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Expanding
Vocabulary Through Reading
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One day when my son Kay was about fifteen years
old, I heard him talking to his mother and noticed him using big, abstract words. I
wondered when and how he had acquired a vocabulary larger than the typical fifteen year
old. Then I realized that at the age of fourteen, Kay had begun to borrow books from my
study. He even took out Introduction to Philosophy by Takeo Iwasaki. He said he
understood it, though his love of logic and argument sometimes annoyed his mother.
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Thus, it occurred to me that my son was
confirming Krashen's theory of vocabulary acquisition through reading. (see Footnote 1 ) Krashen supports the
position that vocabulary is best acquired incidentally and effortlessly through reading. I
have living proof of this hypothesis in my son. Furthermore, a questionnaire I distributed
to twenty-two senior high school English and Japanese teachers revealed that 95.5% of them
agree with the above hypothesis. (See pp. 37.)
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Krashen suggests that even "light
reading" can contribute to language acquisition-a proposition I had thought most high
school teachers in Japan would disagree with. But contrary to my expectation, out of 22
teachers, 41% answered that even reading comic books would help, while only 27% thought
they would not, and 32% had no opinion.
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I agree with Krashen that high school students
should be encouraged to read lighter things faster and in greater quantity, but in
practice teachers go painfully slowly over materials that are too difficult. Their defense
is that if they did not familiarize the students with difficult passages, the students
would panic when confronted with actual entrance examinations, some of which are
ridiculously difficult. As a result, students cannot understand some classroom reading
materials unless teachers "kindly" translate each sentence, explaining the
structure by grammatical dissection, and giving many derivatives for every new word.
Teachers just translate, students only listen. It is not at all unusual that of forty
students in one class, more than thirty never speak or read an English sentence even once
during a fifty-minute class. This is a lecture in puzzle-solving strategies rather than a
language class.
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I hate to admit it, but I was one of those
teachers who thought this way. I am now determined to improve my teaching by reducing
translation to a minimum and increasing student-centered activities such as reading aloud,
listening comprehension, dictation, and discussion in pairs or small groups.
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Krashen further asserts that massive quantities
of pleasure reading in the students' own area of interest may be the best way to prepare
foreign language students for the serious study of literature. I still remember the
excitement I experienced when, at the age of eighteen, I read "Liza of Lambeth,"
the first work of Somerset Maugham. I did not even hear my mother call me to come
downstairs for dinner; I was not even aware I was hungry. "Low risk" reading in
which I was not held responsible for content, in which I could skip words without fear of
missing anything that would affect my grade, resulted in vocabulary growth and overall
language competence that would later make reading great literature much easier.
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I had always wanted my students to experience
the same pleasure from reading, so, I invited my students to take part in a "Reading
Marathon." As the material for the "race," I chose Bob Greene's Be True
to Your School , which is a diary he kept as a high school student in 1964. On New
Year's Day, 1993, the "runners" were to start reading Greene's diary of New
Year's Day, 1964. They would finish the marathon on December 31, 1993 completing his entry
of December 31, 1964. In short, the assignment was a synchronized reading of a diary, so
to speak. More than ten out of the initial 120 "runners" ran the whole distance,
while many said they had browsed parts that seemed interesting. One of them confessed that
he picked up and read racy scenes exclusively. Anyway, all of them agreed that it was much
more interesting than an authorized textbook in the official curriculum.
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So far, most of Krashen's suggestions seem quite
reasonable. Vocabulary through reading and the use of pleasure-reading can be readily
accepted. But what seems likely to arouse much controversy is his suggestion that
vocabulary neither be taught nor tested. Personally I am not against directly teaching
vocabulary. If I explain, for example, how the word apron was first coined from napron
as well as pronouncing the word repeatedly, it will have a stronger impression on my
students than if they only come across the word in their reading. I understand, however,
that Krashen warns against substituting drills for pleasure reading. As he puts it,
exercises and drills give our students a false idea of what literacy and language
acquisition are all about.
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For the same reason, Krashen argues against
testing vocabulary. He suspects that if we test vocabulary directly, students will study
vocabulary lists and teachers will be tempted to give vocabulary exercises. According to
the survey I made, eleven teachers agreed with this argument, while only three disagreed.
These results show that quite a few teachers in Japan (or at least in my school)
support-in theory-pleasure-reading. I am afraid that schools in Japan won't readily stop
testing vocabulary, which, in a sense, is the acknowledged raison d' etre of some
courses. But we can at least keep in mind Krashen's warning that testing vocabulary has
the effect of hurting vocabulary development, since it pushes teachers and students in the
wrong direction.
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Meanwhile, lately my son Kay takes longer and
longer to get to the table, and there seem to be more and more blank spaces in my
bookshelves.
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QUESTIONNAIRE
SUBJECTS: 22 senior high school teachers.
AVERAGE AGE: 40.7 years old.
Q1. What percentage of your whole vocabulary have you acquired by reading?
59.5 %
Q2. What percentage of your present writing style can be attributed
to your whole reading experience? 64.3 %
Q3. Do you agree with the hypothesis that vocabulary is best acquired (incidentally and
effortlessly) through reading? Yes-95.5 %
(For those who said no.) What do you think the most important factor is in vocabulary
growth? Television
Q4. How do you feel about teaching vocabulary in class?
POSITIVE NEUTRAL NEGATIVE
45.5 % 50% 4.5%
Q5. How do you feel about testing vocabulary?
POSITIVE NEUTRAL NEGATIVE
40.9% 45.5% 13.6%
Q6. Do you think that comic books help enlarge one's vocabulary?
NO NO OPINION YES
27.2% 31.8% 41.0%
Q7. Krashen claims that a brief, sustained, silent reading period is more effective for
vocabulary growth than intensive vocabulary instruction. Do you agree with him ?
NO NO OPINION YES
45.5% 22.7% 31.8%
Q8. Krashen suspects that exercises and drills give our students a false idea of what
literacy and language acquisition are all about. He believes that testing vocabulary has
the effect of hurting vocabulary development. Do you agree with him?
NO NO OPINION YES
13.6 % 36.4 % 50.0 %
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Fukuji
Maruyama teaches English at Okazaki Senior High School.
He has co-authored several books on English composition and grammar.
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Return
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Footnote 1
Krashen, S.W. We acquire vocabulary by reading: Teaching our students in a
proficiency-based classroom. Schenectady, New York: New York State Association of
Foreign Language Teachers. 1986.
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