Sort of knowing a word

Sort of knowing a word

​Back in 1991, I was teaching English on a weekend residential course in old Czechoslovakia. One of the assistants was a student in the arts faculty, where many years later I would find myself head of teacher training. In chatting with this student, she said, but you’re a native speaker – of course you know every word in the English language. 

I picked a random novel off a nearby shelf and opened it to a random page where there was a description of someone using gym equipment. I told her that I vaguely knew that a lateral raises machine, glute ham developer and a leg abduction machine could be found in a gym, but I couldn’t identify them in a gym or a catalogue, let alone describe their functions.

These days I listen to Russian with Max, a podcast for learners of Russian, which I was while I was living in Tashkent. Learning Russian was more or less a hobby, as I did not need to read, write, speak or listen to the language in any professional context. But learning a new language at my age, as a teacher, trainer and author of books on language teaching, allowed me to explore and reflect on learning processes as a student.

​Max’s podcasts are mostly targeted at B1 level, and since his work is partly motivated by Krashen’s comprehensible input hypothesis, I listen for gist. My Russian is well below B1 but I comprehend a lot, and could probably retell the thrust of his monologues in English. This is thanks to my study of Russian, its closeness to Czech and its vocabulary having many English and international words, including those that have Greek and Latin origins. I should mention that there are many false friends between Russian and Czech, my favourite being užasný (amazing, awesome) vs. ужасный (terrible).

Each of Max’s podcasts revolve around a single topic, so there is always the general context to help with the gist, but since he only speaks Russian in the podcasts, you have to infer the topic as well. There is no time during the podcast to analyse his use of words so that you might be able to use them in the cotexts that he employs. It is challenging to observe collocation, colligation and chunks on a single listening, and it is not why we listen.
 
So, while the gym has a leg abduction machine, I would say that our brains have a language abduction machine. Abductive reasoning is a form of logical inference that seeks the simplest and most likely conclusion from a set of observations. We do a lot of abducting when our comprehensible input is only just comprehensible.
 

Many of my students on the MA TESOL program in Tashkent found the academic articles they were required to read ‘only just comprehensible’ and when discussing them in class, their guesses at the meanings of specific words were routinely wildly off. They should not have been guessing the meanings in class, as they had read the articles at home. Given the quantity of reading demanded of them, they were essentially reading for gist, which they were able to do with a superficial knowledge of the words and with the support of the context of each article. This was part of the motivation for writing a workbook for them, that has been recreated as After IELTS.

Our word knowledge typically emerges over time in both first and second language acquisition contexts. In FLA our word knowledge mainly accrues through multiple exposure, although we do use dictionaries, chat to friends about new and surprising uses of words. We even read and watch videos about language. In SLA, our word knowledge mainly accrues through structured study, which is both motivated and reinforced by exposure as we read, write, speak and listen.
 
The emergent stages of vocabulary competence can be described thus:

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1. Unfamiliar: not part of active or passive vocabulary.
2. Emerging awareness: recognising a word in context but not sure of its meaning.
3. Partial understanding: understanding the general meaning based on context and previous meetings with it.
4. Passive Understanding: comprehending the meaning of a word when seen or heard but not yet using it.
5. Active use: using the word in speaking and writing; being aware of its contexts and cotexts.
6. Mastery: having a nuanced understanding of the word including its connotations. The word is fully integrated into language use.

An important application of this continuum is in the revision and recycling of previously studied words.  We obviously cannot learn everything there is to know about a word on its first encounter, so this helps temper our expectations.  We can also structure the word knowledge that we add in successive revisions. This layering is especially valuable in creating our own vocabulary workbooks and flashcards. 

​I am devoting some pages to flashcards, the use of AI, and this continuum in the book I am writing at the moment. It might have the bumptious title, How to Learn Vocabulary Properly. We’ll see!