0-521-94325-3 paperback
Book layout services: Page Designs International
Table of Contents
1
Lessons from the Corpus
How many words are there and how many do we
need to teach? 1
What can a corpus tell us about vocabulary? 2
Frequency 4
Differences in speaking and writing 4
Contexts of use 5
Collocation 5
Grammatical patterns 6
Strategic vocabulary 8
Teaching strategic vocabulary: Fundamentals for
a syllabus 14
2
3
Concluding Remarks 26
4
Appendices
Lessons for the Classroom
What do we need to teach about vocabulary? 18
How can we help learners learn vocabulary? 19
Top 200 spoken words 27
Further reading 28
References 28
1
Lessons from the Corpus
How many words are there and how many do we need
to teach?
It’s almost impossible to say exactly how many words there are in English.
The Global Language Monitor, which tracks language trends, especially in the
media, has counted up to almost a million at 988,968. Webster’s Third New
International Dictionary, Unabridged, together with its 1993 Addenda Section,
includes around 470,000 entries.
Counting words is a...