Vocab in FL Curriculum

Vocabulary in the Foreign
Language Curriculum
Written by experts in the field, this book explains the principles of effective
vocabulary instruction for the modern language classroom. While many
language classrooms rely on practices which can be outdated, idiosyncratic
or ill-advised, this book overviews the research and background necessary to
successfully integrate vocabulary instruction into the curriculum in a systematic
way. Starting with the common gaps in vocabulary instruction, Milton and
Hopwood demonstrate how students’ development of a large, communicative
lexicon, with an understanding of word structure and collocations, is an
essential component of language instruction.
The book addresses goal setting, curriculum design, word selection, how
words are learned, learning in and outside of the classroom and more. It also
addresses common myths about teaching vocabulary in the United Kingdom
and around the world. This comprehensive text fills an important gap in the
literature and is ideal for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in world
language/foreign language methods and language methods courses.
James Milton is Emeritus Professor of Applied Linguistics at Swansea

University, UK.
Oliver Hopwood is Head of Modern Languages at Westminster School, UK.

Vocabulary in the Foreign
Language Curriculum
Principles for Effective Instruction
James Milton and Oliver Hopwood

Cover image: © Getty Images
First published 2023
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© 2023 James Milton and Oliver Hopwood
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Milton, James, 1955– author. | Hopwood, Oliver, author.
Title: Vocabulary in the foreign language curriculum : principles for
effective instruction / James Milton & Oliver Hopwood.
Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2023. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022022960 (print) | LCCN 2022022961
(ebook) | ISBN 9781032244884 (hardback) | ISBN
9781032244853 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003278771 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Vocabulary—Study and teaching. | Language and
languages—Study and teaching. | LCGFT: Essays.
Classification: LCC P53.9 .M56 2023 (print) | LCC P53.9 (ebook) |
DDC 418.0071—dc23/eng/20220606
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022022960
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022022961
ISBN: 978-1-032-24488-4 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-24485-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-27877-1 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003278771
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by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
Prefaceix
1 Introduction and background 1

Introduction 1
Background – why is a book on vocabulary in the
curriculum needed? 1
How this book is organised 4
Conclusion 5
References 6
2 Vocabulary – what is meant by word in teaching words? 8

Introduction 8
The unit of count 8
Lemmas, flemmas and word families 10
Multi-word issues 17
Dimensions of word knowledge 19
References 26
3 Why is vocabulary so important in the foreign

language curriculum? 29
Introduction 29
The importance of a good vocabulary curriculum 29
Coverage 31
Vocabulary, general ability and the four skills 39
References 43
4 How vocabulary is learned 45

Introduction 45
vi Contents
Learning individual words 45
Retrieval practice and generative processing 46
Incidental and explicit learning 48
Focus on form 51
Spaced and massed repetition 52
Word difficulty 55
Hilton’s four propositions 56
References 58
5 Vocabulary and attainment – setting vocabulary goals 62

Introduction 62
Target vocabulary sizes: vocabulary and the CEFR 62
Vocabulary and the CEFR in the UK 68
Vocabulary input (teaching) and uptake (learning) 70
Vocabulary uptake per hour 72
Vocabulary in the curriculum: the Saudi example 76
Where will these words come from? Formal
and informal learning 77
References 81
6 Selecting vocabulary for the curriculum 84

Introduction 84
Criteria for selection 84
Frequency and range 86
Frequency profiles 89
Interest and thematic continuity 93
Availability and learnability 101
Choosing vocabulary to fit the requirement of structural content 103
Modelling vocabulary input and uptake in the curriculum 105
Resources to help vocabulary curriculum design 109
Conclusion 111
References 112
7 British vocabulary myths 116

Introduction 116
Vocabulary myths and the UK culture of foreign language
teaching 116
Myth 1: Grammar is most important for communication
(and you really do not need vocabulary) 118
Myth 2: Learning a super vocabulary of only the most frequent
words means you can communicate 120
Contents vii
Myth 3: Themes, topics and topic-based vocabulary
teaching are bad 123
Myth 4: The UK testing system recognises and rewards extensive
vocabulary knowledge 124
Myth 5: Grammar and vocabulary are entirely
separable entities 125
Myth 6: The vocabulary taught should be reduced
to allow every word to be explicitly recycled 127
Myth 7: Vocabulary learning is incidental and is not
learned in class 129
Myth 8: Learning verbs is especially important and should be
prioritised 131
Explaining these British vocabulary myths 132
References 135
8 Vocabulary in the textbook 139

Introduction 139
Background – theoretical position and the curriculum 139
Planning vocabulary in the textbook 141
Regularity and manageability in textbooks 145
Qualitative considerations 147
Noticing vocabulary in textbooks 148
Recycling and putting words in context 150
Building vocabulary into the curriculum and textbook 152
Conclusion 154
References 154
9 Vocabulary beyond the textbook 158

Introduction 158
The language of the teacher 158
Issues in teacher talk 161
Vocabulary notebooks 163
Vocabulary supplementary materials 165
Management of learning expectations 168
Understanding and measuring lexical input 173
Conclusion 175
References 176
10 Vocabulary learning outside the classroom 178

Introduction 178
Vocabulary learning beyond the teacher and textbook 178
viii Contents
Infant and primary age language learners 180
Activities for growing vocabulary size 181
Learning from lists 187
Developing fluency and depth 188
Informal learning in the curriculum 190
References 191
11 Curriculum design, implications and dangers in delivery 194

Introduction 194
Vocabulary curriculum design process 194
Implications for teacher education and the culture of learning 200
Implications for materials design 203
Implications for language testing 205
Implications for time and resourcing 206
Dangers and pitfalls 207
Conclusion 209
References 210
Appendix 212
Index 214
Preface
We have two reasons for writing a book on vocabulary in the curriculum.

One is that there does not seem to be anything like this available for curricu-
lum designers, materials writers, teachers, trainees or administrators to use, and
which can provide coherent guidance. The literature on vocabulary in the cur-
riculum suggests people teach as much or as little vocabulary as they like, from
whatever range of themes and topics they choose. Sometimes, they try to avoid
topics and vocabulary altogether. There seems to be nothing that can suggest
whether these choices are good or bad, effective or ineffective, unless practi-
tioners are prepared to work through the mountain of literature on the subject
of vocabulary and learning which has emerged over the last 30 years or so. The
time seemed right for a book which pulls together this literature and presents it
in a systematic way. Then practitioners can make well informed choices about
the number of words to teach, the choice of words to teach, and the sequencing
of words which are required for learners to reach their communicative goals.
This should lead to more effective teaching and learning. The teaching and
learning of a whole foreign language lexicon is a big task, and the successful
completion of this task is essential for learners to achieve communicability.
These learners deserve something better than guesswork in the treatment of
such an important element of the curriculum. This book is our attempt to pro-
vide this guidance and to take the guesswork out of the vocabulary curriculum.
The second reason springs out of the first. The absence of any firmly estab-
lished principles for the treatment of vocabulary in the curriculum means that,
sometimes, some very odd and very damaging choices are made. We work in a
country where some truly remarkable, and by remarkable we mean remarkably
bad, choices over vocabulary content are being made in the modern languages
curriculum in English schools. These choices include stripping most vocabulary
out of the curriculum to reduce the learning burden, justify reduced teaching
time and make the subject more accessible. Learners, it is claimed, can be fully
communicative with just a few hundred words in their foreign language rather
than the thousands of words that were taught and learned before. Teaching far
less vocabulary and improving language standards are incompatible, of course,
but learners are being sold a fallacy that an artificial grammar-heavy curriculum
with minimal words will enable young learners to communicate. The standard
x Preface
of learning has already declined both measurably and dramatically in recent
decades and will continue to do so. But, in England, the degree of ignorance
about vocabulary in the curriculum is so huge that the stripping out of most
vocabulary, and the consequent decline in standards, can pass almost unno-
ticed. There is a self-deception pervading many parts of the school language
teaching establishment which springs from ignorance about vocabulary in lan-
guage, and hence there are some very odd and very wrong ideas about what
should be taught. Some of this ignorance is wilful, but much of it is not. It is
possible, then, for the school’s inspectorate to claim that teaching lots of words
will not lead to fluency whereas, in reality, lots of words are an absolute neces-
sity for fluency. Official advice is that where learners do not know the words
they need to say something, they can just substitute other words which they
do know without affecting meaning. In reality, this is usually quite impossible
for learners beginning a foreign language. Anyone who has listened to BBC
Radio’s Just a Minute, or played the board game Articulate!, will know that this
is extremely difficult to do even for fluent L1 speakers. Teaching vocabulary in
England relies on myths for its justification rather than research evidence and
the experience of effective practice. No wonder that one of the reviewers for
this book commented that foreign language learners in the UK are viewed with
pity in other countries. There is a need for a work of this kind to hold a mirror
up to poor curriculum practice in the hope that better informed judgements
can be made. In England, language learners can never learn a foreign language
successfully in school with the current curriculum. They deserve better.
At the heart of the argument in this book is that learning a foreign language
vocabulary to the point where you can become fully communicative, or even
fluent, is a numbers game. If a learner wants to become communicative and
fluent, then they will need to learn lots of words, probably the high thousands.
Yes, there is more to learning a communicative lexicon than, simply, the num-
ber of words. Learners need to know lots about these words. Learners need to
know how they can change words and link them to form structures. They need
to know how words join together to create appropriate collocations and idioms.
And they need to learn about the associations of these words which may differ
in their foreign language. There are many other aspects of language to learn,
too. But learners need lots of words to do all of this.
Vocabulary learning, to become fully communicative, will involve mastering
several thousand words both frequent and less frequent. Frequent vocabulary is
usually considered the most frequent 2000 words, and these include the many
hundred words which are associated with structure. Hence, this is sometimes
called structural vocabulary. Teaching this vocabulary, because these words are
so frequent and because they are so important to structure, is considered a
priority. But it is not the only priority because to become communicative in
everything from everyday to specialist situations, still more to become fluent
and to be able to understand everything they hear and read, learners need lots
more vocabulary. They need good command of the mid-frequent vocabulary
ranges, and this involves knowing, probably, most of the 3000 to 8000 word
Preface xi
range. Knowledge of these words is not an optional part of becoming a fully
communicative user of a foreign language; it is essential. Communicative lan-
guage ability can be described as, very much, a function of vocabulary size.
Only with a large vocabulary do you have the words not just for structure but
also the subject matter of the things you want to talk, read or write about: food,
football, the weather, the flight, your lost bag, your symptoms, your excuses and
so on. And only with this vocabulary do you have sufficient words to form the
elaborate network of collocations and associations which are also an essential
part of good language communication. So, the task of curriculum designer is
to manage the teaching all these words, and the other aspects of knowledge,
systematically. The curriculum has to organise the teaching of thousands of
words, both frequent and infrequent. The numbers game is one which allows
this vocabulary to develop so that all these other aspects of language perfor-
mance can develop too, because if learners do not have these words, they do
not have command of language.
The argument that learners will need thousands of words to become fully
communicative is supported by research and evidence that is unassailable.
So, how does the modern foreign language (MFL) establishment in England
support the idea of teaching only hundreds of words, rather than thousands,
while still maintaining the idea that learners can become expert? We discuss
this in Chapter 7, which refers to a culture of British vocabulary myth, and
the allusion to myth is not made in a light-hearted way. The MFL curricu-
lum in England seems to be based on a belief in magic rather than evidence.
The National Centre for Excellence for Language Pedagogy (2016), therefore,
proposes vocabulary input for the General Certificate of Secondary Education
(GCSE) in England should comprise a super vocabulary of just 1500 or so fre-
quent words, of which, fewer than half will likely be learned. But, like Super-
man, these words have now been endowed with superpowers which enable
them to replace all other words in a language without affecting communica-
tion. All other less frequent vocabulary now becomes redundant. It is argued
that armed with this super vocabulary, learners can become fluent and expert
while knowing only a few hundred words. This is fiction, of course. Super-
man does not really exist and neither do the superpowers attributed to this
super vocabulary. These words are, for the most part, simply frequent words
which are essential for language structure, but they cannot usually replace the
meaningful content of language communication. With a knowledge of only
a few hundred overwhelmingly structural words, and in contrast to learners
overseas, learners in England almost never become expert or even proficient
through foreign language teaching in school. It need not be this way, but it says
much about the crisis in language teaching in English schools that curriculum
organisation is based on mythical superpowers, rather than research evidence.
It is as though, in the Health Service, the government had chosen to follow
the advice of medieval witch doctors, rather than science, in determining best
treatment. Learners cannot become fluent with only a few hundred words in
a foreign language even if this is called a super vocabulary. Calling frequent
xii Preface
vocabulary super vocabulary trivialises the issue of teaching an essential ele-
ment of language and insults the intelligence of learners. These are mistakes
that an effective vocabulary curriculum can learn from.
The teaching of a large vocabulary of thousands of words is clearly a chal-
lenge for any learner, and it is a challenge, too, for the curriculum designer. But
this vocabulary is successfully taught through the curriculum in other coun-
tries. And this vocabulary was also taught, historically, in the UK school sys-
tem. In England, the importance of vocabulary, and the process of teaching it,
seem to have been lost in the mists of modernity.
This book is our attempt to rescue vocabulary teaching from the myths, and
the mists of ignorance, and to present the process and precepts for developing
a good vocabulary curriculum.
1 Introduction
and background
Introduction
This chapter is intended to explain why a book dedicated to the place of
vocabulary in the modern foreign language (MFL) curriculum is needed. It will
explain a background to vocabulary teaching as a neglected area which recent
research has done much to change. This has been of benefit to the learning of
modern foreign languages generally. However, the importance of vocabulary
in language teaching is not fully understood in some places, particularly in the
UK. The structure of this book, to help explain the importance and the teach-
ing of vocabulary, is therefore explained.
Background – why is a book on vocabulary

in the curriculum needed?
It is some 30 years since Paul Nation published Teaching and Learning Vocabu-
lary (Nation 1990), which signalled a surge of academic interest in the learning
of vocabulary in a foreign language. In previous decades there were very few
people who investigated the learning of the foreign language lexicon, and those
who did were conscious of operating in an area that was deeply unfashion-
able and where principled research was a rarity. In a much-cited article, Meara
(1980) describes vocabulary in this period as a Cinderella subject. Through the
1970s and 1980s, it was sufficiently unimportant in academia for literature on
the subject of second language learning to ignore it (reported in Milton 2009)
or dismiss it as marginal to the learning process (Brumfit 1984). As Krashen
(1989) has pointed out, however, learners never lost sight of the fact that
vocabulary is central to learning a foreign language. He observed that learners
carry dictionaries with them and not grammar books.
Since about 1990 the subject of vocabulary in teaching and learning a for-
eign language has undergone a resurgence. We tell ourselves that the days when
vocabulary was a Cinderella subject have long gone, and to a degree they have.
There is now a mountain of academic output on the subject of vocabulary
learning and teaching: journal articles, books and book chapters, and special
issues in journals. There are special interest groups whose members focus on
DOI: 10.4324/9781003278771-1
2 Introduction and background
the subject. In the field of teaching and learning English as a Foreign Language
(EFL) particularly, the major publishers and examining boards devote consid-
erable effort into developing their own corpora (bodies of words) and building
vocabulary into their materials. They produce core word lists which, like the
Oxford 3000 (2021), guide teaching and curriculum design. They link vocabu-
lary knowledge to formal hierarchies like the Common European Framework
of Reference for Languages (CEFR) and are well-founded in research. CEFR
materials, even if they no longer specify the details of vocabulary content, are
quite clear that the expectation in language learning progress is that a large
and sophisticated lexicon will be acquired (Council of Europe 2001, 2020).
There are now theories of language learning which explain acquisition in terms
of vocabulary knowledge and development, such as the Minimalist Program
(Cook 1998) and the Lexical Learning Hypothesis (Ellis 1997), according to
which vocabulary knowledge is indispensable to the acquisition of grammar.
It can be argued that foreign language teaching with this vocabulary focus,
especially in EFL, is notably successful. Millions use the EFL they learned at
school for education abroad and for business and work. This kind of achieve-
ment is a routine outcome of the language teaching system. However, even if
this resurgence in vocabulary is increasingly general, it is not absolutely univer-
sal. There are still many teachers, curriculum designers and influential stake-
holders who do not have access to this research and guidance via articles and
the books, who do not know the latest learning theories, or who think the route
to successful language learning is through grammar rather than vocabulary.
There are many textbook writers who still make idiosyncratic choices as to
which vocabulary, and how much, they choose to teach (Catalán and Fransisco
2008). Lexically driven syllabuses and curriculums are still regarded as novel-
ties. It is notable that formal, criterion-referenced, vocabulary size assessment
still plays no part in formal examinations despite its proven predictive value
and its potential usefulness. Nonetheless, there has undoubtedly been a sea
change in attitudes to the importance of vocabulary in the modern foreign
language curriculum, and these changes have spread widely and with success
across the foreign language teaching community. Except . . .
Except, it seems, in the United Kingdom, and especially in England.
The UK situation is somewhat complicated in that England, Scotland,
Northern Ireland and Wales do slightly different things, but nonetheless, they
have in recent decades shared an attitude to the teaching of vocabulary as part
of the MFL curriculum which is very different from other countries. In England,
the teaching of modern languages in schools works on the principle that vocab-
ulary is not just an unimportant and expendable part of the curriculum but that
it is actually a damaging thing to teach in the classroom. The teaching of lan-
guage through topics and themes has come to be regarded as particularly dan-
gerous because this requires a wide vocabulary, and the teaching of vocabulary
should, it is said, more properly be restricted to minimal numbers. Vocabulary,
then, can be omitted entirely from the government’s specification of modern
language subject content (for example, DfES 2003, DfE 2015) or reduced to
Introduction and background 3
minimal quantities (for example, DfE 2021), with thematic words best avoided
(Teaching Schools Council 2016). Avoiding the proper teaching of vocabulary
is possible because of the belief that in a foreign language it is grammar that is
the mechanism for communication. The government’s review into the peda-
gogy of modern languages (Teaching Schools Council 2016, p. 10) explains
that ‘we use the grammar of a language to say what we wish . . . and to under-
stand what is said to us.’ If the grammar of a language is taught, it is asserted,
then learners have command of the language. The fascination with grammar-
led teaching and learning is nothing new and has certainly been apparent in
various iterations of the secondary modern languages curriculum (Evans and
Fisher 2010).
A damaging focus on grammar in foreign language learning, to the exclu-
sion of communicability and other aspects of language, is not unique to UK, of
course. Describing the teaching of French in Germany, Schöpp (2012, p. 86)
notes ‘die aus der fachdidaktischen Literatur seit langem bekannte Klage über die
Dominanz grammatischer Inhalte und eine daraus resultierende untergeordnete Rolle
mündlicher Kommunikation’ – a long-held complaint in the academic literature
about the dominance of grammatical content and the consequential subor-
dination of oral communication in the curriculum. Thornbury (2000) notes
this tendency in some EFL teachers and calls it OGS, Obsessive Grammar
Syndrome. In all four nations, however, the UK is super-structuralist in its
approach to the foreign language curriculum, and this involves being opposed
to most vocabulary teaching. It is part of a culture of language teaching in
the UK which is so ingrained that practitioners and administrators struggle to
believe they have ideas which are anti-vocabulary. Teaching very little vocabu-
lary and expecting students to learn very little vocabulary and focus instead on
grammatical complexity is just considered normal and right. If it is argued, as
we have said earlier, that foreign language teaching with a research-led vocabu-
lary focus can be highly successful, it can be argued too that the UK’s structur-
alist and anti-vocabulary approaches are unsuccessful. There is ample research
evidence to show that levels of attainment in the UK are low (Milton 2006;
Milton 2013; David 2008; Gruber and Tonkyn 2017) and out of kilter with the
rest of the world (Milton 2010; Milton and Alexiou 2009). This must surely, in
part, explain the grand narrative whereby the British, or at least the English,
consider themselves to be bad at languages.
The intention of this book is to explain to teachers, materials writers, exam-
ining bodies and curriculum designers that vocabulary is a really important
part of any well-structured foreign language curriculum. It is an essential part,
not an optional part and certainly not a damaging part, of any curriculum
that aspires to successfully teach a foreign language for communication. It will
explain the research evidence that demonstrates this, drawing on examples of
successful practice from a variety of language courses, particularly EFL, and
from around the world. It will provide guidance as to how vocabulary can be
intelligently, systematically and usefully put into teaching and the curriculum.
A curriculum is about setting the goals of learning. In vocabulary, this usually
resolves itself into numbers; how many words are necessary to teach to achieve
the overall communicative goals of the curriculum and the form of its content?
However, the vocabulary curriculum also needs to identify the phrases, lexical
structures and other multi-word expressions which make up good language use.
A curriculum is about defining the content of learning, and in vocabulary that
involves choosing not just how many words and expressions, but which words
and expressions to teach for those overall communicative goals. This will help
users of the MFL curriculum in setting appropriate vocabulary goals and select-
ing content. A curriculum also defines a route through learning, or some kind a
plan, so the content of teaching can be marshalled into teaching materials and
classroom time. It is about making sure the system has the resources in place
that can deliver the goals of the curriculum. It does not matter how good the
curriculum is on paper, if it cannot be delivered then teaching and learning will
be sub-optimal. This book, then, is also about how the curriculum organises
the delivery of vocabulary.
How this book is organised

This book is broadly organised into three parts. The first part will establish the
basis for design in any vocabulary curriculum. Chapter 2 will consider what
exactly are the words that form the vocabulary which is to be taught. This has
implications for the delivery of other elements of the curriculum. Chapter 3
will examine the evidence which explains why vocabulary is so important in
learning a language and the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and
successful communicative ability. This is important because it begins to give
the scale of vocabulary learning needed for communication, and it can begin
to define better some of the learning goals of the curriculum. It will enable cur-
riculum designers to define the number of words, and the types of words, which
are needed if learners are to achieve their broader language goals. Chapter 4
will examine how words are learned in a modern foreign language. An under-
standing of this is central to organising the learning of something as large as a
fully working lexicon in an effective curriculum.
The second part of the book concerns goal setting and content selection.
Chapter 5 will set out the information we have about the vocabulary knowl-
edge needed to achieve learning and teaching goals defined in terms of CEFR
levels, and these will provide a principled and evidence-based system for defin-
ing both overall and interim learning goals. It examines the difference between
input and uptake of words. This will help the curriculum define the nature
of the teaching delivery, such as the number of classroom hours, which are
required for success. Chapter 6 will explain how the choice of words can be
made for the curriculum to achieve the overall communicative goals of the cur-
riculum. In the light of these explanations about how language works and how
it can best form part of an organised curriculum, Chapter 7 will consider some
of the myths about the nature of language learning and teaching which can
damage the creation of an effective curriculum, particularly in relation to the
teaching of MFL in the UK. We have characterised these ideas in the preceding
paragraphs, and it is important to counter these myths with research evidence
about the nature of language and language learning and dispel the very damag-
ing effects which these myths are having.
The third part of the book is about organising the resourcing and delivery of
the vocabulary content of the curriculum. A vocabulary curriculum can provide
word lists and topical ideas around which words are selected, but these have
to work their way, in a coherent and systematic way, into the hands of learners
for learning. Chapter 8 will, therefore, examine how the vocabulary curriculum
should be contained in textbook materials for the classroom. The evidence we
have is that a good textbook will be a principal contributor to the delivery of
vocabulary curriculum goals. It can sequence, deliver, recycle and practice the
vocabulary load so it can be learned. The principles by which a good textbook
will do this are described. However, there are plenty of textbooks that fail to do
this, and school MFL textbooks in the UK have come in for particular criticism
(Tschichold 2012; Milton and Hopwood 2021). Perhaps it is not surprising, even
if it is worrying, that UK teachers routinely abandon the use of a textbook and
use an eclectic mixture of downloaded and other materials. This is worrying
because material selected this way cannot hope to deliver coherently the vocab-
ulary needed for communicative goals. Teachers in the UK, or anywhere for that
matter, should be able to do better. In other countries and learning environ-
ments they do, indeed, do better, and examples of these in EFL in particular will
be examined. Chapter 9 will consider the contribution that the language of the
classroom teacher talk can make to the delivery of a good vocabulary curricu-
lum. It is a resource that is under-exploited but has implications for the training
of teachers to effectively deliver such a curriculum. Chapter 10 will consider the
role that an effective curriculum can make of the now huge variety of opportu-
nities offered outside the classroom: things like mobile apps and songs. Gaining
mastery of the volumes of vocabulary needed for effective communication has
long been considered one of the principal challenges facing a learner, and an
effective curriculum will need to consider how to systematically take advantage
of the opportunities offered here to supplement limited classroom time. Finally,
Chapter 11 will summarise the path which is being advocated for the effec-
tive construction of a vocabulary curriculum. It will consider the implications
of using this approach. In the UK, where the modern MFL curriculum is in
trouble, the implications are considerable in terms of, for example, the need to
create coherent materials to deliver such a curriculum and update the training
of teachers to deliver them. It will consider some of the pitfalls, particularly in
terms of over-prescription, that a vocabulary curriculum might fall into.
Conclusion
We are conscious, in writing this first chapter, that some emphasis has been
placed on language learning in English school system and the problems it
faces. However, this is not a book about the English system. It is a book about
the construction of a vocabulary curriculum in almost any modern foreign
language. It is intended to illustrate the things contained here using plenty
of examples from EFL and a variety of other languages and from other parts
of the world to show how things can be done well. Thus, the latest EFL cur-
riculum in Saudi Arabia has a quite explicitly organised vocabulary curriculum
linked to current research, and this curriculum is also linked to considerable
success in the speed and nature of learning where it is put into practice. This
is a model that bears close examination and might usefully be copied else-
where. There are examples from Greece showing how wide thematic variety
and good lexical loading are linked to high rates of EFL vocabulary learning
and impressive overall language progress. Again, these are examples worth
studying and adopting where possible. And there are examples of deliberately
managed and explicit informal language activities in a wide variety of lan-
guages which lead to quite remarkable vocabulary learning and these, again,
might very usefully form part of an effective, successful curriculum. However,
this book is intended, too, to explain how things can go wrong in curriculum
design and damage the language learning system. Unfortunately, the UK sys-
tem for teaching French as a modern foreign language is an excellent example
about how not to do things.
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2 Vocabulary – what is meant
by word in teaching words?
Introduction
The purpose of this chapter is to establish an essential requirement of a vocabu-
lary curriculum which is to make clear what constitutes a word in a foreign
language. The intention is to establish:
1 What a word is and how knowing this relates to the curriculum

2 An understanding that multi-word units can sometimes function like
individual words, and these also need to be identified and built into the
curriculum
3 How this should influence the construction of a vocabulary curriculum.
The unit of count

This is a book about how to organise the teaching of words. Any book on
vocabulary learning and teaching has to establish its unit of count and decide
what it means by word in teaching words, and this book can be no exception.
So what is it that learners learn when they learn a word in a foreign language?
What is it that learners and teachers expect to usefully see when they look up a
word in a dictionary or word list? And what are we counting when we talk about
a learner needing, say, 3000 words to pass an exam or 8000 words to become
very fluent? There is a century or so of research which attempts to meaning-
fully estimate how many words a normal speaker of a language knows, and this
has helped to refine our ideas of what can be usefully counted as a word. There
is no definitive answer, but the last 30 years of research has provided conclu-
sions which, we think, are useful and which can guide the construction of an
effective vocabulary curriculum. Treatments of the issues involved here can be
found in Daller et al. (2007) and Milton (2009). Nonetheless, it is important to
establish at the start of this book what is being talked about.
It is probably useful to start with what is not being counted here. It is prob-
ably not helpful to count every different written form of a word as a different
word. Treating cat and cats as two different words, for example, is probably not
useful or helpful. Treating different grammatical forms of verbs such as work,
DOI: 10.4324/9781003278771-2
Vocabulary – what is meant by word? 9
worked and working as different words may not be useful either. There are a
number of reasons for not counting words this way, and one of them is the
sheer number of words that result when you do this. Counting all word forms
as different words was common in some earlier estimates of vocabulary size and
produced estimates of hundreds of thousands of words. For example, Seashore
and Eckerson (1940) suggested English native-speaking undergraduates have
vocabularies of 155,000 words, and Hartmann (1946) suggested 200,000 words.
The scale of these estimates created real problems in our understanding of the
teaching and learning process. An estimate of 200,000 words for an under-
graduate suggests that a learner encounters, recognises and is able to attribute
some form of meaning to, then learns, an average of 30 new words a day, every
day for 20 years. It was not at all clear how learners could possibly encounter
all these words with sufficient context for learning to enable this to happen.
It gave rise to an unhelpful theory of word learning, which persists in places,
that words are not learned explicitly but are soaked up incidentally, without
noticing and without effort (Harris and Snow 2004), perhaps from extensive
reading (Krashen 1989). Laufer (2005) calls this a default theory of learning. It
is an explanation of learning to fall back on when there is no better and more
believable explanation available.
From a foreign language learning point of view, this view of words appeared
to present foreign language learners with an utterly insuperable barrier to
achieving the type of fluency that native speakers have. How could this many
words be incorporated into a curriculum, and how could learners hope to find
the time to learn them all? It gave rise to an idea that the foreign language
learner’s lexicon could only ever be a much smaller and inferior form of the
native speaker’s lexicon. However, there was an obvious problem with this
idea. Many foreign language learners did, and still do, become communica-
tively fluent and, in terms of the size of their lexicon, almost indistinguishable
from native speakers. A model of the foreign language lexicon comprised of
hundreds of thousands of individual word forms, all learned as different words,
was clearly unbelievable.
It is more helpful, therefore, to think and work using some form of word
family, a base word for which there are rules to create other word forms. Cat
would be a base word, and the highly regular inflection -s added to the end
could make the plural cats, and these two forms can be treated as one word
from a teaching and learning point of view. Regardless of what academics were
doing in counting words, generations of foreign language materials writers have
been working with this sort of definition and to great effect. Thimann’s (1959)
vocabulary lists for French O level, for example, work on exactly this principle.
It is probably not a matter of chance and convention that leads to words being
treated this way. Milton (2009) points to Pienemann’s (1998) processability
theory and suggests that language learners generally will approach the task of
language learning with the assumption that the lemma, a base word and its reg-
ularly inflected forms, is the basic unit of language. The evidence, he suggests,
is that learners learn and store words as a base form, whether orthographic,
10 Vocabulary – what is meant by word?
phonological or both, and these are retrieved from memory and then rules for
inflection are applied when language is used. When learners approach the task
of looking up words in a dictionary or word list, they expect to see a base word
of some sort.
This has profound implications for the way we approach the task of con-
structing a curriculum for learning and teaching, and this, in turn, stems from
the effect such a definition has of the scale of the learning task. Goulden
et al.’s (1990) calculation of vocabulary size, which was made this way and uses
frequency criteria to aid test word selection, concluded that educated native
speakers know about 17,000 word families, rather than the hundreds of thou-
sands of word forms reported in previous estimates. Goulden et al. point out
the significance of this for foreign language learners in that the scale of the
learning task now becomes understandable and believable. It implies a rate
of acquisition of something like 2–3 word families per day which is entirely
believable even if learning is explicit. This is something that foreign language
learners might reasonably aspire to and achieve. The learning load in acquir-
ing a foreign language lexicon is now understandable, where previously it was
a mystery. It makes the task of defining a vocabulary to be learned, as part of a
foreign language curriculum, workable and understandable.
Lemmas, flemmas and word families

Defining a vocabulary curriculum in terms of some kind of word family, then,
makes sense of the learning load and the learning process involved. It probably
reflects the way learners treat words when they encounter them, learn and store
them in memory and then retrieve and process them in use. It also explains why
previous practice in working with base words has proved successful over gen-
erations. It does not solve all problems here, however, because there are various
forms of word family; some are more inclusive and some more restricted.
The previous paragraphs have talked in terms of both the lemma and the
more broadly defined word family. What exactly are these things, and what is
the difference between them?
A lemma is usually considered to be a base word and its inflections, and
these inflections have to:
a Be regular and frequent, so they are clearly rule governed.

b Make changes in form that will not significantly change the meaning of the
base form. The changes these inflections make are grammatical; in Eng-
lish the regular plurals with -s for nouns and the regular -ed past tense for
verbs. In German, for example, this would include feminine nouns which
add -n in the plural and weak verbs with the -te endings in the Präteritum.
In French such examples would include the inflection of regular verbs to
form the imperfect, future and past historic tenses and regular subjunc-
tives. In Arabic, we might include the sound plurals of nouns ending in
‫ون‬- or -‫ات‬.
c Make changes to the base word that do not change the part of speech. In
English, adding -en to the end of the noun wood converts it to an adjective,
and this would be considered a different word. In German, adding -heit to
an adjective such as schön often turns it into an abstract noun denoting the
same quality. In French, Italian and Spanish, verbs can be adapted through
the addition of -tion, -zione or -ción to create nouns with linked meaning –
such as colloboration, collaborazione and collaboración.
The definition of a word family is more broadly drawn and includes all these
regularly formed grammatical inflections which comprise the lemma. Addition-
ally, however, it includes many regularly formed morphemic derivations which
are more than just grammatical changes to the base word because they can
change the meaning and the part of speech of the base word. A base word like,
in English, the verb manage can have a large number of inflected and derived
forms, therefore, which would fall into its word family. These would include the
grammatical inflections managed, managing and manages, as with the lemma.
Additionally, the word family would include a potentially larger number of
morphological derivations, such as manager, manageress, manageable, unmanage-
able, management and this list probably is not complete as these derivations can
be added incrementally to each other as in manageability.
It so happens that in English this lemma and word family distinction gen-
erally works fairly straightforwardly. Grammatical inflections, in English, are
restricted to additions and changes at the end of words and do not affect the
beginning of the base word. There are rules for the creation of these inflec-
tions which are generally very frequent and very regular. Adding -s to a noun
to make a plural is a good rule even if it sometimes has to be -es as in mix
and mixes. In Bauer and Nation’s (1993) classification of these inflectional and
derivational affixes in English, there is a clear distinction in frequency between
regular inflections and almost all derivations, even if they are regularly formed.
English is straightforward, too, in that there are not many of these inflections,
compared with morphological derivations. This enables Milton (2009) to pro-
duce a table which can concisely illustrate the lemma and word family distinc-
tion in English, Table 2.1.
Table 2.1 Examples of common words and related word forms to form a lemma or a
word family (taken from Milton 2009, p. 11)
Base form Forms which might be Forms which might also be included
included in a lemma in a word family
week weeks weekly, mid-week

govern governs, governed, governing government, governance,
governess, governor,
ex-governor, governable,
misgovern
wide wider, widest widen
Reality is not always as neat and ordered as this table, and there are occa-
sions where the base forms of two different parts of speech are the same. Aim,
for example, can be a noun or a verb. In German, schnell can denote the adjec-
tive fast or the adverb quickly. Indeed, in German, virtually all adjectives can be
used as adverbs, while most verbs can be nominalised through the mere use of
a capital letter (lesen, Lesen). In French, goûter is both a noun (afternoon snack)
and verb (to taste). In lemmatised word counts these are usually counted as
two separate words; however, word lists, such as Cambridge PET (University
of Cambridge 2006), may often record these as a single word, although they
are clearly marked as having two parts of speech. The unit of count that works
this way is called a flemma, and there is some evidence (McLean 2018) that
learners understand this possibility as a principle of the foreign language early
in development, rather than later.
Other languages, even if they are closely related to English like French, are
more highly inflected, and a concise summary of this kind is much harder to
create. With nouns, for example, French inflects for gender as well as num-
ber producing, simply put, more inflections even when regular. French requires
noun-adjective agreement which requires, in turn, more adjective inflec-
tions. There are different forms of French verbs, even when these are regular.
Table 2.2 illustrates some of this complexity.
The appearance of the neat regularity of English (even if that is something
of a simplification) rather disappears in French, which is clearly more compli-
cated. Because of this extra complexity, the kind of frequency distinction which
facilitates a convenient lemma and word family distinction is harder to draw,
not least because many French adjectives can function as nouns and vice versa.
In other languages, too, the distinction between regular and irregular is rather
more difficult to draw because a word might not follow the most regular of
patterns. However, the word might be somewhat predictable in that it follows
one of a number of potential patterns, a fact which makes learning, predicting
and using these patterns rather harder. Good examples of this would be strong
verbs in German, whose vowel sound changes in different tenses or with dif-
ferent personal pronouns (as in essen – isst – aß – gegessen), or broken plurals
in Arabic (such as ‫ صديق‬which becomes ‫)أصدقاء‬. The equivalents of the Bauer
and Nation (1993) list of affix frequency and use for English are much harder
to find in other languages.
What is the significance of this, and why is this important for the creation of
an effective curriculum? Making the right choice about what you are counting
as a word is important because it affects the choice of the word forms you put
in front of learners to learn, and it informs the assumptions you can make about
the learning process, including when and how successfully students manipu-
late and inflect words within sentences. There is an assumption in teaching
vocabulary that if you teach one form of a word, usually a base form, then all
the other inflected and derived forms of that word can be added with little or
no effort to the learner (for example, Bauer and Nation 1993). This assumes
that the learner has all these rules, and that an entire lexicon can be made up
Table 2.2 Examples of common words and related word forms in French to form a lemma or a word family
Part of speech Variant Sub-variant Words within lemma Linked words within word family
Nouns Gender coiffeur, coiffeuse coiffure

infirmier, infirmière infirmerie
premier, première, etc. premièrement
Number coiffeurs, coiffeuses
infirmier, infirmières
Vocabulary – what is meant by word?

premier, première, etc.
Adjectives Gender bleu, bleue bleuté
italien, italienne bleuâtre
actif, active, etc. activement
Number bleus, bleues
italiens, italiennes
actifs, actives, etc.
(Continued)
13
Table 2.2 (Continued)
14
Part of speech Variant Sub-variant Words within lemma Linked words within word family
Vocabulary – what is meant by word?

Verbs Infinitive mood jouer, choisir, vendre choix
Indicative mood Present joue, joues, jouons, jouez, jouent joueur
tense choisis, choisit, choisissons, choisissez, choisissent joueuse
vends, vend, vendons, vendez, vendent jouet
Imperfect jouais, jouait, jouions, jouiez, jouaient jeu
tense choisissais, choisissait, choisissions, choisissiez, choisissaient vente
vendais, vendait, vendions, vendiez, vendent vendeur
vendeuse
Future jouerai, joueras, jouera, jouerons, jouerez, joueront
tense choisirai, choisiras, choisira, choisirons, choisirez, choisiront
vendrai, vendras, vendra, vendrons, vendrez, vendront
Past historic jouai, jouas, joua, jouâmes, jouâtes, jouèrent
choisis, choisit, choisîmes, choisîtes, choisirent
vendis, vendit, vendîmes, vendîtes, vendirent
Subjunctive mood Present joue, joues, jouions, jouiez, jouent
tense choisisse, choisisses, choisissions, choisissiez, choisissent
vende, vendes, vendions, vendiez, vendent
Imperfect jouasse, jouasses, jouât, jouassions, jouassiez, jouassent
tense choisisse, choisisses, choisît, choisissions, choisissiez,
choisissent
vendisse, vendisses, vendît, vendissions, vendissiez,
vendissent
Conditional mood jouerais, jouerait, jouerions, joueriez, joueraient
choisirais, choisirait, choisirions, choisiriez, choisiraient
vendrais, vendrait, vendrions, vendriez, vendraient
Participles Present jouant, choisissant, vendant
Past joué, choisi, vendu
Table 2.3 Examples of Academic Word List verbs and their derived abstract nouns
clarify clarification
comment comment, commentary
commit commitment, commission
comprise composition
consist consistency
communicate communication
conform conformity
of base words and regularly formed derivations and inflections. Neither of these
assumptions is true.
There are many word forms in language that defy easy analysis in terms of,
in this case, rules for derivation and inflection. The idea that language is a
rule-based system may be broadly true but not entirely true. An example of this
is contained in Table 2.3. The first column contains verbs beginning with the
letter C that is taken from Coxhead’s Academic Word List (Coxhead 2000).
The second column contains abstract nouns that are derived from these verbs.
What are the rules for derivation here?
If this seems like a difficult and unfair exercise, then it probably accurately
reflects the state of mind of a learner faced with the task of making sense of the
way a European language manages to change a base word into another word
class. There is not a lot of regularity very visible here. The verbs do not look
conveniently uniform and neither do the suffixes when these become abstract
nouns. It may be possible to describe rules for derivation, but the frequency
with which these rules can be applied may make the practice of defining and
teaching these explicitly a costly distraction from acquiring communicative flu-
ency in a language. It is easier and quicker to learn these as individual words,
rather than as part of a rule-based system. This may fit better with the way
these words appear to be stored in memory in European languages.
The assumption that inflected and derived forms of base words can be added
to a lexicon with little effort is misplaced in the case of modern foreign lan-
guage learners. With learners who are starting from a point of no knowledge,
you can be sure that they will not know these rules. One of the tasks of the
teacher and the designer of the grammar element of the curriculum is to help
the learner with instruction to gain this kind of knowledge. The assumption
with the lemma is that learners will start the learning process with the expecta-
tion that the words they learn will inflect and much of this will be some kind of
rule-based change. The assumption, too, is that with appropriate teaching they
will learn these infections relatively early in the learning process. The observa-
tion of Milton (2009) is that in English these forms are, indeed, acquired early
in the learning process and develop with the early growth of vocabulary size.
In English, at least, these inflections occur so frequently and are so regular
that they occur naturally in the language used to teach learners at the earliest
stages. There is no inconsistency, therefore, in presenting and counting words
this way and the learning that will occur.
More complex and less frequent derivations are a different matter, however.
Not only is there evidence to suggest that, at least in European languages,
derived word forms are stored and processed as lemmas in their own right,
but also there is evidence that high levels of competence, including a large
vocabulary, are required before these are learned in a foreign language. Milton
(2009) points to the research of Mochizuki and Aizawa (2000) which exam-
ines the vocabulary sizes and indications of the overall levels of competence
in EFL which are required before these derivations were in any way learned.
Knowledge of over 3000 lemmatised words from the most frequent 5000 lem-
matised words, CEFR B level or better, therefore appears a requirement before
these derivations appear to be used with any consistent accuracy. Even where
learners had achieved C2 level performance and over 7000 lemmatised words
of tested knowledge, they still struggled with the function of affixes such as in-,
inter- and -ish. The acquisition of these affixes appeared related to their fre-
quency in English. Milton (2009) concludes that a large vocabulary is needed
before these more complex affixes can be learned. It seems unhelpful, there-
fore, to treat words as whole word families in the context of MFL teaching
and learning. This would be the case in classrooms where pupils with a less
inflected first language are learning a more inflected second language or where
the types of derivation are very different from those that they know from their
first language. Teaching the rules for derivation before learners have the vocab-
ulary that can exemplify these rules runs the danger of teaching grammar for
grammar’s sake rather than as part of the process of developing grammar and
lexis together to achieve communicative goals. Treating words as word families
is likely to remove many word forms from a useful place in the sequence of
teaching and mislead both teachers and learners of the scale of learning they
are undertaking. The curriculum needs to keep in mind that high levels of
fluency are possible, perhaps are required, before something approaching full
grammatical accuracy is obtained. It is for this reason that models of linguistic
progression such as the CEFR (Council of Europe 2020, p. 132) foresee full
grammatical accuracy and control not occurring right from the word go, but
building gradually in tandem with other elements of knowledge and proficiency.
This has significance for the creation of a vocabulary curriculum. A curricu-
lum for foreign language learners at the earliest stages of learning can usefully
define and present the words for learning as lemmas. Learners can be expected
to acquire the inflectional abilities which can make sense of words presented
this way even if this takes longer in some languages, like French, than it does in
others, like English. The curriculum writer or teacher can have a good idea of
the learning load associated with volumes of words presented this way and that;
in testing word knowledge using this definition, neither teacher nor learner is
being misled by assumptions for word knowledge that cannot be sustained.
In English, even in a relatively small curriculum, because these forms are fre-
quent and regular, there will be examples of their use for learning to occur. It
seems likely, because of the relationship between frequency of occurrence and
learning observed with vocabulary, that a meaningful command of inflections is
likely to emerge earlier in a language like English than in, say, French. It seems
likely that control of grammatical inflections in a language like French is likely
to require a larger vocabulary than would be the case in English, to provide
exemplification of the greater number of forms and to allow them to be prac-
tised in a range of meaningful contexts.
Derived word forms that move beyond the lemma to the wider word family
are best treated as separate lemmas. They can be listed in the learner lexi-
cons, and individual items can be taught and tested as individual items. For
these, we assume that learners need to learn a large vocabulary so that when, in
the fullness of teaching time, rules for derivation may be formally taught there
are sufficient examples of the use of these rules for them to be understood. The
sequencing of grammar and vocabulary in the curriculum can work in har-
mony rather than conflicting in a way that will create an obstacle to progress.
The negative impact on learning of trying to teach language as a purely rule-
based system, without the words to which these rules can be applied, cannot
be underestimated. It is damaging to the confidence and motivation of learners
where this kind of teaching does not lead to obvious communicative profi-
ciency. It turns into teaching about language without communication, rather
than teaching the language for communication.
The argument can be made (for example, Coxhead 2000) that teaching deri-
vational rules can help the growth of a lexicon and particularly the receptive
side of the lexicon. Comprehension in speech and writing can be enhanced if
the unknown words in a text can be broken down into their component mor-
phemes where at least the derivational suffixes are recognised and understood.
There may be some truth in this but only some. These derivations can add
to and alter the meaning of a root morpheme, but they do not contain much
meaning in themselves and might sometimes change the meaning of a word in
unexpected ways, such as the confusion around the meanings of flammable and
inflammable in English; sentir and sensible in French; kommen and bekommen in
German. Learners will still need to understand the overwhelming majority of
the words in any text for comprehension, and a large vocabulary is needed for
that. Knowledge of derivations is probably not going to change that. A princi-
pal task of the curriculum is to organise the learners into the acquisition of the
volumes of vocabulary that allow a working understanding of all the base words
in a text, which is an essential for communication. It is a question of vocabu-
lary size, and this is dealt with more fully in Chapter 3. Once sufficient size for
comprehension is gained, then knowledge of these derivational rules may prove
helpful but probably not before.
Multi-word issues
Thus far, the vocabulary in the curriculum has been dealt with as though it
were comprised of single words which, presumably, are joined together by
grammatical rules. In reality, language and the lexicon are not so simple. Some
expressions we routinely use are multi-word and are not easily explained by
rules of grammar. It is thought that a surprisingly large amount of language is
made up of formulaic or prefabricated expressions, and these are conceived
of as relatively fixed expressions. It is thought that these expressions help the
construction of language for communication, especially where there is time
pressure in communication, as in speech, avoiding the difficulty of constructing
whole phrases from scratch. They help in communication by allowing pauses to
be reduced or avoided, and they promote the kind of idiomaticity which marks
a fluent speaker (for example, Hilton 2008).
Many of these expressions are simply multi-word items that function, effec-
tively, as single words. In English something like ice cream is a single unit of
meaning even if it is usually written with two words. It is not entirely decom-
posable, so knowing the meaning for the two words which comprise it sepa-
rately does not really give you the meaning of these two words combined. In
French, something like fromage frais would be an equivalent item. Order that
after your dinner expecting cheese and you may get a surprise. Salle de bains,
likewise, is clearly one room, like salon, and with one function. Learners will
need to learn it as a single item of meaning. Well-constructed lists, such as
those associated with the Cambridge PET exams in EFL, routinely list these
multi-word items in their word lists (University of Cambridge 2006). Any well-
constructed vocabulary curriculum will want to teach these expressions in
addition to single words. German can combine nouns and other parts of speech
to form compound nouns whose meaning can often be safely assumed (Ver-
schwörungstheorie, Geschirrspülmaschine, Bundestagsabgeordnete) but sometimes
less so (Hausarzt, Fleischkäse, Kinderwagen, Strafvollzug).
In English, there is the particular issue of phrasal verbs. A verb such as
turn may be frequent and is sufficiently useful to be included in a good cur-
riculum. However, phrasal verbs such as turn on and turn off are also both
frequent and really useful in the context of teaching functional activities like
turning on and turning off lights or taps. These are not entirely fixed in the
sense both that they will have to inflect for number and tense, but also in that
the phrasal verb does not always occur unbroken. It is possible both to turn
off the tap and also to turn the tap off. Again, well-constructed lists such as
Cambridge PET exam word lists (University of Cambridge 2006) in EFL add
these to their lists, even in the elementary stages of learning, where they fit in
terms of the topical content and other elements of the curriculum. Separable
verbs in German, therefore, tend to be taught distinct from their core verb,
not least because the relationship to the original core verb can become rather
obscure, as in kommen, ankommen, auskommen, vorkommen, herunterkommen
and so on. Counting these items as part of the vocabulary load helps man-
age the spread of vocabulary teaching across themes and across lessons so
the learner is not over- or under-loaded. Formulaic and multi-word expres-
sions can extend further into whole phrases like hang on a minute and you’re
pulling my leg in English or je vous en prie in French. These can usefully be
learned and used as whole units without the need for grammatical construc-
tion. As Schmitt and Meara (1997) point out, learners can learn and use
these phrases quite correctly and appropriately without understanding all the
words that make them up.
Corpus work in English means that there are lists that help define the multi-
word units and their frequency to help curriculum designers and materials
writers define these phrases and decide their place in teaching. In English,
for example, Martinez and Schmitt (2012) provide a frequency list of phrases
linked to the frequency of individual words. There are a range of highly inform-
ative core lists which include not just lists of words but the kind of phrases that
form part of the structure of language and which are relevant here (for exam-
ple, in French, see Bürgel and Siepmann 2022).
Dimensions of word knowledge

In specifying the vocabulary content of a curriculum of a foreign language
course, there has to be an understanding of the word knowledge that is
expected. In listing the words for exploitation in the curriculum, what is the
expectation in terms of knowledge and the ability to use these words? Presum-
ably, it is not enough just to recognise the form of the word. Learners taking
language courses are generally expecting to use the words meaningfully and
correctly in conversation or in writing. This may involve knowing a word’s
meaning as well as its form, recognising it receptively and being able to use
it productively and knowing how to use it which includes, with some words
like swear words, knowing when you should not use it. It turns out that word
knowledge can be fairly complex and that it is by no means obvious how the
curriculum can helpfully reflect this range of knowledge. Nation (2001) use-
fully brings some order to this complexity by summarising, in Table 2.4, what
knowing a word means.
Nation divides word knowledge into three broad areas: knowledge of word
form, knowledge of word meaning and knowledge of word use. Each of these
three major divisions is further divided into three. For each of these subdivi-
sions, Nation identifies the need for both productive and receptive knowledge.
There are, within Table 2.4, 18 different elements of word knowledge.
Under the heading of knowledge of word form, Nation identifies knowledge
of the written form and knowledge the spoken form. He also identifies knowl-
edge of word parts, which are the affixes, the inflections and derivational addi-
tions which have been part of the discussion of what a word is. There is often
an assumption that where a word is recognised in written form then many other
parts of knowledge can be assumed including the knowledge of the spoken form
of a word. In most teaching environments, both the written form of the word
and the spoken form will be modelled by the teacher. But what happens when,
as Krashen (1989) assumes, words are learned outside the classroom and from
reading, where there is no spoken model? Or vice versa, what happens when a
student knows the spoken form but when its written form is not spelled as the
student might expect, as in fier in French or gucken in German? A language
like Arabic is considerably more challenging here as in the written form of
Table 2.4 What is involved in knowing a word (from Nation 2001, p. 27)
Form Spoken R What does the word sound like?

P How is the word pronounced?
Written R What does the word look like?
P How is the word written and
spelled?
Word parts R What parts are recognisable in
this word?
P What words parts are needed to
express meaning?
Meaning Form and meaning R What meaning does this word
form signal?
P What word form can be used to
express this meaning?
Concepts and R What is included in the concept?
referents P What items can the concept refer
to?
Associations R What other words does this word
make us think of?
P What other words could we use
instead of this one?
Use Grammatical R In what patterns does the word
functions occur?
P In what patterns must we use this
word?
Collocations R What words or types of word
occur with this one?
P What words or types of words
must we use with this one?
Constraints on use R Where, when and how often
would we meet this word?
P Where, when and how often can
we use this word?
(R = receptive, P = productive)
Modern Standard Arabic the diacritical marks which convey so much informa-
tion about pronunciation, including the short vowels, are omitted.
Where languages share much of the same alphabet, as with English and
French or English and Spanish, then the spelling can give a guide to the pro-
nunciation. However, research which compares phonological and orthographic
vocabulary size shows that the two types of knowledge do not map on to each
other, and successful learners typically recognise many more words by sight
than by sound (for example, Milton and Hopkins 2006). This appears to be
normal and, up to a point, may simply reflect the way spoken language can
often work with a rather smaller lexicon than written language. Historically,
the training of learners in the sounds of a foreign language, before any mean-
ingful words were taught, was a feature of the audio-lingual method. The
theory underpinning this method, that language learning required extensive
habit formation, is generally not now believed. Time spent in trying to create
these pronunciation habits, as in the extensive use of minimal pair drills which
were a staple of EFL teaching in the 1970s, are now considered a poor use of
valuable classroom time. Nonetheless, they are perpetuated in school foreign
language teaching in England where extensive pronunciation work, including
working with single words out of context at the outset of language teaching,
is considered by officials as best practice (NCELP 2020; Wardle 2021; Ofsted
2021) and the subject of renewed research interest (Woore et al. 2018). It is
to be noted, however, that the same Ofsted report cited here (Wardle 2021)
also reflects how disappointing progress is, and some research also suggests it
is ineffective in promoting vocabulary learning. We suggest that the particu-
lar phonics practice recommended in England is an ineffective practice which
should be discontinued. A more effective approach for learners who share a
common European L1 and L2 is explained in Chapters 9 and 10. Knowledge of
sound-spelling correspondences is certainly not unhelpful but does not negate
the need to learn as many words as possible in the early stages of a curriculum.
Under the heading of knowledge of word meaning, Nation lists the kind of
ability which is often encompassed, in foreign language learners, in a trans-
lation of a word into the L1. The learner can link the word to the thing or
the idea that it represents. However, the other two elements of knowledge of
meaning indicate that meaning is often not that literal. Knowledge of concepts,
referents and association refer to the wider ideas and links that a word often
carries with it. In English thin and slim have very similar meanings, but slim car-
ries with it altogether more positive connotations than thin. Being slim carries
the ideas of being healthy and attractive, but being thin often carries the idea
of appearing unwell and where gaining weight might be a good idea. In English,
beautiful tends to refer to women, whereas its French equivalent beau, belle is
used more generally. Billig in German has clearer negative connotations than
the English cheap, not least because German has the specific word günstig for
items which offer good value for money. Even the most basic words such as
pain (bread) or Wurst (sausage) denote things which are firmly rooted in the
target language culture which are not the same as their English or American
equivalents. Furthermore, a word might have a straightforward and broadly
direct translation but may also have additional meanings. Sitz, in German, can
quite straightforwardly be a seat. However, Sitz can have additional meanings
such as registered office, and indeed other translations of the word seat are also
available: Platz, Sitz, Stuhl and of course the verb sitzen. Language is, of course,
full of idiom and idiosyncrasy: nous reposons notre valise.
Even where a word appears to have a direct translation into another lan-
guage, these connotations and associations may not be identical, and learning
this is part of word learning in a foreign language. Schmitt and Meara (1997)
point to an order in the learning of words where recognition of form precedes
the acquisition of subtleties of meaning and use. This would mean, in terms of
the construction of a vocabulary curriculum, that it should prioritise the acqui-
sition of form at the outset of learning, and once a sizeable foreign language lex-
icon is learned, subtleties in the choice of words and their usage can be added.
The issue is complex, however, and it is difficult to construct methodologies
that allow the many variables to be easily combined in a single model of learn-
ing. Nor is it the case that the most basic and everyday words are the words
most free of idiom, subtlety or pragmatic significance as we see in common
forms of greeting in many languages, which are often heavily socially codified.
Under the heading of knowledge of word use, Nation lists knowledge of
grammatical function, and this is more than understanding whether a word is,
say, a verb or an article. It involves understanding how these words work in the
foreign language. Learners of English from an L1 background that does not use
articles will likely struggle to use the word the used in the fashion of L1 English
speakers even when these learners are advanced and highly communicative.
Meanwhile, anglophone learners of French may struggle with the fact that
French has no preterit form and uses the compound perfect tense instead (j’ai
fait means both I have done and I did). Knowledge of collocation is linked to the
issue of formulaic language raised earlier in this chapter. It involves an appre-
ciation of the words that will likely occur with another word, and the phrases
words occur in, because these can vary from language to language. In English,
for example, we routinely talk of drawing a conclusion rather than making a con-
clusion. To convey meaning, using draw here is hardly essential, but it is what
the English language tends to do. German, meanwhile, supplies a contribution
(einen Beitrag leisten), whereas English would find such a phrase tautologous.
Where these are taught as units, then this must be counted in the vocabulary
teaching load and spread, appropriately, across the curriculum.
Constraints on use are likewise sensitive to first and foreign language dif-
ferences. All languages are likely to have words and expressions with restric-
tions on use, but these restrictions can vary. The English word student is now
commonly used to include secondary-age learners as well as undergraduates,
whereas the same cannot be said of the French and German equivalents étudi-
ants and Studenten (which is itself being gradually replaced by the more gender-
inclusive word Studierende). Swear words with religious references are no longer,
probably, very highly offensive in most British English, but in other languages
and in other countries such expressions can be highly offensive. Sometimes, the
constraint on use might be grammatical rather than semantic. In French, some
verbs must be followed by à, others by de when second verb is being added,
whereas other verbs can directly precede an infinitive. In German, similarly,
some verbs require the word zu before another infinitive can be introduced,
whereas with other verbs this would be incorrect. In British English, things
are different from but similar to other things. In Arabic, a place is far on and
close from another. In French, we lend something to someone but also borrow
something to someone.
Across all these elements of word knowledge runs a receptive and productive
vocabulary distinction. Receptive vocabulary can be thought of as recognition
of the words and their meaning when encountered in speech or written text.
Productive vocabulary can be thought of as the words that can be readily called
to mind and used by a learner in speech and writing. This can be achieved, of
course, with varying degrees of accuracy before communication is jeopardised.
Accuracy and communication are seldom directly correlated: these house are
close from the village where live she is clear enough in meaning. Milton (2009)
notes that productive vocabulary is effectively a subset of receptive vocabu-
lary, and research repeatedly shows that a learner’s receptive vocabulary will
be measurably larger than productive vocabulary. This is probably a feature of
language generally since the processing demands of speech in particular mean
that it is probably not possible to have an entire lexicon available for almost
instant use. However, this can also be seen as a developmental feature of the
kind Schmitt and Meara (1997) describe. It may be useful to consider that
words may first be learned receptively, and with practice and use they can be
more readily added to the productive lexicon.
It is important to remember, therefore, that complete knowledge of every
aspect of knowledge for every word taught is not a realistic or even a desirable
goal for teaching. Even native speakers will not know every subtlety of meaning
and every use for every word they know. Native speakers will not know every
word in their language. Furlough is a word that, very likely, few native speakers
of English will have come across or used before the 2020 pandemic. Native
speakers also often operate with words and word meanings that might even be
considered mistakes. Confusing practice and practise or prescribe and proscribe in
English are examples. Many native speakers of French will make errors in the
writing of certain phonemes with multiple potential spellings such as é, ée, és,
ées, et, er, ez, ais, ait, aient or ai. Where the language is diglossic, as with Arabic,
it can be even harder to choose a use for some words that is completely correct
and appropriate.
The discussion of inflectional and derivational affixes has already indicated
that the development of this kind of knowledge will be related to overall vocab-
ulary size, and that a well-constructed curriculum can help sequence the teach-
ing of this kind of knowledge so that teaching can be made coherent and linked
to the needs of learners. It can be argued that much of Nation’s elements of
word knowledge and word use are likely to develop with extensive language
use which, in turn, is also likely to develop with vocabulary size. This is part
of a discussion later on in this book. We have already made the argument that
teaching every derivational affix early in the curriculum, before learners have
mastered sufficient volumes of words for these affixes to be seen and under-
stood, is not just likely to be ineffective, it is likely to have damaging effects on
learner confidence and motivation. This argument can be extended, bearing
in mind Schmitt and Meara’s (1997) tentative order of acquisition in word
knowledge, where recognition of form precedes knowledge of usage. However,
because not all words are learned simultaneously, lots of these elements of col-
location and use are likely to develop at different times in relation to other
words. At any one time the words a learner knows are likely to be in a variety of
states of knowledge, some with a wider range of meaning and usages and others
which are recognised with only hazy understanding of meaning and how they
work in relation to other words.
It stands to reason that much of the development of foreign language vocabu-
lary knowledge has to occur in relation to the overall size of the lexicon. A learner
will not understand the relationship of one word to others if those other words
are not known and if there is insufficient exposure to these words in a variety of
contexts for these interrelationships to be appreciated. Teaching and curriculum
design has to accommodate this. We suggest that early learning is likely to involve
the teaching of lots of words and their basic meanings. Teaching can build in
some elements of structure with these words but working within the confines of
the words that are in the learners’ lexicon and the topical and communicative
content of the rest of the curriculum. Once a sizeable vocabulary is developed
then a greater focus on phraseology and an appropriate choice of words can be
made to meet the greater communicative goals of, say, an exam.
Well thought out word lists such as Cambridge PET and KET (for exam-
ple, University of Cambridge 2006) include common phrases and structures in
addition to single words in their lists. The entry for at, for example, is followed
by a number of prepositional phrases.
at all (prep phr)

at first (prep phr)
at last (prep phr)
at least (prep phr)
at once (prep phr)
at present (prep phr)
at the same time (prep phr)
Within this framework of existing vocabulary knowledge, the beginnings of

the development of effective word combination and use can begin. It should be
remembered, however, that real command of many of these aspects of knowl-
edge is something that is generally associated, like the learning of affixes, with
higher levels of vocabulary knowledge. Hierarchies of level and ability pick
up on this kind of development. The highest levels of performance associ-
ate with good use of idiomaticity and word connotation; the lower levels are
more closely related to the growth in the number of words to meet ever more
demanding variety in communicative situations. Martinez (2013), in line with
these hierarchies, suggests a threshold at about the 5000 word knowledge level
before many of these elements of polysemy and collocation can emerge, even
in frequent words.
In Table 2.5, therefore, the highest C1 and C2 levels of the CEFR mention
idiomaticity and use of idiom, collocation and connotative levels of meaning
as features of performance. These are absent in the lower A and B levels. By
contrast, the A and B ranges characterise progress in terms of an increasing
number of vocabulary items which allow communication across a wide range of
topics and themes. Knowledge develops from possession of a basic vocabulary
(A1), to sufficient (A2 and B1), to good (B2) and finally to a broad lexical reper-
toire (C1 and C2).
Table 2.5 Vocabulary descriptors in the CEFR (adapted from the Council of Europe
2001, p. 112)
Bands Levels Range
Proficient user C2 Has a good command of a very broad lexical

repertoire including idiomatic expressions and
colloquialisms; shows awareness of connotative
levels of meaning
C1 Has a good command of a very broad lexical
repertoire allowing gaps to be readily overcome
with circumlocutions; little obvious searching
for expressions or avoidance strategies;
good command of idiomatic expressions and
colloquialisms
Independent user B2 Has a good range of vocabulary for matters
connected to his/her field and most general
topics; can vary formulation to avoid frequent
repetition, but lexical gaps can still cause
hesitation and circumlocution
B1 Has a sufficient vocabulary to express him/herself
with some circumlocutions on most topics
pertinent to his/her everyday life such as family,
hobbies and interests, work, travel and current
events
Basic user A2 Has sufficient vocabulary to conduct routine,
everyday transactions involving familiar
situations and topics; has a sufficient
vocabulary for the expression of basic
communicative needs; has a sufficient
vocabulary for coping with simple survival
needs
A1 Has a basic vocabulary repertoire of isolated
words and phrases related to particular
concrete situations
These many aspects of word knowledge make modelling the vocabulary

knowledge and learning process very difficult. In an attempt to bring order
to this, the multiple dimensions of knowledge have been reduced to a smaller
number of vocabulary dimensions. Anderson and Freebody (1981) suggest
two dimensions, breadth and depth, while Daller et al. (2007) suggest three:
breadth, depth and fluency. Here vocabulary breadth, or size, refers to the num-
ber of words a learner knows almost irrespective of how well they know them.
Vocabulary depth refers to what the learner knows about these words, often in
terms of how they are used and how they interact with other words. Meara
(1997) characterises this dimension as links between words, and the greater the
number of links a learner has, then the greater the depth of knowledge. Meara
(1996) contrasts both these dimensions with the ease with which a word can
be accessed. Daller et al. (2007) build this in as fluency, sometimes called acces-
sibility, in a three-dimensional model of the lexicon. This fluency dimension
turns the binary receptive and productive distinction, in Nation’s (2001) table
of knowing a word, into a continuum.
These terms, breadth, depth and fluency, are a useful shorthand in talking
about a learner’s vocabulary. In conceiving of these as separate dimensions it is
easy to imagine that these can be easily treated and taught as separate entities.
Milton and Hopwood (2021) note in the teaching of French in UK schools that
the input of new word forms is almost halted rather early in the process, at the
point where only a few hundred words are recognised. At this point, there is
an attempt to promote depth of knowledge as part of curriculum design. How-
ever, the development of multiple links between words, a condition of depth of
knowledge, requires that a lot of words are known. If learners have only a few
words, then there will be only a few links. For the rich web of interrelationships
that Meara (1997) envisages in depth, a large lexicon is required. What this
means is that these elements of word knowledge are not entirely independ-
ent, but they develop in relation to each other. Fitzpatrick and Milton (2014)
summarise the research in the area as suggesting that these three dimensions
tend to collinearity. This supports the observations earlier, and noted in hierar-
chies such as the CEFR, that a condition of developing the wide range of word
knowledge that includes depth and fluency is developing a large lexicon. As
Marsden and David (2008, p. 195) point out, ‘an early emphasis on the teach-
ing and learning of lexical items might be useful, not only in improving learners’
vocabulary but also in helping them to develop grammatical systems.’ It should
not be surprising, then, that a system like that in the UK example and which
tries to teach depth and fluency but not breadth will struggle for success. This
inter-relationship of dimensions has a useful outcome in terms of understand-
ing the learner’s vocabulary progress to levels of high proficiency, which is that
a simple measure of lexical size is likely to give a lot of information about other
aspects of lexical knowledge and a good indication of general progress to the
learners’ communicative goals.
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3 Why is vocabulary so
important in the foreign
language curriculum?
Introduction
The purpose of this chapter is to make absolutely clear just how important
vocabulary is in a foreign language curriculum for it to be effective. It will
examine:
1 Coverage figures which can show how much vocabulary is needed for min-
imal understanding and for full understanding of text and, by extension,
how much vocabulary is needed for communication
2 Studies which quantify the importance of vocabulary in performance in
all four skills and which show that vocabulary is the most important single
element of knowledge in measures of language performance.
The importance of a good vocabulary curriculum

The first two chapters have asserted that vocabulary is essential to successful
language learning. In principle, this is understood by learners, teachers, materials
writers and curriculum designers. Even in the English system, curriculums are
content to assert that vocabulary is really important (DfE 2021), even if every-
thing that follows in this subject content diminishes and sidelines it. What is not
generally understood is how important it is, especially in relation to other areas
of the curriculum. The volumes of vocabulary which are needed to become a
communicative user of a foreign language are, likewise, not appreciated. The
absence of this knowledge and understanding is what allows for badly structured
curriculums to emerge, as in England, and for inappropriately structured teaching
materials to be created (Konstantakis and Alexiou 2012). The result is a teaching
system which is unable to give learners the opportunity to succeed.
Chapter 2 explained about an appropriate unit of count, a definition of word,
which is appropriate for teaching and for building an effective curriculum.
There is a wider importance to this understanding of what a word is, and, in
vocabulary learning research, it has allowed us to model far more convinc-
ingly the language learning process and the structure of a foreign language
lexicon. It has allowed us to calculate, and put numbers on, the relationship
DOI: 10.4324/9781003278771-3
30 Why is vocabulary so important?
between vocabulary knowledge and, for example, general language ability and
comprehension. This chapter is intended to explain this relationship so that the
volumes and choice of vocabulary needed in any curriculum are understood. It
will explain the importance of vocabulary to communication and provide the
background to the vocabulary sizes which will form the content of subsequent
chapters. It will become clear that building an appropriate vocabulary is essen-
tial to all the things which, in a foreign language, we aspire to teach.
The research evidence, which supports the idea that vocabulary is really
important for foreign language learning, may be new to readers. However, the
basic idea should not be new because writers have been producing pithy apho-
risms to remind us of this truth over many decades. Wilkins (1972, p. 111)
writes
Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing

can be conveyed.
Long and Richards (2007, p. xii) write
Vocabulary can be viewed as the core component of all the language skills.
Laufer (2005) quotes one of the founders of modern linguistics, Henry Sweet,
saying
The greatest problem which a learner faces in learning a foreign language

is to master the huge volume of vocabulary necessary for communication.
Laufer herself reflects (Laufer and Sim 1985, p. 410)
Vocabulary knowledge is the most important area of knowledge required

for comprehension.
The idea that vocabulary is so important it should feature prominently in the

curriculum, is not new either. Milton (2009, p. 251) writes
Clear, and large scale, vocabulary goals should be a principal feature of any
good teaching syllabus.
Alderson (2005, p. 88), goes as far as to suggest that the whole of language abil-
ity in a foreign language might be defined by vocabulary knowledge.
Language ability can be largely described as a function of vocabulary size.
You cannot learn a foreign language for communication without learning

words, and lots and lots of them. That is a major challenge to any learner, and
the task of the teacher and the curriculum is to help organise this process best.
Why is vocabulary so important? 31
Coverage
What is it that makes vocabulary so important to comprehension of text and to
foreign language ability generally? Coverage gives a really good idea of why this
is the case. Coverage is the number of words, or more usually the percentage
of words, a reader knows in any given text, and this number connects to the
comprehension, generally speaking, that the reader can take from the text. If a
learner is presented with a text where none of the words is known, then there will
be no comprehension. No meaning can be taken from the text. However, if the
learner knows all the words, then it is likely that there will be at least some com-
prehension, possibly full comprehension. Full comprehension may also require a
knowledge of other elements of language such as structure and idiom. This is why
school pupils may struggle with comprehension tasks in L1, even if they know all
the words in the text in front of them. If a learner knows just some of the words
in a text, then there is likely to be partial comprehension. The basic relationship
is obvious here. The more words a learner knows in any text then the better com-
prehension is likely to be. Obvious, too, will be the inference that if a learner has
a large vocabulary and knows a lot of words, they are likely to understand more
words in a text and have better comprehension than a learner with a smaller
vocabulary. There are complications in this relationship, but the principle is a
good one to remember. The bigger a learner’s vocabulary is then the better their
comprehension and communication is likely to be. An absolute essential of really
good and fluent communication is a large vocabulary.
One of the complications is that some words occur much more frequently than
others, and another is that words can perform a variety of tasks within a text.
But these two things are often related. The words which occur most frequently
in language are often called structure or function words because many of them
may not carry much meaning in themselves, but they can have an important
role in signalling the relationship between the other words and ideas contained
in any text. In English, words like prepositions, articles and conjunctions are
structure words, and in any corpus they are likely to be highly frequent. Less
frequent words are often called content or lexical words, and these are words like
most nouns, adjectives and main verbs, as well as specialist vocabulary. These are
the words that usually carry most of the meaning in any text. Without structure
words the meaning of a text can become opaque or confused, but without the
content words comprehension will likely disappear altogether. The importance of
vocabulary in relation to other elements of language for communication is con-
sidered later in this chapter. But consider this example to show the importance of
vocabulary and ask yourself the following question.
What does a cow eat?

A cow eats grass.
You can lose elements of formal grammar without affecting your ability to
understand and provide an answer. You can omit the article, you can omit the
Table 3.1 Cumulative coverage figures for different frequency bands (Carroll et al. 1971
cited in Nation 2001)
Number of words Text coverage (%)
10 24
100 49
1000 74
2000 81
3000 85
4000 88
5000 89
12,000 95
44,000 99
87,000 100
inflected -s at the end of the verb, and your understanding is scarcely impaired.
But if you lose elements of the content vocabulary then important elements
of meaning can be lost. In this case if you do not know the words cow, eat and
grass, then your ability to understand the question, and provide an answer,
disappears entirely. Vocabulary knowledge is crucial for comprehension and
communication. This point will be picked up again in Chapter 6 because it has
an important bearing on how words are selected for an effective curriculum.
The effect of these differences in frequency, in particular, has a significant
effect on coverage. A small number of words, like prepositions and articles, occur
over and over again in text and can contribute disproportionately to coverage.
Nouns in English usually have an article preceding them, and while a text can
have lots of different nouns in it, there are only three articles. Consequently,
the articles in English, the, a and an, typically can make up as much as 10% of
any corpus. The contribution to coverage of these frequent words is large. By
contrast, there are very many words which are far less frequent and which in
any decent corpus will contribute far less to coverage. This can be clearly seen
in Table 3.1 where the most frequent ten words in English contribute 24% to
coverage in Carroll et al.’s (1971) corpus. The most frequent 100 words
contribute nearly 50%. By contrast, the 1000 words in the 5000 word frequency
band contribute just an additional 1% to coverage over cumulative coverage of
the previous 4000 words.
This kind of distribution is called a Zipf distribution, and it is common to
plot this up as a curve on a graph to illustrate how the relationship between the
number of words and coverage is not straight line. This is done in Figure 3.1.
Here the words are arranged in diminishing order of frequency on the X axis
and coverage is plotted on the Y axis. The large contribution to coverage of the
most frequent words can be seen on the left of the graph where the curve rises
steeply. However, that steep incline begins to flatten quite quickly.
After only about 100 words the contribution of each additional word to cov-
erage becomes much smaller, and the line of the curve tends to become more
closely parallel to the Y axis.
100
80
coverage
60
40
20
0
0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 12000 14000
words
Figure 3.1 The most frequent bands in Table 3.1 presented in graph form
It is easy to be misled by these figures for coverage and to imagine that 50%
coverage or 80% coverage from comparatively few words, which sounds like
a lot of coverage, ought to give good comprehension. Nothing could be fur-
ther from the truth. A student who knows the top ten most frequent words in
French (le, de, un, à, être, et, en, avoir, que, pour) may well know 25% of words
in a text but will probably have understanding of 0% because these words are
entirely structural. No meaningful sentence can be constructed using them.
It is easy to imagine that the vocabulary learning task in a foreign language
can be made small and comparatively easy by focussing on these most frequent
words. Or that because a small number of words are so frequent, they must be
more useful and more important. Nation (2001, p. 16) suggests that the 2000
most frequent words are so important to language learning and language ability
that almost anything which can be done to make sure they are learned is worth
doing. This is often, as in the England’s current curriculum ideas (DfE 2021),
taken as a rationale for teaching only words from within the most frequent 2000.
It is often interpreted as meaning, by extension, that lower frequency words are
unimportant – or even a distraction – in language learning and should be omit-
ted from teaching (Teaching Schools Council 2016). The most frequent 2000
words are, of course, important, but for comprehension lower frequency words
are important too. It is possible to demonstrate this using redacted text, and this
helps explain the vocabulary thresholds which Nation (2001) suggests exist in
this relationship between word knowledge and comprehension.
The figures in Table 3.1 indicate that only about 100 words give 50% cover-
age of the corpus they are taken from. Fifty percent of that corpus is comprised
of only those 100 words repeated many, many times. This type of figure is typi-
cal of lemmatised corpora in European languages (for example, Lonsdale and
Le Bras 2009 for French). Fifty percent coverage sounds like a lot, but what
does that give you in terms of comprehension? In the next example, we have
taken a short passage from online news (BBC 2020) and redacted, with XXXX,
every word beyond the most frequent 100 in a lemmatised frequency list taken
from the British National Corpus (Kilgariff 2006).
XXXX has XXXX its XXXX XXXX with XXXX XXXX in XXXX to XXXX
XXXX a XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX by XXXX. XXXX XXXX XXXX
XXXX said the XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX and the
XXXX XXXX XXXX of XXXX from XXXX. XXXX XXXX to XXXX XXXX
for XXXX XXXX XXXX and XXXX XXXX there to XXXX, he said.
Because this is a small text and not a large corpus, the coverage of the most
frequent 100 words in this case is only about 32%. Nonetheless, for a small
number of words, that is a lot of coverage. However, it would probably be fair
to say that knowledge of these words gives little clue as to the meaning of the
passage. A large part of the problem here is that these highly frequent words
are function and structure words, and they are not content words. They are
overwhelmingly articles, conjunctions, prepositions and auxiliary verbs. They
are not the words that give the substance of what the piece is about.
If the rate of redaction is changed, so knowledge of the most frequent
1000 words is assumed, the percentage of coverage increases.
XXXX has XXXX its XXXX XXXX with XXXX XXXX in XXXX to fears
over a new XXXX XXXX law XXXX by XXXX. XXXX XXXX XXXX
XXXX said the new law XXXX XXXX XXXX own basic law and the XXXX
current level of XXXX from XXXX. XXXX planned to extend XXXX for
XXXX XXXX XXXX and XXXX businesses there to XXXX, he said.
The most frequent 1000 words in this text give over 50% coverage, but this
adds little to comprehension. The reader will now know that the passage is
something about a law, a new law and about business. But that is all. The issue
is again that many of the known words are function and structure words that
would contribute to comprehension if all the other words were known but by
themselves can contribute little to meaning. There is a second issue emerging,
however, which is that even though this level of knowledge, so closely tied to
frequency, allows some content words to appear, they are few in most texts and
insufficient for good comprehension.
The most frequent 2000 words, assuming a doubling of vocabulary knowl-
edge in a theoretical learner, adds little to coverage in this text. Here coverage
is about 56%.
XXXX has XXXX its XXXX XXXX with XXXX XXXX in XXXX to fears
over a new XXXX XXXX law XXXX by XXXX. XXXX XXXX XXXX
XXXX said the new law XXXX XXXX XXXX own basic law and the XXXX
current level of XXXX from XXXX. XXXX planned to extend XXXX for
XXXX XXXX XXXX and encourage businesses there to XXXX, he said.
Knowledge of the 2000 words, again, adds a small number of content words
to give substance to the passage. The reader now knows there is a fear of some-
thing, and somebody wants to encourage businesses to do something, but what
is not clear. How these ideas link together is not known. What the new law is,
or is about, is not known. The reader is missing the specific words, essential for
this particular text, to enable meaning to emerge. The point being made here
is that knowing even substantial numbers of only the most frequent words is
unlikely to give full comprehension of most text, the kind of text that is found
in things like the news. Remember that the ability to engage with, and even
produce, this kind of text is a standard of CEFR descriptors at B level (Council
of Europe 2001) and of the general goals for learning even in the UK (DfE
2021). In order for full comprehension to emerge, almost all words in any text
will need to be known. In this text, as in most, this requires knowledge of over
5000 words which gives over 95% coverage.
Australia has suspended its XXXX treaty with Hong Kong in response to
fears over a new national security law imposed by China. Prime Minister
Scott Morrison said the new law undermined “Hong Kong’s own basic
law” and the territory’s current level of autonomy from Beijing. Australia
planned to extend visas for Hong Kong residents and encourage businesses
there to relocate, he said.
This text has not been specially selected or adapted to give this kind of
result. This is the kind of thing that emerges from almost all coherent narra-
tive text, text of the kind you find in newspapers, stories and talks. In short,
this is the sort of thing that native speakers might typically produce and that
learners are expected to work with. The language we normally engage with is
not lexically reduced to only the most frequent words; it includes these most
frequent words but also a range of infrequent words relevant to the subject
of the text. Different types of normal language use high frequency words to a
greater or lesser degree. For example, the language a toddler uses is rather dif-
ferent to that of an 11-year-old and different again to that of an undergraduate
or professional in the workplace. Or an alternative way of looking at it would
be that, depending on who you are, the low frequency words you use and see
might differ. General lists of the highest frequency words are therefore of gen-
eral value, and not necessarily specific value, and knowledge of both frequent
and infrequent words is essential for comprehension. This is something that
will be returned to in Chapters 5 and 6 because it has an important bearing
on how many words a curriculum needs to teach and which words need to be
included in the curriculum.
Hu and Nation (2000) investigate this relationship between vocabulary size
and comprehension further using comprehension questions and a slightly dif-
ferent form of adapted text, rather than a redacted text as used earlier. In their
study, a text is modified to allow for different levels of coverage. The modifi-
cation involves substituting lower frequency words in the text with nonsense
words rather than redacted words. Four versions of the text were produced
giving 80%, 90%, 95% and 100% coverage. Native-speaking testees of English
were given one of these texts, and all testees were given a set of comprehen-
sion questions. What emerged, as with the redacted text earlier in this chapter,
is that 95% coverage at least of a text was needed for comprehension. Often,
100% coverage was needed. This is a conclusion that repeatedly emerges from
research (for example, Hirsh and Nation 1992; Laufer and Sim 1985). More
recent research qualifies this a little but does not make the task of learning
and teaching vocabulary any less significant. Laufer and Ravenhorst-Kalovski
(2010) suggest about 95% coverage in normal text is needed for what they call
‘adequate comprehension’ (p. 25). They go on to suggest it is a level of knowl-
edge that would not satisfy most educators, and it cannot provide genuine flu-
ency in many circumstances. An optimal figure, about 98% coverage, is needed
for significantly better comprehension associated with ‘functional independ-
ence in reading’ (p. 25). These numbers are replicated in Nation (2006) who
confirms his earlier Hirsh and Nation (1992) conclusions that 98% coverage is
required for easy comprehension of text.
Seaton (2004) tackles the relationship between vocabulary size and compre-
hension from the learners’ point of view. He tested learners’ knowledge of the
5000 most frequent words in English (using Meara and Milton’s 2003 X_Lex
test) and also asked them to rate, on a scale of 1 to 5, how good they felt their
comprehension was, separately, in reading and in oral communication. A score
of 1 meant they understood nothing and 5 indicated they thought they under-
stood everything. The results he obtained have been summarised in Figure 3.2.
The relationship between increasing vocabulary size and increasing compre-
hension is visible in both speaking and listening data. However, Milton (2009)
draws attention to two things. One is that learners scoring under 2000 words
predominantly reported they understood nothing in both reading and writing.
This fits with the coverage data and the redacted text examples given earlier.
With knowledge of fewer than 2000 words it is generally difficult to garner
understanding; the learner has neither enough words, nor enough of the right
6000
5000
lexical size
4000
speaking
3000
reading
2000
1000
0
1 2 3 4 5
self assessment
Figure 3.2 Student self-reports of comprehension and vocabulary knowledge

words, for this to occur. Knowledge of the most frequent 2000 words, in most
corpora, gives something like 80% coverage, but that is often insufficient for
comprehension or communication. The further point he observes is at the
other end of the knowledge scale where learners had knowledge approaching
4000 words out of the most frequent 5000, beyond this point, learners felt they
had good command of both spoken and written language and could understand
everything they encountered. Knowing about 4000 of the most frequent 5000
words probably implies an overall vocabulary size which is larger than this and,
again, fits with the coverage data and the redacted text examples given previ-
ously. Knowledge of 5000 words or more, including most of the most frequent
words, in most corpora is likely to give approaching 95% coverage of a normal
text or thereabouts, and 95% coverage suggests pretty good comprehension.
The second thing is that there is a difference visible here in the number of
words needed for achieving good comprehension of spoken and written text.
This also fits with data from corpora of spoken language (Adolphs and Schmitt
2003) and coverage provided by spoken corpora specifically (Nation 2006).
The most frequent words in speech tend to give higher coverage than in writ-
ing. Consequently, the proportions of known words needed to understand spo-
ken text can be smaller in speech than in writing. The difference may not be
huge, however. Nation (2006) suggests that 6000 or 7000 words may still be
needed for good comprehension when listening to the dialogue of a film.
All of this suggests that the simple and straight line relationship where the
more words a learner knows then the better they get is not completely accurate.
The relationship is curved or even kinked. Substantial volumes of vocabulary
are required before comprehension of narrative text can begin to emerge. And
only after this level is achieved can incremental gains in comprehension occur
with increasing vocabulary knowledge. Nation (2001) suggests that there is a
threshold, therefore, in vocabulary learning, a level of vocabulary knowledge
below which comprehension is generally not possible. He places this threshold
at about 80% of coverage. Milton (2009) calls this a level beyond which gist
understanding begins to become possible. Note that this is possible not inevi-
table. Nation further suggests that there is a second threshold at around 95%
coverage. He calls this a probabilistic threshold. At this point something like
good comprehension is possible. He calls this probabilistic because even with
sufficient words, full comprehension can rely on knowledge and understanding
of other features of language, as we know when we read, but do not necessarily
fully understand, texts in our L1. These thresholds are marked on Figure 3.3.
Where vocabulary size and comprehension are plotted against each other
on a graph, therefore, the relationship might appear something like an S-curve
as shown in Figure 3.4. A small vocabulary providing less than 80% coverage
means there are insufficient words, and insufficient of the right kind of words,
for comprehension, except in very contrived circumstances. The comprehen-
sion S-curve remains at the bottom of the graph even as vocabulary increases.
After about the 80% coverage point, there are sufficient volumes of words for
some comprehension to take place. Additional words add, generally speaking,
100
80
95% coverage
coverage
60
40
80% coverage
20
0
0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 12000 14000
words
Figure 3.3 Nation’s vocabulary thresholds
Figure 3.4 The vocabulary comprehension S-curve
additional gains to the ability to understand text. This continues until at some
point, presumably beyond the 95% to 98% coverage point where something
approaching full comprehension is attainable and increasing vocabulary size
will yield diminishing marginal returns. Learning new words beyond this point
may be useful, particularly if the learner has to communicate in new subject or
thematic areas, but their impact on overall comprehension in most normal text
will become progressively less.
The importance of this for the construction of an effective curriculum is
plain to see. If the curriculum’s general goals aspire in any way for meaning-
ful communication to occur, and presumably they will because that is what
language is for, then these vocabulary coverage figures translate into necessary
targets for learning. The beginning of independent communication requires
that an 80% coverage target, probably over 2000 words in European languages,
is a requirement. If anything like full communicability is intended, then the
95% coverage target and over 5000 words is a requirement. This kind of vocab-
ulary information can be fitted into hierarchies of ability and performance like
the CEFR. This helps give ideas on vocabulary size needed to meet the board
curriculum goals of communication, and this is explained further in Chapter 5.
Vocabulary, general ability and the four skills

Coverage gives a very good idea of the importance of vocabulary for commu-
nication and comprehension, and this provides a pressing reason for making
sure suitable vocabulary targets feature in any language curriculum. However,
coverage explains in only general terms this relationship. It does not explain
how vocabulary knowledge stands in importance in relation to other elements
of knowledge such as grammar. It has been noted too that coverage figures in
speech and writing vary so the relationship of vocabulary to ability in each of
the four skills may also vary. There are methods for examining these things and
for quantifying the importance of vocabulary in language learning both gener-
ally and in relation to other variables.
A widely cited study by Stæhr (2008) gives an example of how the contri-
bution of vocabulary knowledge to language ability and the four skills can be
measured and quantified. He examined the relationship between examination
grades on listening, reading and writing papers and the vocabulary size of the
testees as estimated using Nation’s (2001) Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT). Cor-
relations between VLT scores and examination grades were calculated. The
results he obtained are shown in Table 3.2.
The correlations are strong and are statistically significant. These kinds of
results are perhaps slightly higher than some other results but correlations of
0.5 to 0.7 are typical of this kind of comparison (see summary in Wang and
Treffers-Daller 2017). The presence of good correlations supports the idea
that vocabulary knowledge is important for performance in each of these indi-
vidual skills. The higher the correlation then the more important vocabulary
appears to be. The relationship between listening ability, therefore, appears less
significant, because of the lower correlation, than in the relationship Stæhr
noted between vocabulary knowledge and reading and writing. Stæhr goes on,
Table 3.2 Spearman correlations between vocabulary size scores and reading, listening
and writing scores (Stæhr 2008, p. 144)
Listening Reading Writing

Vocabulary size .69** .83** .73**
** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level.
however, to ask the question to what degree vocabulary accounts for exam
scores, and how much vocabulary is crucial for success. He divides the exam
results into two groups, below average on the one hand, and average and above
average on the other, and carries out a binary logistic regression analysis. From
the results he is able to conclude that as much as 72% of variance in the abil-
ity to score an average mark or above on the reading test can be explained by
vocabulary size. Because the correlations with writing and listening are smaller,
it appears the contribution of vocabulary knowledge to the writing and listen-
ing skills is also smaller although it is still very sizeable. Stæhr records R2 scores
that suggest up to 52% of variance in the ability to score average or above in
writing, and 39% of variance in listening, can be explained through vocabulary
size. In the skills involving writing, therefore, the single factor of vocabulary
knowledge could explain more than half of the variation in the skill sub-scores.
It is notable that the 2000 word threshold crops up again in this study. Stæhr
is also able to conclude that lexical knowledge which includes most frequent
2000 words in English represents a threshold which must be crossed if learners
are to gain an average score or above on these tests. These results reinforce
the conclusion that vocabulary is vitally important in achieving high levels of
performance and gaining high exam grades.
The difference in coverage provided by vocabulary in speech and in writ-
ing has been pointed out previously, and here another difference between the
written skills and the oral skills appears. Why should vocabulary appear more
significant in reading and writing than in other skills? Does it have something
to do with the nature of the relationship between vocabulary and these differ-
ent skills?
Milton et al. (2010) explain this difference in terms of the nature of vocabu-
lary knowledge. In investigating the relationship between vocabulary knowl-
edge and the four skills, they use a test of written vocabulary knowledge (Meara
and Milton 2003) and a second test of aural vocabulary knowledge (Milton and
Hopkins 2005). As noted in Chapter 2, written and aural vocabulary knowl-
edge do not map onto each other perfectly and appear to be different types of
knowledge. The vocabulary scores gained from these tests were then compared
with IELTS grades, both the overall grade and the grades for the four sub-skills.
They suspected, as Stæhr suspected, that vocabulary size measured by a writ-
ten test (X_Lex) would correlate best with the writing sub-skills of reading and
writing, and that vocabulary size measured with an aural test (A-Lex) would
correlate best in the speaking sub-test where knowledge of the written form of
a word would not be useful. Finally, they anticipated that both tests would cor-
relate with scores on the listening sub-test where IELTS required the testee to
both read the question paper and listen to a passage for answers. As in Stæhr’s
(2008) study, they were attempting to quantify just how important vocabulary
knowledge is in performance in the four sub-skills of language and in an overall
measure of language performance.
Their results are summarised in Table 3.3 and reveal, like Stæhr’s results, that
statistically significant and strong correlations emerged between the written
Table 3.3 Spearman correlations between vocabulary size scores and IELTS scores
(Milton et al. 2010, p. 91)
A-Lex read listen write speak overall
.456* .699** .479** .761** .347* .683**

A-Lex .217** .676** .441** .713*** .546**
* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level.
** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level.
vocabulary size test (X_Lex) and the reading and writing sub-tests which
require the learners to read in English. Aural vocabulary knowledge (A-Lex)
appeared to correlate strongly with the speaking and listening sub-tests which
require the learner to understand words in aural form. The written X_Lex test
also correlated, though more moderately, with the listening sub-test.
The correlations in the Milton et al. (2010) study are slightly smaller than
those in Stæhr’s study although they are fully in line with other studies. Con-
sequently, linear regression analysis suggests that slightly less of the variance in
IELTS sub-test scores can be explained through vocabulary size. The explana-
tory power of vocabulary knowledge alone is, nonetheless, very powerful.
Vocabulary size explains nearly 60% of variance in writing scores and nearly
50% of variance in reading scores. Listening scores are best predicted by a com-
bination of orthographic and phonological vocabulary scores which together
explain over 50% of variance. However, it should be recalled that the relation-
ship between vocabulary knowledge and comprehension and communicability
in a foreign language may not be entirely linear. This is likely to be most appar-
ent where knowledge of the aural form of the word is important because of the
way frequent words can give more coverage in spoken text than in written; the
top of the S-curve will flatten at a lower level than for written text. In these
cases, binary logistic regression can be used, rather as Stæhr was able to use it,
to examine how important a factor like vocabulary is in distinguishing between
a group of learners who are able to score 5 or better on IELTS and a second
group who score 4.5 or lower. Binary logistic regression suggests that differences
in scores on the written test of vocabulary size (X_Lex scores) can explain over
60% of the learner’s ability to score IELTS grade 5 or above in the speaking
test (Nagelkerke R2 = .610). The same analysis suggests that aural vocabulary
size (A-Lex scores) can explain 45% of the variance in learner’s ability to score
grade 5 or above in IELTS listening (Nagelkerke R2 = .450). The two forms
of the test combine to explain nearly 60% of variance on the overall IELTS
grade (Nagelkerke R2 = .588). This study also provides a calculation of the
importance of vocabulary to overall language ability as measured by the overall
IELTS grade. The correlation with the X_Lex score of .683 shows that even a
quick and simple measure of receptive vocabulary knowledge is a good indica-
tor and predictor of general language ability. Milton et al. are able to conclude
that vocabulary knowledge is not just an important factor in determining how
well a learner can perform in the four skills, but that it is the most important
factor. A large vocabulary is essential for high level performance in a language.
There are two conclusions, therefore, that can be drawn from this. One is
that, again, this shows just how important vocabulary knowledge is to perfor-
mance in all four skills. It does not seem to matter whether the skills are recep-
tive or productive skills; vocabulary appears crucial to successful performance
on all well-constructed measures of foreign language ability. A well-designed
curriculum cannot ignore this and must build in vocabulary goals of the right
size and the right kind if learners are to achieve communicability. If the goal
of learning is independent and fluent communication, then these goals will
number vocabulary in the thousands. The second conclusion is relevant to
the design of a curriculum because it becomes clear in the Milton et al. (2010)
study that knowledge of both spoken and written forms of words are needed
for the range of performance across the four skills to which most learners and
their teachers aspire.
These studies, and the correlations and variance figures they report, would
be impressive regardless of any other consideration. However, the scale of the
importance of vocabulary in the curriculum can be seen when these results are
compared with similar results drawn from studies which attempt to calculate
the impact of other factors in the learning process. The results of two studies
are reported here which summarise the kind of conclusions which emerge.
The Laufer and Sim (1985) study is now rather venerable but is important
in the development of vocabulary studies. It is one of the earliest studies
which articulates the idea of a 95% coverage threshold as a requirement of
anything approaching full comprehension. It is also interesting because it
is not only a study comparing language scores and vocabulary size but also
contains an interview section to elicit what learners felt it was important to
learn and what were the biggest obstacles to communicative progress they
faced. Their results confirmed that the lexical element was paramount and
more important than other factors that might affect comprehension such as
knowledge of the subject and knowledge of structure. This was concluded
regardless of the level of the learners. In a curriculum such as that of England
(DfE 2021) where knowledge of grammar is considered paramount in com-
munication, it should be a concern that in Laufer’s and Sim’s study, knowl-
edge of structure emerges as the least important of the factors examined.
Learners report that a known syntactic structure was not helpful when key
words in a sentence were unknown.
This is a conclusion, however, which makes sense when regression analyses
are carried out to examine which factors, separately or combined, can explain
most variance in language performance scores. Vafaee and Suzuki (2020)
examine a range of factors, including syntactic and vocabulary knowledge, in
relation to second language listening ability. Results suggest that while both
were statistically significant, the correlation of vocabulary knowledge with lis-
tening ability was nearly twice as strong as that of syntactic knowledge; 0.55
compared to 0.28. They are able to conclude that vocabulary knowledge is a
much stronger predictor of listening ability than any of the other factors they
examined. We are not saying here that learners who just learn words will sud-
denly understand everything in the language. Of course, being able to decode
the words phonologically and understand grammatical connections between
words is also important, among other things. But knowing the words them-
selves is a prerequisite to all of these.
These kinds of analyses reinforce the message that coverage figures convey
about the importance of vocabulary to any foreign language curriculum if it
can hope to be effective. Teaching a vocabulary of the right kind and the right
content is an absolute essential of learning a lexicon for communication. The
studies in this section illustrate and confirm a general truth about vocabulary
that was recognised at the time of Henry Sweet and even before such studies
became possible. Learning a foreign language vocabulary is the biggest chal-
lenge to any learner not just because of the scale of learning that is involved but
also because it is only by succeeding in this challenge that good communication
becomes possible. Students have long recognised, and academic studies now
report too, that vocabulary is the single most important element of language for
communication and more important than knowledge of structure or any other
element of language that we know of.
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4 How vocabulary is learned
Introduction
Chapter 2 explained how words are stored and are best treated in the men-
tal lexicon. Treating them as lemmas, a base form with associated rules for
grammatical inflection, makes best sense from the point of view of organising
a curriculum. Word knowledge, it turns out, is multi-faceted and complicated.
The process of learning is, then, also complicated. What is it that learners
do with these base words that enables them to be memorised after they have
encountered them, linked to meaning, recognised when they are encountered
in speech or writing, used in appropriate structures and forms, and recalled,
with increasing effortlessness, for use in speech or writing? This chapter will
examine a number of ideas that are thought to explain successful learning of
individual words and then place these in a wider description of the learning of
a whole lexicon. It will consider intentionality in learning new words and how
learning a lexicon can involve both explicit and implicit learning. It will con-
sider the need to retrieve and use these words to aid memory and involvement
load. It will consider the research which links numbers of repetitions to word
learning, although this must be treated cautiously. And it will consider word
difficulty factors which make easy rules for repetition hard to generalise across
a whole lexicon.
Learning individual words

A feature of the way successful techniques are able to promote the effective
learning of words is that they are explicit in the presentation of words and the
link to meaning. Something as basic as flashcards is thought to derive its effect
from the use of dual coding, where the coding of memories is in both iconic
and propositional form, although the research evidence for the theory is mixed
(Boers et al. 2009; Farley et al. 2012). The word form in sound and writing is
linked to a picture which provides the meaning. This is thought to aid retention
and recall (Paivio 1971, 1986), and this should aid the acquisition of words in
the lexicon. Newton’s negotiation of meaning technique is a learning process
which involves presenting a new word and challenging the learners to work
DOI: 10.4324/9781003278771-4
out the meaning for themselves (Newton 1995). Newton’s examination of the
technique suggested it aided the retention of words but notes that present-
ing words and finding meaning made this time-consuming. A technique such
as keyword or linkword explicitly identifies new words for learning, and then
each word is linked to an image, the odder or more outrageous the better. For
example, the French word for hedgehog is hérisson so the learner might imagine
his or her hairy son holding a hedgehog. There are various papers by Gruneburg
and Beaton (for example, Beaton et al. 1995, 2005) which support the idea that
this helps, perhaps especially with children. A feature of learning words, then,
is that the words have to be presented so the form is clear, and there has to be
a link to meaning even if that is just a basic translation.
Retrieval practice and generative processing

It is not enough, of course, to learn the form of a new word and its mean-
ing. Mastering vocabulary involves leaning to use these words fluently in the
right structures and with the right associations. Noticing and understanding
a new word is just the first step to this, and learning also involves issues of
repetition and recycling which can associate with word retention. So Hume
and Rodd (2021) note the literature which suggests that if a word is noticed
and understood and then subsequently retrieved, it will be better remembered.
Moreover, where these words are repeated with slightly different meanings and
in slightly different contexts, then not only does this help cement a path so
the new words can be retrieved automatically, which is essential for fluent lan-
guage, but it will also cement the relationship with other words and structures.
This is called generative processing. The dimensions of depth and fluency can
be promoted, in addition to vocabulary breadth, where this kind of meaningful
language activity is used. Hume and Rodd are clear that this better retention
results from intentional practice and learning. However, while the business of
learning a new word seems to be deliberate, and while the learner has to notice
the form and the meaning, it is not at all clear that learning every nuance of
meaning and every association and collocation has to be quite so deliberately
practised. Nor does the learner have to deliberately read or speak faster in
order to develop the dimension of automaticity that is so important to fluency.
These things often seem to develop implicitly through exposure and meaning-
ful language use.
Part of the issue in explaining learning in the area of depth in particular is
that this is not yet a well-defined construct (Milton 2009), so it includes a wide
a variety of things which are hard to unite convincingly. It is a broad collec-
tion of elements of knowledge which are additional to breadth, recognising a
word as a word and which shade into fluency of the ease and speed these ele-
ments are retrieved for use. Some of these, like knowledge of word parts (see
Table 2.4), might even be seen as elements of breadth. Not surprisingly, then,
some elements of lexical depth seem to benefit from explicit demonstration
and explanation. Some word combinations are sufficiently fixed and frequent
How vocabulary is learned 47
for them to function like single lexemes and are sometimes called phrasemes.
So, expressions like of course and at least in English, tout de suite or parce que in
French, por lo tanto in Spanish and ab und zu in German can also be taught like
single words. In EFL, established core word lists, such as those associated with
the Cambridge PET exams in EFL, routinely list these multi-word items in their
word lists (University of Cambridge 2006).
Not all collocations are so fixed, however, and words have subtleties of
meaning and use which are contained in Nation’s (2001) taxonomy of what
it means to know a word (Table 2.4). In English, it is appreciating the dif-
ference, for example, between being thin and being slim or that in addition
there are various ways of saying two plus two equals four, two and two is four
and so on. In French, tard and en retard are commonly both learned as mean-
ing late, but their meanings are distinct as delayed and at a late hour. So it is
possible to arrive at a destination tard but without being en retard. Similarly,
learners of German will grapple with the distinction between verschieden and
unterschiedlich, both of which translate as different but where the former means
various and the latter differing in nature. All of this subtlety and use may not
be so readily taught or learned explicitly. It would probably be impractical to
teach all of this material for every word explicitly anyway, but this may not be
necessary. The acquisition of this type of knowledge may be a bit more like
the development of the fluency dimension where extensive exposure and use
appears to produce gains in this area. Ellis (1994a, 1994b) suggests that a facil-
ity in the recognition of the phonological form might be acquired implicitly
through mere exposure, and Martinez (2014) suggests that some of the more
structural elements can be added through massive exposure. These ideas are
now supported by research evidence. Dang et al. (2021), for example, note that
knowledge of collocations appears to develop incidentally in this way. Zhang
and Milton (2022), further, note that an extensive programme of reading the
news each night produced gains in speed of processing even where a vocabulary
noticing element was absent from the activity. This absence meant that there
were no noticeable word gains, but the speed and skill of accessing words that
were known appeared to benefit. There is a good reason, then, for the idea that
some elements of depth may usefully develop by simple exposure, and it lies in
Meara’s ideas that depth can be characterised as links between words (Meara
2004). In this analysis, encountering a word in something like general reading
would not merely trigger the word itself but the links with other words that the
first word possesses. It is an idea that helps explain the Boulogne ferry effect
where encountering only a small number of words in a dormant lexicon seems
to activate a much larger proportion of the lexicon.
The point of all this is to explain that there is no single quick fix in the teach-
ing and learning of a foreign language lexicon. It is a lengthy process involving,
probably, not just multiple word encounters but different kinds of encounters
and activities for words to become fully and easily functional. Mastering the
complexity of a word involves different kinds of learning, and hence different
kinds of teaching, that need to be reflected in the curriculum. These ideas
provide the background to an understanding of issues surrounding incidental
and explicit learning.
Incidental and explicit learning

Much of the literature on foreign language learning is content with the idea
that vocabulary learns itself. Harris and Snow (2004), for example, view word
learning as an unconscious process. The metaphor of scenery passing a car
window is provided. Words in the foreign language will pass by and, then, enter
the lexicon. Explicit teaching of words is discouraged and vocabulary learning
is presumably implicit, and this is often called incidental learning. McQuillan
(2016) insists that teaching vocabulary is less efficient than simply reading on
its own. In other words, it takes care of itself while the brain is engaged in doing
something else such as grammar or a communicative task. Snow (1998, p. 1)
writes that vocabulary can be learned by ‘subconscious absorption of words as
they crop up incidentally.’ It is a view of learning that can explain a lot about
why vocabulary is treated and neglected as it is in the UK MFL system. It is
an afterthought which everyone hopes will look after itself. Krashen’s ideas
on the growth of the lexicon through reading share this idea. Provided learn-
ers read enough, they will learn lots of vocabulary. There is little thought for
the processes that are involved in learning, and learning to use, each word.
With this approach to vocabulary learning, the curriculum does not have to
give too much attention to the words it will contain. Provided there are words
somewhere to provide the scenery, it is not specified how many or which words
exactly, word learning just happens. This is a deeply unsatisfactory approach to
the learning of the subject, however, because research repeatedly shows that
word learning from genuinely incidental input is small (for a review, see Horst
et al. 1998). Uptake is so small that it probably cannot explain the acquisition
of a functional and communicative lexicon.
Attention has to be paid, therefore, to conscious, or explicit, learning of
vocabulary. Hilton (2019) suggests that the learning of the meaning of a new
word in a foreign language is initially an attentive process. In other words, the
learner has to be very much conscious of the new set of sounds or letters and
their meaning. In this way, vocabulary acquisition can never be something that
is purely subconscious. Research suggests that where teaching makes words
explicitly available for learning, then growth in lexical size results, and that
growth can be substantial. While uptake of new words from implicit learning
is considered negligible, one word per hour maybe (Horst et al. 1998), learn-
ing that is more explicit can be far higher. Milton and Meara (1998) note that
uptake of words from classroom teaching, which will involve some explicit
vocabulary learning in the form of things like intensive reading passages, can
be three or four words per hour in good environments. Activities like read-
ing comic books and singing songs, where there is a specific vocabulary focus,
can lead to uptake of up to 30 words per hour (for example Horst and Meara
1999; Milton 2008; Garnier 2014). This scale of learning can go a long way to
explain how really able learners can master a whole lexicon for communica-
tion, where it is additional to classroom input. This is discussed in further detail
in Chapter 10.
Not all aspects of the lexicon are necessarily learned this way, however.
There is so much to mastering a complete lexicon that explicit learning prob-
ably cannot satisfactorily explain it all. Schmidt (1994) carves up elements
of the lexicon and suggests that some are explicitly learned while others are
not. He suggests that while phonetic and phonological qualities of a word can
be learned implicitly, the meaning of a word is learned explicitly in a manner
which necessitates deliberate attention and effort. The idea that different ele-
ments of the lexicon are learned differently is helpful. Our understanding is
that much of vocabulary breadth is best explained by explicit learning. The
form has to be identified by the learner, and the learner has to consciously link
the form to a meaning. Other elements of the lexicon, such as elements of
depth and the fluency dimension, may not always work this way. There is evi-
dence that developing automaticity in word processing while reading (Zhang
and Milton 2022) and collocational knowledge (Dang et al. 2021) can develop
without any deliberate attention to developing these abilities. The practice of
reading for meaning, repeatedly and a lot, is sufficient to promote these dimen-
sions of knowledge. This type of learning, then, is much more readily thought of
as implicit; there is no deliberate intention to learn in these examples.
A binary distinction which can assume that vocabulary learning is either
explicit or implicit may not be a useful dichotomy. The learning of a word in all its
complexity does not have to be either entirely conscious and deliberate learning or
entirely subconscious absorption. It probably involves both. There is an enduring
appeal in assuming all vocabulary learning is implicit, because it allows practition-
ers to hope that far more words are being learned, in some sort of separate process,
than those taught in lessons. It relieves practitioners, such as curriculum writers,
of the burden of having to plan and deliver a lexical curriculum. But learning a
large lexicon does not seem to work this way and explicit, conscious, teacher-
led learning is required at the outset. An exclusively explicit approach is equally
flawed in neglecting the incremental gains in knowledge and performance that
might be achieved through repeated exposure and through meaningful language
use. The implicit/explicit dichotomy has to be adapted to allow for the idea that
these types of learning may be complementary in relation to vocabulary, and that
there will be inevitable overlap of these types of knowledge gain.
This has significant implications for the curriculum and for teaching. To
grow a lexicon of the size needed for communication, the curriculum will need
to plan for a lexicon of the relevant size to be taught explicitly. The words, or
structures, will have to be presented in teaching in a way that can be noticed
and linked to meaning. There will have to be provision made for some repeti-
tion to aid retention. However, for the lexicon to become fully useful for com-
munication, the curriculum must also plan for extensive use of language so that
automaticity and perhaps elements of vocabulary depth, too, can fully emerge.
In this context, the learners cannot merely be passive passengers in the journey
through learning. They have to be given the materials and techniques that
allow them to learn, and learning involves their engagement and effort.
It is, perhaps, helpful to clarify some of the terms often used when describing
the processes whereby lexis is committed to memory. In particular, it is useful to
distinguish between incidental and implicit learning, and even informal learning,
as these are often conflated. Each of these seem generally assumed to be differ-
ent from explicit learning, but this is not necessarily the case at all.
Implicit learning is learning which happens without the learner being aware
of it. It takes no effort on the part of the learner. In vocabulary, this would mean
that no conscious effort to notice a new word form or associate it with meaning
is needed for it to be learned and subsequently used. In learning new vocabu-
lary this happens rarely if at all. It arguably does occur, though, when the word
form is known, and the learner is developing other aspects of the word’s use. It
would occur when learners gradually learn the nuance or common collocations
of a given word, such as on the TV, im Fernsehen or à la télé.
Incidental learning is often used as another term for implicit learning, but it
can and perhaps ought to refer to something slightly different. It is sometimes
thought of as the process of learning something while doing something else
(Richards and Schmidt 2002). In this meaning it would involve learning new
words while reading for pleasure. Any learning that takes place here might
be implicit if the words are not even noticed and yet are still added to the
lexicon, but it does not have to be. Nation (2015) envisages incidental vocab-
ulary acquisition only really occurring within extensive reading programmes,
not short instructional texts used in classrooms, and suggests it can only work
within certain constraints. The students would need to know virtually all of
the words surrounding the new word, to provide meaning from context, and
should be able to determine the word’s pronunciation. For Nation, then, inci-
dental learning is probably explicit but its defining feature is that it happens
outside the context of formal learning in the classroom and in an activity that
learners might do out of interest or for fun. It is clear from studies that exam-
ine incidental learning of vocabulary (and Horst et al. 1998 draw attention to
this) that many researchers do not see it this way and interpret any learning
that occurs as implicit. The term can be unhelpful, therefore, because it gives
no hint of the learning process involved and confuses issues of how words are
learned. In Peters’ and Webb’s (2018) study of incidental vocabulary learning
from TV programmes, the authors note lexical uptake that is so high they sus-
pect their learners are deliberately identifying and practicing new words from
the programme between tests of knowledge. There is nothing wrong with this,
of course, and it is exactly what the language teacher wants, an activity that is
sufficiently interesting and motivating for learners to independently set about
the task of additional learning unprompted. However, the learning that results
is called incidental even though the authors think the process may often have
been very explicit.
Explicit learning is where the learning is deliberate and purposeful. It is where,
for example, a new word form is noticed and where some kind of meaning is
attached. This is most easily recognised in the context of formal classroom
teaching where a textbook might have a section on vocabulary where the goal
of the activity is the learning of vocabulary itself. Or it might involve an old
staple of language learning, being given a bilingual word list to learn for home-
work. It might even occur in an intensive reading activity where part of the
task is to notice new words and to check that the form and meaning have been
recognised. So long as the deliberate intention of the learner is to notice and
to learn words is present, and effort is made to learn new words, it is explicit. It
can occur either inside or outside the classroom.
Milton (2008) examines vocabulary uptake from tasks such as watching films
with subtitles, singing songs and reading comic books. The activities he examines
involve a clear vocabulary learning focus with tests on the vocabulary content
of the activity before, during and after the intervention which typically involved
multiple uses of the source text over many weeks. Milton calls this type of activity
informal learning to indicate that the word learning that occurred was deliberate
and looked nothing like the incidental learning activities investigated where this
noticing and learning focus was missing. Milton records very large vocabulary
gains with this kind of focus compared to the negligible vocabulary gains gener-
ally noted in studies of incidental learning (summarised in, for example, Horst
et al. 1998). The distinguishing feature was that these activities were done for fun
and outside of class, even if they were explicit.
Much, if not all, of this analysis works with the idea that vocabulary learn-
ing involves adding more words to the lexicon, and this is crucial to learning, of
course. However, as is pointed out, there is more to the lexicon than this. The
incidental activities which appear to be unproductive in gaining new words appear
much more useful in developing the fluency and automaticity in using words once
they are known. The confusion in terminology results from a confusion over the
nature of learning. Is it deliberate, so explicit, or without effort and noticing, so
implicit? Confusion also stems from the formality of the learning which is occur-
ring. Is it formal and in class or outside class and for fun? Finally, confusions can
also stem from a lack of clarity over what dimension of vocabulary knowledge
is being considered. Is the activity intended to address learning new words for
breadth, subtlety of use for depth or speed of access for fluency? Table 4.1 is our
attempt to bring some order to this confusion of names, using two dimensions to
explain how the learning of the dimensions of knowledge can usefully progress.
Focus on form
The work of Laufer and Hulstijn (2001) illustrates the crucial role played by
the learner’s act of noticing or attending to new words as they arise, thus con-
firming the primacy of explicit learning in language classrooms. This works
builds on the principle of depth of processing (Craik and Lockhart 1972) in
which the probability of remembering something long-term depends less on
how long it is in the short-term memory and more on how deeply the learner
engages with that new information when it is presented. Laufer and Hulstijn
Table 4.1 Means of vocabulary acquisition
Location
In class Outside class
Deliberateness Explicit Explicit learning e.g. Informal learning e.g.

intensive reading for reading comic books,
vocabulary, vocabulary songs, subtitled films
teaching, explicit lexical with word noticing focus;
activities, e.g. gap fill could also include word
activities growth in lists, vocab apps growth in
vocabulary breadth vocabulary breadth
Implicit Implicit learning e.g. Incidental learning e.g.
grammar exercises, reading comic books,
exam practice, songs, subtitled films
communicative tasks without learning
development of vocabulary focus development of
depth and fluency vocabulary depth and
fluency
find that this applies to learning new words, too. The deeper and more complex
the cognitive engagement with the word, the more likely a learner is to remem-
ber it. Shallower processing or less deep cognitive engagement might include
just reading a text with the new words with help of a glossary. Deeper cognitive
engagement might mean looking words up in a dictionary, recycling them in
output tasks or differentiating the new words from other known words in a
multi-choice task. They suggest a framework of need, search and evaluation to
help practitioners design learning tasks which maximise the chances of learn-
ing a new word. Need guides the teacher to ensure that the use of the new word
is required for completion of the learning or communicative task. Search refers
to the learner directing their attention toward identifying the meaning of the
L2 word. Evaluation is the final stage whereby the learner tests out their use of
the new word. Need, search and evaluation are presented by Laufer and Hulstijn
as involvement factors. Their hypothesis is that the higher the involvement
load, the more likely it is that the student will retain the word. The hypothesis
has largely been supported by empirical studies such as Keating (2008) and
Eckerth and Tavakoli (2012). All of this matters for classroom practitioners
because the implication is that how we teach words and devise tasks in which
they are practised is at least as important as other issues in vocabulary learning,
such as how frequently a learner encounters new words. It may be more impor-
tant, as argued by Laufer and Rozovski-Roitblat (2011).
Spaced and massed repetition

To be learned, a word needs to be presented and repeated, but how many words
should be presented at any one time, and how often should these words be
repeated? There is a literature on this, and it is well worth considering because
there are useful lessons to be taken from this material. Notwithstanding this,
it must be kept in mind that repetition is not the only factor that will influ-
ence learning. Seeing the same word dozens of times will not necessarily lead
to learning as Pigada and Schmitt (2006) found in their research. The degree
of cognitive engagement has already been raised, and the next section will
raise issues of individual word difficulty. Studies of word repetition and learn-
ing often seem to assume that all words are alike, and that all words should be
treated alike in the course of classroom learning. They are not, so the subject of
repetition has to be treated cautiously, therefore.
Certainly, some amount of repetition will help learning. Studies repeatedly
show a relationship between the number of repetitions of words in classroom
texts and the number of learners that retain these words in memory (for exam-
ple, Vassiliu 2001). However, repetition does not lead inevitably to learning, and
studies which undertake item analysis (for example, Milton 2008 and Vassiliu
2001) note that some words which are hugely repeated can remain, apparently,
invisible to learners and are just not learned. Nonetheless, as Scholfield (1991)
asserts, curriculum planners will want to build in time for deliberate revision of
previously learned material and he calls this periodicity. His ideas are explained
in more detail in Chapter 8. Repetition addresses the issues where learners will
forget some of the new words they have learned and will need to remind them-
selves before they forget entirely.
From the point of view of curriculum construction, however, the issue of
spaced and massed repetition is important. It goes to the heart of how the cur-
riculum manages the large volume of words needed for communication. Does it
try to teach them in large groups, or does it spread out the learning load as much
as possible? It should be remembered that one of the tasks of the curriculum
is to plot the best path possible through the material it contains. The spacing
effect is one where repetitions are spaced out in time, and the research indi-
cates that this practice tends to produce better retention than massed repeti-
tions where repetitions are closer in time. In language learning, this often turns
into the related issue of presenting and teaching vocabulary in concentrated
lumps rather than in smaller manageable chunks. Caution is needed when
applying research from cognitive psychology, as with this research, directly to
language learning (Rogers 2017). Nonetheless, where the vocabulary content
of textbooks is studied, it is noteworthy that the spacing of vocabulary in the
curriculum corresponds with success in language learning. Textbooks in the
UK (Tschichold 2012; Milton and Hopwood 2021) and the old Saudi text-
book series analysed by Alsaif and Milton (2012) are characterised by highly
variable rates on input from year to year and poor exploitation where much
of this vocabulary is never recycled. These textbook series associate with low
vocabulary uptake overall and, in the UK example, even the inspectorate note
the poor language progress made in the years where vocabulary input was small
(Dobson 1998). By contrast, Vassiliu’s (2001) carefully measured and regular
vocabulary input and practice results in regular and larger vocabulary gains
and better overall language progress. There is more to designing a successful
curriculum than just the rate of vocabulary input and repetition but, never-
theless, the planning of when to introduce and revise new vocabulary will be
a key design curriculum consideration. For teachers, the implication is that
they are well advised to resist teaching lots of words at once and instead teach
vocabulary in smaller chunks spread out over time with gradual layering of new
content on top of recycled older content – we diagrammatise this in Chapter 6.
There is advice on how many repetitions are needed for each word to be
learned and the timing of these repetitions. Saragi et al. (1978) recommend at
least ten encounters for each new word to aid learning. The work of Cepeda
et al. (2008) suggests that the form-meaning relationship of a word should be
revisited with a delay of about a month for optimal memorisation. Gairns and
Redman (1986) suggest new words should be repeated after 1 day, 1 week, 1
month and after 6 months, in order to aid learning. These suggestions should
not be treated too rigidly since how easily a word is learned will depend on
more things than the number of repetitions, including the nature of the word
itself, and research has on many occasions found that the learning of word
meanings does not appear to be as affected by frequency as much as might be
thought. Pigada and Schmitt (2006), for example, found in their study that
while single encounters virtually never led to the meaning of a word being
learned, words required anything from two to more than 20 occurrences for
the meaning to be remembered. Van Zeeland and Schmitt (2013), in a later
study, found that the learning of word meaning was particularly unaffected by
frequency of encounter. What is also interesting to note is that words which
are the hardest to learn or require the most exposures are not necessarily the
ones that we are most likely to forget (Barclay and Pellicer-Sánchez 2021); in
fact, the opposite is found to be true, namely that words with a higher learning
burden, requiring more exposure, tend to be less vulnerable to decay in the
memory. Nonetheless, this kind of advice regarding the number of encounters
needed with a word is enshrined in some approaches to curriculum design. The
education watchdog for England, Ofsted, for example, looks for evidence that
schools have a schedule of planned revisiting to ensure that words are retained
in long-term memory (Ofsted 2021). It espouses retrieval practice as one of its
guiding principles and defines this as recalling something you have learned in
the past and bringing it back to mind, arguing that this aids effective retention
of knowledge of the form and meaning link in the long-term memory.
These studies often assume that once the form and meaning link of a new
word is established in memory then the job of learning is done, but of course, it
is not. There is very little research which directly relates retrieval practice and
the acquisition of vocabulary in a modern language in terms of the way words
must be proceduralised so they are available, more often than not, without
explicit retrieval effort. This characteristic of automaticity is of critical impor-
tance when learning to use a language proficiently, as opposed to merely pos-
sessing knowledge of or about it.
In order to develop the full range of vocabulary knowledge to form an
effective and functional lexicon, a range of types of repetition, and not just a
number, is probably required. For the dimension of growing the lexicon, then,
repetition of words and their links to meaning and structure will be required,
and some of this will have to be formalised in controlled activities. As Thorn-
bury (2000) notes, in EFL there is an abundance of this kind of material to
help the learner. Much of this material is attached to textbooks in the form of
workbooks, websites with extension activities and games and apps. There is an
abundance of free-standing materials designed to supplement any textbook,
not just a specific textbook. This sort of material can explicitly present new
words in input, but it also provides extensive recycling and retrieval. However,
simple repetition will have to move on to encompass the kind of extensive
exposure where words, once taught, can be encountered in a wide variety of
forms and genres of materials which can illustrate the range of collocations and
subtleties of use and meaning which are part of an effective lexicon. It will have
to include things like listening to or reading the news, watching films, singing
songs, talking to people in online video games and using apps, all of which
might promote the kind of automaticity and fluency in word knowledge that
characterises good communication.
Word difficulty
Many studies (Chen and Truscott 2010; Laufer and Rozovski-Roitblat 2011;
Rott 1999; Webb 2007) have suggested that words encountered more fre-
quently are more readily learned than words encountered less frequently. In
turn, this is likely to mean that beginners will tend to learn higher frequency
words early on because frequent words are more likely to be encountered in
learning materials, and these words are more likely to be encountered more
often than less frequent words; this probably accounts for the frequency effect
observed in word learning regardless of the qualities of the words themselves.
However, frequency is not really an element of difficulty as Milton (2009)
points out. Difficulty is concerned with the intrinsic qualities of the word rather
than its frequency of occurrence. If anything, the most frequent words in a
language might, in fact, be trickier to learn because they can be polysemous
(Sinclair 1991), highly idiomatic or irregular.
Models of word difficulty (for example, Milton and Daller 2007; Willis and
Ohashi 2012), therefore, typically consider variables such as a word’s length, its
part of speech, its concreteness and its cognateness. Verbs are trickier because
they may be less readily recognisable or retrievable in their conjugated forms.
Longer words appear more difficult to recall orthographically and phonologi-
cally than shorter words. Concrete words tend to appear easier to learn than
words with more abstract or polysemous meanings. A new word might be easier
to learn if it is phonologically simple (Ellis and Beaton 1993) or easier to spell.
Cultural considerations also come into play. A word might be grammatically
and phonologically straightforward, indeed it could in theory even be a cog-
nate, but it may be unfamiliar because its meaning is culturally alien to the
learner. This might apply to foodstuffs or words describing religious practice, for
example. So, a shorter word which is a noun cognate with very specific mean-
ing is likely to be comparatively easy to learn. Learners typically do not struggle
with words such as Hund in German or chat in French. It is likely that students
with L1 English will relatively easily learn the meaning of intégration, Integration
and integración in French, German and Spanish respectively, whereas mastering
words such as aléatoire or gleichgültig will require more numerous encounters.
Studies show that these models of word difficulty can explain some, at least, of
whether a word is likely to be learned in addition to frequency of occurrence.
It is wise to be cautious with blanket application of these factors, however.
Not all short words and not all high frequency words are easier to learn. The
correct use of idiomatic particles such as doch in German, the various mean-
ings of the preposition vor or the many uses of common verbs such as rendre in
French remind us that short words are not always easy. Sinclair (1991) points
out that higher frequency words often have ‘less of a clear and independent
meaning.’ Common verbs are also more likely to be irregular in form; common
words may often deviate from their basic meaning when they (as they often do)
feature in collocations or formulaic sequences. Word difficulty is complicated
and elements of difficulty overlap uncomfortably. To this should be added the
variability which is introduced where learners’ first and target languages vary.
What may be a cognate for a Romanian-speaking learner of French may not
be a cognate for an English or German L1 learner. A long word in French
(such as maroquinerie) might be challenging for an L1 English learner, but the
equivalent word in German Lederwarenladen, though it is even longer, might be
easier because it is a compound, as is so often the case in Germanic languages,
of familiar nouns. In other words, the extent to which the measures of word
difficulty apply depend on which language you are learning and which lan-
guages you already speak. Even word difficulty factors as straightforward as the
one for part of speech mask considerable complexity once we take into account
how different languages use parts of speech in different ways. Nominalisation is
a marker of high-quality French, but L1 English learners can be flummoxed by
concepts such as sensibilisation as such a word is rendered in English through a
whole phrase. The point to be taken from all this complexity is that a one-size-
fits-all approach to repetition may not be appropriate, and a certain number of
repetitions per word will not lead inevitably to word learning.
Hilton’s four propositions

The process of learning a lexicon which emerges from this suggests a process of
teaching which will be a lot like Hilton’s four propositions (2019, 2022).
1 Un programme lexical structuré

A programme for the systematic and sequenced presentation of the vocab-
ulary needed by the curriculum. We think this includes
• Clear vocabulary goals
• A good textbook which introduces sufficient words with sufficient
thematic variety in a sensible and learnable order with sufficient time
for revision and practice
• A programme of informal consolidation and extension with signifi-
cant activity outside of the classroom.
2 Une phase d’apprentissage explicite
A phase where new words are explicitly presented, taught and repeated to
aid memorisation of (written and aural) form and the link to meaning and,
maybe, relevant frequent structures. We think such a phase might include
things like
• Choral repetition
• Multiple choice exercises, gap fill and cloze exercises
• Word drills and sentence practice
• Substitution tables
• Games, puzzles, word searches, crosswords.
3 Une phase de rodage implicite
A phase where new words can be used meaningfully and in context so
that skills such as automaticity, collocation and association skill can be
developed implicitly. Typically, this might include communicative activi-
ties such as
• Dialogues
• Role plays
• Presentations
• Listening to radio and TV excerpts
• Letter and creative writing
• Graded readers and so on.
4 Des activités métalinguistiques
A phase which is less concerned with communicative activity or the learning
of words, and is more focussed on learning about the new words, such as
• Their derivational morphology (how new words can be formed with
prefixes or suffixes)
• Their grammatical categorisation
• Nuances of meaning and so on.
This fourth and final proposition seems likely to be applicable only when
learners have an extensive vocabulary.
The significance of this for the curriculum is that it will need to plan at a
number of levels. It will need to plan to input all the words required, formally
presented for noticing. This could be classroom learning but could equally
be word lists for home learning or even extension work like Milton’s (2008)
informal activities with planned vocabulary tests and vocabulary development.
Given time constraints for work in the classroom, it seems likely the curriculum
will need a combination of these. The curriculum will need to include in its
planning some planned recycling in class, not least so the new words can be
repeated and encountered in appropriate structures. Vocabulary teaching will
involve deliberate recycling, perhaps while other elements of the curriculum
are being tackled, such as grammar. It will be remembered that whatever else in
the curriculum is being tackled, it will certainly involve the use of words. This
might be done inside the class or it might equally well be done with the use of
workbooks outside class. Then, finally, the curriculum will need to plan large
scale exposure to allow depth and fluency to emerge. For reasons of time this
will almost certainly have to be done, largely, outside of class with the use of
workbooks, extensive reading, structured use of films, songs, games and apps.
Finally, the cherry on the cake, once learners are communicative and have
large vocabularies, is the development of the rules for derivation and etymol-
ogy, the nuances of meaning and so on which form Hilton’s fourth proposition.
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5 Vocabulary and attainment –
setting vocabulary goals
Introduction
The first essential step to building vocabulary into the curriculum effectively is
to understand how many words learners need to learn to meet their curricular
goals. It would be naïve to imagine that every item of vocabulary taught as
part of a curriculum will be learned. It would be naïve, too, to imagine that the
curriculum need pay no attention to how many words a learner can reasonably
be expected to learn in, say, a classroom hour or in a week or in a school year.
These are things that will define the content of the curriculum. This chapter
will explain the normative vocabulary sizes we have related to the CEFR levels
and how these can begin to give structure to a vocabulary curriculum. It will
examine, too, how these differ and are very wrong in the UK which is lead-
ing to massive under-achievement by learners. It will cover the relationship
between vocabulary input (teaching) and uptake (learning) since these two,
while related, are usually very different, and this affects the vocabulary content
of the curriculum. It will consider vocabulary uptake per hour since this deter-
mines the classroom and learning time needed to deliver the curriculum. As
an example of the way vocabulary numbers are formally built into the language
curriculum, the vocabulary loading of the EFL curriculum in Saudi Arabia is
examined. We think this has worked successfully to raise standards. Finally,
this chapter will consider formal and informal learning to help explain how the
curriculum can manage the teaching of a large vocabulary.
Target vocabulary sizes: vocabulary and the CEFR

How do you know how many words you should be teaching? The relationship
between vocabulary size and general language level and performance is suf-
ficiently strong for normative figures for vocabulary knowledge to be attached
to each level of the CEFR, so, if you know the level of attainment in the CEFR
which forms the overall goal of the curriculum, then you have figures to work
with. In the latest versions of the CEFR (Council of Europe 2001, 2020) there
are no vocabulary lists or even vocabulary sizes attached. The hierarchy is cast
in terms of descriptors at each level and, as Chapter 2 has illustrated, these
DOI: 10.4324/9781003278771-5
Vocabulary and attainment – setting goals 63
include broad characterisations of the vocabulary knowledge expected. Vocab-
ulary breadth or size is expected to increase with each level until, at advanced
level, there is very considerable vocabulary knowledge and thousands of words,
and the characteristic of being advanced is the sophistication of use with this
vocabulary in terms of idiomaticity and collocation. The issue leading to these
broad characterisations is one where there is a potential drawback in prescrib-
ing, too rigidly, the language for each level. To do so would restrict the flexibility
of the system and its ability to be applied across the huge variety of language
courses and language learning that takes place in Europe. Milton (2010) points
out that where learners have very specialist language needs, airline pilots or sea
captains for example, their vocabulary requirements might not be so readily
fitted into the framework if these were cast in terms of the vocabulary needs of
young learners in school with a more general language course. The CEFR has
to accommodate the requirement to be an overarching descriptive framework
capable of fitting the breadth of these needs within it.
Historically, the CEFR has been linked to core vocabulary lists and figures
for attainment at several of the levels in the hierarchy. The original Threshold
level materials, for example, contained word lists for French (Coste et al. 1987)
and English (Van Ek and Trim 1990) and other languages at B1 level. These
lists are similar in size and typically contain about 2000 words. This should not
be a surprise. In each language list the words were derived from notional func-
tional areas which were thought appropriate to these levels, such as clothing
and what people wear, personal identification and routines in daily life. These
European languages are similar, and it would be a surprise if the vocabulary
lists differed greatly in size when derived this way. The French list contains,
therefore, just under 2000 words, and the English and German lists just over
2000 words. These lists do not comprise the most frequent 2000 words only.
They are a combination of frequent, structural words and less frequent, con-
tent vocabulary; both are calculated to outline the vocabulary needed for com-
munication in the topic areas they cover. The A2 Waystage materials for French
and English (for example, Van Ek 1990) also included word lists and these
were, as might be expected, smaller in size than the Threshold lists with about
1000 words. These are core lists intended to guide the creators of curriculums
and teaching materials so that learning at each level could be meaningfully
compared across countries and even across languages.
These lists are not intended to be the entirety of the vocabulary curriculum
at each level, rather, the expectation is that they will be supplemented to reflect
the needs of learners and the curriculum appropriate to the A2 and B1 levels of
the CEFR. The numbers that have emerged, however, are very revealing. The
2000 word figure which emerges at Threshold level fits with the lexical thresh-
olds discussed in Chapter 3 since this level of word knowledge appears to be
associated with 80% coverage of a text and the emergence of comprehension
outside the most limited and controlled language environments. A 2000 word
lexicon does not make a learner communicative, but it is a level below which
effective communication is impossible. Learners at B1 and B2 level in the
64 Vocabulary and attainment – setting goals
CEFR are expected to be linguistically independent in some meaningful sense,
and 2000 words in the foreign language is probably a minimal requirement for
that to begin to occur. The Waystage A2 lists contain about 1000 words and
are called Elementary and so do not make any presumption of the ability to
function independently. The Council of Europe’s (2020) supplementary mate-
rials are quite explicit in the expectation that the growth of the lexicon, from
elementary levels through independence, will progress with instruction in the
vocabulary of an ever wider range of themes and topics, and this insight will be
discussed in Chapter 6.
While these lists have not been withdrawn or disowned in any way, they
seem to have been pushed into the background, which is unfortunate as they
served as helpful benchmarks for curriculum design. Nonetheless, the CEFR
documentation is clear that future work on the descriptors might usefully
include ‘an analysis of the . . . vocabulary necessary to perform the communi-
cative tasks described on the scales could be part of the process of developing
a new set of language specifications’ (Council of Europe, 2001, p. 33). It goes
on to suggest that ‘users of the Framework may wish to consider . . . what size
of vocabulary (i.e. the number of words and fixed expressions) the learner will
need . . .’ in seeking to attain a particular level of performance (Council of
Europe 2001, p. 150). This is what is done in some vocabulary size tests (for
example, Meara and Milton 2003) and international comparisons (for exam-
ple, Milton and Alexiou 2009; Milton 2010). These link specific vocabulary
sizes to each CEFR level.
Milton (2010) summarises the approximate vocabulary sizes associated with
each CEFR level and a variety of formal EFL exams (see Table 5.1) out of
the most frequent 10,000 words in English. The estimations come from two
sources. One is by direct testing using tests like the Eurocentres Vocabulary Size
Test (EVST) (Meara and Jones 1990) or XKLex (Masrai and Milton 2012)
on subjects who take and pass exams of known CEFR level. These tests esti-
mate recognition knowledge of the most frequent 10,000 lemmatised words
in English. It is reported that very fluent EFL users score 8000 to 9000 words
on these tests and, inevitably, must know more words beyond the 10,000 word
Table 5.1 EFL vocabulary sizes associated with CEFR and exam level (Milton 2011)
Vocab size Cambridge TOEFL IELTS CEFR level

(max 10,000)
9000 630 8
8000/9000 CPE 620 7 C2
7000/8000 CAE 600 6.5 C1
6000/7000 550 6
5500/6000 500 5.5
4500/5500 FCE 450 5 B2
About 4000 PET 350–400 4.5 B1
About 3500 KET 300 4 A2
range. These are the kind of people who get an A in the Cambridge Profi-
ciency in English examination. The second way of reaching these estimations
is made by using coverage figures, as in Nation (2006) and Laufer and Raven-
horst-Kalovski (2010), where 98% coverage of a corpus is taken as the neces-
sary figure for full comprehension of a text. They conclude that for reading
and writing well, learners probably need to know the most frequent 8000 or
9000 word families. Ninety-five percent coverage, or about 5000 words, is
needed for adequate comprehension, and about 80% coverage or a minimum
of 2000 words is needed before any real understanding emerges and for any
kind of independent communicative proficiency.
At the top of Table 5.1 you can see that C2 level, CPE, is associated with
lexicons with about 8000 word families or more. At C1 level learners have
about 7000 words. At B2 level, FCE learners have about 5000 words, and that
fits well with other information we have, for example from Hindmarsh’s (1980)
word lists, which contains about 4500 items. The relationship between vocabu-
lary size and exam level continues down to the bottom of the table which is,
of course, exactly what the CEFR descriptors require. Milton (2010) notes,
particularly, how large the volumes of vocabulary are to get beyond even the
most elementary levels. Three thousand or 3500 words are needed just to get to
the level where an A2 level exam can be passed and to a level where some kind
of independent communication is practicable. In designing a curriculum for
language attainment at these successive levels, these are the kind of numbers
that have to be factored in.
Meara’s and Milton’s (2003) X_Lex test is a test of the most frequent
5000 words and works in a variety of languages including English, French and
Spanish. A test of Greek has been created (Alexiou and Milton 2008). Because
this test tests only half the vocabulary levels used in the EVST, the most fre-
quent 5000 words rather than the most frequent 10,000 words, the numbers
are smaller than in the previous Table 5.1. Despite its smaller sample size, it is
still a very graphic illustration of how learners have to learn thousands of words
to progress to independent and then fluent levels of communication. Scores on
the English version of this test are also linked to CEFR levels, and this is shown
in Table 5.2.
Table 5.2 Mean EFL X_Lex vocabulary size scores and the CEFR (adapted from Meara
and Milton 2003)
CEF level X_Lex
A1 <1500
A2 1500–2500
B1 2500–3250
B2 3250–3750
C1 3750–4500
C2 4500–5000
This test is widely used, and one of its attractions is its construction which
allows parallel forms and equivalent tests in languages other than English to be
generated. The figures we have for vocabulary knowledge in UK French as a
foreign language are largely derived from this test. These scores are often taken
as an estimate of overall vocabulary size in a language. At the lowest levels of
knowledge this might be an attractive supposition. However, given the way
learners always learn content from across the frequency bands and above the
5000 word level, these might be underestimates even at low levels for learners
learning from balanced input. At the higher levels, C1 and C2 levels particu-
larly, there are clearly ceiling effects. The test is considered by the authors prin-
cipally as a levels test, although it may be used as a test of vocabulary size with
an understanding that it is only testing the most frequent 5000 lemmatised
words in any language.
Using various different language versions of this test, it becomes possible to
consider the numbers that emerge in languages other than English. Milton and
Alexiou (2009) have attempted this in French as a foreign language and Greek
as a foreign language. It is important to note that their French data is drawn
from students who are in class to study for exams at the CEFR levels shown
here, rather than from learners who have completed their learning and have
passed exams. They are in the process of learning here and vocabulary scores
are likely to be higher when they actually take the exams. Milton and Alexiou
include French as a foreign language from UK schools in their data, and this
is treated separately in the next section. The results they obtain are shown in
Table 5.3.
This raises the question as to whether the vocabulary levels in a variety of lan-
guages in the CEFR should be the same or similar. In the cases of most European
languages they probably should be similar. They are Indo-European languages
derived from the same proto-language and constructed similarly. Much of the
vocabulary they use is similar or cognate. They may be more or less heavily
inflected but, as Milton and Hopwood (2021) demonstrate for French, the
definition of a lemma can be similar in these languages, and the coverage fig-
ures that emerge are very similar. Broadly speaking, the same number of words
should give about the same level of coverage and about the same level of com-
prehension in each of these languages. This is a principle that has been put
into effect in the US State Department’s Foreign Service Institute School of
Table 5.3 Summary of mean X_Lex scores for each CEFR level in French and Greek
CEFR Level French in Spain French in Greece Greek in Greece
A1 894 1126 1492

A2 1700 1756 2238
B1 2194 2423 3338
B2 2450 2630 4013
C1 2675 3213
C2 3721 3525
Language Studies where levels and achievement across some 50 languages are
moderated, at least in part, by the vocabulary size and achievement of learners
(James Bernhardt, personal communication, 24/04/2019). However, individual
language exams will have been constructed, in the absence of these vocabulary
measures, only on the basis of the broad CEFR guidelines meaning some differ-
ences at least should be expected.
Nonetheless, in Table 5.3 it will be seen that there are important similari-
ties. The figures for Greek resemble the English L2 learners in Table 5.1 and
Table 5.2. Something over 2000 words are needed to reach a pass level at A2,
and vocabulary sizes of around 3000 words are typical of learners at the Inde-
pendent B level. While the figures for French are smaller, not least because the
learners are not yet taking exams at the prescribed levels, there are still impor-
tant similarities. Learners in the A2 class have vocabularies that are approach-
ing the 2000 word level. A requirement of achieving B level is knowledge of
more than 2000 words. Two thousand words, it will be remembered, is the
lower of Nation’s thresholds and marks a level below which independent com-
munication is effectively impossible and above which this communication can
begin to emerge. It seems unlikely that differences in patterns of inflection
will be driving these differences. French is more highly inflected than English,
involving a greater learning load and probably more learning time at the out-
set, and there may be differences in the context of learning and motivation.
This may possibly delay the development of other areas of language. However,
Greek is also more highly inflected than English and, for example in terms of its
gender system, even more complicated than French. Yet, the figures for Greek
are very similar for English and probably do reflect the systematic differences in
communicative level that the CEFR was designed to capture.
The figures provided in Table 5.1 and Table 5.2 can be taken as good general
guidelines for the volumes of vocabulary that should form the goal of learn-
ing in a well-constructed curriculum. These are the numbers that learners can
and do obtain in achieving the kind of communicative proficiency that is usu-
ally the goal of foreign language learning. As Woore (2020) suggests, these are
numbers that should apply across a range of European languages. These num-
bers are important not only to achieve the right scale of vocabulary knowledge
because vocabulary is, in itself, essential to a language. They are important,
too, because of the way they tie into other areas of language and the curricu-
lum. Structural and grammatical command are impossible without the right
volumes of vocabulary knowledge. Communicative proficiency is impossible
without sufficient words.
The 2020 Update to the CEFR (Council of Europe 2020) still opts to
exclude vocabulary size targets, but it does include helpful descriptors of
vocabulary range at each level (p. 131). B1 is the level, it says, which allows
communication related to ‘familiar topics and everyday situations’ including
‘current events.’ At B2 level, as students cover greater volumes of lower fre-
quency thematic vocabulary, learners can ‘use much of the specialist vocabu-
lary of their field’ but not necessary talk about topics they have never studied.
At C1 level, though, students will have a ‘broad lexical repertoire allow-
ing gaps to be readily overcome.’ In other words, by this point, learners will
be acquiring enough words to be able to communicate with some degree of
effectiveness about themes for which they do not necessarily know all of the
specialist vocabulary. The vocabulary sizes we have suggested here are fully
in line with these ideas.
Vocabulary and the CEFR in the UK

The data Milton and Alexiou reported, and which was partially summarised
in Table 5.3, included figures for French in the UK, and these were removed
so they could be treated separately. Previous chapters have reflected on the fact
that vocabulary in language learning is treated significantly differently in the
UK compared to, probably, anywhere else. A consequence of this is that the
place of vocabulary in the CEFR levels is different to anywhere else, also. It is
worth considering in more detail, therefore. The danger in doing this is that
it gives the UK system a credibility it really does not deserve. The UK CEFR
placements in relation to vocabulary do not fit with the research evidence that
exists concerning vocabulary knowledge and communication. They do not fit
with the CEFR’s own descriptors. They do, however, seem calculated to dis-
guise a low standard in UK foreign language learning (Milton 2006) and to
disguise progressive decline in that standard (Milton 2013; Milton and Hop-
wood 2021). However, a section like this gives the opportunity to use the UK
system as an object lesson in what happens when the necessary volumes of
vocabulary are systematically excluded from the curriculum. What happens is
nothing good.
Table 5.4 records the vocabulary sizes at B1 (GCSE) and B2 (A level) as
described in Milton (2006) and David (2008). Additionally, the sizes of the
core vocabularies at A2 and B1 described in this chapter, which were devel-
oped in the work leading up to the current CEFR system, are added.
The vocabulary levels of French learners at B1 and B2 levels in France and
Greece are thought to be underestimates because these learners are in the pro-
cess of learning and have not yet reached the level to take and pass B1 and B2
Table 5.4 Summary of mean scores for each CEFR levels in the UK and elsewhere
CEF French in the UK French in the UK French in French in Threshold

level (Milton 2006) (David 2008) Spain Greece core size
A1 894 1126
A2 1700 1756 1000
B1 852 564 2194 2423 2000
B2 1930 2108 2450 2630
C1 2675 3213
C2 3721 3525
exams. The UK learners in the Milton (2006) study have all completed their
courses and taken exams while those in the David (2008) study had not. Despite
this, the vocabulary sizes of the UK learners are a fraction of the sizes obtained
elsewhere. Learners routinely take exams, which in the UK are claimed to repre-
sent B1 and B2, with about a quarter or a third of the vocabulary size needed to
pass these exams elsewhere. The UK vocabulary sizes are a fraction, too, of the
core vocabulary size of the Un Niveau Seuil vocabulary lists devised for B1 (Coste
et al. 1987). These low vocabulary scores are a product of policy and design in
the UK system, and this is clear in successive UK descriptions of foreign language
subject content (DfE 2015, 2021).
While GCSE and A level may be described in terms of the CEFR, it would
be a profound error to imagine that the learners of French in UK schools really
do routinely attain B1 and B2 levels in their school exams. The nature of the
communicative tasks which the CEFR descriptors provide at B level are simply
impossible with vocabularies so small. Learners in the UK have little of the
topical vocabulary that is necessary for meeting the CEFR descriptors: things
like listening to the news and understanding it. In other countries, the UK B1
(GCSE) level learners would be at A1 level. The ceiling in vocabulary attain-
ment imposed by the subject content (DfE 2021) means learners can scarcely
hope to progress beyond this level. The UK B2 (A level) learners would be at
A2 level elsewhere. Learners in England cannot be as competent as learners
elsewhere who have vocabularies twice or even four times the size. No wonder,
then, that UK students who take foreign language courses abroad routinely find
themselves in classes at a level far lower than they imagine their attainment to
be, and UK learners compare themselves unfavourably to learners elsewhere
(Ofsted 2021).
These differences are reflected in a transnational study by Gruber and Ton-
kyn (2017), which compared learners of French in Germany with learners of
French in England. The study found that learners in England knew far, far
fewer words than their counterparts in comparable German schools with com-
parable teaching hours. Gruber and Tonkyn assert that key reasons for this
were found to be the resources and pedagogy in use. The textbook used in
England was found to be thinner in content overall and more heavily weighted
toward high frequency vocabulary, and tasks and activities were less cognitively
challenging. Students in England were found to be learning fewer words, at a
slower rate, and using them in less stretching ways, focussing instead on syntac-
tical complexity to meet the needs of public exams. The curriculum approach
in England, which diminishes and sidelines vocabulary learning, is a model of
conspicuous failure. The goals of this curriculum, and the CEFR levels the cur-
riculum aspires to, can never be met when the curriculum design deliberately
excludes the vocabulary knowledge essential to attain these things. This vocab-
ulary avoidance should be avoided in any curriculum design which seriously
intends to successfully enable learners to achieve independent communication
in their foreign language in line with the CEFR descriptors.
Vocabulary input (teaching) and uptake (learning)
In a recent seminar for teachers of foreign languages in UK schools, we polled
the participants on their expectations in vocabulary learning. How much of the
vocabulary they taught did they think learners retained? The results varied, of
course, but the general expectation was that learners would retain most of the
words taught, 75% or better. Research shows that this expectation is optimistic,
sometimes wildly optimistic. Only a proportion of the words which are taught
are generally retained sufficiently well to be recognised in vocabulary size tests,
let alone work their way into productive use. There can be a number of rea-
sons for this. In Chapter 4 we explained that the words themselves can have
individual difficulty characteristics that make them more or less learnable. But
there is also learner variability including the inevitable instances where classes
or learning activities are missed for some reason. Learners can just switch off
occasionally especially if the learning material is dull and repetitive. For a
whole variety of reasons, not every word taught or used in a language class will
be retained.
This has important consequences for the way an effective curriculum
handles its vocabulary content. It will need to consider not just the kind of
vocabulary knowledge targets needed for the broader communicative goals of
the curriculum, but also the volume of vocabulary input needed to achieve
those vocabulary knowledge targets. If the vocabulary target for learning is, say,
3000 words and the curriculum only delivers 3000 words in its teaching, then
learners will fall short, possibly far short, of this learning goal. Target setting in
the curriculum requires an understanding of the relationship between vocabulary
input (the words that are taught) and vocabulary uptake (the words that are
learned). In this way, teaching a foreign language is unlike the teaching of some
other subjects where the content taught might broadly be equal to the content
that students are expected to learn. This is because in a modern language, learn-
ers are not merely learning content, they are learning to use this content in a way
which is unique to modern languages among classroom subjects.
There are several studies which give us a good idea of the relationship
between teaching vocabulary and learning vocabulary, and these can inform
the construction of an effective vocabulary curriculum. In a series of studies,
Vassiliu (2001) examined the entirety of the vocabulary input for his beginner
EFL students at a school in Greece and then, at the end of teaching, measured
what vocabulary they retained using a bespoke test of the teaching material.
Individual learners varied and only the very highest scoring students managed
scores above 75%, and then only slightly above. A few other learners scored
significantly lower than 20%. The average uptake was 53%, just over half, of the
900 or so lemmatised words input. Vassiliu had several observations to make
on this result. First, he wondered if this result could be replicated. But, second,
he interrogated the relationship between input and uptake. While input of this
order appears common in foreign language textbooks for an academic year of
study, he wondered whether learners were being overloaded. He reasoned that
if vocabulary is in the textbook, then it is there to be learned, and if even the
best learners cannot learn it all then perhaps something is going wrong. Could
the burden of vocabulary learning profitably be reduced?
He conducted three further studies (Milton and Vassiliu 2000) where the
teaching materials were examined in similar detail but, this time, with varying
input loads in relation to the same classroom time available for learning. What
emerged from this second study was that reducing the volume of vocabulary
input did increase the proportion of words retained, but not by much and,
broadly, uptake remained very similar at between 55% and 60% of words input.
It was concluded that reducing vocabulary input did not appear to be a useful
teaching strategy, but that increasing the vocabulary input did seem potentially
beneficial. The result of teaching a higher vocabulary load was that in the class-
room time available learners learned more vocabulary and made faster progress
in other areas of language and toward their overall learning goals.
These and other examples, which produce very similar outcomes, lead Mil-
ton (2011) to conclude that something over 50% vocabulary uptake is far
from being a problem. It is a good outcome. He points out that there are fac-
tors which mean that this is actually a feature of a supportive and successful
vocabulary learning environment. The learners of EFL in Greece in the Vassiliu
(2001) study, for example, were attending a school where there was consid-
erable parental support, encouragement and expectation. Teaching materials
provided ample opportunity for extension work outside of class. There was also
considerable EFL input for learners in the form of TV and films in English,
sometimes with subtitles. It is hard to find, in relatively normal school class-
room environments, vocabulary uptake that is higher than 50% of input. In
Vassiliu’s studies, where learners learned about 50% of the words taught them,
they gained hundreds of words every year and attained their communicative
goals. They learned about 500 words, on average, from the most frequent
5000 words in English and 700 words or more overall every year in school. This
input enabled the more able learners to make even faster progress to becoming
proficient in their foreign language.
By contrast, there are language learning environments which are far less suc-
cessful. Milton and Meara (1998) and Milton (2006) are studies which exam-
ine vocabulary learning of French in UK schools and conclude that even after
5 years of study probably only about 800 words are learned. Milton (2011)
relates these outcomes to the textbooks which provided the vocabulary input
and is able to conclude that vocabulary uptake is probably only about 20% of
input. Milton (2011) considers that the vocabulary learning environment is
poor in this example. The textbooks which were used in this case are described
as deficient both in the volume of vocabulary contained, which is too small for
communication, but also in the exploitation of the vocabulary content which
is less than optimal. It is described as unvaried and demotivating (Tschichold
2012). There are whole years where very little new vocabulary is introduced.
Our observation of Tschichold’s learners is that outside of class there was lit-
tle support for learning. The textbooks did not include workbooks or other
extension materials; these days, textbooks do often include workbooks but
these tend to be for grammar. Other language input, in terms of pop songs,
films and TV programmes in French, was absent. Enthusiastic parental sup-
port was often missing. This is probably the sort of language learning environ-
ment that leads Harris and Snow to conclude that ‘few words are retained from
those which are “learned” or “taught” by direct instruction’ (2004, p. 55). Their
assertion must be tempered by the observation that even in this environment,
the highest scoring learners in the Milton (2006) study still learned some three
quarters of words taught in the textbook and were only stopped in this rapid
progress when, as Tschichold (2012) noted, input of new words declined and
there were few new words to learn.
The conclusion to be drawn from these studies is that the vocabulary selec-
tion and loading in the curriculum is a highly material concern that has a very
direct impact on learning. Learners can learn large amounts of the vocabulary
if it is well and formally presented in learning materials and if sufficient vocabu-
lary is presented for learning. Learning may not generally be the 75% and more
expected by teachers but, if the circumstances are good, 50% of input for the
average learner. The more vocabulary is a priority and the more vocabulary
is taught, then the more vocabulary is learned, and this can have beneficial
effects on overall language learning progress. An effective curriculum, there-
fore, should probably look to teach double the volume of vocabulary which it
expects the average learner to learn. Hilton (2019) echoes this assertion in her
advice to teachers of foreign languages at collège level in France.
Milton and Vassiliu (2000) suggest that for the most able learners, there is a
good case to be made for enhancing vocabulary input since learners can learn
this material and move rapidly to more autonomous language use as a result.
Their learners appeared to learn vocabulary in such volumes that mastery of
the thousands of words needed for communicability is a realistic possibility
even with restricted classroom hours. Many learners in the Milton (2006) study
of French in UK schools were clearly held back in their progress by inadequate
teaching materials (see Milton 2008). A condition of learning from an effec-
tively constructed curriculum, then, is the provision of resources and materials
that can deliver the volumes and the sequence of vocabulary that is needed by
learners. An average uptake rate of about 20%, as in the UK school system,
should be a sign that a root and branch reconsideration of the language learn-
ing process is in order, starting with the curriculum and including the teaching
materials. It is a sign that things are going badly wrong.
Table 5.5 summarises the likely input requirement at each of the CEFR levels
for learners to attain the vocabulary knowledge to pass exams at these levels.
Vocabulary uptake per hour

Once we know the overall vocabulary size target for a given course, we can begin
to consider how this is loaded into the curriculum. Goal setting for vocabulary
includes putting a number on the volume of vocabulary that needs to be learned
Table 5.5 Summary of likely vocabulary learning goals and vocabulary input at each
CEFR level
CEFR Input/words Uptake/words learned in Uptake/words learned in

level taught X_Lex – (average attainer) 10k tests – (average attainer)
A1 3000 1000–1500 1500

A2 5000 1750–2250 2500
B1 6000 2500–3000 3000
B2 8000 3250–3750 4000
C1 10000 4000–4500 5000–6000
C2 15000+ 4500–5000 8000–9000
and the volume of vocabulary that needs to be taught in order to achieve the
communicative goals of the curriculum. Goal setting need not make presump-
tions about the nature of the learners. But once a goal is set for the learners,
probably in terms of a CEFR level, then the curriculum will have numbers of
words to work with. Initially these will be the number of words needed to attain
the CEFR goal. It allows the curriculum to begin to make the right plans for
timetabling and for deciding how much vocabulary should be delivered each
year or even each hour of teaching. The literature on vocabulary teaching (for
example, Gairns and Redman 1986; Scholfield 1991) consider something like
ten words per classroom hour appropriate figures, and this figure appears also
to be what effective courses input (Swan and Walter 1984). There is a fairly
predictable relationship between classroom hours and the rate of vocabulary
learning. Milton and Meara (1998) reviewed a range of school courses, in both
English and other languages, where figures for teaching time and vocabulary
learning were available and noted the regularity which appeared to exist. In
good learning environments uptake was generally about 3–4 words per contact
hour for average attainers. Occasionally, as in the Vassiliu (2001) and Milton
and Vassiliu (2000) examples and in really good learning environments, uptake
was slightly higher at five or more words per hour and about 50% of input.
These are figures for average learners and represent good progress from the
input provided. It must be remembered that good learners will learn more than
this, and a good curriculum will want to promote the progress of the ablest
as well as average learners. This information is useful in planning because it
allows teaching time to be allocated to language learning on a principled basis
rather than by pure guesswork. If the goal of language learning were for aver-
age attainers to learn 3000 words, then the curriculum might need to build in
something like 700–800 hours of learning time to achieve this goal if all learn-
ing is to take place in the classroom. Higher attainers will learn more quickly
and either need less time or learn more words, provided the words are made
available for learning. If this amount of time cannot be made available, then
either the curriculum goal needs to be reconsidered or plans must be made so
that the vocabulary gap can be made up in some other way through learning
outside the class.
The curriculum must make sure the vocabulary targets are set to allow all ranges
of learning ability to make good progress. If the learning target is 3000 words and
the input is 6000 words, the average may well learn 3000 words, but the other
3000 are not wasted. These are the words that the more able learners can, and
likely will, also learn. This is an important resource in the way a curriculum caters
for the full range of individual variation in learning. A notable feature of recent
UK curriculums is the way the attainment of the most able learners is suppressed
by the imposition of ever smaller vocabulary learning targets (Milton 2008). The
curriculum in England thinking seems to be based on the idea that all learners are
average and will learn at the same speed. Learners are not, of course, all the same.
There is no good reason for a curriculum to penalise and restrict the attainment
of the most able learners.
There are examples of curriculums where large amounts of time are made
available within the timetable, and probably there is sufficient time in the class
for vocabulary learning to meet the overall goals of the course. The school
system in Saudi Arabia, which teaches English as a first foreign language to its
learners, has been studied repeatedly in relation to its vocabulary learning goals
and the achievement of learners (for example, Alhazemi 1993; Alsaif 2011;
Alshaikhi 2016). The timetable allowance has changed over the years but a
feature is how generous the timetabling is. It appears that about 900 classroom
hours are commonly made available, and the uptake figures suggest that if the
learning environment is good, and the teaching materials are good, then suf-
ficient vocabulary for good levels of communication are entirely possible. How-
ever, it is an expectation in most language learning systems that learning time is
not completely restricted to the classroom. Established norms where teaching
hours for formal exams are provided, as with Cambridge English (2021), sug-
gest there is a clear expectation that the classroom time will be supplemented
with exposure and study outside the classroom. The figures which Cambridge
English provide suggest that time spent learning outside the class would have
to match the learning inside the classroom.
Even in UK foreign language teaching, historically, this was the expecta-
tion, and perhaps half of the vocabulary burden of the course might routinely
have been learned this way. The vocabulary teaching load of the old O level
French exam is thought to be about 4500 words (Milton 2013), with the lexical
load probably split between a textbook and supplementary learning material.
Thimann’s (1959) A French Vocabulary for Ordinary Level, which is a supple-
mentary book, is a series of word lists for learning at home and which probably
doubles the vocabulary burden of the course book. One list per week is sug-
gested over the final 3 years of the 5-year O level course. This is considered a
burden so slight that these words could easily be learned in conjunction with
other French learning. Thimann suggests there are 2250 words, although our
analysis suggests there are 2391 lemmatised words. More than half of these
words are outside the most frequent 2000 words in Lonsdale’s and Le Bras’
(2009) frequency dictionary. The lists exclude words that can reasonably be
expected to be covered in classroom teaching, such as grammar and structure
vocabulary including common irregular words, basic or very common vocabu-
lary and cognate words that Thimann considers easily guessable. Measured
uptake among O level French learners (Milton 2008) suggests an average
vocabulary size of over 2200 words. Again, this suggests retention of 50% of
input, more than 30 years after learning finished and, we calculate, 3–4 words
per classroom hour.
Not all learning environments are good, and uptake in these cases can fall
well short of the 50% ideal and 3–4 words per hour, which seems to be obtained
in good environments. Uptake of 1–2 words per hour is noted in Milton and
Meara (1998) in these less successful courses. Examination of the vocabulary
input for courses where vocabulary learning is so slight suggests, and this should
not be a surprise, that it occurs where vocabulary input is also slight. Milton
(2006) notes a drop in vocabulary uptake to below one word per hour in the
second and third years of French instruction, and this coincides in Tschichold’s
(2012) analysis of the teaching materials with a drop in vocabulary input to
three words per hour or less. Note that that is input, not uptake. Milton and
Hopwood (2021) note a continuation of this pattern in the UK teaching of
French in schools. Entire years can pass where the input of new vocabulary is
negligible. Alsaif and Milton (2012) note the same trend in EFL learning in
Saudi Arabia. There was small vocabulary input over the course of learning and
uptake of about one word per contact hour (Alhazemi 1993; Alsaif 2011) and
periods with negligible vocabulary input where vocabulary uptake falls to below
one word per hour is noted. In this example, Alsaif and Milton (2012) point
directly to poverty of vocabulary input as the cause. Learners cannot learn
vocabulary they are never taught. It is only fair to point out here that Saudi
Arabia has updated both its curriculum and its teaching materials since Alsaif’s
work, and the outcome is discussed later in this chapter. An average uptake
rate of one word per classroom hour should, as with an uptake rate as low as
20%, be a sign that things are going badly wrong and that a major reconsidera-
tion of the curriculum is in order, including the teaching materials.
This discussion of the learning environment should not distract from the
principal consideration of this section, which is to draw attention to the need,
as part of the curriculum design process, for the provision of adequate time for
learning. The figures presented here should allow this to be done in a principled
way. To present this idea in its simplest form, there is a relationship between
language learning, including vocabulary learning, and the time available for
learning. Milton and Meara (1998) demonstrate just how simple this relation-
ship can often be. In an international comparison they draw attention to a
straight line relationship that appears in their data between classroom hours
and vocabulary knowledge of learners. As Gruber and Tonkyn (2017) show, the
relationship is not, of course, always quite so mechanical. Nonetheless, the UK
learners in their study demonstrated lower vocabulary learning than the com-
parative German group and not the least of the issues involved in this was that
they had less classroom teaching. A well-constructed curriculum has to make
appropriate provision, and that means appropriate time arrangements for the
Table 5.6 Vocabulary input and attainment CEFR targets, with learning hours added
CEFR Input/words Uptake/words Uptake/words Hours needed –

level taught learned in learned in classroom and informal
X_Lex – 10k tests – learning combined –
(average attainer) (average attainer) (average attainer)
A1 3000 1000–1500 1500 400

A2 5000 1750–2250 2500 600
B1 6000 2500–3000 3000 750
B2 8000 3250–3750 4000 1000
C1 10000 4000–4500 5000–6000 1500–2000
C2 15000+ 4500–5000 8000–9000 2000–3000
Table 5.7 Lexical knowledge and CEFR levels from the curriculum of the Ministry of
Education in Saudi Arabia (2016, p. 78)
Grade CEFR level Cumulative Expected Cumulative Uptake

hours vocabulary uptake vocabulary uptake per hour
4 Leading to A1 65 250 words 250 words 4 words

5 Leading to A1 130 250 words 500 words 4 words
6 A1.1 195 250 words 750 words 4 words
9 A2.2/B1.1 585 550 words 2200 words 4 words
biggest task in language learning, which is the acquisition of a lexicon sufficient

for communication. Table 5.6, therefore, builds on Table 5.5 and tabulates the
likely learning time needed to attain the vocabulary goals at each of the CEFR
levels.
Vocabulary in the curriculum: the Saudi example

The teaching of EFL in schools in Saudi Arabia has already been mentioned
previously. It is a learning environment where generous classroom hours are
made available for language learning; yet, historically, uptake of vocabulary
in particular, and language progress more generally, appeared unsatisfactory.
Studies by Alhazemi (1993) and Alsaif (2011) were cited to demonstrate this.
Since these studies were written, the EFL curriculum has been significantly
reworked, and the materials used to deliver it have been changed to provide a
very different focus. This is reported in Alexiou et al. (2019) and summarised
in Table 5.7. The way vocabulary is treated stands out, and it is a good example
of how the volumes of vocabulary, talked about earlier, can be coherently and
successfully built into curriculum design.
It will be noticed that the overall goal of attainment for learners following
this curriculum is the cusp of A2 and B1. The anticipated rate of uptake is
consistently around four words per contact hour which is an attainable rate in
successful learning environments. This curriculum is calculated to bring learn-
ers, after 6 years and 585 hours of input, to a knowledge of 2200 words. The
figure of 2000 words, and by implication the 80% coverage figure also, reap-
pears in this design. Learners are intended to achieve a level at the A2/B1 cusp
which is, as research evidence suggests it should be, beyond the 2000 word
level. It fits with the figures provided earlier in this chapter for the volumes of
vocabulary needed to achieve these levels. However, although the CEFR goal
is similar to that reported in the UK foreign language system, more words are
required to be learned and much more time is made available for this to occur.
The anticipated vocabulary uptake rate is consistently set at 3–4 words per
classroom hour which the research literature suggests is a thoroughly attainable
goal. These figures provide not only an overall target for vocabulary attain-
ment but interim figures which can be used by teachers and learners to monitor
their progress to the overall goal. This looks like good and coherent vocabulary
design for a curriculum.
These changes have run concurrently with a significant overhaul of the text-
book and teaching materials which have become much more heavily vocab-
ulary loaded. Individual textbooks vary but studies suggest (AlShaikhi and
Milton 2017; Aldaghriri 2019) these routinely deliver vocabulary that is at
least double the goal of learning. There is average input of eight or more words
per hour, and this is consistent with effective vocabulary teaching. This is also
in line with the studies of textbook loading and uptake reported earlier in this
chapter and in line with the precepts for vocabulary design suggested here.
Where textbooks are adopted which could be demonstrated to deliver these
vocabulary changes, the outcome was a change in the nature of the vocabu-
lary learning that occurred. Both AlShaikhi and Milton (2017) and Aldaghriri
(2019) report a mean score for learners at the end of grade 9 that is around
2000 words. This is within 5% of the curriculum goal that was set and does
place these learners, as anticipated, at around the A2/B1 cusp. It is argued in
both studies that the changes in vocabulary loading of the curriculum and the
textbooks have brought about a large increase in the volume of vocabulary
taught and the speed with which this vocabulary is learned. The learning envi-
ronment, and the learners within it, no longer look poor but, instead, appear
good and successful. Good vocabulary curriculum design has brought about a
sea change in the learning environment.
Where will these words come from?

Formal and informal learning
The example of the Saudi curriculum shows what can be achieved with careful
design of vocabulary in the curriculum which is carried through to the mate-
rials which are used in the classroom. The school system in Saudi has made
generous provision for English language learning in particular and in this it
is probably unusual. It has allowed textbooks to be selected to deliver that
volumes of vocabulary which are wanted. Generally, the textbook is considered
a principal source of foreign language vocabulary for learners, sometimes the
only source (for example, Häcker 2008; Tschichold 2012). If the textbook is
well-constructed then it should not only provide the vocabulary that is needed
but should help organise and sequence the material so it can be learned effec-
tively. Gruber and Tonkyn (2017) found, in their comparative study, and like
Vassiliu (2001) before them, that higher lexical loading of textbooks associated
with more extensive lexical knowledge in learners. The vocabulary loading of
textbooks is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 8.
But, what happens where input solely from the textbook is not possible or
is, perhaps, not always wanted? In these cases, informal learning will have to
supplement the formal input of the classroom. Chapter 4 made the distinc-
tion between explicit and implicit learning, and learning new words will always
be fairly explicit. New words must be noticed; their form must be learned;
their meaning and usage must be identified. The textbook, if it is well writ-
ten, will make new words explicit and will explain them and provide practice.
But if vocabulary learning is to occur outside the classroom, it cannot be left
to chance. The curriculum will need to identify the learning that is to occur
and make provision for it. However, where vocabulary learning occurs outside
the classroom, it is usually considered incidental. Words are learned in pass-
ing, while doing something else, as in Harris’ and Snow’s (2004) metaphor of
scenery passing a car window. The input is uncontrolled; the learning process
is uncertain, but some kind of learning is expected to occur. In studies of inci-
dental vocabulary learning, measured uptake is usually negligible (see Horst
et al. 1998 for a review). Milton (2008) suggests that it is impossible to explain
the volumes of vocabulary which successful learners acquire through inciden-
tal learning. Milton distinguishes incidental learning, therefore, from infor-
mal learning. Informal learning involves an activity which learners carry out
outside the classroom but with a deliberate learning focus. In Milton’s (2008)
study this included reading comic books, listening to songs and watching films
with subtitles in the foreign language. To this might be added extensive read-
ing programmes (Nation 2015), learning from bilingual vocabulary lists (as
in Fitzpatrick et al. 2008) or indeed language learning apps. Such activities
involve learning that is far from implicit. The input of vocabulary is understood
and controlled, activities are simple and the uptake can be carefully moni-
tored. The presence of regular vocabulary tests based on the learning material
meant the learners knew they were engaged in some kind of vocabulary mining.
This last point proved to be a great motivation, and this is discussed in greater
detail in Chapter 10. The activities proved to be motivating because the tested
uptake that resulted was both large and measurable. Milton (2008) records
measured vocabulary learning in some of these activities at ten times the rate
vocabulary is generally acquired in class. Success is always encouraging and
learners, in informal vocabulary learning situations, can see their success.
There are good reasons why these kinds of informal learning will need to be
built into the curriculum. One reason is where there is insufficient classroom
time for all the vocabulary needed for the broad curriculum goals to be covered
in class. It has been noted previously that the expectation generally is that lim-
ited classroom time will be provided for foreign languages, and this will have
to be supplemented if learning and curriculum goals are to be achieved. A fea-
ture of EFL teaching is that, generally, a good textbook will be accompanied
by workbooks and by extension materials. As Thornbury (2000) notes, there
is a superabundance of other materials available to help both the learner and
teacher in EFL. We have already referred to the old O level syllabus for mod-
ern foreign languages in UK and the French vocabulary extension materials
explicitly provided for homework by Thimann (1959). Yet, in modern UK MFL
materials where the vocabulary content is assessed (Tschichold 2012; Milton
and Hopwood 2021) these workbooks, which can systematically extend the
vocabulary size of learners, are conspicuously absent. A condition of a success-
ful vocabulary curriculum, therefore, is that where informal learning is to occur
the content must be identified, the learning must fit with the overall sequence
and structure of vocabulary learning and the informal materials must be coher-
ent. One of the goals of teaching a large vocabulary as early as possible in the
learning process, Nation (2001) argues, is that this gives learners levels of com-
prehension which mean that they can manage their own vocabulary learning
and are less dependent on classroom input. However, a feature of MFL learn-
ing in UK schools is that there is inadequate classroom time provided for the
general goals of learning, but there is also no coherent plan for making up this
shortcoming through informal learning outside the class. Rather, the strategy is
to deny that vocabulary is needed.
A second reason for wanting to build informal learning into a curricu-
lum is to address issues where the textbooks are inadequate for some reason.
Alexiou and Konstantakis (2009) and Konstantakis and Alexiou (2012), for
example, point to the vocabulary loading of EFL textbooks and criticise both
the volumes of vocabulary taught and the strong frequency bias. Additional
vocabulary teaching and materials are needed to achieve the CEFR goals of the
textbooks they examined and here a much more extensive thematic vocabulary
knowledge was clearly needed. In the UK, Tschichold (2012) and Milton and
Hopwood (2021) indicate that French textbooks used in school are also inad-
equately loaded with vocabulary for learning, and this material is not appro-
priately exploited to help learning. Again, additional vocabulary teaching and
materials would be needed if learners are to achieve the vocabulary knowledge
levels which are usually associated with the curriculum goals.
Thornbury (2000) points to a further reason for wanting to supplement
classroom and formal teaching with informal learning. Teachers will want to
take advantage of the interests and communicative ambitions of learners in a
way that textbooks cannot always deliver. Bespoke materials or materials sug-
gested by the learner could, potentially, be a very useful addition to a well-
structured vocabulary curriculum, particularly in promoting communicative
fluency and nourishing motivation. It will help, too, in developing the learner’s
depth of word knowledge, the often-wide range of uses words may occur in
and the speed and ease with which these words can be called to mind for use.
The retrieval practice suggested in Chapter 4 becomes much more achievable
where the learners have something they really want to talk about and there-
fore words they need to retrieve for communication. The judicious use of such
material is not, of itself, incompatible with a good vocabulary curriculum. It
can help bolster the growth of vocabulary size which is so important for overall
language ability. It can promote access to a wider variety of idiomatic materials
than a textbook can offer and can promote greater fluency. However, if over-
used or misused, this can be damaging.
There is a danger in this last practice linked to a belief that good learn-
ing comes from throwing away the textbook and using just ad hoc or down-
loaded material. Miller (2021), for example, advocates ditching the textbook
entirely, and Thornbury (2000) also comes close to suggesting this. It is a
feature of MFL teaching in the UK that teachers are often heavily dependent
on these ad hoc and downloaded materials or that they are so underwhelmed
by the textbook that they ditch it entirely in favour of a course designed
entirely in-house. The problems associated with French textbooks noted ear-
lier may, possibly, be driving this trend as teachers move away from something
they think will not work and move to something they hope might work. How-
ever, the danger in this approach in that the teaching of vocabulary ceases
to be principled, systematic and sequenced and becomes instead entirely
adventitious, particularly so in an examinations context which appears to
prize syntactical complexity over communication and vocabulary breadth.
As Schmitt (2019) observes, busy classroom teachers are unlikely to have the
time, expertise and resources to apply the complex principles of vocabulary
loading to design their own individual materials which go so far as to replace
the textbook. Where this occurs, neither the teacher nor the learner has any
idea whether the right words or the right number of words are being delivered
for the curriculum goals to be achieved. Vocabulary learning becomes unor-
ganised and incoherent. These are all qualities that should not be present in
a good vocabulary curriculum which exists precisely to set clear goals and
the route to achieving them. It is also a good learning opportunity missed
since, as research evidence shows (Vassiliu 2001; Gruber and Tonkyn 2017),
where good learning materials are provided, vocabulary learning can be sub-
stantial and very successful.
The whole objective, then, of the vocabulary curriculum is to identify the
goals of learning. Once the goal for vocabulary learning is known, the number
of words and the structures they can occur in, then teachers and materials
writers can begin to plan the hours of input across the time available for learn-
ing. How many hours in class each year are needed for this material? What is
the anticipated input and anticipated uptake? The learning of a lexicon for
communicative ability is a large undertaking and it needs to be spread intel-
ligently across the time available for learning to make the task achievable.
This chapter has considered the numbers of words and how these should be
best treated. This includes the multi-word expressions and the collocations
and structures which form the lexicon. The business of the next chapter is to
try to explain what these words and these structures should be and how they
should best be chosen.
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6 Selecting vocabulary
for the curriculum
Introduction
The purpose of this chapter is to explain how all the individual vocabulary
items can be selected as part of an effective curriculum which can lead to
a workable and communicative foreign language lexicon. This involves an
understanding of what the lexicon should look like, not just in terms of size
but also in terms of the words that are to be learned. The intention, there-
fore, is to describe the principles for the selection of vocabulary content and
describe, too, some of the background in research that helps explain these
principles and how they can be applied. The chapter will explain the role of
word frequency and range in selection. It will explain about vocabulary pro-
files and the way a developing lexicon mixes frequent and infrequent word
knowledge. It will consider the availability and the learnability, or difficulty,
of words for learning. It will consider, too, the role of interest and utility which
addresses the choice of topical and content vocabulary and the requirements
of other elements of the curriculum, especially grammar. It will explain how
these elements can be modelled to guide curriculum construction. Finally,
the chapter will point at some of the resources which are available to help
this kind of selection.
Criteria for selection

When academics review foreign language textbooks with vocabulary in mind,
they are often critical of the choices that writers make and the way this essen-
tial element of language is exploited. Catalán’s and Fransisco’s (2008) review
of textbooks suggests writers make idiosyncratic choices as to the number of
words presented, the choice of words and the degree of systematic recycling
for these words. Dodigovich and Agustín-Llach identify a ‘perplexing noncha-
lance’ (2020 p. 2) in the choice of words for teaching. It is as if there are no
principles for materials writers which can help direct the organisation of vocab-
ulary in a textbook. Tschichold (2012), in reviewing a series of textbooks teach-
ing French in the UK, criticises both the small size of vocabulary presented to
DOI: 10.4324/9781003278771-6
Selecting vocabulary for the curriculum 85
learners and the highly repetitive content. Milton and Hopwood (2021) review
a later generation of the French textbooks used in the UK and make similar
criticisms. The choice of vocabulary is small, actually much smaller than before,
and with poor exploitation for learning. These studies reflect an idea that has
appeared in the academic literature for almost a century without this situation
changing. Milton and Benn (1933), in a study of 29 beginner French course
books used in the UK, note that of the more than 6000 types used, only 19 were
common to all the books. A recent review of textbooks used in France reached
almost identical conclusions (Hilton et al. forthcoming). This is of concern
for a number of reasons. One of them is practical; that learners moving from
school to school will likely have very different language knowledge and back-
grounds which will make integration to their new classes difficult. Also, Milton
and Benn question whether frequent vocabulary, apparently so important to
language, is underrepresented in a way that will damage progress toward the
goal of communicability. An emphasis on this frequent vocabulary can have its
critics too. Konstantakis and Alexiou (2012) and Alexiou and Konstantakis
(2009), in reviewing elementary EFL textbooks, criticise the overemphasis on
frequent vocabulary in their content. In teaching so much frequent and struc-
tural vocabulary, they argue, essential topical and content vocabulary has been
driven out. The result is that textbooks are dull and repetitious, and learners
are missing the content vocabulary needed to communicate. They also note
that it appears to drive down the volumes of vocabulary taught, which is also
damaging in achieving the goal of communication. The views of Milton and
Benn, and Alexiou and Konstatakis, are not incompatible or contradictory.
What they draw attention to is the absence of an understanding of vocabulary
in a developing lexicon and the principles by which this vocabulary knowledge
is best selected and taught.
What, then, are the principles by which vocabulary should be selected
for teaching and which should drive the choices made for vocabulary in the
curriculum? Milton and Hopwood (2021), summarising O’Dell (1997) and
White (1988), suggest six criteria which might be used to select the words
to teach.
• Frequency
• Range
• Vocabulary of interest or relevance to learners
• Thematic continuity
• Learnability
• Availability
It is worth considering all of these, although, in the following analysis, we

have telescoped this analysis under three headings. This list is probably not
intended to be exhaustive, and we will add one more: the issue of making vocab
selection fit with the grammatical aspect of the curriculum.
86 Selecting vocabulary for the curriculum
Frequency and range
The first of these criteria is that of word frequency. This has been considered
of primary importance to vocabulary selection for 100 years, sometimes to the
exclusion of all else. Robson (1934) refers to textbooks from the 1920s which
use word frequency in French to help select course book content. Milton (2009)
notes that subsequent writers always seem to place this at the top of the list
of selection criteria (for example, Sinclair and Renouf 1988; Gairns and Red-
man 1986; White 1988; O’Dell 1997). Many of these distinguish range from
frequency, but we have chosen to put these ideas together. In practice, words
with a large range, meaning they occur in a lot of the different sub-corpora that
comprise a big corpus, are also frequent. Range and frequency will tend to iden-
tify the same words, however, the range calculation probably tells users as much
about the nature of the corpus as it does about the words that comprise the
corpus. O’Dell points out that high frequency words are likely to be prominent
at the outset of learning, and this is important because without these words
learners will never communicate effectively. Nation (2001) puts a number on
these words and suggests that it is the most frequent 2000 words which are
so important to language learning and language ability that almost anything
which can be done to make sure they are learned is worth doing. These are the
2000 words identified in Chapter 3 and which are generally known as function
and structure words.
These words are really important, therefore, and will need to be repre-
sented in any effective vocabulary curriculum. But how should these words
be treated in the curriculum and in teaching materials? One interpretation of
this approach is to argue that that these words should be taught at the outset
of learning and to the exclusion of other vocabulary material. Martinez (2013)
make this argument and quotes Read in saying, ‘There is an obvious payoff
for learners of English in concentrating initially on the 2000 most frequent
words, since they have been repeatedly shown to account for at least 80% of
the running words in any written or spoken text’ (Read 2004 p. 148). The cov-
erage offered by these words is often given in explanation of this approach (for
example, DfE 2021). The assumption is being made that 80% coverage, which
sounds high, should mean good comprehension and good communicability. In
school foreign language teaching in England, this approach is adopted entirely
uncritically and progresses from being an implicit assumption to an assertion as
of a fact. The Department for Education’s subject content, for example, almost
entirely comprises words selected from the most frequent 2000 and states that
this is ‘because vocabulary specified in this content is informed by the fre-
quency of occurrence in the language it will be well suited to communication
about a wide range of common themes and topics, and for different purposes’
(DfE 2021, p. 4).
These frequent words, and the structural role they play in language, are
important, of course, and they should form part of a good curriculum. However,
there is much that is wrong about adopting frequency alone as the criterion for
selecting and sequencing the words. A curriculum constructed this way is cer-
tain to fail if the goal is to teach language for communication. An understand-
ing of this is a feature of Applied Linguistics and the development of corpus
studies since their emergence as distinct subject areas. Corder (1973, p. 223),
in considering the words that should be chosen for teaching, points out that
[The] relative frequency of a lexical item in the use of the language in all
situations is too crude a criterion. There will be many words which are
central to the needs and interests of a particular group of learners which
have low relative frequency.
The series editors to the Routledge series of Frequency Dictionaries explicitly

advise against unthinking, frequency-based vocabulary selection. They write
‘we are not claiming, of course, that frequency information should be used
slavishly’ and ‘frequency alone may never act as the sole guide for a learner’
(McEnery and Rayson (2009) in Lonsdale and Le Bras 2009 p vii). Nonethe-
less, the English system relies on this frequency criterion almost entirely in its
vocabulary selection, so it is worth taking time to rebut the kind of arguments
they use.
Much of the selection by frequency argument draws on the observations
by Nation (2001) about the importance of the most frequent 2000 words.
However, Nation also explains (for example, Nation 2001, 2006) that for inde-
pendent communication the learner will need more than 2000 words, perhaps
5000–9000 for anything like fluent communication. He observes (Nation
2001) that for the communication within specific topic areas, as for learners
studying through a foreign language at university, infrequent words including
specialist and academic words will be needed. It must be remembered that
communication in language is always about something, so there will always be
a specific topic or subject. That 2000 word figure is a threshold below which
independent communication is effectively impossible (Nation 2001). While
Nation is tied to the importance of frequency in vocabulary selection and using
frequency to help sequence vocabulary for teaching, he acknowledges (Paul
Nation, personal communication 2021) that this must be moderated by other
factors dictated by the needs of individuals or groups of learners.
This reflects the observations, made in Chapter 3, that knowledge of those
2000 words is unlikely to give good comprehension. While the 2000 word
threshold marks a point where the beginnings of independent communication
can become possible, we have demonstrated that comprehension and commu-
nication are not inevitable with this level of knowledge. 2000 words and 80%
coverage will not always, probably will not usually, provide good comprehen-
sion. It might provide none at all. This is because coverage and comprehension
are not the same thing and are not in a simple linear relationship. The S-curve,
which demonstrates the relationship between vocabulary size and comprehen-
sion (Figure 3.4), demonstrates that the relationship is rather more compli-
cated. The ‘super vocabulary’ of 1500 frequent words, identified by NCELP
(2022) in England, will not crack language comprehension. It will likely give
no comprehension at all of most texts. Communication and comprehension,
it turns out, are also dependent on the other 20% of coverage and the thou-
sands of words which are infrequent. Something approaching 100% coverage,
not 80%, is needed for comprehension (Nation 2006; Laufer and Ravenhorst-
Kalovski 2010). The assertion made by the DfE (2021) that 80% will give good
communication on a wide variety of topics is simply untrue. There is a confu-
sion here between being able to illustrate language use with a limited lexicon
comprising frequent words, which is possible, and being able to communicate
fully and effectively with that limited lexicon, which is not usually possible. As
a final goal for teaching a language for communication, this strategy of selecting
only the most frequent words must fail.
There remains the possibility that teaching only the 2000 or so most fre-
quent words is an interim strategy intended to get students to the point, as
Nation (2001) suggests, where some communication at least is possible and
vocabulary acquisition can move from the classroom to more self-directed stu-
dent learning strategies such as extensive reading. There is much that is wrong
with this approach too. One problem lies in the way we know learners grow
a lexicon in a foreign language, and this does not fit with such a restricted
input. This is discussed in the next section. A second problem lies in the dif-
ficulty this approach creates in the construction of coherent, interesting and
motivating teaching materials. It is an issue that Konstantakis and Alexiou
(2012), Alexiou and Konstantakis (2009), Tschichiold (2012) and Milton and
Hopwood (2021) point to. Restricting vocabulary this way leads to thematic
paucity which links to low lexical uptake. This is discussed later in this chapter.
Advocates of teaching words in frequency order rarely consider whether it
is possible to successfully teach merely high frequency words first in the early
years of language learning. High frequency words can be difficult for the begin-
ner to learn for a number of reasons. The very highest frequency words are
more likely to be polysemous, grammatically irregular or opaque in meaning.
Consider common verbs like get, être and werden, for example, or filler particles
such as noch, enfin and like. Additionally, high frequency words may not reflect
the learner’s world. A first lesson to a class of 7-year-olds (the age at which
many learners start to learn English in lots of countries) would probably want to
include words for animals, colours and classroom items – words that are largely
absent from the most frequent words in well-constructed frequency lists. Very
different words would likely be needed for undergraduates in an ab initio class.
Adult learners start with words for their jobs, their heritage and personal cir-
cumstances, as illustrated in the bestselling Al-Kitaab Arabic language series
(Brustad et al. 2011) but, again, this requires words that are often infrequent.
It is important for curriculum design to pay attention to frequent words in
the selection of vocabulary for teaching and to ensure, as learning progresses,
that good coverage is provided at this level. But frequency cannot be the only
criterion in the selection of words in the curriculum. The curriculum needs to
teach a lexicon that is communicative and that is teachable. A lexicon that
comprises only frequent words is not suitable for proficient communication nor
suitable for effective teaching.
Frequency profiles
A first issue, in approaching the construction of a vocabulary curriculum, is to
understand the type of lexicon a learner is trying to build in the course of devel-
oping foreign language competence. Learners will expect that they are trying to
communicate in the language and will expect to acquire the kind of knowledge
that will allow this communication to take place. Teachers and parents may well
have an exam or formal assessment as the goal of learning, and they will want
learners to develop the kind of lexicon that will give good grades. What does
such a lexicon look like? A frequency profile is a helpful way of characterising
what a functional and communicative lexicon, the kind that learners have when
they pass formal exams and as they become communicative, should be like. The
frequency profile compares word frequency against knowledge within frequency
bands and is most easily understood when this is presented as a diagram. Meara
(1992) draws up a typical learner vocabulary profile in a graph by arranging the
words of a language in 1000 word frequency bands along the horizontal axis of
the graph and plots knowledge within those bands on the vertical axis. What
emerges in a typical learner is something like that displayed in Figure 6.1, where
there is a slope in knowledge, downwards from left to right.
What this shows is that learning displays what is a called a frequency effect
(Milton 2009). Learners will tend to know a greater proportion of the words in
the higher frequency bands than they do in the lower frequency bands. These
100
80
% words known
60
40
20
0
1000 2000 3000 4000 5000
1000 word frequency bands
Figure 6.1 Vocabulary profile of a typical learner

higher frequency words are more likely to occur in normal language and are
more likely to be repeated in normal language, so even in teaching materials,
there is a greater chance of these being noticed and learned. Milton (2009) is
at pains to emphasise that this frequency effect is only a tendency, and it is not
inevitable that a highly frequent word in a good corpus will be learned before
a word of lower frequency. Meara hypothesises that as a learner’s knowledge
increases, the profile moves upwards toward 100%, where all the words in this
frequency band are known, and at that point the profile flattens out at the most
frequent levels, and the downwards slope, left to right, shifts to the right into less
frequent vocabulary bands. It is important to note, however, that less frequent
words are also learned and these are spread out across the less frequent bands.
Research into the vocabulary knowledge of learners shows that Meara’s
hypothesis is broadly right. Going back as far as Ellegaard (1960), these pro-
files are observable in the lexicons of learners. As Figure 6.2 shows, learners
taking exams at successive levels of the CEFR, A2, B1 and B2 do display the
frequency profile, and the profile does move upwards with progress and at each
successive level of the CEFR.
The frequency effect can be clearly seen here at each level of learning. How-
ever, in addition to this frequency effect, there are other important features of
the frequency profile that should be noted. One is that learners can reach levels
of good proficiency without anything like full knowledge of the most frequent
2000 words. The learners in Figure 6.2 pass B2 level exams knowing 3500 words
out of the most frequent 5000 and maybe 4500 words over all but, typically, know
only about 1400 words from the most frequent 2000. Milton (2009) studies high
level foreign language performers, and their results suggest they seldom hit 100%
knowledge in these levels, as Meara (1992) hypothesised, before achieving the
very highest levels of competence. Typically, learners hit a 90% to 95% ceiling.
It is worth putting this in the context of the expectations for vocabulary
knowledge in the proposed subject content for England (DfE 2021). Here,
1000
900
800
700
words known
600
500 A2
400
B1
300
200 B2
100
0
1 2 3 4 5
Figure 6.2 Vocabulary profiles at CEFR A2, B1 and B2 levels

learners are expected to learn 1500 words out of the most frequent 2000 (DfE
2021) and very few – less than 200 – other words. This level of knowledge in
the first two 1000 word bands typically associates with learners at C2 level
who have overall vocabulary sizes of perhaps 7000–9000 words. The idea that
learners need these 2000 words for communication needs to be significantly
qualified, therefore. Learners need many of these words, and for the highest
levels of communication they need most of them. But the idea that these highly
frequent words, and all these words, are essential to communicative compe-
tence to learners at this stage is untenable. The idea that they offer a shortcut
to communication is untenable also. Knowledge in these high frequency bands
is part of the lexical knowledge that is needed for communication, but only part
of that knowledge. The design of a vocabulary curriculum needs to take this
into consideration, and a goal of teaching all the most frequent vocabulary – at
the expense of other vocabulary – as a requirement of learning is misplaced.
This leads on to the second feature to emerge from Figure 6.2.
The lexicons of all the learners whose results are summarised in Figure 6.2
show considerable knowledge beyond the 2000 range. This knowledge is prob-
ably under-indicated in this figure because of the way sampling stops at the
5000 word mark. The angle of the graph, however, suggests considerable
knowledge beyond this level even at A2, still elementary, level. Because of
the frequency effect, and the way the frequency of words in these less frequent
levels is fairly similar, there is a case for arguing that the relationship is curved
and that the level of knowledge flattens out beyond the 3000 word level. This
effect is visible in studies which sample knowledge at these additional levels.
An example is given from Aizawa (2006), who tested 363 Japanese learners of
English at university in Tokyo and at approximately A2/B1 level. Aizawa used
the Japanese JACET 8000 word lists and was able to extend his profile to eight
1000 word frequency bands, and this is shown in Figure 6.3. The clear slope
100
90
80
% words known
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000
Figure 6.3 Frequency profile for Japanese learners of EFL

which is visible in the first three bands becomes much flatter, and less consist-
ent, beyond this level.
Learners, even at the elementary levels of learning, acquire substantial
amounts of infrequent vocabulary. Elementary learners may even be predisposed
to learn frequent and infrequent vocabulary in roughly equal measure. The Mil-
ton (2006) study of learners of French in the UK shows that learners have this
kind of frequency profile even when vocabulary input is heavily skewed to only
frequent words. These less frequent words are needed to exemplify aspects of
structure, such as noun and verb infections, and are needed even for the rudi-
mentary communication that these learners attempt. Figure 6.2 also shows that
vocabulary learning, as it progresses from A2 to B2 and toward the higher levels
of performance, involves acquiring markedly more infrequent vocabulary than
frequent. The learners in Figure 6.2 have acquired on average about 350 words
in the most frequent 2000 word range in making this transition to B2, but at
least three times this number of words in the levels from the 3000 word band
upwards. Good progress in foreign language learning is absolutely conditional
on learning these less frequent words. These infrequent words are the content
words which form so much of the subject matter of language. However, once
70% or so of the most frequent 2000 words are acquired, then learning more
of these words seems comparatively less important for communicability. Less
important but not unimportant; proficient users will continue to deepen their
knowledge of those more frequent words in terms of their idiom, irregularity or
multiple meanings. This will happen gradually alongside the acquisition of new
words from the less frequent bands.
This section addressed the question of how the lexicon that learners build is
shaped in order to communicate and pass formal exams. The figures provided
earlier are, of course, summary data provided by lots of different learners. The
summary data suggests that learners do not build a lexicon comprising only
the most frequent words, nor do they learn by acquiring frequent words before
infrequent words. It is also important to know that this is not just a summary
effect. None of the individual learners whose knowledge has been reported
here grows a lexicon which excludes less frequent vocabulary. What learners
always do, and this is the point to take from this section, is build a lexicon that
has a balance of frequent and infrequent word knowledge. Learners always
acquire a balance of structural and content vocabulary. They do this because
both types of vocabulary are needed for communication and for passing exams
that involve communication. Both types of vocabulary are also necessary for
other aspects of language to develop, for example, to learn even quite basic
grammar, as we shall explain later in this chapter. By the time learners achieve
intermediate levels of performance, CEFR B levels, they will have a lexicon
where the number of infrequent words will begin to outnumber frequent words,
probably substantially. Without vocabulary of this nature, learners can never
progress beyond elementary levels of performance. Teaching only the most fre-
quent vocabulary is a disservice to learners. Other words are needed, and this
has important implications for teaching which is addressed later in this chapter.
For the purpose of constructing an effective vocabulary curriculum, the pres-
entation and learning of this balance of frequent and infrequent vocabulary is
required.
Interest and thematic continuity

This section picks up two more of the criteria by which vocabulary for teaching
should be selected. These are, first, the need to teach vocabulary of interest or
relevance to learners and, second, to provide some kind of thematic continuity
and coherence in the materials used in teaching and learning. The previous
section has demonstrated that if learners are to learn a foreign language suc-
cessfully, then they need substantial numbers of both frequent and infrequent
vocabulary. Learning a lexicon with these characteristics is a substantial task,
and learners will need to be kept motivated and interested if they are to suc-
ceed. This section argues that teaching a wide variety of themes and topics
is the best route to both teaching this wide range of vocabulary and to keep-
ing learners engaged in learning. This addresses the second of the difficulties
mentioned previously. It is difficult when teaching only frequent and limited
vocabulary to create coherent, interesting and motivating learner materials.
The idea that you can teach a small number of words for communicability
in a foreign language is a fairly recent idea. The idea that you can teach only
a small number of the highly frequent words and achieve communicability is
even more recent. Both these ideas are able to thrive because of the lack of
obvious principles by which vocabulary has historically been selected for teach-
ing. O’Dell (1997) suggests, of most EFL courses, that vocabulary selection is a
haphazard process where words are fitted around, and are subservient to, other
curricular demands like grammar. She also suggests that the lexicon selected for
MFL teaching may have been small in imitation of the teaching of classical lan-
guages where learners only needed the words to read a limited range of classical
texts. A lexicon of this kind may well be both small and rather odd-looking
in comparison with word lists produced from modern, large corpora. But his-
torically, large vocabulary input seems to have been the expectation. Tharp
(1934) produces a basic vocabulary list for French, and his idea of basic is some
4500 words. Fluency will require substantially more, and clearly vocabulary
knowledge of these amounts will require thousands of words of infrequent vocab-
ulary. We have noted in Chapter 5 that the expectation of the O level syllabus
seems to have been that a lexicon of about this size would be taught, and this fits
well with both Thimann’s (1959) O level words lists and with core words lists
such as Français fondamental (Gougenheim 1958). Français fondamental contains
about 3000 lexical entries and is just a core list. The vocabulary taught to learners
will contain this core but will be larger through being supplemented with topical
and subject vocabulary relevant to the learners and their exams.
In reaction to these volumes of learning, there is the idea that the scale of
the learning task can be reduced through a careful selection of vocabulary.
And if the volume of vocabulary learning can be reduced then the time taken
to reach communicability in a foreign language can be reduced too. Superfi-
cially, this is very attractive. O’Dell (1997) Häcker (2008) and Milton (2009)
all point to the baleful effect of Ogden’s Basic English (Ogden 1930) which is
quoted in the UK, apparently in all seriousness, as an exemplar of the way Eng-
lish can be fully functional with a very small lexicon. In this, English is reduced
to fewer than 1000 words. While Ogden may be clear that he is proposing
a form of English that is manifestly limited and incomplete – there are only
three pronouns for example – the idea that this represents an ideal for teaching
persists. The assertion (for example, Sinclair and Renouf 1988) that frequency
of word occurrence is a sufficient condition for the choice of words for teach-
ing is thought to give empirical credibility to this idea. It is firmly asserted in
the latest English subject content proposals (DfE 2021) that only a proportion
of the most frequent 2000 words are sufficient for good communication on a
wide range of topics, and this is because research shows that only 2000 words
can provide 80% coverage of text. The previous chapters and section of this
chapter have demonstrated that the idea a learner can be fully communicative
with fewer than 2000 words is entirely untrue. The idea that the organisation
of vocabulary teaching around an appropriate range of themes and topics is
also challenged in the UK system (Teaching Schools Council 2016), and this is
probably untrue too.
Vocabulary is so important to success in language learning that if the curricu-
lum is to be effective, then the selection of vocabulary needs also to be effec-
tive and principled. Cutting out vocabulary in large amounts, or teaching only
highly frequent vocabulary, will not work. How, then, should the vocabulary
for teaching be selected to cover both the frequent and infrequent vocabu-
lary that is needed? Nunan (1988) usefully divides some of the more recent
approaches into two: notional and functional or product-based approaches on
the one hand, and process-based approaches on the other. Both of these have
ideas that are probably useful in an effective vocabulary curriculum.
O’Dell suggests that product-based syllabuses were developed in response
to a foreign language teaching environment where learners could do well in
exams based on a structural or grammatical syllabuses while still being inca-
pable of holding even the simplest of conversations in the foreign language.
She gives the example of being able to ask for a cup of tea in the foreign lan-
guage. This structural or grammatical approach is where the current foreign
language curriculum in England is placing itself. In contrast to these gram-
matical approaches, notional and functional syllabuses addressed the needs of
learners and identified the language, including the vocabulary, needed to carry
out a range of basic but necessary tasks in the foreign language (for exam-
ple, Wilkins 1976). They are concerned with what is being taught and learned
rather than how language is learned. Much of the work carried out in the crea-
tion of the CEFR was built around notional and functional subject areas in an
attempt, as Van Ek and Trim (1990, p. 1) put it, to ‘convert language teaching
from structure dominated scholastic sterility into a vital medium for the freer
movement of people and ideas.’ The focus is moved from the acquisition of
narrowly grammatical knowledge to knowledge and skills necessary for com-
munication. Early CEFR A2 and B1 materials, therefore, are built around com-
municative topics such as personal identification, home and the environment,
free time, travel, shopping and food and drink. The performance criteria in the
current CEFR (Council of Europe 2001) likewise focus performance assess-
ment in terms of these, and other, broadly communicative areas. Van Ek and
Trim produced vocabulary lists in an attempt to help the creation of syllabuses
and harmonise basic content and language levels across a variety of languages.
These are very useful lists which are still in use, for example in Cobb’s Lextutor
programmes (Cobb 2008). The argument behind this kind of approach, that
you cannot be said to have any kind of mastery in a foreign language if you can-
not even order breakfast or O’Dell’s cup of tea, is a strong one. Modern core
word lists, such as Oxford 3000 (2019), and the materials which derive from
these, correspond very closely to the content which these syllabuses propose
and, as shown in Table 5.3 earlier, are demonstrably successful. The approach
in UK foreign language teaching, to limit these topics or even avoid topics
altogether in teaching, is demonstrably much less successful (see Table 5.4).
The virtue of a good product-based approach in terms of curriculum planning
is that vocabulary can be determined in advance. The topics can allow vocabu-
lary, particularly from the less frequent bands, to be incorporated meaningfully
into the teaching process. This allows good goal setting, and it allows progress
to be monitored. It is a real bonus in the construction of exams and assess-
ment for a wide variety of learners where tasks and tests can be based on this
type of material, confident that it will have been covered in teaching. For the
construction of an effective vocabulary curriculum a product-based approach
appears necessary.
Process-based syllabuses, however, are rather different in that they are con-
cerned with the learning process rather than the content of learning, how
things are learned rather than what is learned. The result is that, broadly, the
content of learning is determined by the learners themselves and is not so easily
predicted in advance. It clearly sits less easily with the idea of the curriculum
where essential elements of the language, and vocabulary is one such element,
need to be predetermined and organised. The benefits of being able to work
with the needs and interests of the learner is offset by the unpredictability of
the content. O’Dell refers to White (1988) in suggesting that the vocabulary
content of such a syllabus is a blank. There is an important element to this
approach, and it is not irreconcilable with defining an effective vocabulary cur-
riculum, and this lies in its flexibility of approach in relation to learner needs
and interests. A curriculum will not want unreasonably to stifle the ability of
teachers, for example, in building materials for language learning around the
specific interests of learners. These can have considerable benefits in terms
of maintaining the focus and interests of learners and in giving these learners
some degree of ownership of the language they are learning. The curriculum
cannot be so tightly defined that it becomes a straight-jacket for the teaching
system. However, in practical terms, how is learning going to be consistent in
level and how can it be fairly tested if there is no predictable commonality in
the subject content of learning?
This is not a new problem and the way of reconciling the need to predeter-
mine the vocabulary content of the curriculum and the need to allow reason-
able flexibility in that content lies in the way vocabulary goals can be cast both
in terms of words lists and, as the previous chapter has explained, word num-
bers. This is what lies behind the creation of core word lists such as Français
fondamental and, more recently, like the Oxford word lists for EFL (for exam-
ple, Oxford 3000 2019). The core list contains words derived, quite explicitly
in the Oxford Primary List, from topic areas which are relevant to learners
and which can predefine the structural and some of the content vocabulary
required to reach the required level of ability. Additionally, however, this core
list is expected to be supplemented with vocabulary both from the topic areas
determined by the core list and in other topic areas which might be chosen to
reflect student interests or a current event, like the Olympic games, and around
which lessons can be formed. The idea is that this additional vocabulary will
supplement the core list and, as a consequence of this, the vocabulary sizes
needed for the learning goals with an appropriate spread of vocabulary across
the frequency bands can be achieved.
A wide range of themes and topics actually helps achieve this goal of acquir-
ing a suitably large vocabulary with a good balance of frequent and infrequent
vocabulary. The problem with teaching a selection of only the most frequent
2000 words, as England’s subject content requires (DfE 2021), is that these
frequent words alone rarely, if ever, provide enough vocabulary on any one
topic to allow a coherent body of interesting and motivating teaching mate-
rial to be created, and this is illustrated further in this chapter. Frequency lists
are constructed, as the name says, in terms of frequency, and there is nothing
coherent in subject matter in the ways these lists are organised. It should not be
a surprise, then, if there are few words in any specific topic area, and the nature
of frequency lists means that topic vocabulary is likely to be spread across the
frequency bands drawn from a large and general corpus.
To test whether frequent vocabulary alone can cover this kind of variety
Hopwood and Milton (forthcoming) compare the notional and functional
wordlist for French in Un Niveau Seuil (Coste et al. 1987), a wordlist designed
to help create effective learning materials at CEFR A2 and B1 level, with the
1200, 1700 and 2000 most frequent words in Lonsdale and Le Bras (2009). The
significance of the 1200 and 1700 limits is that these are vocabulary content
limits set in subject content by DfE (2021) in its content proposals; the ones
that are confident this vocabulary allows learners to talk about a wide range of
subjects.
Here are some examples of their findings starting with the topics of food and
drink. It will be recalled that a criticism of structural syllabuses, giving rise to
notional and functional syllabuses, was that learners could do well in exams
based on the structural content of language but still could not communicate
with their language and do something as simple as order breakfast or a cup of tea.
Table 6.1 Food and drink vocabulary in Lonsdale and Le Bras (2009) in relation to
frequency
Top 1200 Top 1700 (Higher) Top 2000

(Foundation)
Drink eau 475 café 1886

Food fruit 896 poisson 1616
Related words prendre 43 manger 1338 boire 1879
choisir 226
Table 6.1 summarises the food and drink vocabulary in Un Niveau Seuil, con-
sidered fairly essential vocabulary and which can also be found in the most
frequent 1200 and 1700 words, the levels of knowledge prescribed in the Eng-
land’s foreign language subject content (DfE 2021) and in the most frequent
2000 words generally known as frequent words. The French frequency list used
here is the Routledge A Frequency Dictionary of French (Lonsdale and Le Bras
2009), as recommended in DfE (2021).
What is immediately apparent is how little vocabulary in this general topic
area there is in the most frequent levels of the frequency list. A Foundation-
level learner in England, even if they succeeded in learning the 1200 most fre-
quent words taught them in their syllabus, would be almost incapable of doing
anything within this topic. There are some general words, prendre and choisir,
which might be useful across a range of food choices, but there is almost no
other vocabulary specific to the subject. From a communicative point of view
the learner is restricted to water and fruit. Learners at Higher level, with 1700
frequent words as input, are not much better off. They can add fish to their diet.
Even a focussed selection from the most frequent 2000 words could only permit
four items of food and drink. Every other item of food and drink is excluded
from the content. Words which we would probably consider basic items for
learners of French, like pain or lait, do not occur in the top 2000. A tourist ask-
ing for a glass of orange juice, equipped with the top 2000 words, would be able
to say I, want and of, but not glass, juice or orange. For learners at, ostensibly A2
and B1 level, this is transparently an entirely inadequate level of knowledge.
The argument behind the creation of notional and functional syllabuses and
which we reported earlier in this chapter, that you cannot be said to have any
kind of mastery in a foreign language if you cannot even order breakfast or a
cup of tea, is realised here.
This is not an isolated example. Van Ek’s and Trim’s (1990) Threshold (B1)
materials include the general notion of colour, and it would be reasonable to
teach learners the words for colour in their foreign language. If you have ever
gone shopping for paint, bought a car or watched interior design shows, you will
know there can be an extensive range of words and terms for colour, so Van
Ek’s and Trim’s list is conservative in this light with nine basic colours (blue,
black, brown, green, grey, orange, red, white and yellow) and three qualifiers (dull,
Table 6.2 Colours in Lonsdale and Le Bras (2009) in relation to frequency
Top 1200 Top 1700 Top 2000
Colours noir 572 bleu 1216

blanc 708
rouge 987
vert 1060
Qualifiers clair 335 couleur 1211
dark and light). Their list is not intended to be exhaustive, of course. Coverage
of colours in Lonsdale and Le Bras is shown in Table 6.2.
The restrictions imposed by a frequency criterion mean that even a list of
colours as limited and basic as that of the Threshold list cannot be covered.
Learners at England’s Foundation level would be restricted to just four colours;
Higher level students would be restricted to five. They would be able to recog-
nise only one of the qualifiers that Van Ek and Trim list.
These examples could go on almost indefinitely. The most frequent
2000 words in the Lonsdale and Le Bras (2009) frequency list for French covers
only 60% of the Threshold (B1) and Waystage (A2) vocabulary, a list which is
considered basic and core, therefore not a complete lexicon for teaching. Most
of what is common to both lists is the highly frequent functional and structural
vocabulary and polysemous words which have general meanings. The topic
specific vocabulary, which allows learners to do things like order cups of tea and
specific things to eat for breakfast, say what they do or understand how others
feel is missing from the frequency list. When we communicate, on pretty much
any topic or in any scenario, we need the specific words to do this related to
the subject or topic involved. This means a wide knowledge of less frequent,
topic-related vocabulary is essential for normal communication. This is not
an option; a wide range of topical vocabulary is essential. High level, fluent
users of a foreign language always have a large lexicon, the majority of which is
comprised of these thematic and infrequent words spread across the frequency
bands. If the goal of language teaching is communication, then these words are
an essential part of the vocabulary curriculum.
The purpose of a language is to communicate, and communication is always
about something. In order to communicate about something, as in the example
earlier about food and drink, the learner will need lots of words related to the
subject. A lexicon for teaching that is selected entirely by frequency will fail to
equip learners with the words for communication. The argument, made by the
DfE (2021), that with fewer than 2000 frequent words you can communicate
about a wide range of topics is entirely false.
In order to bolster the idea that these words are not essential, at least in
modern foreign language teaching in England, teachers are advised that less
frequent words can be replaced with more frequent ones (for example, Woore
2020; Marsden 2021). The advice is that strategies and circumlocution will
get learners past the impediment of a highly restricted vocabulary. Rather than
teaching the language to avoid this ignorance, therefore, time is devoted to try-
ing to teach strategies to cope with ignorance. This reasoning is entirely false.
As Milton (2022) points out, ‘No amount of invention, no strategies, are gener-
ally good enough to make up for the absence of this content vocabulary where
it is needed, and it is needed in almost everything we say and write.’
The first reason for not wanting to teach a lexically restricted vocabulary
of only frequent words is that it makes communication on any topic impos-
sible. Despite the attraction of teaching a small number of words which would
appear to reduce the time and the effort involved in learning a language, the
inability to communicate rather takes away the point of teaching the language
in the first place. However, there is a second reason for wanting to teach a
bigger vocabulary, spread across the frequency bands and calculated to cover
a wide range of potential communicative topics. This is that learners actu-
ally do better learning this material where vocabulary is presented in a wide
range of topics. This is not a new conclusion but an established observation
about the language learning process recorded in research over the decades.
Dubin and Olshtain (1986), nearly 40 years ago, were able to point out that,
‘possessing a good vocabulary stock is what enables many learners to use their
knowledge of the language effectively and in ways that fit their specific needs’
(p. 111–112). Thimann’s (1959) O level word lists are explicitly organised
into topical areas which the author thinks are relevant and suitable for the
O level exam. They are extensive in number, proportionately oriented to the
less frequent vocabulary ranges, and the evidence of the vocabulary sizes of
O level learners suggests this approach was successful (Milton 2008). Milton
(2011) is able to quantify the benefits of presenting vocabulary in this way. He
observes that learners presented with vocabulary in a wide range of relevant
and interesting topics typically acquired about 50% of the words presented to
them. Where learners were presented with a limited range of topics which were
highly repeated, typically, they typically learned only 20% of the words pre-
sented to them. Vassiliu (2001), for example, deliberately taught a wide variety
of themes, which associated with a high vocabulary input. His measurements
of vocabulary learning indicated proportionately high vocabulary learning and
good overall language progress. By contrast, studies show that where this trend
is reversed and restricted themes and topics covered, then uptake is low, even
allowing for the lower vocabulary input as in the learning of French in the UK
(Milton 2006). Vocabulary uptake in this example could even fall below 20% of
input in some years of learning. A wide thematic range associated in teaching
with larger vocabulary input. In contrast, an effect of a much reduced range
of topics, what Milton and Hopwood (2021) term thematic paucity, is that a
much smaller lexicon was taught. However, teaching many more words did not
restrict learning, it led to both more words being learned and more words pro-
portional to input being learned (Milton 2011). An irony in the English system
which teaches French is that what appears to be a deliberate attempt to reduce
vocabulary input, so the learning load is lighter, does not help the learners.
It leads to even less vocabulary being learned. Milton (2011) attributes this
variation in learning to good subject content where a wide range of topics and
themes contributes to learner motivation and interest. Random lists of words
are not interesting, but a range of carefully selected topics can engage learners.
There are further benefits which Milton and Hopwood (2021) suggest can
result from teaching a wide range of topics as part of good curriculum design.
Materials created this way will inevitably, if the materials contain normal lan-
guage, illustrate the most frequent words in language in a range of contexts.
Thematic variety allows this vocabulary to be recycled and repeated without
this repetition becoming boring. Recycling and repetition of words can play an
important role in the process of words being noticed and then learned, as dis-
cussed in Chapter 4. The way themes can allow frequent vocabulary to repeat
naturally and without time-consuming formal classroom activities means that
important classroom time can be saved for other aspects of learning. After all,
if the supposedly high frequency vocabulary did not occur naturally in varied,
context-appropriate and age-appropriate teaching materials, then we could
legitimately wonder whether it really is high frequency for the target audience
at all.
Additionally, a wide thematic range allows a curriculum to address the goals
of cultural understanding which is generally regarded to be a goal of learning
which runs parallel to the goal of language mastery itself. It is specifically identi-
fied, for example, in the DfE’s (2015, 2021) modern foreign language subject
content in England. The teaching of a wide range of topics also appears to
allow vocabulary learning at a rate which makes it possible to master the thou-
sands of words needed for communicative proficiency and some semblance of
fluency within the classroom time allowed for teaching. To do this, the curricu-
lum and the textbooks derived from the curriculum would have to select and
grade their material very carefully so, year on year, substantial quantities of new
vocabulary are introduced. This ought to mean that well graded and sequenced
textbooks include progressively more infrequent vocabulary; they will become
more and more lexically sophisticated. Again, the evidence suggests that this is
what does happen in some carefully constructed textbook series (Milton 2009).
In terms of learner motivation, a rich and varied thematic curriculum is more
likely to contain material which interests a range of learners than a curriculum
which recycles a small number of themes again and again or one which rejects
thematic content entirely.
There is a further conclusion drawn from Milton’s (2009, 2011) analyses of
textbooks and teaching which manage to teach vocabulary effectively. In addi-
tion to learners learning a balance of frequent and infrequent vocabulary in
order to achieve progress, it appears that successful textbooks present the same.
Milton notes that a wide range of topics in teaching materials produces some-
thing like a 50/50 balance in input between frequent and infrequent vocabulary
at the earliest stages of learning. Less successful teaching materials criticised
in, for example, Alexiou and Konstantakis (2009), Konstantakis and Alexiou
(2012), Tschichold (2012) and Milton and Hopwood (2021) display something
like a 67/33 ratio of frequent and infrequent vocabulary. Unbalanced input of
this kind associates, as illustrated in Tschichold (2012) and Milton (2006),
with low levels of vocabulary uptake.
A well-designed vocabulary curriculum will want to balance frequent and
infrequent vocabulary at the beginning of teaching, therefore, and will need
input which is built around a wide range of topics and themes to meet the need
for adding interest and thematic continuity. We have argued that the benefits
of doing this are considerable. It allows vocabulary of an appropriate volume
and frequency range to be more readily built into the curriculum so vocabulary
size targets can be met and, ultimately, communicability achieved. Communi-
cative ability is dependent on this less frequent, topical and content vocabu-
lary as much as on frequent and structural vocabulary. A range of relevant
and interesting topics can help enhance motivation in learners. Language is
always about something, and thematic or topical content is what allows the
curriculum designers to build in language that does not only illustrate gram-
matical structures but actually has a purpose in a topic that is interesting. It
allows cultural elements of language teaching to be easily included. It assists in
the business of repeating and recycling the high frequency vocabulary without
damaging over-repetition of a limited range of topics. It allows examinations to
assess learner progress and performance to be constructed in a way that is as
fair and equal as is reasonably possible. The curriculum should avoid the pitfalls
of an overemphasis on only frequent vocabulary and in restricting language
input to only a limited range of topics which appear to associate with ineffec-
tive teaching and unsuccessful learning.
Availability and learnability

The final criteria to determine the selection of words for learning are avail-
ability and learnability. White (1988) suggests, with the criterion of availabil-
ity, something that is close to the idea of teaching of vocabulary in coherent
topics and themes. He illustrates this with the example of teaching the words
pepper and salt together which he argues are equally available to first language
speakers of English. Salt maybe more frequent in most good corpora than pep-
per, but they are both from the same lexical set of condiments, and it makes
sense to teach them both. Availability might also mean the teaching of words
for things that are available in the classroom and which are imageable, there-
fore. We are aware, of course, of the argument (for example, Tinkham 1997)
that teaching words in lexical sets is not as efficient as teaching in thematic
sets. However, a doctrinaire application of this idea is not appropriate. Stud-
ies which investigate this effect (for example, Erten and Tekin 2008) show
that learning in lexical sets is also effective, and that the convenience of
organising teaching this way may outweigh any problems. It must be remem-
bered too that the argument that there is some kind of learning issue associ-
ated with teaching words in lexical sets is not necessarily supported by the
results reported in these studies. Differences in measured word uptake might
be explained by retrieval and test effects rather than by the learning effects
the authors suggest. The arguments in this area, however, still support the
idea that teaching in thematic sets, where there is coherence in word selec-
tion around a theme, a subject or a topic, is a good way of organising things.
Availability has an important effect, however, on the choice of words in that
the choice of words for teaching have to relate to the world picture of the
learners. Language teaching for very young learners will often include things
like animals. Words like giraffe and bear may not feature high up in most gen-
eral frequency lists but, as Milton (2009) points out, they are a part of young
children’s lives, and teaching has to reflect this.
Learnability is also listed by White. White is clearly thinking about cog-
nateness with regard to this, but he is also thinking about the other factors
discussed in Chapter 4 such as word length. He suggests these might be taught
early in the learning process, perhaps for motivational effects, so learners can
feel that learning a language is achievable. However, the criteria of Learn-
ability and Availability have to be viewed in the context of teaching a whole
lexicon because a fully communicative lexicon cannot be made up entirely
of easy words that can be illustrated from within the classroom. But the idea
that teaching should include words that are straightforward and accessible to
learners, especially young learners, is an important one. It is worth keeping in
mind the discussion in Chapter 4 which demonstrates that words can often
combine both easy and difficult features, and some features of less frequent
words make them particularly suitable for early learning and especially young
learners. These less frequent words include lots of concrete, regular, unam-
biguous nouns, for example, with much more straightforward usage. They are
easier to visualise and illustrate, and easier to use than, for example, many
highly frequent irregular verbs which risks becoming enmeshed in grammati-
cal issues before learners have the vocabulary to cope with this. There is a
reason, then, for teaching things such as food and drink, colours, numbers
and days of the week early in the learning process because it is in acquiring
these words that learners can get a sense of progress in learning the lexicon.
This approach avoids introducing in an uncontrolled and unsequenced man-
ner issues of irregularity which challenge the grammatical patterning which
early learning should also teach. The Appendix is our attempt to illustrate
some of this complexity in comparing the qualities of high frequency and
thematic vocabulary in French.
An effective vocabulary curriculum will have to place emphasis overall on
teaching the right volumes and the right type of vocabulary to help learners
achieve their learning aims. This will involve teaching across a range of topics
which present a full lexicon but which can also interest and engage learners.
This does not need to be constrained by issues of difficulty. In the context of
teaching a whole lexicon, difficulty is an issue of how words might best be
taught rather than how words are selected. To be communicative, the lexicon
will need to include both frequent vocabulary but also large quantities of less
frequent topical and thematic vocabulary.
Choosing vocabulary to fit the requirement
of structural content
An effective curriculum will want to develop grammatical competence along-
side vocabulary, and part of the process of vocabulary selection is to ensure
that words are available to allow this to happen. The curriculum will want, for
example, to teach the way rules for grammatical inflection can create new word
forms. The selection of vocabulary will have to ensure that there are enough
words and the right words that allow this to happen. As Chapter 2 has shown,
this is more straightforward in some languages than in others. Verb forms in
English inflect in the present simple tense, only in the third person singular: I
eat, you eat, she eats and so on. The present tense in French, for example, has
rather more variation, je joue, tu joues, il/elle joue, nous jouons, vous jouez, ils/elles
jouent and can vary according to the type of verb, with alternative sets of end-
ings for those verbs whose infinitive ends in -ir or -re, such as finir and vendre.
The choice of vocabulary will have to accommodate the need for this. It will
probably, as Hilton (2019) suggests, require multiple exemplars of each form
to allow this system to begin to be internalised. This is where a thematic or
topic-based curriculum is a real bonus in allowing this kind of selection. An
overemphasis on selection by word frequency is a problem for effective teach-
ing because sufficient examples of this kind of variation may not be found in
the most frequent vocabulary bands. It challenges the learner’s ability to use
the structures the curriculum is trying to teach. An example of this is a speci-
fication, in the original DfE subject content proposals (2021), which required
vocabulary content drawn almost exclusively from the most frequent 2000
words. The subject content expected learners to use the partitive article in
French (du, de la, des, de l’) when talking about playing musical instruments,
even though there are no musical instruments in the top 2000 words. The
needless and doctrinaire restriction on vocabulary selection, governed only by
frequency, meant that the structure could never be used in practice. Table 6.3
gives an illustration, with plural nouns, of how limited the choices can some-
times be for teaching grammatical rules with a word frequency restriction.
Grammatical forms such as regular plurals and tenses will need to be part of
any curriculum even at the earliest stages of learning. There is a balancing act for
every teacher in doing this. Ideally, grammar practice or a new grammatical point
will be introduced using previously learned vocabulary. But it is notoriously dif-
ficult for grammatical teaching to be internalised for use by learners very quickly.
Some learners will gain these skills more quickly than others. Teachers have to
be prepared to lay such teaching aside and teach other aspects of the curriculum
including more vocabulary. The grammatical focus can be returned to, perhaps
with a different set of illustrative vocabulary, refresh the memories of learners.
The balancing act is to get an effective combination of structure, vocabulary and
other features of language in teaching to optimise learning.
There are aspects of grammar and structure, however, where convention is
that it is better to sequence their introduction to coincide with a vocabulary size
Table 6.3 Formation of plural nouns within the Lonsdale and Le Bras (2009) most
frequent 3000 words (adapted from Hopwood and Milton forthcoming)
Top 1000 words Top 2000 words Top 3000 words
Add -x to masculine 4 examples 3 examples 7 examples

nouns ending in -eau e.g. niveau e.g. bateau e.g. oiseau
Add -x to masculine 4 examples 0 examples 4 examples
nouns ending in -eu e.g. lieu e.g. dieu
Masculine nouns ending 5 examples 8 examples 5 examples
in -al change to -aux e.g. journal e.g. animal e.g. cheval
No change for nouns 23 examples 19 examples 14 examples
ending in -s e.g. mois e.g. bras e.g. repas
No change for nouns 8 examples 2 examples 2 examples
ending in -x e.g. taux e.g. époux e.g. flux
(NB only for
masculine)
No change for nouns 1 example 0 examples 1 example
ending in -z gaz nez
which allows examples to occur more naturally. The introduction of rules for
morphemic derivation, for example, were timed, historically within the foreign
language syllabus, in England for close to O level or even A level where learn-
ers might be expected to have a vocabulary large enough to handle this burden.
Recent changes have moved this forward to nearer the beginning of learning
(DfE 2021) where learners have a lexicon of only a few hundred overwhelm-
ingly frequent words and are without good examples of this kind of change or
the communicative ability to use this kind of rule. Part of the issue here is that
these rules may mislead as often as they can provide good guidance, as words
in almost any language can behave irregularly. It is often assumed that these
irregular word forms are learned individually rather than derived as part of a
rule-based system, and in lemmatised words lists these are often low frequency
words. The evidence is that much of this kind of acquisition is linked to the size
of the learner’s vocabulary (Milton 2009), and so an attempt has to be made to
place these items appropriately within the context of a growing lexicon.
There are other aspects of grammar and structure which curriculum leaders
may delay teaching until learners have a sizeable vocabulary and rather more
extensive exposure. These include:
• Those which are more conceptually difficult (for example, because equiva-
lents are not directly available in the learner’s L1) such as some uses of
dont in French or the subjunctive mood in various languages
• Those whose meaning is less tangible or more idiomatic, such as the sec-
ondary functions of some German modal verbs or some types of third per-
son question formation in French
• Those which are difficult to teach explicitly when pupils know very few
words, such as reflexive verbs which take the dative in German or the
meanings which can be associated with certain inseparable prefixes in
German
• Those with very little or no impact on meaning, such as the pleonastic use of
ne and le in French or, arguably, prenominal adjectival endings in German,
or indeed the agreement of past participles in verbs taking être as an auxil-
iary in compound tenses in French
A key point to remember in the balancing of the lexical and grammatical cur-
riculum is that grammatical knowledge of words is a crucial part of the dimen-
sions of word knowledge outlined in Chapter 2 (drawing on Nation 2001).
Growing a lexicon of the size needed for effective communication will necessar-
ily involve mastering much of the structural knowledge of words in the lexicon.
But the knowledge and use of this structural knowledge will have to develop in
line with the growth of vocabulary size. For example, a learner will inevitably
learn adjectives very early on in their learning of German. The learner might
also begin to learn how these adjectives decline, in some instances, according
to the noun which they describe. But learners will not, in German, learn all
permutations of those adjective endings, in all four cases, singular and plu-
ral, and in the three full patterns of endings, until rather later. Likewise, the
learner might well learn, fairly early, that some prepositions require the use
of the dative, accusative or genitive case in German, particularly where the
choice of case affects meaning. But the curriculum leader cannot and should
not expect full mastery of this to be achieved before allowing the learner to
move on to new words, new contexts and new scenarios in the language. This
is because learning depth of word knowledge is gradual. Martinez (2013) and
Milton (2009) both observe that command of these kinds of elements of lan-
guage can only emerge once considerable language mastery overall has been
gained, including a vocabulary size of 5000 words or more. Requiring full depth
of knowledge for each word as it is learned – or, in other words, full grammati-
cal mastery of each word in its various forms – would bring linguistic progress
to a grinding halt.
Modelling vocabulary input and uptake in the curriculum

Even if criteria like learnability may not feature too prominently in the selec-
tion of vocabulary in a curriculum, issues such as selecting the right volumes
of vocabulary, with an appropriate spread of frequency and arranged around
a wide range of motivating topics, will present challenge enough. How are all
these to be built coherently into a description of teaching and learning and
a plan of how to work through the words for teaching? The following is an
attempt to model and visualise the way a lexicon is best constructed within the
curriculum, and this is done in the form of a target like an archery target shown
in Figure 6.4. Each ring represents 1000 word frequency bands arranged suc-
cessively with the most frequent 1000 as the bullseye, the second 1000 words as
the next ring and so on to the outer ring which represents the 5000 word band.
Figure 6.4 The lexicon archery target
Figure 6.5 Lexical learning in hypothetical first year, spread across the frequency bands
A frequency model of teaching and learning, as in the DfE (2021) system,

aspires to teach only the most frequent rings. In Figure 6.4 that would mean,
for Foundation learners, teaching slightly less than half of the area covered
by the two inner-most rings. The learning uptake from this input would be
much less than this for the average learner gaining an average grade. Almost
no other vocabulary is considered necessary for communication. However, we
have shown that for communication a spread of vocabulary across these rings
is needed and that a focus on teaching all of the frequent vocabulary, all at one
time, does not fit with the way learners actually learn a language successfully
or indeed use language in real life. A successful vocabulary curriculum should
present a mixture of frequent and infrequent words, chosen to reflect the sub-
ject and structural goals of learning. In a 5-year scheme teaching students to
CEFR B1 level, therefore, learner progress in the first year of learning might
look rather more like the oval with the dashed line shown in Figure 6.5.
The first year’s learning, therefore, would be expected to show something
like a 500 word uptake with a 50/50 balance of frequent and infrequent words,
and this is visible. There is no rush to teach the frequent words disproportion-
ately or for learners to learn all of them at this stage. The choice of frequent
words can be made to fit with the choice of structures and other forms being
taught. The choice of infrequent words can be determined by the choice of an
appropriate range of topics.
Figure 6.6 Lexical learning in the hypothetical first 2 years, spread across the frequency
bands
bands
A second year’s progress might look something like that in Figure 6.6 where
input will inevitably replicate and recycle much of the frequent vocabulary.
However, there will also be a range of new themes and topics which will intro-
duce novel vocabulary in the less frequent bands. A further 500–700 or so
words might be added to the learner’s lexicon. It is worth noting that to get to
the 4000 and more words needed to pass an exam which is genuinely at B1,
with 3000 or so from within this archery target model, learning has to focus
at least as much on developing knowledge in the 3000, 4000 and 5000 word
bands as in the frequent bands.
A third year of progress might appear like the third oval with the dashed
line in Figure 6.7. More vocabulary across all the bands will be introduced and
learned. Inevitably, there is likely to be some replication of vocabulary from the
most frequent bands although new material will still be introduced. But, again,
less frequent vocabulary, in significant numbers, perhaps 500–700 words over-
all from a range of new topics and themes, will also be introduced.
A fourth year might appear like that in Figure 6.8 with a further 500–700
new words added to the lexicon. Inevitably, input will replicate and recycle
much of the frequent vocabulary but, ideally, the existing less frequent vocabu-
lary will be recycled too, to keep it in memory.
bands
Figure 6.9 Lexical learning in the hypothetical 5 years, spread across the frequency
bands and calculated to bring learners to a level of vocabulary suitable for
B1 level exams
A fifth year might appear like that in Figure 6.9, bringing the learner to a
state where maybe 60% or 70% of the most frequent 2000 words are known
and a further 50 % or so of the ranges 3000, 4000 and 5000 words. Learners
who take and pass CEFR B1 level exams almost invariably, the exception is in
the UK, possess a lexicon structured very much like this. To achieve this level
of knowledge, remember, input will have to be substantially larger than the
final attainment of learners as a group.
This is a model, of course, which gives an illustration of how successive years
of vocabulary input and uptake might ideally develop to reach both the num-
bers of words needed for a B1 level exam but also the vocabulary profile and
spread of knowledge across the frequency bands which is also needed. The out-
come of this type of development is a lexicon that is suitable for independent,
though still imperfect, communication. It has a balance of frequent structural
and less frequent content and topic-related vocabulary. It results from introduc-
ing vocabulary through a wide range of themes and topics which allows learners
to be communicative within these areas, and it also allows sufficient flexibility
for structural content to be included. It builds in the type of recycling needed
for words to be retained and added to the productive and fluent lexicon, and
this might be attained through extensive exposure rather than classroom activ-
ities. The curriculum designer, to achieve this, needs to specify the vocabulary
attainment, and possibly input, at each level of learning. It would probably
want to provide guidance as to the topics at each level so that delivery is coher-
ent for everyone following the curriculum. Learners can change schools and
exam boards can set exams which can be equally appropriate for all learners.
But the curriculum will need to establish a lexical system something like this or
lexical delivery will fail. This is important beyond issues of the lexicon. If lexical
delivery is inadequate, then other aspects of the curriculum, such as language
structure, cannot be taught appropriately. The model illustrated here need not
be completely inflexible, and the combination of vocabulary size targets, core
lists and topics should allow some flexibility for teachers and learners to follow
individual topics of interest, and this is explained further in Chapter 10.
Resources to help vocabulary curriculum design

One of the benefits of building the lexical content of a curriculum around a
rich selection of topics and themes is that there are plenty of examples available
which propose such topics and provide lists of words. These can constitute,
at least, the foundation for curriculum design. These days, they will likely be
linked to the CEFR and to the age range of the learners for whom a curriculum
is intended (see Gruber and Hopwood 2022).
Van Ek’s and Trim’s (1990) Waystage (A2) and Threshold (B1) materials
are examples of a good range of thematic lists supported by well thought out
vocabulary lists. These may now appear a little old, but the notional and func-
tional ideas they are based on are still valid. People still eat and drink, they still
identify themselves to others, they still travel and go shopping; in short, they
do all the things these materials describe. These may need updating in places;
there was no broadband and there were no EV charging points in 1990. However,
there are well-constructed and equivalent lists in a range of European lan-
guages. Table 6.4, for example, illustrates the way these materials correspond at
Waystage (A2) level in English and French.
It would be foolish to dismiss existing core lists such as Français fondamental
(Gougenheim 1958) even though this list is now somewhat venerable. It is a
good size, at something over 3000 items, to serve as a core list to guide teaching
to A2 and B1 levels. It is built around an intelligent choice of both topics and
structures suitable for learners at secondary school age. It is divided into two
which makes the setting of interim goals straightforward. Tschichold (2012)
and Christ and Christ (2006) both record its use as the basis of French teach-
ing across a variety of countries. It would seem foolish to reinvent the wheel
unnecessarily by trying to create a new curriculum structure, and in the case
of the DfE in England doing this unsuccessfully, where there is a fully working
wheel already in existence and ready to use. It would give the English system, if
Table 6.4 Thematic analysis of Waystage and Un Niveau Seuil (Coste et al. 1987)
Waystage themes (Van Ek and Trim 1990) Equivalent ‘notion spécfique’ in Un Niveau
Seuil (Coste et al. 1987)
1. Personal identification 1. Identification et caractérisation

personnelles
2. House and home, environment 2. Maison et foyer,
3. Environnment géographique, faune et
flore, climat et temps
3. Daily life
4. Free time, entertainment 11. Loisirs, distractions, sports, information
5. Travel 4. Voyages et déplacements
5. Le gîte et le couvert: hôtel, restaurant,
etc.
6. Relations with other people 12. Relations électives et associatives
7. Health and body care 8. Hygiène et santé
9. Positions, perceptions, pérations
physiques
8. Shopping 6. Commerces et courses
9. Food and drink 5. Le gîte et le couvert: hôtel, restaurant,
etc.
10. Services 7. Services publics et privés
11. Places 4. Voyages et déplacements
12. Language 15. Langue étrangère
13. Weather 3. Environnment géographique, faune et
flore, climat et temps
Table 6.5 Multi-word expressions beginning in . . . in Cambridge PET word lists

(University of Cambridge 2006)
in advance in front of in pencil
in any case in half in pieces
in case of in ink in place
in danger in love in private
in the end in order in public
in fact in order to
used, direct comparability with systems elsewhere and that ought to be a really
useful quality.
Well-constructed lists are likely also to include structures and multi-word
items to start the process of structure learning. The Cambridge PET word lists
(University of Cambridge 2006), for example, are at CEFR B1 level and include
multiple multi-word phrases, relatively frequently occurring in English, but rel-
evant and useful to learners. An example of the expressions beginning in . . . are
given in Table 6.5. Again, this is a resource that can be mined for information
and guidance for anyone constructing a curriculum. The whole wheel does not
have to be reinvented and such resources do exist in other languages such as
French (Bürgel and Siepmann 2016).
How do you know which words are frequent and which are not so that a bal-
anced lexicon can be planned appropriate for teaching? Good core lists such as
Oxford 3000 (2019) will give a good steer to the most frequent words of English
and words that are also relevant for teaching. In other languages it may not be
so easy, but there are now dictionaries available in many languages which are
frequency-based as with the Lonsdale and Le Bras (2009) A Frequency Diction-
ary of French. This series includes other commonly taught language such as
Spanish, German and Arabic.
It is possible, too, to take other materials and calculate a vocabulary profile
to check the balance of teaching materials and to enable the sort of modelling
in Figure 6.5 through Figure 6.9 to take place in curriculum design. Cobb’s
Compleat Lexical Tutor website (www.lextutor.ca) allows vocabulary profiles to
be drawn in either English or French so the proportion of any text in each
frequency band can be known. In also includes text compare facilities so that
the progress of vocabulary input over, say, each year can be modelled up. This
should be an essential tool for any curriculum designer.
Conclusion
In order for a curriculum to bring learners to the level of effective communica-
tion, it will need to plan for a wide range, as well as a substantial number, of
words. It is necessary to understand that this will involve selecting a balance
of words from across the frequency bands and from a wide range of subjects.
Vocabulary selected in this way makes communication possible and makes
learning interesting, encouraging and motivating for learners. The evidence we
have shows that learners do best when teaching is organised this way. Addition-
ally, at least a core vocabulary will need to be specified to cover the lexicon that
is thought central to the subject and divided by levels and years so progression
is planned. It will need to specify some, and probably most, of the topics and
subjects which are to be covered. This is necessary to bring coherence and
cohesion to teaching, allow pupils to change schools and allow exam board
to set tests which are equally applicable to all learners at the various levels of
learning. Targets in terms of the numbers of words taught and learned, by the
average learner, at each level will probably need to be specified. The example of
the Ministry of Education in Saudi Arabia (2016) shows that this can be done
both intelligently and effectively.
It is probably unnecessary and overly prescriptive to specify the entire vocab-
ulary input, and a core, if it is substantial and built around topics at each level,
should still allow teachers, learners, materials writers and exam bodies some
flexibility in their choices, provided the proper-looking vocabulary profile with
the right size is kept at each level. On the basis of this, the curriculum designer
can plan the time that is needed for learning. This will probably involve some
thought being given to both classroom input and practice and repetition and
the use of resources for input and practice outside the classroom. Most school
systems will struggle with making the volume of time needed for language
learning available simply through classroom teaching; learning can be highly
effective outside the classroom if it is well-structured and organised.
The outcome of this process should be topic lists and word lists. These lists
should be the frequent words needed for structure and core vocabulary and
topic lists with topic-related vocabulary so that words are in place for learners
to begin to communicate in areas that are relevant to the curriculum. Part of
this process will probably involve monitoring of learner progress and knowledge
in a way that most teachers and administrators are currently unfamiliar with.
Fortunately, this no longer has to be difficult, and there are well-established
vocabulary size tests available which should be used much more widely than,
currently, they are. Most participants in the learning process are blind to their
vocabulary knowledge in relation to their needs, and this does not have to be
the case. The process will also rely on teachers having access to further training
and development to enable them to monitor the vocabulary input they choose
in relation to overall targets and the kind of profiles needed for communication.
It is worth reflecting at this point that the variation, noted at the outset of
this chapter, and which is often viewed as a weakness in the vocabulary cur-
riculum process, need not always be a lack of thought or appropriate planning.
The precepts we have advocated here will very likely lead to lexical curricu-
lums that can differ dependent on the nature, age and interests of the learners.
The choice of topics and content for 6 or 7-year-olds is likely to differ from that
which is appropriate for adult and vocational learners. However, when mod-
elled up as in Figure 6.4 through Figure 6.9, the similarity in structure should
be apparent. Further, provided the end goal is some kind of communicative
independence, then the end state should be similar too. Learners, to be effec-
tively communicative, will need substantial frequent and structural vocabulary
and also substantial less frequent and topical vocabulary. An effective lexicon
for communication looks like the frequency profiles shown in this chapter and
with the volumes of vocabulary described in Chapter 5. This is the goal of cur-
riculum structure that teachers, materials writers and administrators should
aspire to if they want their learners to learn a language.
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7 British vocabulary myths
Introduction
This chapter identifies some of the beliefs and ideas in UK foreign language
teaching that inform teaching practice and which are, largely, wrong.
• Myth 1: Grammar is most important for communication (and you really do not
need vocabulary)
• Myth 2: Learning a super vocabulary of only the most frequent words means you
can communicate
• Myth 3: Themes, topics and topic-based vocabulary are bad
• Myth 4: The UK testing system recognises and rewards extensive vocabulary
knowledge
• Myth 5: Grammar and vocabulary are entirely separable entities
• Myth 6: The vocabulary taught should be reduced to allow every word to be
explicitly recycled
• Myth 7: Vocabulary learning is incidental and is not learned in class
• Myth 8: Learning verbs is especially important and should be prioritised
The chapter demonstrates that research shows these ideas are a poor basis for
formal language teaching. It explains why these ideas have taken hold so firmly
in the UK, specifically in England.
Vocabulary myths and the UK culture

of foreign language teaching
Folse (2004) identifies eight vocabulary myths. These are widely held ideas and
beliefs about the learning of foreign language vocabulary that shape language
teaching practice and the materials that are intended to promote the learn-
ing of a foreign language. They include ideas such as grammar being much
more important to language learning and understanding than other aspects of
language and that teaching vocabulary in word lists is unproductive. They are
myths because, despite being widely held, there is rarely much evidence to sup-
port these ideas. Often there is considerable research evidence to suggest they
DOI: 10.4324/9781003278771-7
British vocabulary myths 117
are untrue. A feature of these myths is how persistent they can be even in the
face of unsuccessful language learning where they are put into practice. Foreign
language teaching is often as much about dogmatism as it is about pragmatism.
The myth is more important, it seems, than the outcome of these myths in
terms of learning. Folse reflects, as we are reflecting in this book, that these
ideas have often led to a treatment of the curriculum and teaching materials
which has no vocabulary focus.
The previous chapters of this book have indicated that formal, school-
based foreign language teaching, in England particularly, clings to many of
these myths. This is despite mounting evidence that England is adopting
an approach that seems to have little basis in research about the way lan-
guages work or about how a language is learned. It persists, too, in the face
of mounting evidence that foreign language learning in English schools is
falling in standard and is dramatically less successful than it is elsewhere.
Some or much of this may also be true of other nations within the UK, each
of which pursues its own education policies. It is a culture that has developed
over more than a generation and has become so prevalent that even the sug-
gestion that the small volume of vocabulary in the teaching curriculum is
leading to low standards is met with incredulity. It is a culture of denial that
there is a problem or, even, that standards of language learning are low. It is a
culture that can persist because it promotes myth and dogma above research
evidence and the evidence of far more successful teaching practice in other
countries. If foreign language teaching is to improve in England, and if it is to
achieve levels of success which are routinely achieved elsewhere, then these
myths must be challenged, and the culture surrounding language teaching
must be changed.
Some of Folse’s myths have now developed a particularly British slant
which reflects the views of a small but influential cadre of educationalists in
the UK strongly tied to structuralist approaches to language and learning.
There are other myths which have emerged among the latest generation of
language teachers and writers in the UK, and these myths are particularly
British it seems, even if they are articulated also in the English as a foreign
language teaching system. They are not mentioned by Folse not only for rea-
sons of space in his book, but because they are probably not so obvious in
language teaching outside the UK. These are myths, however, which provide
a culture of language teaching in the UK and where, in England for example,
the Department for Education (DfE 2021a), apparently in all seriousness,
can propose omitting almost all vocabulary from the teaching curriculum.
The purpose of this chapter is to identify some of the myths in their British
context and rebut them. Foreign language teaching within the UK, or any-
where else for that matter, cannot be successful until teachers, inspectors,
curriculum designers, materials writers and learners all understand that these
ideas have no basis in empirical research and are damaging the process of
curriculum design and of language learning.
Myth 1: Grammar is most important for communication
(and you really do not need vocabulary)
This myth is the very first myth that Folse identifies in his book, and it is still
alive and flourishing especially in England. There has long been deep-rooted
suspicion of vocabulary in language learning in the UK. Bodmer (1944), for
example, insists that knowing lots of words ‘does not get us very far’ (p. 34)
without knowledge of grammar. He forgets, of course, that knowing lots of
grammar gets us nowhere at all without knowledge of vocabulary. He probably
underestimates just how much communication can be achieved with words.
There is an idea, and the MFL Inspectors for schools promote this, that learn-
ing vocabulary just turns learners into dictionaries and will not make them flu-
ent (Wardle 2021). In the UK, therefore, a government-funded advisory board
(Teaching Schools Council 2016, p. 10), explains that ‘we use the grammar of
a language to say what we wish or need to say . . . and to understand what is
said to us.’ The implication of this is that if the grammar of a language is taught,
then learners have command of the language and anything else is, largely,
peripheral to the language learning process. The stitching together of progress
with a grammatical curriculum has been the bedrock of language learning in
the UK for some years (see Gruber and Hopwood 2022), despite a popular mis-
perception that the GCSE examination at 16 has a focus on communication.
The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority’s (QCA 2010, p. 38) descriptors
for levels of progress in writing make no quantitative references to vocabulary
at all, but do feature various benchmarks relating to ‘knowledge of grammar,’
‘use of tenses,’ ‘variety of structures’ and ‘accurate . . . grammar.’
Additionally, it is suggested in the United Kingdom, that too great a focus
on vocabulary or other non-grammar features of language can be damaging by
distracting learners from this vital grammar focus. It is not surprising, given this
obsessive grammar focus, if the details of the curriculum which are provided in
the UK are predominantly details of a grammar curriculum with little room, in
this way of thinking little need, for anything else. Milton and Hopwood (2021)
note that the DfE’s (2021a) subject content proposals devote more than 85%
of the document to a description of grammar, but there is no topical descrip-
tion of what communication in the foreign language might be about nor what
purposes it might serve and only the most limited description of vocabulary
content. This document seeks to reduce the vocabulary content of the curricu-
lum to minimal quantities of words selected overwhelmingly by frequency – a
consideration we discussed in Chapter 6. But this sidelining of vocabulary is
nothing new. A slightly earlier subject content document (DfE 2015) omits a
vocabulary content description in its entirety; it is not important enough even
to mention. This is an extreme manifestation of Folse’s myth.
Folse illustrates that this is a myth by referring to his own real-life experi-
ence of trying to buy flour in a shop in Japan. He set about the task, he relates,
armed with some knowledge of Japanese grammar and no little ingenuity but
without the word for flour. He was unable to communicate what he wanted
for the lack, simply, of the vocabulary he needed, the word for flour. Without
the right vocabulary, a learner cannot communicate. It is common sense, and
yet it clearly is not so obvious to UK curriculum designers. Folse points to the
quotation from Wilkins, given in Chapter 3 of this book, that without grammar
very little can be conveyed, but without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.
An appeal to logic can be supported by reference to the evidence of research.
Chapter 3 has shown that vocabulary size measures correlate, often strongly, with
measures of overall language ability and with measures of performance in the four
language skills. Stæhr (2008) and Milton et al. (2010) calculate that vocabu-
lary knowledge can explain more than half the variance in language test scores.
They can conclude that vocabulary knowledge is the most important factor in
determining how well a language learner can perform. Other studies (for exam-
ple, Vafaee and Suzuki 2020) calculate that vocabulary knowledge makes almost
double the contribution of grammatical knowledge to measures of language abil-
ity. This research does not suggest that grammatical knowledge is unimportant,
but it does reinforce the idea that a curriculum for foreign language learning, if it
is to be successful, must make vocabulary learning a priority.
The evidence of teaching itself supports this. Learning environments where
vocabulary is prioritised, as in Vassiliu’s (2001) studies in Greece, show good
language progress and large growth in vocabulary size. However, where vocabu-
lary input is minimised and grammar prioritised, as in the UK (Milton 2006;
David 2008; Gruber and Tonkyn 2017), vocabulary learning is small, language
progress generally is poor and students become demotivated. As Alderson
(2005) points out, language ability is very much a function of vocabulary size,
so the learners in the UK have a very poor return in terms of language perfor-
mance after years of study. Not the least of the problems of a grammar focus
which minimises vocabulary input is the way that the grammar itself cannot
be properly taught because the vocabulary needed to exemplify the grammar
is missing (Hopwood and Milton, forthcoming). Again, if the goal of language
teaching is for learners to make good progress and become communicative,
then prioritising vocabulary in the curriculum is essential.
Why would the UK MFL teaching establishment cling to an outdated and
ineffective idea about language and teaching? This is considered at the end
of this chapter, but it is worth pointing to a number of characteristics. One
is the doctrinaire attitude of some educationalists who are tied to a structur-
alist agenda and wilfully dismiss all other facets of knowledge and learning,
regardless of the evidence. An admission of the evidence would involve a
very public admission of failure and error. Often, it seems, promoting personal
career objectives, tied to structuralism, overwhelms an appreciation that this
approach is damaging learning and teaching. But also, a generation of vocabu-
lary denial and grammar promotion has led to astonishing levels of ignorance
about vocabulary in language learning. It leads to the unsupported belief that
decline in the standard of GCSE, and that GCSE is inferior to O level is because
O level required lots of grammar, and this should therefore be reinstated. In
fact, the most striking difference, as we argue elsewhere, is probably the huge
hollowing-out of vocabulary teaching over the last 30 years, and the absence
of sufficient vocabulary also drives out the teaching of structure. Finally, this
grammar infatuation has created a very destructive inspectorate regime which
penalises vocabulary teaching and an assessment regime which is obliged, in
the absence of knowledge, to use bizarre performance-oriented tasks which
require learners to repeat language they have learned off by heart. How many
tenses are used in an utterance? How many complex structures? These are
facets of performance which are poor indicators of language level when used
this way. Actual communication is beyond the level of learners at GCSE and
cannot be assessed.
Myth 2: Learning a super vocabulary of only the most

frequent words means you can communicate
This is one of several myths which have the same theme, that of justifying the
teaching of a very small vocabulary by claiming that this is all that is needed
for communication. This particular myth, that only highly frequent words
are needed, is found in government-sponsored reviews of language pedagogy
(NCELP 2021) and in the DfE subject specification materials (DfE 2021a).
The idea springs from the observation, noted in Chapter 3, that these highly
frequent words can provide comparatively high levels of coverage in text. So, in
its consultation on the proposed subject content, the content of only 1200–1700
words for A2 and B1 level learners is justified because the ‘2000 most fre-
quently occurring words represent around 80% of the words in any written
text and upwards of 90% of words in informal conversation’ (DfE 2021b, p. 7).
It is asserted that a vocabulary of 1200–1700 highly frequent words is well
suited to communication about a wide range of common themes and topics
(DfE 2021a). This notion has been sponsored by education authorities in the
UK for some time. In 2003, the curriculum for MFL in England for the lower
secondary years stated that ‘using even a limited range of language, learners
can communicate in a wide variety of situations’ (DfES 2003, p. 17). It is an
assertion that needs some unpacking to separate out the element of truth it
contains from the conclusions they draw, which are wrong.
The assertion is problematic for two reasons. One is that in the frequency
lists which are recommended for use in UK schools, coverage is significantly
lower. Hopwood and Milton (forthcoming) observe that in the Lonsdale and Le
Bras (2009) list for French, drawn from an equal mixture of written and spoken
texts, the top 2000 words only provide 72% coverage and not the 80% or 90%
claimed in the official documentation. The second reason, as Hopwood and
Milton also point out, is that the subject content does not propose that learners
should learn all these 2000 words. Only 1200 words (or indeed far fewer, once
irregular grammatical forms are included) are suggested for Foundation tier,
and research shows that learners will not learn all these words (for example,
Milton 2011). Learners, then, will not achieve the 80% to 90% coverage figures
which are suggested. Their level of vocabulary will be significantly smaller and
insufficient for anything but the most basic communication – and perhaps even
insufficient for this basic communication – if the words taught do not match up
with the learners’ real-life needs.
The conclusions drawn from this idea of coverage are wrong, too. The cov-
erage figures are grossly misleading in the way they are presented by the DfE.
They imply that there is a direct relationship between the percentage coverage
that words can give in corpora and the degree of comprehension that they pro-
duce. They imply that if the most frequent 2000 words in a language can give
80% or even 90% coverage, then these words will give 80% or 90% communi-
cation or understanding. This is illustrated in a tweet published by England’s
National Centre for Excellence in Language Pedagogy.
Time is limited but we can show children they can ‘crack’ a language with
a booster pack of ‘super vocabulary.’ Research shows knowing about 1,700
of the most frequent 2000 means you can probably understand between
72%–92% of what you see or hear.
(NCELP 2022)
The assumption that coverage of a text correlates directly with understand-

ing of a text is clearly stated. However, this direct correlation does not exist,
and the S-curve, in Figure 3.4, showing the relationship between vocabulary
size and comprehension illustrates this. There is no golden bullet that can
crack a language without large scale vocabulary learning providing something
close to 100% coverage of most text. The idea that there is a super vocabulary
providing an easy route to language mastery is entirely fanciful.
As Chapter 3 has shown, the relationship between vocabulary size and com-
munication does not work this way. Good comprehension of any text is likely
to require 95% to 100% knowledge of the words involved. It is a grave error to
assume that the most used words in a language are always the most useful and
are some kind of super vocabulary. Good communication depends on knowl-
edge of a large number of words, including lots of the less frequent words in the
subject areas needed for communication. Knowledge of only small numbers of
highly frequent words cannot permit the kind of communication that the MFL
curriculum in England claims as the goal of learning. It is entirely wrong to
suggest otherwise. Further, intensive learning of the most irregular, polysemous
and idiomatic words – which tend to be the most frequent – in the very earli-
est stages of language learning may well demotivate learners and decelerate
progress in these tender early months and years.
Why would the DfE in England, and its curriculum designers, be so intent on
teaching a small lexicon that they resort to myth in order to justify it? Woore
(2021) reflects on the figures produced by Nation (2006) and Laufer and
Ravenhorst-Kalovski (2010) that 8000 words are needed for 98% coverage in
English and good comprehension, and he calls this an enormously high figure.
In other countries, as the figures in Milton and Alexiou (2009) show, teachers
set about teaching these words, and learners set about learning them. In the
UK this is considered unacceptable. The myth is needed to justify the idea that
the size of the lexicon can be reduced without damaging the standard or quality
of the course.
Woore (2021, p. 8) suggests learners can get round the need to teach lots of
words by teaching just the frequent ones and using strategies.
If we start [teaching] with the high frequency words then we will be left
with a smaller number of lower frequency [words] . . . you can also com-
pensate for gaps in your knowledge with effective strategic behaviour
In a conference paper, Marsden (2021) repeats this idea.
[I]t can be tempting to get drawn into particular topics, food or hobbies,
that might not be necessary for all learners in a class. Instead of listing so
many specific words, ‘circumlocution skills’ are part of communicative
competence: You can express ‘niece’ or ‘sitcom’ with words that are more
generally useful.
They are asserting, therefore, that knowledge of the words which will allow
communication can be replaced by strategies for coping with ignorance. They
will almost always be wrong in this as studies of coverage and comprehen-
sion show (for example, Hu and Nation 2000). They are advocating a strange
approach to teaching where time is to be spent teaching how to cope with
ignorance of the foreign language rather than avoiding the ignorance by teach-
ing the language.
Leaving aside the idea that there will be some learners who never eat and
will never need vocabulary for food and drink, consider the kind of linguistic
strategies which Marsden and Woore envisage. Presumably, instead of sitcom
learners need to learn TV programme which is funny. Instead of niece they need
to learn daughter of my brother/sister. Real language, and presumably the inten-
tion is to teach a real foreign language, does not avoid less frequent vocabu-
lary. By failing to teach it, learners will always be receptively at a loss when
confronted by authentic language which will use lots of infrequent words. The
idea, too, that circumlocution is an easy and low-level language skill in pro-
duction is also a fiction. The CEFR Companion Volume (Council of Europe
2020) ascribes such strategic behaviour to rather more experienced and knowl-
edgeable learners. Learners need knowledge of lots of words, and considerable
fluency, to make this kind of substitution. Even for native speakers it can be
hard to do. How quickly can you find an alternative expression for orange juice
without the words orange and juice and using only highly frequent words? This
kind of strategic behaviour – circumlocution, advanced dictionary use and so
on – is beyond the abilities of elementary GCSE level learners with only a few
hundred words of knowledge.
It is probably possible to illustrate language use and grammatical structure
with a small, and highly frequent, set of words. However, for the communicative
tasks which are identified as the goal of learning, even in the UK, a wider
vocabulary is needed. It is a myth to suggest these lower frequency words are
not needed. It is false, too, to suggest strategic behaviour alone can avoid the
communicative shortcomings which ignorance of these words creates.
Myth 3: Themes, topics and topic-based vocabulary

teaching are bad
For a generation, now, the UK teaching establishment has been deeply antago-
nistic to the idea of teaching a language through a wide variety of topics and
themes. Milton (2009, p. 3) reports the national Centre for Information on
Learning and Teaching (CILT) hosted seminars in the 1990s entitled Break-
ing the topic stranglehold of MFL teaching and were devoted to ‘steering teach-
ers away from the dangers of purely vocabulary based teaching.’ There is still
an idea that topic-based teaching is particularly damaging and that ‘language
courses [that] are organised around thematic topics . . . can be too specialised,
teaching relatively rarely used words at the expense of common words’ (Teach-
ing Schools Council 2016, p. 9). The latest curricular proposals in England
(DfE 2021a) make a point of omitting virtually all topical content in favour of
a frequency criterion. This is an outcome of the frequency focus in curriculum
design. Topical and thematic organisation of teaching materials will involve
topical vocabulary, and this topical vocabulary is usually less frequent outside
the most frequent 2000 words. Where the intention is to reduce the vocabulary
taught by focussing on only the most frequent words, then these topical words
have to be excluded, and a necessary corollary is that the topics that require
them have to go too.
This might take the political sting out of topic selection (NALA 2020)
but will do little to advance students’ ability to communicate; the approach
effectively abandons communication as a goal. The modern foreign language
curriculum in England reduces the size of vocabulary taught and restricts it
overwhelmingly to the most frequent words; the effect of this is to remove
the vocabulary that allows learners to communicate. Communication is always
about something; there has to be a subject or a purpose. It has to be coherent.
For this, topical vocabulary and a large vocabulary is needed. But if the topi-
cal vocabulary is removed, then the topics may also be removed. A lexicon of
unrelated words, linked only by frequency, may be suitable for passing an exam
in grammar knowledge, but it will not allow learners to communicate.
The second thing to note is the research evidence which shows how impor-
tant this topical, and less frequent, vocabulary is for comprehension and com-
munication. Chapter 3 has noted how dependent comprehension is on growing
a lexicon of sufficient size, and this involves a knowledge of thousands of less
frequent, topic-related words. But studies also show how dependent compre-
hension is not just on overall vocabulary size but on knowledge of topics and
this topic-related vocabulary specifically (Masrai 2019; Song and Reynolds
2022). Not surprisingly, therefore, studies show that teaching a wide range
of topics, and a wide range of topical vocabulary, is highly effective. It pro-
motes the teaching of a large vocabulary across the frequency ranges, and this
leads to more vocabulary being learned (for example Vassiliu 2001). Enhanced
vocabulary knowledge, including these less frequent topical words, associates
with higher language level generally (Alderson 2005). Teaching a wide range of
themes also associates with enhanced motivation (Milton and Hopwood 2021).
Studies also show the damaging effect of avoiding this wide thematic content.
Milton and Hopwood (2021) note that in UK teaching materials, the thematic
content is highly restricted. In the Studio series of French GCSE textbooks,
covering 5 years of study, just two topics comprise nearly 50% of all textbook
input, and just six topics comprise three quarters of the content. The volumes
of vocabulary taught are small, and vocabulary uptake is low (for example,
Milton 2006; David 2008). Studies regularly report how dull and demotivating
these materials are (for example, Häcker 2008; Tschichold 2012; Milton and
Hopwood 2021). It is probably impossible to create coherent teaching materi-
als for communicative language and an effective and workable examination
system in the absence of a good thematic organisation of the curriculum.
In England, there is an erroneous belief that a wide-ranging topical and
thematic content for learning has been a cause of the problems which teach-
ers experience, rather than a means to achieving a solution. Language is
always about something, and thematic or topical content is what allows the
curriculum designers to build in language that has a purpose and that is inter-
esting or useful. Communicative ability is as dependent on topical vocabulary
as much as the frequent structural vocabulary. A topical and thematic struc-
ture for a scheme of study is essential to achieving this communicative ability.
This myth, that topical content in teaching is best avoided, is clearly very
damaging in terms of the quality of materials it produces and the learning
that results. A sea change in the culture of teaching is required for teachers
to understand that low thematic content is a cause of failure rather than a
route to success. Wide topical content is a sine qua non of success in language
teaching. It requires the planning and sequencing that is discussed in Chap-
ter 4 to ensure that learners have sufficient exposure to words they need for
communication.
Myth 4: The UK testing system recognises and rewards

extensive vocabulary knowledge
The curriculum and subject content for learning in the UK (for example, DfE
2021a) includes communicative language goals which, elsewhere, would require
several thousand words to achieve. This vocabulary can be described in general
terms. The national curriculum for MFL at Key Stage 3 (DfE 2021c, p. 2),
for example, stated that pupils should be taught ‘a wide-ranging and deepen-
ing vocabulary that goes beyond their immediate needs and interests, allowing
them to justify their opinions and take part in a discussion about wider issues.’
Yet, as we have demonstrated, the detail of vocabulary for delivery is absent
(DfE 2015) or massively reduced (DfE 2021a). This wide-ranging vocabulary is
not delivered in textbooks or in class (Tschichold 2012; Milton and Hopwood
2021). Learners routinely complete GCSE exams with knowledge of 500 to
800 words (Milton 2006; David 2008) rather than several thousand. This
level of knowledge cannot be said to be wide-ranging or deep. With this kind
of knowledge, learners really cannot discuss a range of interests and cannot
explain or justify a range of opinions.
Nonetheless, examining bodies continue with the myth that this vocabulary
is present and is tested. For example, the AQA writing mark scheme (AQA
2019) states that a variety of vocabulary must be used for top marks. Studies
suggest, however, that where learners do have large vocabularies, they get no
credit for this in the examination system. Richards et al. (2008), for exam-
ple, demonstrate that French learners at GCSE gain nothing from vocabulary
knowledge beyond the most frequent 1000 words in terms of the grade they
receive. A vocabulary that is deep, varied and wide-ranging is not system-
atically rewarded. Our discussions with examiners suggests they do recognise
vocabulary as a quality marker but cannot apply it. It is trumped in the grading
process by grammatical complexity and specifically by use of tenses (see also
Gruber and Hopwood 2022). The reference to vocabulary in this assessment
has become just a decoration.
The problem is not just one where the curriculum does not teach the vocabu-
lary which exam boards are meant to assess. There is a methodological problem
too. In the AQA writing paper, for example, the main tool used for learners to
demonstrate their vocabulary knowledge at Foundation level is just 90 words in
length. If we accept the DfE’s argument that in the normal language of native
speakers something like 80% to 90% of words would fall in the most frequent
2000 words, then this means that even the most sophisticated of learners could
have as few as nine words to demonstrate a wide-ranging and deep knowl-
edge of vocabulary. The task construct is not good enough to adequately test
the knowledge it is looking for. The conflation of vocabulary and grammatical
complexity in this writing assessment illustrates a poor understanding of the
relative importance of the two in determining fluency and proficiency but is
an artifice which allows the pretence of testing for wide-ranging vocabulary
knowledge.
Myth 5: Grammar and vocabulary are entirely

separable entities
The first of the myths addressed in this chapter is one where grammar knowl-
edge is considered of overwhelming primacy in learning a language. However,
with this idea comes a second idea, that the vocabulary element of language
is entirely separable from the grammar and is largely dispensable. This is a
myth because a large vocabulary is needed to realise a good command of gram-
mar. Reducing vocabulary content has been a feature of the school foreign
language curriculum in England for several decades, and the assumption is
made, therefore, that grammatical knowledge can largely replace vocabulary
in communication. The Teaching Schools Council (2016) pedagogy review,
for example, states ‘We use the grammar of a language to say what we wish . . .
and to understand what is said to us. Grammar is, therefore, indispensable for
communication in the new language’ (p. 10). One of the contributors to that
report and the subject specification says
It’s got to be understood that spontaneous production of language relies

on grammatical knowledge. You cannot produce new language that you
haven’t heard . . . unless you have grammatical tools at your fingertips. It’s
grammar that allows you to do that and do it accurately.
(Bauckham 2020)
The approach to teaching is one that involves ‘a strong knowledge of grammat-

ical principles’ within which is embedded ‘knowledge of the most frequently
used words in a language (including verbs)’ (Teaching Schools Council 2016,
p. 9).
There is a real problem, however, in the idea that the grammatical knowledge
needed for communication is so easily separable from vocabulary knowledge.
The reason learners grow larger vocabularies as they improve communicatively
is not just that this gives them access to the words needed for fluent com-
munication in terms of subject matter but that these words also are needed to
exemplify the grammar which is also required for communication. Hopwood
and Milton (forthcoming) argue that vocabulary and grammar have to progress
in line with each other, and they demonstrate that many of the grammatical
forms which are required in the subject content in England are insufficiently
realised in the most frequent 1200 or 1700 words for a grammatical system to
be effectively acquired.
The evidence of current research is that substantial examples of grammatical
forms may be needed for language rules to be effectively internalised (Hilton
2022), and a small and frequent lexicon does not contain the necessary exam-
ples. Hopwood and Milton argue that language is not as conveniently and sim-
ply rule-based as the writers of the curriculum for England imagine. Languages
are only partly rule-based. The rules can be complex and of limited application.
For example, the 2021 curriculum proposal requires students to learn how to
make a French noun ending -eur feminine by changing -eur to -rice as in séna-
trice. However, there are, we believe, only eight such examples in the top 2000
words on which the curriculum is based – even fewer, therefore, in the 1200 or
so words that could form the entirety of the lexical curriculum for grade 4 or 5
(an average grade). Meanwhile, there are just as many, if not more, nouns end-
ing -eur which do not follow the -eur/-rice rule, such as visiteur, professeur and
chômeur. Similar arguments can be made for verbs in German which require
dative reflexive pronouns. Even at a more general level, students will struggle
to learn many irregular verbs if they lack the vocabulary to put these verbs into
meaningful, uncontrived sentences.
Acquisition of the most frequent word forms and rules for regular inflection
may exclude the many, many irregular past tenses, feminine forms and plural
forms, to pick just three examples, which grammatical specification in England
requires. These will have to be learned as separate and additional words, and
these are often categorised as infrequent, therefore excluded from the subject
content. The language model the writers of the English subject specification
use, with a small number of words and a small number of rules for inflection
and derivation, does little justice to the complexity and requirements of real
language. We estimate that a vocabulary size three or four times that proposed
would be needed to adequately exemplify the grammar contained in the sylla-
bus. It is a figure also suggested by Martinez (2013). Not uncoincidentally, this
is also the scale of vocabulary size needed to adequately carry out the variety of
communicative functions which the CEFR requires of B1 level in terms of topic
and theme. Not surprisingly, because of these difficulties, in the final version
of the DfE’s subject content (2022) irregular grammatical forms are separately
listed but still compulsory, thereby contradicting the document’s own precepts
that vocabulary can and should be drawn from only the most frequent 1200 or
1700 words.
It is a myth, then, that vocabulary is largely superfluous to communication
and can be replaced by grammatical knowledge. This grammatical knowledge
is, itself, dependent on developing a large lexicon to exemplify it sufficiently
well. UK structuralists, by removing so much vocabulary from the curriculum,
have, without realising it, removed much of the grammar they wish to prioritise.
Myth 6: The vocabulary taught should be reduced to allow

every word to be explicitly recycled
The need to justify the small vocabulary content of the subject content has
given rise to yet another myth, that planned repetition of all words is necessary
to ensure learning. The volume of words taught should be reduced, therefore,
to allow for all this repetition, which will be time consuming. Smith and Conti
(2021) and Marsden (2022), for example, repeat this myth uncritically. Smith
and Conti (2021, p. 158) claim ‘by limiting the input to higher frequency lan-
guage you enable this language to be recycled multiple times, giving it a greater
chance to find its way to long-term memory.’ The Teaching Schools Council
(2016, p. 9) justify the exclusion of infrequent vocabulary by suggesting that
such vocabulary ‘can be too specialised, teaching relatively rarely used words
at the expense of common words which it is harder to plan for re-encounter-
ing later.’ Like all the best myths, this one is rooted in a truth; there is a link
between the repetition of new words and their likely retention.
The relationship between repetition of vocabulary items and their likely
uptake is well established. Generally speaking, the more frequently words are
repeated then the more likely learners are to report in tests that they recognise
these words (Milton 2009). It is an observation which helps explain the fre-
quency effect observed in Chapter 6 where words in the more frequent bands
are generally more likely to be known than words in less frequent bands. Fre-
quent words are more likely to be encountered in language input, so they are
available for learning, and they are more likely to be encountered multiple
times so they are noticed, and a link to meaning and use can be made. Words
like I, the, because and and are good examples, but there are many more.
The advice that ‘teachers must teach, practise, consolidate, reinforce and
assess’ their input (Teaching Schools Council 2016, p. 5), including all vocabu-
lary, probably creates more problems than it solves in how best to make use
of valuable classroom time in acquiring a lexicon. It is too mechanical and
assumes that all words are the same and need to be treated the same way. Some
words do not need so much planned and formal classroom recycling. For exam-
ple, cognate words are much more readily retained than non-cognate words
(Milton and Daller 2007; Willis and Ohashi 2012). The word for taxi in many
languages is taxi, and a single exposure may be sufficient for it to be internal-
ised in the foreign language. Other words are much more resistant to learning.
Word difficulty factors such as word length, abstractness and the absence of
an easy translation equivalent, to mention just three, can all make new words
harder to commit to memory. Studies strongly suggest that formal classroom
interaction to help the learning of individual words is so time-consuming that
it is impractical to teach an entire working lexicon in this way (Newton 1995).
Milton (2009) also believes that there is not enough time in class for all this
repetition and that consolidation of knowledge and the appreciation of use of
such words is best achieved outside class by a range of the type of activities
which are described in Chapter 10 and are dependent on the nature of the
words being learned.
The most frequent words, by virtue of their frequency, will tend to repeat
in normal input, so provided there is adequate input, and variety of input;
then there is plenty of opportunity to encounter and reencounter these words
without the need for so much planned repetition. If a so-called high frequency
word does not occur in any such varied, age-appropriate and context-relevant
material, then the chances are that it is not really important for the learner.
For example, words such as législatif and irakien are high frequency words in
French (Lonsdale and Le Bras 2009) but are unlikely to occur naturally in most
secondary school materials.
Almost everything that is done in the foreign language will involve some
very high frequency words. The issue with these words, and perhaps the reason
why structuralists want to focus on these words particularly, is that the high-
est frequency words are the so-called structure and function words: pronouns,
articles, auxiliary verbs, conjunctions, prepositions and so on. Learners struggle
not so much with recognition of form as with the use and meaning of these
words, so learning these words is an issue of depth and fluency rather than
breadth. They need considerable exposure to the use of these expressions for
them to be fully appreciated. Formal classroom teaching and recycling can go
only so far with this, and real progress can probably only come if the teacher
can encourage a sufficient variety and sufficient volume of exposure. German
prepositions like vor and bei, which have multiple meanings and sometimes
occur as part of a separable verb, might fall into this category. So too might
common French verbs like mettre, prendre and tenir which are irregular, polyse-
mous and also occur in certain fixed collocations. Much of this may have to be
outside classroom practice for all these forms to be internalised.
The less frequent words, and overwhelmingly content words, present a dif-
ferent set of learning requirements. They are not generally tied to a range of
different structures and uses, and learning is more an issue of recognising word
form and linking this to meaning. Best use of classroom time is for these words
to be exemplified and modelled, particularly aurally. They can be repeated in
the context of other practice, such as grammar practice, to aid recycling in
class. However, because they are topic-related these words may have only a
short lifespan in the topical content of the class. It is probably better to use time
outside of class for the task of extensive repetition. Learners often know very
little about how to manage learning in this way, and the profitable use of time
outside of the classroom is not an institutionalised feature of language learning,
for example, in England. However, in EFL, there are multiple types of material
available to help this which the UK system should learn from. Chapter 9 and
Chapter 10 consider these issues.
The conclusion here is, then, that treating all words the same and imagining
that simple, formal repetition through classroom teaching will routinely result
in learning, is an error and does little justice to the complexity that is involved
in acquiring a working lexicon for communicative use. Language learning is
time-consuming, so learners will need to make good use of time outside of class.
Managing all this recycling has to be part of a good curriculum.
Myth 7: Vocabulary learning is incidental

and is not learned in class
In 2004, CILT produced a volume of guidance for teachers which addresses
directly how best to approach the teaching of vocabulary (Harris and Snow
2004). The advice it gives should strike most readers of this book as surpris-
ing since it suggests that teaching vocabulary in class is a waste of time. The
argument has three strands. One strand is that it is highly ineffective. Snow
(Harris and Snow 2004, p. 55) writes, that ‘few words are retained from those
which are “learned” or “taught” by direct instruction.’ If it is ineffective, then,
do not do it. Devote your time in class to doing something more useful and
more profitable. The second strand, and this will be familiar in the context
of MFL in England teaching, is that it is just too big a task. Snow writes that
teaching vocabulary ‘is an overwhelming task and not one for the individual
teacher’ (p. 61). Snow’s work on vocabulary makes a rather depressing read.
It is big, it is hard, so give up. The third strand is the assertion that words in
a foreign language are not learned explicitly; they are learned incidentally. He
says, ‘the majority of words we learn are not actually taught, but are imbibed as
a result of doing something else’ (p. 73). Snow says foreign language vocabulary
is like scenery passing the car window on a long journey. All this vocabulary is
acquired passively without much thought and without really noticing. This is
a set of ideas that sits precisely within the English or perhaps British culture of
foreign language learning and teaching and where vocabulary teaching is to be
avoided. There is a lot that is wrong with these ideas.
This approach to vocabulary teaching in England begs the question of where
vocabulary comes from if it is not from the textbook and the classroom? What
is the scenery, outside the car window, that Snow refers to? For learners of EFL
in, say, Greece, there are abundant sources of English outside the classroom:
subtitled films on TV, popular songs and internet games and apps. They are part
of the language environment for these learners. The same cannot be said of
learners of, say, French or German in the UK. UK learners are heavily depend-
ent on the classroom and the textbook as the sources of words for learning
(Häcker 2008). In the UK, unless the curriculum organises vocabulary learning
through the teacher and starting in the classroom, then it is unlikely new words
will spontaneously emerge from somewhere else.
Snow is entirely wrong in asserting that little is learned from direct instruc-
tion, provided this is done well. Vassiliu’s studies (2001), summarised previ-
ously, are based on input from direct instruction and from the contents of the
textbook and classroom. He reports vocabulary uptake routinely of the order of
50% of input. Among the most able learners it was higher. His learners could
learn something like 500 to 700 words a year from the vocabulary included in
the textbooks and the classroom. Donzelli’s (2007) study of learners in Italy
reports the same outcome. Direct instruction is very effective in teaching
vocabulary, even if it can be time-consuming.
Vassiliu’s and Donzelli’s studies contradict another of Snow’s assertions.
Vocabulary need not be an overwhelming task unsuitable for teachers. The
teachers in these examples took care to prioritise vocabulary teaching. Vassiliu
selected textbooks to provide wide thematic variety and high vocabulary input.
Donzelli’s teacher systematically supplemented the textbook with additional
vocabulary for learning. They monitored vocabulary input closely to ensure
input was continuous and regular. Their learners learned lots of vocabulary.
Learning vocabulary is not an overwhelming task for most learners. It is a big
task. It takes time and effort and has to be properly organised and supported,
but only in contexts such as England does it become impossibly difficult. One
reason why it becomes so difficult in England, particularly, lies in the absence of
time allotted for the subject in the timetable (Milton and Meara 1998; Ofsted
2021). A second reason is the teaching environment which does not prioritise
vocabulary. The English vocabulary learning and teaching environment could
be made much better, and this would likely yield improvements both in vocabu-
lary learning and in language progress generally. An effective curriculum should
arrange for more words to be taught both inside and outside the classroom.
A final issue to contradict in Snow’s understanding of vocabulary learning
is the idea that this is incidental. The evidence we have on how vocabulary is
learned and how lexicons big enough for fluency are grown is that incidental
learning is a highly unsatisfactory explanation of learning large numbers of
words. Studies of incidental word learning from reading suggest that word
learning is negligible (summarised, for example, in Horst et al. 1998) but stud-
ies of explicit learning repeatedly show how effective this can be in growing
the vocabulary breadth needed for communication (for example, Vassiliu 2001;
Donzelli 2007; Milton 2008; Garnier 2014). The development of vocabulary
depth and fluency, however, may benefit from extensive exposure without so
explicit a vocabulary learning focus provided, of course, there are sufficient
words in the lexicon for this to take place (Zhang and Milton forthcoming; Jin
and Webb forthcoming). Vocabulary learning is much more complicated than
Snow’s implicit learning paradigm.
This myth is symptomatic of the wider language learning culture in England
where vocabulary teaching is something to be avoided or at least demoted and
subordinate to grammar teaching. It is symptomatic too of the wider ignorance
and misunderstanding, among all participants in the process, of just how impor-
tant vocabulary is and how it can best be taught. It is part of a culture that must
change if language learning is to improve in England.
Myth 8: Learning verbs is especially important

and should be prioritised
This seems to be a genuinely British vocabulary, and very modern, myth. The
idea probably emerges from a paper by Marsden and David (2008) which notes
that more proficient learners at GCSE tend to use proportionately more verbs
in their output than less proficient learners. From these observations a huge
jump is made to the conclusion that proficiency is dependent on verbs in par-
ticular rather than the development of the wider range of word types which
characterise the communicative learner’s lexicon. The Teaching Schools
Council, (2016, p. 9), for example, asserts, ‘In the early stages of a language
course, particular attention should be paid to the planned building of pupils’
verb lexicon.’ It then lists 25 ‘commonly occurring verbs,’ 15 of which are
highly irregular and one of which (aimer) is actually listed twice. Interestingly,
these 25 – or more accurately 24 – ‘commonly occurring verbs’ do not accu-
rately reflect the most commonly occurring verbs according to frequency data,
which suggests something about the extent to which such policy documents are
indeed backed up by research. Nevertheless, the idea is prominently asserted
in Ofsted’s (2021, p. 12) Curriculum Research Review of languages which sug-
gests the curriculum should ‘recognise the importance of building a strong verb
lexicon, especially in the early stages of language learning.’
This is an argument which has little basis in any coherent theory of language
learning but is best explained in terms of what the English system now under-
stands proficiency to be. We have characterised the English teaching orthodoxy
as structuralist, both in this chapter and elsewhere in this book. Part of this
paradigm is that grammatical accuracy, particularly in relation to verb knowl-
edge, is used as a proxy for proficiency. European languages, we have illustrated
French in Chapter 2, tend to be quite heavily inflected, and the construct of
the lemma is complicated. Learners need multiple exemplars and considerable
exposure to internalise these forms. If proficiency, even at the lowest level, is
thought to mean grammatical accuracy, then it makes sense to teach a lot of
verbs even if this means that teaching the rest of the lexicon is compromised.
However, as the CEFR descriptors illustrate, the development of language pro-
ficiency is only partially dependent on the development of grammatical accu-
racy. It is also dependent on the growth of a lexicon of several thousand words.
Meara and Milton (2003), in their French version of the X_Lex test, also
produced a test of exclusively French verbs. It was developed to test the idea
that verb knowledge could, in some way not yet understood, tap into hierar-
chies of ability such as the CEFR. Even after 20 years, they have yet to find a use
for the test because knowledge of verbs does not appear to predict proficiency
development better than overall vocabulary size. Given the prominence this
myth has gained it would make sense to extend, systematise and publish this
research. Our general observation is that it mimics other tests of vocabulary
size because it is, after all, a test of vocabulary knowledge but, if anything, has
less predictive power because it uses an odd sample of the lexicon as a whole.
We see no evidence to support the idea that prioritising verbs is anything other
than a distraction in the process of growing a communicative lexicon. Even
at A2 level, the CEFR level anticipates that language users will make ‘basic
mistakes’ (Council of Europe 2020: 132).
A reliance on the productive use of nouns is, as Marsden and David note,
a feature of L1 learners at the very earliest stages of development. It can-
not be stressed enough how small the lexicons they are considering are. The
year 9 learners who comprise their less proficient group may know only about
200 words in their foreign language; their proficient users may have ten times this
number (Milton 2006; David 2008). The lexicons of the two groups are massively
different in many ways which Marsden and David never consider, principally in
size. What they are noting may be nothing more than a feature of very small
lexicons adequate for only the most minimal, often one word, communication.
Even in L1 learners, the systematic use of multi-word forms, requiring grammar,
emerges when the lexicon is substantially larger than 200 words.
This is yet another myth which is used to justify the teaching of a small
lexicon, suitable only for illustrating grammatical use, rather than a lexicon for
communicative proficiency. If communicative proficiency is genuinely wanted,
then the curriculum that is needed must lay aside this idea and focus on the
business of growing a much larger, better formed lexicon.
Explaining these British vocabulary myths

These myths are not completely unique to teachers in the UK nor are they
entirely absent from teaching outside the UK. They have, however, given
rise to a teaching environment with two very particular characteristics. One
is the British super-structuralist approach to language, where being correct
has become more important than communicating and understanding. A cur-
riculum and subject description which devotes some 85% of its content to a
description of the grammar to be taught and omits almost everything else (DfE
2021a) is a very clear signal of this. It is also a signal that foreign language
learning in schools is in crisis. Such a focus on a single element of language can-
not hope to deliver the range and complexity of language needed for normal
communication. The second characteristic is the variety of myths which can be
used in an attempt to justify teaching an ever smaller vocabulary content. Ideas
such as grammar is much more important for communication than vocabulary,
communication only needs a few hundred words, that it only needs a few hun-
dred words of highly frequent super vocabulary, that teaching a wide variety
of topical vocabulary is dangerous, that vocabulary will come from somewhere
else outside the classroom, and that no one learns vocabulary anyway are used
to explain the decline in vocabulary content in the curriculum. Milton (2013)
measures this decline which is massive. The vocabulary content of the current
foreign language curriculum may be just a quarter of the size that was routinely
taught just 30 years ago. The standard of learning that emerges from this mini-
mal input has, inevitably, also declined in equal measure.
Why do these myths have such a strong place in foreign language teaching in
England? How is it that the structuralist ideas, largely abandoned in most of the
language teaching world, are able to flourish in the UK? The answer probably
lies in the school environment of the last 30 years. The year 1989 saw the intro-
duction of a national curriculum with an objective that more learners should
gain qualifications on leaving school at 16. Students at 16 no longer took
qualifications called O levels but took a new set of exams called GCSE. Mod-
ern foreign languages, in particular, had been seen as elitist and hard and had
comparatively low take up in the school population as a whole. The numbers
taking the exam were in decline. Milton’s (2013) figures from the WJEC exam
board show that within 5 years of the introduction of GCSE the numbers tak-
ing the French GCSE had doubled, the numbers passing had doubled and the
numbers getting A grades increased 500%. Politicians were able to present this
as a triumph. Anthony Adonis, a schools minister in 2006, could assert that
‘continued progress in exam performance is real – it is not the result of dumbing
down of standards – and the roots of this success lie in a fundamental shift in
the quality of teaching in our schools’ (reported in Milton 2013). At the same
time, however, the range of topics taught was reduced, which enabled the time
given over to French in class to be reduced also. To reduce teaching and at
the same time increase exam success would, if standards were maintained, be
something of a miracle. This outcome should have been interrogated far more
critically than it was. However, in an atmosphere where schools are judged by
the number of exam passes and good grades they obtain, and where education
ministers crave the appearance of success, there was no appetite for this. There
was no miracle, of course, and Milton was also able to show that the price paid
for increasing numbers passing after the introduction of GCSE was a very real
dumbing down. The vocabulary knowledge needed to pass GCSE French had
fallen by about 75% compared to O level. It was a collapse in standard that
the bodies responsible for maintaining the quality of exams probably failed to
notice and certainly failed to act upon. Even the highest performers at GCSE
currently attain nothing like the standard of knowledge that average learners
attained at O level a generation ago.
It shows how marginal vocabulary is, at an institutional level, when most of
the content of the curriculum can disappear and this passes unnoticed among
almost all stakeholders. There was a further price to pay for diminishing the
content of the curriculum which is that it becomes uninteresting and transpar-
ently pointless. Levels of interest and uptake of languages at school are now
lower than before the introduction of GCSE and are diminishing (Dearing and
King 2007; Vidal Rodeiro 2009). Had Adonis and other ministers looked at
language teaching and learning outside the UK this decline would have been
very obvious. The gulf in language performance in the UK compared with other
countries is very obvious to the learners (Ofsted 2021) even if it is invisible to
education ministers. There is a fine irony in this. Modern foreign languages is
a subject that aspires to teach an engagement and understanding of cultures in
other countries and yet appears unable to learn from more successful foreign
language teaching practice in these other countries. If readers search for more
evidence of an anti-vocabulary culture in the literature on modern foreign lan-
guages in the UK, they will not have to search far to find it. In the national
curriculum levels used in the early 2000s, for example, the term vocabulary was
mentioned more times in relation to Geography than it was that in modern
foreign languages.
The place of these myths, in this teaching environment, is to justify the reduc-
tion in the content of teaching and maintain the idea that it is all part of an
improvement in the teaching of the subject. The idea persists, even at the high-
est levels of teacher training and the inspectorate, that the teaching of lots of
vocabulary is something that inhibits the acquisition of language and that it is
best avoided in the curriculum. In reality, of course, it is something that promotes
language learning and competence but, in England, it is hard to displace these
myths. It is easier to maintain these myths than to plan for a workable curriculum
which would require more vocabulary around a wider range of relevant topics
and subjects. It is easier than planning a much better balance of structure and
vocabulary teaching to allow the words to be taught and that allow language
structures to be acquired. It is certainly easier than admitting that a generation of
government approaches to modern foreign languages have led directly to a huge
decline in standard, which surely must have something to do with the declining
popularity of the subject, too. It requires an understanding that illustrating lan-
guage structure, using a minimal vocabulary, is not the same as teaching commu-
nicative language use which requires a lot of vocabulary. The price for this is not
paid by teachers, administrators or politicians, however, it is paid by a generation
of language learners who leave school with historically low levels of proficiency.
It requires a reverse in the attitudes of teachers, teacher trainers and education
administrators, inspectors and government ministers to change this. Foreign
language teachers seem mostly unaware that things can be done differently and
that they can be done significantly better. If communication is the goal of learn-
ing a foreign language then more time is needed in the classroom, better and
more relevant resourcing is needed and, crucially, an appreciation that teaching
appropriately large volumes of vocabulary is at the heart of communicative suc-
cess. The current culture of delusion, denial, shortcuts and make-believe super
vocabularies will not help.
This chapter has attempted to explain and illustrate a generation of misun-
derstanding and misinformation which leads to the reduction of vocabulary
in the foreign language curriculum. If practitioners in the UK feel they do not
share these misunderstandings, they should bear in mind they have tolerated,
even supported, low vocabulary targets, poor vocabulary teaching and low lan-
guage learning standards that are unique to the UK. It cannot be stressed too
strongly how wrong this relegation of vocabulary is and how damaging when,
uncontrolled, it is applied to language teaching.
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8 Vocabulary in the textbook
Introduction
The purpose of this chapter is to explain the importance of good teaching mate-
rials, usually a well-designed textbook, in the context of an effective vocabulary
curriculum. To achieve this the curriculum needs to carry through the princi-
ples of regularity, manageability and periodicity in the organisation of vocabu-
lary input and then present this vocabulary in thematically interesting, varied
ways with contexts and tasks that promote learning. A good textbook should:
• Exemplify the words to be learned so learner can notice them, in regular

and manageable amounts
• Provide a link between form and meaning
• Suggest techniques to aid recall of form and meaning
• Begin to place new words in the context of language structure, the forms
they occur in and the other words they occur with
• Begin the process of recycling these words to aid memorisation and
automaticity.
The textbook cannot provide all the practice and exposure needed for com-
plete fluency, but it will organise the vocabulary content of the curriculum to
help achieve this goal.
Background – theoretical position and the curriculum

A curriculum sets the goals and the content of learning and plans some kind
of route through learning so the goals are achieved. It does not create the
classroom materials but tries to usefully define the vocabulary content and
sequencing of those materials. However, the creators of a curriculum must,
presumably, have an approach to learning in mind, the theories and assump-
tions which underlie the learning process, and, therefore, the creators must
also have a good idea of the methods and techniques needed to put the cur-
riculum into practice. These ideas will govern how vocabulary is treated in
the curriculum. From the ideas we have described in the previous chapters, a
DOI: 10.4324/9781003278771-8
number of underlying elements are apparent in the approach that should be
taken in teaching vocabulary.
One such idea can be associated with the Minimalist agenda as envisaged
by Cook (1998) and Ellis’s Lexical Learning Hypothesis (1997) where the
implication is that it is the acquisition of vocabulary that drives the acquisi-
tion of a language. Learners must learn vocabulary, and it is the features of this
vocabulary which drive the acquisition of other elements of language, such as
its grammar, its pronunciation system and so on so a learner can become com-
municative and fluent. The research evidence as we understand it certainly
indicates that vocabulary, in substantial quantities, is an essential part of grow-
ing foreign language ability and runs alongside the development of language’s
other elements. The research does not show that it is driving it necessarily,
and that would be hard to demonstrate empirically. Nonetheless, it is an idea
of the way languages work and are learned that requires a large vocabulary to
be taught. Ideally, the introduction of this vocabulary should run alongside the
other elements of language that this vocabulary is needed to exemplify. This
approach to teaching fits well with the kind of communicative goals envis-
aged in the CEFR progressive level descriptors which clearly, also, imply an
ever larger vocabulary capable of tackling a wide variety of everyday topics
and current affairs alongside the development of an increasingly sophisticated
knowledge and use of structure.
There is a noticing element in the process of learning a word. The noticing
hypothesis is a theory of second language acquisition which advances the idea
that in order to acquire linguistic features and progress their abilities, learners
must first consciously notice the input (for example, Schmidt 1990, 1994). We
have pointed to the Laufer and Hulstijn work on vocabulary (Laufer and Hul-
stijn 2001). The focus on form idea makes the same point that learners have to
take notice of the form of the word as the first step to learning it. Word learn-
ing, in terms of mastering the form of a new word and attaching it to meaning,
is intentional, therefore. A curriculum can identify the words needed for learn-
ing, but the requirement of the curriculum, also, should be that all these words
must be presented so that they are noticed. Learning lots of new words is not
implicit. It does not occur without effort or unintentionally or by accident. The
requirement that for any kind of communicative fluency a large vocabulary is
taught makes this additional requirement a considerable teaching challenge.
There is more to learning words than the recognition of form, however. The
form must be attached to meaning, the possibilities of use in structure and the
other sub-knowledges included in the dimension of vocabulary depth, which
develop incrementally over time (for example, Laufer 2006). And words must
be encountered and used enough for their use to become automatic. In Laufer
and Hulstijn’s focus on form idea, for best effect learners do not only notice the
words, they access meaning and have to make use of the form by dictionary
checks and free writing. Here, there are elements of Krashen’s input hypoth-
esis (1987) and the interaction hypothesis (usually attributed to Long 1981).
Learners need to be exposed to a variety of materials in the foreign language
Vocabulary in the textbook 141
which they can understand, and they should interact with the language and
create and modify language for comprehensible output. The work on retrieval
and generative processing, where words are better retained for use when they
are noticed and understood and then subsequently retrieved, and where words
are encountered with slightly different meanings and different contexts, sup-
ports this (for example Kornell et al. 2009; Karpicke 2012). Again, since there
are a lot of words required for effective communication, this requirement adds
a considerable burden to the curriculum if it is to be effectively delivered. A lot
of interaction, repetition and use of words means even more time for learn-
ing, more than the class can often allow. The curriculum must face up to the
need for an effective marriage of classroom teaching and outside class activi-
ties to put this requirement into practice. As Konstatakis and Alexiou (2012),
Tschichold (2012) and others observe in their studies of textbooks, this is rarely
done systematically and well. Rates of input and rates of repetition in course
books from one year to the next can vary considerably.
These approaches target the three dimensions of vocabulary knowledge
described in Chapter 2: the breadth of vocabulary knowledge in terms of
knowledge of form, link to meaning and use, practice to develop structural
awareness, and fluency. The curriculum goal here is to make sure teachers are
delivering in class the volumes and selection of vocabulary to fit sub-goals for
this area of input and learning into the overall target and then monitor to
see whether it is working. The textbook has to deliver not just on vocabulary
input but appropriate recycling and exploitation or, rather, begin the process
of recycling and exploitation. The curriculum requirement is to describe and
enumerate this, so the textbooks deliver the planned vocabulary.
Planning vocabulary in the textbook

This chapter is clearly about vocabulary in the classroom and in the textbook.
Textbooks are often the principal, sometimes the only, source of foreign lan-
guage vocabulary provided to learners, and this has to be managed system-
atically for best effect. The role of textbooks in exposing learners to the right
numbers and sorts of words appears, though, is not always understood. Not
only is this clear from studies of textbooks themselves, as we discuss in this
chapter, but in critical writing about textbook design. Rudby (2003), for exam-
ple, makes only the scantest of reference to vocabulary loading in an otherwise
comprehensive checklist of quality criteria for language teaching materials.
The literature on vocabulary in textbooks is often critical. The volumes of
vocabulary provided can be considered inadequate to meet the goals of learn-
ing (Tschichold 2012); there can be an unhelpful frequency bias in the material
which produces a lexicon that is uncommunicative (Konstantakis and Alexiou
2012). The exploitation of vocabulary can be poor providing learners with lit-
tle opportunity to learn the vocabulary given (Milton and Hopwood 2021).
The choice of vocabulary can appear idiosyncratic and unprincipled (Catalan
and Fransisco 2008). There is little at a theoretical level to provide guidance
to writers and which can help make the textbook both more principled in the
things it does and more effective.
Milton and Hopwood (2021) point to Scholfield’s work on vocabulary plots
(1991) which identifies three criteria which, we suggest, all materials writers
should make evident in their work. Scholfield’s ideas are sensible, grounded
in examples of effective practice, and well worth trying to exploit. Experience
says this is a good way of doing things. The three criteria are regularity, manage-
ability, and periodicity for vocabulary loading.
Regularity addresses an issue which has underpinned all of this book; that
of teaching the large number of words needed for communication and for flu-
ency. This is a big task, and, clearly, thousands of words cannot be taught all in
one go. All the evidence we have summarised in this book has suggested this
material needs to be spread out, alongside other features of learning, over the
course of instruction, and it helps to spread it out fairly evenly. If the learning
goal is to reach, say, CEFR B1 level, where learners will need to learn about
3000 words, then the curriculum needs to plan to input something like dou-
ble this as described in Chapter 5, 5000 or 6000 words therefore; this needs to
be spaced across the time of learning. If there were 6 years available for course
instruction, then the curriculum would plan for 800 to 1000 words of input a
year, assuming that the number of hours per year of teaching remains broadly
constant. Vocabulary input needs to be evenly spread, roughly, across the learn-
ing period. The evidence where input and uptake from the vocabulary in course
books is measured is that course books can do this successfully (for example,
Vassiliu 2001). French vocabulary materials in the UK from a previous genera-
tion made a virtue of this regularity (Thimann 1959) and could also be highly
successful. Course books which do not do this are often characterised as unsuc-
cessful (for example, in Tschichold 2012 and Milton and Hopwood 2021). Here,
periods of higher input are followed by periods of low, or almost no, input. Where
a learner’s vocabulary growth is stalled, at this early stage of learning, then lan-
guage progress generally will probably be limited also because vocabulary growth
is so important to progress in learning a foreign language. Irregular vocabulary
input is almost certainly counter to effective language teaching. The presence of
regularity for vocabulary input in the curriculum allows meaningful intermediate
goals to be set and progress can be usefully monitored.
Manageability is a related criterion and refers to the need to present vocab-
ulary regularly but also in numbers that are achievable by learners. Milton
(2009) reports that there are highly intensive language courses which routinely
provide 60 words a day, every day, for learners who hope to achieve commu-
nicability very rapidly. Where learners are selected by aptitude and are highly
motivated, it is an approach that can work. This is clearly inappropriate, how-
ever for most learners in school who have other subjects to learn and other
activities to pursue. The French vocabulary course for O level (Thimann 1959,
p. 6) presents 2250 vocabulary items, 20–30 words per week, and asserts that
these words ‘with their attendant idioms, can be mastered’ in 3 years with a
learning load described as ‘so slight that it could be taken in conjunction with
1400
1200
total vocabulary exposure
1000
800
600
400
200
0
class 1
class 4
class 7
class 10
class 13
class 16
class 19
class 22
class 25
class 28
class 31
class 34
class 37
class 40
class 43
class 46
class 49
class 52
class 55
successive classes
Figure 8.1 Vocabulary rate plot from Donzelli
the normal French preparation.’ This is probably correct; Donzelli’s (2007)

study of input and uptake of EFL learners in Italy shows tremendously regular
input of relatively small amounts of vocabulary each lesson but which com-
bined make for very substantial vocabulary input. The outcome of vocabulary
presented for learning this way was highly impressive uptake of that vocabulary.
Figure 8.1 shows a cumulative plot of vocabulary input and, except for a couple
of kinks, the regularity of input, and the manageable incremental quantities
that are introduced, are clearly visible.
Periodicity refers to the need, which Scholfield recognises in the normal
course of teaching, to combine periods of input with periods of recycling and
testing and where, he feels, completely continuous input is not wanted. Schools
routinely devote a period to exams, for example, where formal teaching stops.
Scholfield points to highly successful and effective course books (Swann and
Walter 1984) which can demonstrate this trend. This is shown in Figure 8.2
where input per unit is generally fairly regular when introducing new words per
unit, about ten words per classroom hour, we think. But there are also three
units where input drops to zero, and these are revision units. It is also a feature
of the highly successful course Donzelli (2007) describes.
In the Swan and Walter examples, textbook vocabulary input is consistently
at or over about ten words per contact hour. In Donzelli’s (2007) study, teacher
input added to the textbook input totalled a similar figure. It appears where
these quantities of words are systematically presented, in this way, then learners
can and do make good progress in learning vocabulary. Such quantities do not
overwhelm learners where the learning environment is good. However, not all
learning environments are so successful, and a feature of these less successful
70
65
60
55
50
New Vocab Items
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Units
Figure 8.2 Vocabulary rate plot of Swann and Walter’s Cambridge English Course Book 1
16
14
Ave input per hour
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
year 7 year 8 year 9 year 10 year 11
input in Studio ideal input

Figure 8.3 Annual rate of input in Studio (Milton and Hopwood 2021) compared with
‘ideal’ as in Swan and Walter (1984)
learning environments seems to be that they exhibit a very different approach

to vocabulary teaching. The input rate for French in the UK schools is an
example of this. The type of elaborate class by class or unit by unit analyses,
seen in Donzelli and Scholfield, are absent from the literature. Milton and
Hopwood summarise vocabulary input from one textbook in an annual plot,
and this is shown in Figure 8.3. It is the rate of vocabulary input, and input
per hour, which is so telling. The input here is not just inconsistent, but it is a
fraction of the input, maybe only a third of the input, in more successful course
books. In Years 8 and 9, input falls to just a third of the input typically found
in Swan and Walter. This textbook does not take the teaching of vocabulary
seriously. This period of very low input coincides with low progress both in
vocabulary and in language development overall (QCA 2002 quoted in Milton
2006) and are called wasted years (Ofsted 2015).
Scholfield’s three criteria, if appropriately applied, do not lead inevitably to
successful vocabulary teaching. Teaching is more complicated than that. How-
ever, applying these criteria leads to a system and an approach which lays the
foundation for success, and without it learners will be significantly hindered.
Regularity and manageability in textbooks

The first task, then, is to make sure the words that are needed are presented
to learners and are noticed. This is the task of teaching materials and for most
learners it will be a textbook. We have noted in previous chapters a tendency
in the UK where teachers turn to downloaded material from the internet and
where, it appears to us, the choice of vocabulary is arbitrary and adventi-
tious. Such an approach is unlikely to succeed because, for success, the right
vocabulary in the right numbers needs to be demonstrated. Random choices
of vocabulary from the internet probably cannot lead to the construction of
a communicative lexicon over time. However, the degree of consistency and
planning that a well-constructed textbook can bring to the classroom gives
teaching and learning the chance of success. We suspect that teachers may
resort to this tactic where textbooks do not do this and provide teaching con-
tent that is inadequate, for example, where textbooks are underloaded and
overly repetitious.
A feature of the successful language teaching which Vassiliu investigates
(Milton and Vassiliu 2000; Vassiliu 2001), and by successful we mean high
vocabulary gains and good overall progress to meet CEFR goals, is the way
successive textbooks continually introduce new vocabulary to attain the num-
bers which are needed to meet the goals of learning. Vassiliu deliberately chose
his textbooks so that a wide range of the topics and themes were covered,
as required for success in the international CEFR based exams taken by his
learners. The textbooks were used successively during a single year of teaching.
Figure 8.4 illustrates this. At the centre of the diagram is the number of words
common to all three textbooks analysed here. These are 328 mostly function
and structure words. Around the outside are the numbers of words which are
unique to each of the three books, 456, 239 and 302, and represent a continual
input of new vocabulary. These numbers are of the same kind of size as the
words common to all texts. These include much vocabulary that is specific to
the topics chosen in each section of teaching and are comparatively infrequent,
therefore. Some of it, however, is also frequent and structural and varies from
book to book because of the selection of structural and other points chosen
for teaching at this time. The outcome from this type of organised vocabu-
lary input is measurably large vocabulary uptake and measurably good overall
TEXT A
456
115 171
328
239 302
99
TEXT B TEXT C
Figure 8.4 Vocabulary common to three beginner EFL textbooks
language progress. Vassiliu followed this practice throughout successive years

at his school, and learners added to their lexicons, consistently, about 500–700
new words each year. Leaving aside issues of his choice of a range of topics
calculated to provide variety and interest as well as lexical coverage, the lesson
to be taken from this is that regular vocabulary input can, if done well, leads
to regular vocabulary uptake. For large scale learning of a workable foreign
language lexicon, this is what is wanted. The words are there to be learned.
Not all textbook series are so good in their choice of vocabulary, nor do teach-
ers always have the knowledge and opportunity that Vassiliu had in choosing
materials. The choice of internet materials by teachers of foreign languages
in the UK might be excused by the quality of textbooks they are otherwise
given to work with. French textbooks have received particular criticism over
the years. Tschichold’s (2012) study, for example, illustrates a feature of such
books, which is the way the introduction of vocabulary is rarely consistent,
regular or principled. In Tschichold’s example, developing a large vocabulary
does not appear to be a goal even though learners are intended to reach CEFR
B1 after 5 years of instruction. Her data, analysed in Milton (2011) to provide
an idea of the rate of introduction of new vocabulary, demonstrates this incon-
sistency and is summarised in Table 8.1.
Comparatively large vocabulary input in the first year is followed by much
smaller input in the second year, only about 30% of the first year input, and then
a third year where input is also comparatively small. Only in the fourth year do
numbers rise again. Toward the end of the course it seems there is a scramble
to increase the learner’s lexicon in an effort to achieve the levels needed for
CEFR B1. The number of words introduced in Volume 4 increases to some
Table 8.1 Rate of introduction of new vocabulary in Encore Tricolore (Milton 2011, p. 68)
Volume Cumulative vocabulary New words introduced
Volume 1 946 946

Volume 2 1234 288
Volume 3 1692 458
Volume 4 2779 1087
four times that of the second year. The point is that, where the CEFR B1 goal
of learning requires 5000 or more words of input in 5 years, spending 1 year
with only 200 words of input and another with only 400 makes the learners’
task nearly impossible. It is no surprise that students and teachers in England
report the jump between GCSE (age 16) and Advanced Level (age 18) to be
impossibly large (Board and Tinsley 2015). By presenting so little vocabulary
in the middle years of the course, the learners are left with an insuperable task
in the final years. Despite an increase in the number of words presented, the
overall numbers required for CEFR B1 are not attained. It is a failure on the
part of the materials writers to appreciate both what the goal of learning is here
and how to effectively achieve it. But it is a failure, too, in curriculum design
where adequate input is nowhere described (for example, DfE 2015, 2021).
Not surprisingly, measured uptake from this kind of input is poor, at about
100 words per year (Milton 2006; David 2008) and a fraction of that attained in
Vassiliu’s courses. Not only are there inadequate words for learning presented
in the teaching materials, they are organised to make the task of learning dif-
ficult. Effective vocabulary teaching, as Scholfield points out, is not organised
this way.
The observations of experience professionals, such as Gairns and Redman
(1986), the practice of effective textbook writers such as Swan and Walter
(1984), and the outcome of this kind of research allows some numbers to be
put into the regularity and manageability description. Input for effective learn-
ing appears to work well with a vocabulary pitched at about ten words per
classroom hour and with, at the basic levels of learner knowledge, a 50/50 split
of frequent and infrequent vocabulary. Once the frequent levels of vocabulary
knowledge are well established, at about 70% of the most frequent 2000 words,
the input of less frequent and topical vocabulary will increase perhaps to the
80% infrequent levels of input Konstantakis and Alexiou (2012) propose.
Qualitative considerations
The principles of regularity, manageability and periodicity refer to the volumes
and timing of vocabulary exposure. This appears to make the effective control
of vocabulary in the curriculum a matter of mere numbers. It is more than this;
a good textbook is more than just lists of vocabulary. As Chapter 6 has shown,
a successful textbook, in the modern classroom, has to provide texts for reading
and listening, as well as opportunities to explicitly notice and practice using the
target words. The texts need to be relevant, useful and interesting if motivation
to learn is to be maintained.
A key qualitative implication of the principles of regularity, manageability and
periodicity is that a good textbook, in order to keep on delivering new vocabu-
lary, will need to be thematically rich and varied. Textbooks, or textbook series,
which churn through the same topics again and again will struggle to do this.
Milton (2011) and Milton and Hopwood (2021) identify that samey, repetitive
content has become a feature of foreign language textbooks in England, with
inevitable negative consequences for motivation. For the motivationally doubt-
ful or neutral learner, the good textbook has to offer texts worth reading, content
which is sufficiently interesting, engaging or entertaining to warrant the effort.
Tomlinson (2003, p. 234) notes a widespread tendency for textbooks to provide
‘bland, neutral and trivial texts for learners to read and to listen to.’ This cannot
be a good thing, however good the lexical loading. Andon and Wingate (2013,
p. 183) assert that problems the choice of, or lack of choice of, ‘topics, texts and
activities’ in textbooks are a key motivational barrier for UK language learners
in schools. Textbooks which offer content devoid of any intrinsically interesting
content will only serve the needs of those learners who are already motivated and
engaged. More than this, Wingate (2018, p. 445) finds that the types of textbooks
prevalent in the UK ‘are not only uninteresting, but even face-threatening to
adolescents, and therefore counter-productive to meaningful communication.’
Bell (2004, p. 7) points out, and the same, we think, is true at the time of writ-
ing, that language learners in England suffer ‘a dull topic-based diet which cap-
tures neither their interest nor their imagination.’ The textbook is a key way in
which this motivational problem can be addressed. Dörnyei’s (2009) influential
model of motivation in language learning – the L2 Motivational Self System –
identifies that the learner’s effort will be a function of the extent to which they
feel they ought to learn the language, the extent to which they want to learn the
language and the quality of their classroom experiences. Clearly, textbooks have
a considerable role to play in at least the latter two of these considerations. This
is not to mention the considerable intercultural and socio-cognitive learning that
a textbook can or perhaps should encourage (Coffey 2013).
An effective curriculum will organise the vocabulary learning load into regu-
lar and manageable amounts for delivery, therefore, but it will need to ensure
that it selects vocabulary from a wide range of themes and topics which are
relevant and useful to learners. These two ideas are connected. An absence of
thematic variety usually results in low vocabulary input overall, and periods of
learning where new vocabulary to input is hard to find.
Noticing vocabulary in textbooks

It is not enough, of course, for words to be in the textbook and spread out
appropriately. It is an essential first step but more is required. The words must
be presented in a way where the form can be noticed and linked to meaning.
There is more to vocabulary than just form and meaning, but this is another
essential step if learning is to be effective. This is not a book designed to detail
and explain vocabulary teaching techniques. There are many roads to Nirvana,
and there are plenty of ways to make words and their meanings visible and
learnable. A variety of techniques may be needed for a learning task as large
as the acquisition of a communicative lexicon. However, learning words does
not happen by itself, and the task of the textbook is to make sure the noticing
of form and the form and meaning link are established. Chapter 4 has outlined
some of the ways this can best be done given what we understand about the
language and the word learning process. There are many established and tra-
ditional techniques which place noticing form and linking this to meaning at
the heart of teaching.
Modern textbooks will want to employ a range of methods and techniques to
prompt the learner to notice form and link it to meaning. For younger learners,
especially, this might involve images or sets of wordcards/flash cards. Although
this might seem outdated, there is much to be said for them (Hilton 2022;
Nation 2001). The form can be presented orally, although many cards also give
the written form. A picture of the object or concept can also give the meaning.
Obviously, this works with concrete and imageable words but is much less use-
ful for abstract words like philosophy and imaginary. Language learning apps,
such as Duolingo (2021), can still make use of this technique to introduce new
words. Keyword or Linkword (2021) techniques take this principle a step fur-
ther and associate new words to highly memorable images. The idea is that you
take a foreign language word and link it to an image which includes something
in your own language which sounds like the word you are trying to learn. So,
for example, if you are English speaking and are learning French and you need
to learn the French word for hedgehog (hérisson), then you have to imagine
your hairy son holding a hedgehog. The odder or more outrageous the image
is, the better it is. Research suggests that this can be effective (for example,
Beaton et al. 1995, 2005), and it may be particularly effective with children
and learners with dyslexia. But learning large numbers of words this way may
soon lose its novelty value and may not, therefore, be appropriate for the whole
lexicon. As learners become older or/and more proficient, these techniques will
probably be less suitable. But even a textbook for advanced learners will want
to help learners notice new words and their meanings – by highlighting them,
emphasising them and requiring learners to match them with L1 translations or
synonyms in the target language, for example. Textbooks for proficient learners
who are learning more technical vocabulary might provide a target language
definition for new words.
There are many other techniques that can fulfil this role, but these examples
illustrate that effective vocabulary teaching and learning involves noticing new
words and linking them to meaning. Somewhere, the vocabulary content has
to be systematically presented to learners for this to happen. Learners can-
not learn words that they never encounter. A well-constructed textbook is an
optimal place for the words to be presented for learning. A well-constructed
programme of teaching might, meanwhile, make use of a good textbook and
supplement this with other materials calculated to introduce and exploit the
new vocabulary the learners need. This does require system and organisation
on the part of the textbook writer or the teacher. Milton and Hopwood (2021)
point to a feature of French foreign language textbooks in the UK where this
kind of organisation is missing. They point to words included in the glossary
of the textbooks they examine which are not subsequently tested in revision
or assessment sections. There are words in the text which are not included
in the glossaries. The issues of small and inconsistent vocabulary loading in
these texts has already been pointed to. It is hard to escape the conclusion
that vocabulary learning is not a priority for the course Milton and Hopwood
examine. Its presentation and exploitation is disorganised, and it should not be
a surprise, then, that vocabulary learning is small.
We are aware, in saying that new words need to be systematically and explic-
itly treated in teaching materials for learning to be effective, that when a large
vocabulary is needed for communication, this will take up a lot of the textbook
and a lot of teaching time. Textbooks will need to cover other aspects of lan-
guage also, and teaching time is always limited. Moving some of this vocabu-
lary learning activity outside the classroom might make sense if the delivery of
teaching can be well directed and made effective. This is discussed later in this
chapter and in Chapter 10.
Recycling and putting words in context

As Nation’s table (Table 2.4) of what it means to know a word shows, there is
a lot more to knowing a word than just recognising the form and having some
idea of a word’s meaning. There is also a lot more to learning a word than being
presented with it, no matter how well this is done. Vocabulary teaching has to
set about the task of developing the learners’ knowledge of these new words to
appreciate how these words might fit into language structures, how they might
collocate and how they might appropriately be used. To be fluent in English it
is not enough to know the word for bath, for example; you are likely to need to
know that in English somebody can run a bath and take a bath rather than make
a bath or do a bath. Talking about the weather in Greek you would say Κάνει
κρύο, it does cold rather than it is cold. It is not just collocation, of course, there
are multitudes of these kinds of usages which the learners will need in order to
be fluent and natural in language use. However, all languages will differ at least
to some degree in the way they like words to join together, and the textbook is
a place to start the process of teaching this.
This process of exemplifying new words in context can be viewed as rep-
etition and recycling, and this is something that has already been consid-
ered in previous chapters. Repetition and recycling of new words is generally
considered a good thing since it aids both memorisation and the speed of
recall from memory. The relationship is not perfectly mechanical, but the
principle that the more often words are repeated then the more likely they
are to be retained and used holds true. However, where the requirement is to
teach a lot of new words, then how are all these words to be recycled appro-
priately alongside the teaching of other aspects of the language curriculum
and all in the relatively small space of a textbook? It is a real challenge and
one that, as the reference to Milton and Hopwood’s work shows, many text-
books cannot meet. The French textbooks mentioned earlier are not alone
in struggling with this. Cobb (2008) suggests that the vocabulary content of
textbooks, generally, is mainly limited by the need to recycle the vocabulary
the textbook contains. Recycling high frequency function words is inevitable,
as these words occur inevitably and of their own accord, but where the same
thematic content and the same low frequency content vocabulary is repeated
in the different modules of a textbook then the amount of vocabulary input
overall is limited. In these cases, only a small amount of new vocabulary can
be acquired and that limits progress.
Part of the task of the textbook, then, is to take the words for learning and
begin to put them in context and give learners the chance to use them. Vocab-
ulary practice, here, can begin to complement the teaching and practice of
other aspects of language required by the curriculum. Traditional Latin materi-
als which introduced vocabulary at the start of a textbook module would reuse
this vocabulary in explaining and practicing whatever was the grammar focus
of that module and again in a reading and in a comprehension passage. Transla-
tion tasks were very much part of this format and, again, these could be used to
recycle the vocabulary of the unit. Chapter 4 has discussed the debate on the
optimal number of repetitions but striving for an ideal number of repetitions
within the context of a textbook is probably to misunderstand the reality of
what can be achieved. The idea should be to ensure that new words are prop-
erly illustrated in use and to begin the process of repetition.
It would be unrealistic and unnecessary to demonstrate every single possible
detail of use, explicitly, in order to achieve arbitrary numbers of repetitions
which may not be needed once the form is recognised and the beginnings of
a link to meaning is established. These are things that might better be done
with a different kind of teaching and outside the classroom and this is dis-
cussed further in this chapter and in Chapter 10. Our understanding of the way
automaticity of word use develops, and that includes the automatic use, and
this includes the appreciation things like grammatical inflection, may be things
that develop incrementally with extensive use rather than through deliberate
learning as with form and meaning. Hilton 2022 observes the limitation of time
available in classrooms for the development of semantic networks in the brain
which can be deployed fluently and automatically. She therefore recommends
sustained usage activities which, for the most part, also need to take place out-
side of the very limited teaching hours available.
It is not, of course, just an issue of how often words are repeated, but also
how effectively and in what tasks this repetition occurs. Not only have we
seen in Chapter 4 that some types of word exposure may be more profitable
than others, but repetition of the same tasks will have the same demotivating
consequences as endless repetition of the same topics and texts. Both Gruber
and Tonkyn (2017) and Andon and Wingate (2013) find that tasks found in
British textbooks, for French and German, are cognitively under-challenging,
and this will have detrimental consequences not just for motivation but for
lexical acquisition too, resulting in a damaging spiral of disengagement and
decelerating progress.
Building vocabulary into the curriculum and textbook

How should the curriculum designer and teachers manage the content of text-
book vocabulary in relation to the curriculum? Currently there is little or no
mechanism and, as been pointed out already in this book, curriculum designers
behave idiosyncratically and often provide little or no information on how the
vocabulary content is structured. Teachers have to try to manage this absence
of information and try to make the best of it but have little idea if what they
do is appropriate or useful within the construct of the curriculum. Managing
vocabulary well in the classroom and textbook requires a massive change in the
way the curriculum handles the vocabulary burden.
At the level of curriculum design

• The curriculum description should provide clear totals of lemmatised
words to be taught and learned to achieve the level or type of language
attainment it requires.
• The curriculum should clearly spread the vocabulary burden across the
time available for learning with interim targets for both delivery and
learner uptake. The Ministry of Education in Saudi Arabia (2016) is a rare
example of a curriculum which does appear to make this kind of vocabu-
lary content and progress plain in terms of achieving a specified CEFR
goal. Where this is applied the effect appears highly beneficial to learning
overall (for example, Aldaghriri 2019; Alshaikhi 2016; Alshaikhi and Mil-
ton 2017).
• The curriculum should indicate the time that will be needed for delivery
of the curriculum and, where classroom time is short for some reason, give
guidance as to what can reasonably delivered in class and through the
textbook and what will need to be delivered by other mechanisms.
• The curriculum should provide a clear choice of topics and core vocabu-
lary to be covered. This is essential if there is to be sufficient coherence
in the content of teaching to allow learners to change schools without an
impossible change in learning content and to allow exam boards to con-
struct meaningful and fair exams based on content that is common for all
learners.
• The curriculum needs to provide a clear model of vocabulary input to
show the required spread across the frequency bands that allows commu-
nicative ability to develop.
At the level of the textbook
• There is a decision to be made, and to be made clear to teachers and learn-
ers, as to whether the textbook covers the whole of the vocabulary curricu-
lum or just part of it. If the textbook delivers only part of the vocabulary
curriculum then there has to be sufficient support and other extension
material for learners to reach the vocabulary goals of the curriculum where
the textbook itself does not meet these goals. The loading of textbooks and
other materials have to be made clear to users. It is not acceptable that
teachers and learners are kept in the dark about the vocabulary content.
• There should probably be a requirement that textbooks and other materi-
als must fit with the curriculum and deliver the content of the curriculum
or a clear part of it. In Saudi Arabia, for example, it is our understanding
that publishers have to demonstrate that their textbooks contain sufficient
vocabulary and topics to be adopted for use in schools. If they cannot do
this, then they cannot be used. Where this requirement is missing, as cur-
rently in teaching MFL in the UK, then as Tschichold (2012) and Milton
and Hopwood (2021) demonstrate, the vocabulary content of teaching
can fall far short of the vocabulary needed to achieve the course’s CEFR
communicative goals.
• The textbook should be able to demonstrate the vocabulary is presented
with the required regularity and manageability of content for the vocab-
ulary burden to be manageable for learners. There should be no fallow
periods where, as Tschichold (2012) and Milton and Hopwood (2021)
demonstrate in UK delivery, for weeks, months or even years there is little
or no systematic vocabulary growth in the materials used for teaching.
• The textbook will have to demonstrate there is sufficient recycling and
exploitation of the vocabulary content for classroom learning to be
optimised.
At the level of the teacher

• Teachers will need to understand the vocabulary content of the textbook
and materials they use and choose material to fit with their plans for cur-
riculum delivery.
• If teachers want to supplement the textbook with bespoke materials, then
they need to be clear how this will fit with the overall curriculum objec-
tives. In an ideal world, teachers will have the time, the resources and the
talent to create materials that are flexible and responsive to the particular
interests of the learners. But this material has to fit with the published
materials being used to meet the overall vocabulary targets of the cur-
riculum. If the teacher does not do this, then learners will fall short of
the levels of knowledge and ability which other learners will have. Not all
teachers can undertake such materials creation, and they should be able to
access teaching material which clearly contains the vocabulary they need.
There is a lot here. It says a lot about the place of vocabulary planning in most
curriculums that much, even most, of this will rarely be considered. In the
absence of systematic vocabulary planning and delivery, however, the delivery
of the whole curriculum is compromised and risks failure.
Conclusion
This chapter has argued that the organisation of the vocabulary content of an
effective foreign language curriculum should follow the principles of regular-
ity, manageability and periodicity. The introduction of the new words needed
to achieve the goal of learning needs to fall into regular and relatively small
numbers spread across the time available for teaching. Extended periods with
no new vocabulary is likely to place an unattainable burden on the learner later
in the learning process. The curriculum also needs to manage the business of
recycling these words to aid learning.
The systematic introduction of words for learning is usually the province of
a well-organised textbook which should:
• Ensure the new words are presented appropriately so the form can be
noticed
• Ensure there is link of form to meaning
• Recycle these new forms and meanings in the kind of structure and forms
which may also be the focus of the modules and topics being taught
• Provide rich and varied thematic contexts and appropriately challenging
tasks in which to encounter and practise the vocabulary.
Input at a rate of about 10–12 words per classroom hour is a feature of success-
ful textbook which also, at elementary level, demonstrate a balance of about
half frequent and structural vocabulary and half content vocabulary elected
from a wide range of themes and topics.
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9 Vocabulary beyond
the textbook
Introduction
This chapter will consider the contribution that the teacher can bring to the
classroom in learning the vocabulary of a foreign language. The teacher’s role
is often limited to
• Recycling the vocabulary of the textbook

• Modelling this orally.
While this is useful, the textbook rarely contains the volume and range of
vocabulary needed for mastery of a language. The task of the teacher should
include, therefore, additional vocabulary building activities. These should
include:
• Adding vocabulary for learning through their own classroom language

• Organising the use of additional formal material to help input and retain
new vocabulary.
The extra difficulties of learning from oral input are raised, and the use of a
vocabulary notebook is recommended. The benefits of adding regular vocab-
ulary testing and monitoring are explained. Mechanisms for analysing the
vocabulary of the textbook and extra materials through vocabulary profiles are
explained.
The language of the teacher

In the previous chapter we commented that the textbook is often the principal,
if not the only, source of new vocabulary for learners. We are not alone in sug-
gesting this, Häcker (2008) suggests that for UK learners of foreign languages
this may be the case for the majority of learners. This does not have to be true,
of course, because words do not have to come exclusively from the textbook.
The classroom usually contains a teacher and the teacher can, at least in the-
ory, do a lot to add to the vocabulary environment the classroom contains. We
DOI: 10.4324/9781003278771-9
Vocabulary beyond the textbook 159
have suggested in theory because in practice we do not seem to have very many
studies to assess what teachers say and how much this contributes to vocabu-
lary learning. This is probably because this kind of data is hard to collect. You
have to record whole lessons and transcribe them to assess the words being
used. In the UK, of course, it is also because of the way vocabulary in learning
has been sidelined for so long and continues to be sidelined. In the UK, the lit-
erature and teacher training focusses, rather, on the use of the foreign language
as the language of instruction (in terms of how much of the lesson is conducted
in the target language) and getting learners to use this language also (for exam-
ple, Christie 2016). These practices are not so obviously linked to vocabulary
goals, and the focus is not really on how many words the teacher is inputting,
nor which ones they are. Remember, too, there is a very strong steer from the
English inspectorate to guide teaching away from the business of addressing
vocabulary at all (Wardle 2021).
However, we do have some studies which investigate how the language of
the teacher can impact vocabulary learning. Tang and Nesi (2003) is one such
study which reaches rather unpromising conclusions. This reports an analysis
of English language classes in two schools in Hong Kong and mainland China.
The intention was to see whether a lexically rich learning environment was
provided by the teacher in the classroom. A lexically rich environment would
provide learners with lots of infrequent and unfamiliar words which would be
available for learning. Tang and Nesi argue that a necessary part of language
progress is to teach large numbers of these infrequent words and to grow a large
vocabulary as a requirement of learning for communicative proficiency. They
observed that the teacher in mainland China delivered content which was tied
very precisely to the textbook being used. The teacher tended to recycle the
words of the textbook for learning and missed the opportunity to extend their
learners’ vocabulary by introducing more words. The teacher in Hong Kong
spent less time explicitly teaching words but the oral language of the class-
room departed rather more from the textbook content. They speculate that the
Hong Kong classroom provided better conditions for the incidental acquisition
of vocabulary, and they report more successful learning in Hong Kong. None-
theless, their impression from both of these studies was that teachers, often,
stick close to the textbook so the textbook remains the principal source for the
new foreign language lexicon. The teachers did not make a deliberate and seri-
ous effort to grow their learners’ vocabulary through their own input.
The idea that classroom interaction, by itself, can provide a hugely rich lexi-
cal environment may be flawed, however, as Meara et al. (1997) found. The
classroom language of ten teachers of ESL immersion courses in Canada was
analysed to investigate the frequency of the words used. The results suggested
that in many ways the teachers were very consistent in the language they used.
In using English for the management of the class and the explanation of the
textbook, they appeared to use a lot of simplification. They structured their
language to make it understandable to the learners. They did not seem to use
their language for helping their learners acquire vocabulary. On average 85% of
160 Vocabulary beyond the textbook
teachers’ utterances belonged to the most common 1000 words in English, and
97% fell within the most frequent 2500 words. Only 3% were outside the first
2500 most common words and were therefore regarded as unusual and could,
therefore, provide new vocabulary for learning. The point is that learners
probably cannot learn lots of vocabulary from comprehensible input because,
in order for this language to be comprehensible, almost everything must be
known. Where teachers have adjusted their language to be understood, it
appears that there is very little vocabulary that is unusual and that might help
the learners grow a big vocabulary. Horst (2010) draws similar conclusions and
found little evidence of vocabulary learning from this source of input. It is no
wonder, then that she reflects that the contribution of teacher talk to lexical
acquisition is negligible.
While the contribution of this input to learning new vocabulary may not
appear to be all that was hoped, there are other benefits to be had from this
approach. The aural presentation of words written in the textbook is not always
bad. One of the things the teacher can do with repetition of words from the
textbook is model the aural form of words. The pronunciation of words may
not be apparent from the written form and may not be regularly accessible
in any other way. In languages where writing is logographic there is no way
of working out the pronunciation of a word from its written form. Even with
alphabetic writing systems, the written form in some languages, like English,
may mislead as much as it helps. How should an English learner who knows
enough and through be expected to pronounce thorough? Even in French, a less
opaque language, learners may be surprised when they hear the pronunciation
of the past participle eu which does not resemble peu, and instead sounds like
pu, and equally confused by the distinction between the pronunciation of fier
as an adjective as opposed to a verb in two wholly separate word families. The
limitations in aural input for most learners may help explain the observation
on the structure of their lexicons where the knowledge of the written form of
words generally exceeds knowledge of the aural form (Milton and Hopkins
2006). Studies suggest that increasing learners’ knowledge of the aural form
of words can help improve aural skills in the foreign language (for example,
Masrai 2021; Woore et al. 2018) and may even facilitate vocabulary reten-
tion. Repeating words from the textbook orally will also help learning by mak-
ing them noticeable and by beginning the process of repetition and recycling
that will help retention and recall. While a principal focus of teaching and the
curriculum should be to grow the size of the lexicon, and it is this that Horst
(2010) is referring to, it is not the only goal; enhancing depth and promoting
fluency are also goals.
Notwithstanding these other benefits, there is reason for thinking that if
the teacher does not also attempt to promote vocabulary growth, then this is
an opportunity lost. The study by Donzelli (2007), already referred to in this
book, suggests that good teachers can and do adjust their language in the class-
room to add substantially to the vocabulary of the textbook. Donzelli examined
the teacher’s language in 55 successive classes in a first year EFL course for
1400
1200
total vocabulary exposure
1000
800
600
400
200
0
class 1
class 4
class 7
class 10
class 13
class 16
class 19
class 22
class 25
class 28
class 31
class 34
class 37
class 40
class 43
class 46
class 49
class 52
class 55
successive classes
Figure 9.1 Teacher and textbook vocabulary input in Donzelli (2007)
9-year-old learners in Italy and compared the language of the textbook with
that of the teacher. Figure 8.1 has already shown that this teacher’s control
of her vocabulary showed impressive regularity and manageability. New words
were introduced regularly and in modest amounts in class after class after class.
Equally impressive is that in doing this the teacher managed the process of add-
ing vocabulary to the textbook’s input. This is shown in Figure 9.1.
In Figure 9.1 the lower line summarises the input from the textbook spread
across its five units calculated in word types. The upper line summarises the
total vocabulary input, class by class, and shows that in almost every class the
teacher added to the vocabulary of the textbook. The textbook contained a total
of 583 word types, and the teacher talk added a further 739, more than dou-
bling the total vocabulary input of the course. Tests of uptake confirmed that
much of this was learned with an average of 8.4 word types learned per hour.
An analysis of Donzelli’s results indicate that although she is measuring types
and not lemmas, this result reflects a genuinely wide vocabulary input, and
is not just an artefact of counting inflected forms multiple times. Her results
compare favourably with uptake in the best learning environments reported in
Chapter 5.
Issues in teacher talk

The Donzelli study is very encouraging from the point of view of teaching vocab-
ulary since it suggests that successful vocabulary learning may not need to be
tied completely to the vagaries of any individual textbook. Teachers have the
opportunity to add to the textbook by exploring the word families presented in
the textbook or by introducing wholly new words to add to learning. Teacher talk
may help deal with issues where the textbook appears under-loaded both in terms
of overall vocabulary loading and also where input is skewed to only the most
frequent vocabulary. It may at least help students understand the use of words
in context, in their different forms or in their related word forms. Teachers have
the opportunity, it seems, to make more of the classroom time available to them
to enhance the learning of an essential element of the language. If the teacher
can understand the loading of the textbook, and there are techniques for analys-
ing the vocabulary loading of these texts, then a good teacher should be given
the opportunity to add intelligently and systematically to the textbook. Extra
vocabulary loading of this kind need not, it seems, overload the learner. Some
of the techniques for making this kind of analysis are discussed in Chapter 10.
There are some issues which the oral presentation of new vocabulary in class
by the teacher will raise. One of these is the transience of the spoken word. If
a new word is presented on a page of the textbook in writing, then it can be
returned to multiple times if needed. Missing a class, or even a momentary
lapse in concentration, need not be a problem here. The learner can return to
the new word and learn it later. Or they can return to it and check the spelling
or the meaning. The spoken word, however, is fleeting and ephemeral. Once
spoken, it is gone. If the learner misses it for some reason it is usually impossible
to return to it. Words in spoken form may be harder than words in written form
even to notice so that learning can begin. Speech does not have the conven-
tion of marking, as in writing, the boundaries between words with a space.
Identifying the new word and its form is likely to be much harder unless the
teacher teaches this so it becomes clear. If a new word is not deliberately pre-
sented for noticing, then even its existence may not be realised. People listen
for meaning, and if the meaning is clear then the words that make up the mean-
ing need not be exactly recalled. In presenting words this way, then this adds
an extra dimension to teaching; it is the need to make sure the presentation of
new vocabulary happens in a way where they can be noticed and then learned.
There is an additional issue in presenting words for learning through teacher
talk which is that the written form of the word is unlikely to be fully appreci-
ated unless this form is taught also. In the last section we pointed out that it
cannot be assumed that if a word is known in written form then its phonologi-
cal form will also be known, and the reverse is also true. In many languages
it may be extremely difficult to correctly work out the spelling of a new word
unless it is explicitly made available for learning in some way. The practices of
the teacher in Donzelli’s study are not completely clear but it appears that new
words presented in spoken form were presented and repeated as written items
also even where this created a pause in the flow of teaching. It appears too
that the written forms were presented alongside the spoken forms, often with a
translation. Using a section of the whiteboard or blackboard in class to record
new words which occur orally is a practice which is often used.
The conclusion to be drawn from this discussion is that where the curricu-
lum provides vocabulary size targets, and any good curriculum really should do
this, then the teacher has the capacity to help meet these. Where the textbook
is lacking in the necessary volumes, the teacher can make up the difference at
least in terms of the number of words learners are being taught. It should be an
issue of good practice, however, that teachers routinely add to the lexis of the
textbook since growing learners’ vocabulary size will add to proficiency more
generally.
What does this mean for curriculum design and delivery?

At the level of the curriculum
• This reinforces the need for a good model and a clear and appropriate
set of vocabulary goals. Without these the teacher, in a real sense, is
working in the dark and will struggle to deliver appropriate vocabulary
content.
For the teacher

• Armed with a good curriculum description of the vocabulary to be taught
and learned, the teacher can fill in gaps left by the textbook if not com-
plete or add appropriately to the model of vocabulary knowledge needed
for the CEFR goal. But, probably, anything the teacher can do to add to
vocabulary size will be a useful thing. As a friend and colleague, David
Malvern, once observed to us, ‘if teachers are ever in doubt about what to
do in class, they can’t go wrong in teaching more vocabulary.’
• With all new vocabulary, the teacher has an essential role in delivering the
curriculum which they need to understand. Their role is crucial in ensur-
ing new word forms are noticed by the learners. Without being noticed,
new vocabulary will not be learned.
• They can ensure the new word is modelled aurally as well as in written
form.
• They can begin the process of providing examples of the use of new
vocabulary.
• They can begin to get learners more actively engaged in the processes of
learning vocabulary. This is the subject of the next section.
Vocabulary notebooks
A feature of this chapter and the previous one is that while teaching from the
textbook and in the classroom can present the words selected for learning, and
while it can sequence them into regular and manageable amounts to aid the
learning process, these processes themselves will not lead inevitably to learn-
ing. However, we have only peripherally touched on what the teacher can do
to aid the learning process. Repetition, if not the right kind of repetition, will
not optimally do this job. And while teaching vocabulary learning techniques
like the keyword method might be helpful, teaching a whole lexicon using these
techniques is probably inappropriate. It would become repetitive, boring and
highly time-consuming. Our observation is that young learners, and even older
language learners, are unaware or sometimes ill-informed about the processes
and strategies that can optimise learning. This is noted in the literature, and
Vela and Rushidi (2016) reflect that it is a feature of the current state of edu-
cation that learners do not know how to learn. One thing learners can do
but that teachers only sometimes promote, it seems, is to keep a vocabulary
notebook. Research shows that this can be effective. Vela’s and Rushidi’s study
of the effect on vocabulary uptake when using a vocabulary notebook is able
to repeat the findings of previous studies which find the practice beneficial. In
Vela’s and Rushidi’s study, their tests suggested that a treatment group which
used a vocabulary notebook retained vocabulary at double the rate of a control
group which did not. They report that students were generally positive about
the practice and thought it useful. They note also, however, that some teacher
intervention would likely be necessary to make best use of this technique. Only
15% of students reported that they would continue with the technique inde-
pendently; the rest would only do so if it were required and checked by the
teacher. The point to take away from this, then, is that the teacher cannot
leave vocabulary learning to the learner and needs to promote and manage
activities like keeping a vocabulary notebook as part of the routine of deliver-
ing the curriculum in class. Walters and Bozkurt (2009) noted similar findings
in the value of vocabulary notebooks but caution that they do not necessarily
positively impact learner autonomy.
The days when a vocabulary notebook necessarily referred to a pencil and
paper activity, and where new words and their translations would be logged
in a little book, are long gone. In EFL publishing, the flagship courses from
the major publishers routinely include considerable extension materials for the
textbook. There are workbooks, websites, games and apps, and usually these
include an app or activity that includes noting down new words and fulfilling
the role that the vocabulary notebook once did, potentially more effectively
(Hirschel and Fritz 2013). This is not to disparage the paper notebook nor the
physical act of writing vocabulary down, which will help learning and should be
encouraged. In good materials this kind of activity provides a systematic devel-
opment of word learning to follow on from word presentation and practice in
the classroom. Such activities can contribute significantly to the quantity and
range of language use which is required for good learning. A feature of these is
that they link systematically to the progress of learning materials in the text-
book itself, including vocabulary. Ideally, learners of other modern languages
should have access to the same range and quality of materials. It is the teacher’s
task to organise this kind of extension work. Even if these materials are missing
from the teacher’s textbook, there are plenty of free-standing apps that can be
added to almost any programme of language study and which can help learners
develop the vocabulary presented in class. The use of this kind of development
materials should be made plain in any well-structured vocabulary curriculum.
Putting this into practice is not so much an issue directly for the curriculum
itself, but it is an essential part of the exploitation of a good vocabulary curricu-
lum. A good curriculum should probably provide a strong steer that this kind of
activity is practice that will aid learning. The teacher must:
• Select an appropriate format for the activity, probably a suitable vocabu-

lary notebook app.
• Routinise the format use with learners. Learners probably will not know
how to do this best, or when to do it, or may simply be reluctant to do it
at all if not prompted. But where new words are introduced then writ-
ing them down in a notebook, recording the meaning or a translation,
noting pronunciation and noting examples of use will aid retention. It is
something that can usefully be done at the end of a lesson or a piece of
homework.
• Follow up on the use of a vocabulary notebook app with checks and tests.
Some apps that we have used provide this kind of check activity which can
be made low stakes and unthreatening. But if the goal is to learn vocabu-
lary, then this kind of activity has to be taken seriously by both teachers
and learners.
Vocabulary supplementary materials

In the previous section, we have tended to characterise vocabulary learn-
ing in terms of the things the textbook can do in the classroom which lead
to effective learning and how the teacher should manage this material to
facilitate learning. We have argued that it should be an expectation that the
teacher will supplement the vocabulary in the textbook in order to promote
vocabulary size. The faster the learners can grow their foreign language lexi-
con, then the faster they are likely to make language progress generally. The
previous section has also pointed out that well-structured textbook materials,
or any well-constructed language course, will include a range of additional
materials, and these materials are not restricted to use in the classroom.
Like vocabulary notebooks, there are usually workbooks, extensive reading
and simplified reading materials, vocabulary lists, apps and games which are
intended for the user to use after class. As Thornbury (2000) points out,
in the EFL world there is a huge range of free-standing extension materials
to support and supplement learning, even if the textbook does not provide
this. Such materials also exist for French, such as the CEFR-aligned CLE-
International series (see Miquel 2017). These things are not provided in a
vague hope that eccentrically diligent learners may use them; they are pro-
vided with the expectation that the teacher will direct and manage their use
by learners. These activities are not simply providing a range of language
practice and use needed for learning but also extend the time available for
learning. Remember, time spent in learning is a crucial factor in how much
learning takes place.
Vocabulary exemplification, traditionally, has been seen as something that can
very usefully be treated this way. It lends itself to something that can be done
outside the classroom and, because it is something that every learner will need
to do, it is easy to take a back seat in the classroom. It has the advantage that,
because the task appears straightforward, learners will know exactly what to do.
A list of new foreign language words and their translations are provided, and the
task is to memorise these. The fact that learners in UK school contexts do not do
so is reflective of the motivational crisis associated with current course and cur-
riculum configurations and does not mean to say that such an approach is some-
how impossible or unrealistic. This is the idea underlying the Thimann (1959)
French vocabulary materials which were designed to fit alongside classroom and
other textbook materials in the UK in an earlier language learning regime. This
has 2250 entries, about 700 or 800 words per year, divided into the thematic
units which could be regularly set for homework over 3 years and were intended
to extend and supplement the often frequent and structural vocabulary content
which would be covered in class. This kind of volume of vocabulary learning was
considered by Thimann to be slight and easily within the abilities of any relatively
able learner and is typical of the age he worked in. In Scholfield’s terms (1991),
he is proposing something that is regular and manageable by way of vocabulary
input. He is not proposing a complete lexicon for O level; we think it is about
half of what the syllabus intended to cover (Milton 2011). It is noteworthy, how-
ever, that this supplementary material is, by itself, much larger, perhaps double,
the entire vocabulary content intended for the GCSE in the 2021 DfE proposals
(DfE 2021). Evidence from learners who studied for O level suggest that this type
of approach can be very successful and that maybe 50% of this material could
typically be learned (Milton 2008). Provided learners are presented appropriately
with vocabulary for learning, therefore, teaching part of the vocabulary burden
of the curriculum this way is highly achievable. There is one word of warning.
Thimann, and he is we think typical of his time, saw little reason for explaining
how learners should set about the task of learning this material. He assumed
they would know this or set about the task intuitively. However, not all learners
find this kind of approach so easily accessible. As the example of earlier Keyword
approaches show, however, a little time spent explaining how memory can be
helped for this kind of task might well make this more accessible for a greater
number of learners.
Well-organised extension materials for use outside class can do more than
teach the form and meaning link. EFL workbooks typically recycle recently
learned words in the structures and in the other types of practice the textbook
contains. While the most obvious focus of such an activity is to provide prac-
tice in structure and language use, this recycling of vocabulary within these
structures also has an important function in the development of the lexicon.
Attempting to introduce new vocabulary like this, alongside the introduction
of new grammar forms, would probably not work well, but we have noted previ-
ously the ideas of Ellis (1994a, 1994b) and Hilton (2019) in the way vocabulary
mastery seems to occur. Multiple repetitions and use of words in context, such
as the context of the structures being learned, leads to a familiarity with form
and structure which gives the kind of automaticity associated with fluent com-
munication. These activities will probably not provide all of the exposure that
is needed for this, but it is an important element of that process and one that a
good curriculum should organise and make plain and one that teachers should
action. This repetition of previously introduced material is part of the periodic-
ity which Scholfield’s criteria suggest is important. Part of this process might
also include progress checking and testing. Vocabulary testing is something that
no longer seems to have much of a place in the learning process but, if properly
used, it can be informative to learners and teachers alike and even motivating.
It is probably a necessary part of the process of managing learning expectations.
How does this information translate into the creation

and delivery of an effective vocabulary curriculum?
• Part of the curriculum process is to make sure that the right kind of exten-
sion materials, beyond the textbook, actually exist. An effective vocab-
ulary curriculum is only effective if it can be delivered; if there are no
appropriate materials, this is a problem that will need to be addressed. We
have noted earlier that this is probably easier in EFL where there seems to
be an abundance of materials available to choose from. It may not so easy
in, say, French in the UK where graded readers, vocabulary apps and other
extension materials are much harder to obtain. The materials have to be
good and functional or learning is compromised. The curriculum has to
be capable of delivery and if there are no adequate materials for this, then
teaching is in trouble before it has even started.
• The curriculum has to be clear about what can be delivered in the time
available in class and what, therefore, has to be done outside.
• The curriculum creation process may have to monitor and direct the crea-
tion of materials prior to its delivery.
At the level of teaching materials

• In selecting materials for teaching, there has to be fit with textbook and
curriculum or elements of the vocabulary curriculum will be missed and
the progress of learning damaged.
For the teacher

• The teacher will have to direct and control the use of extension materi-
als where they form an essential part of curriculum delivery. Learners will
need to know exactly what to do to supplement classroom delivery, and
this has to be part of organised teaching.
• The teacher will have to monitor the use of these materials to check they
are being used properly and check that learning from them is what is
expected.
• The teacher may want to create materials to address topics of interest to
learners or to extend classroom delivery. This will have to be done in line
with the vocabulary curriculum.
Management of learning expectations

One element of vocabulary learning which is rarely considered in any language
curriculum is that of testing and the management of learner expectations. We
have devoted much space in this book to emphasising the need for the setting
of vocabulary targets appropriate to the communicative goals of the scheme
of study. We have pointed out the usefulness of interim goals. The idea should
be that goals allow the creation of a plan of work to achieve those goals, and
they provide a measure by which it can be seen whether these goals are being
achieved. The plan of language delivery can be adjusted in the light of this. For
learners of a modern language, it is essential to understand the goals and to
understand what the achievement of these goals means. Learners, in our expe-
rience, have little idea of what it takes to become communicative in a foreign
language, and this should not be a surprise.
Curriculums rarely define their vocabulary content in terms of size, and teach-
ers often have little idea of how much vocabulary they need to teach for learners
to attain their communicative goals. How, then, can learners have any idea of
what is needed, and whether they are on target to pass their exams? This means,
however, that some, or many learners, may have unreasonable expectations of
what their learning should achieve. Learners can easily become frustrated and
demotivated when learning fails to turn, quickly and easily, into communication.
The S-curve in Figure 3.4, which shows the relationship between vocabulary size
and communication, needs to be better understood by all concerned. It leads to
the type of gross error typified by England’s National Centre for Excellence in
Language Pedagogy which asserts that ‘research shows knowing about 1700 of
the most frequent 2000 means you can probably understand between 72%–92%
of what you see or hear’ (NCELP 2022) when research shows nothing of the sort.
The gap between comprehension and coverage is illustrated in Figure 9.2. The
gap between the solid and dashed lines shows that for most learners in school,
with knowledge below about 2000 words, there is likely to be almost no com-
prehension of anything but the most limited and contrived language. Compre-
hension is likely to fall well below coverage figures until a large vocabulary is
acquired. Only beyond the 5000 word level, or thereabouts, do coverage and
comprehension begin to match at near to 100%.
An understanding of how the growth of a lexicon works should help man-
age these expectations. A programme of testing, if it is quick and easy and
coverage/comprehension 100
80
60
40
20
0
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000
coverage comprehension
Figure 9.2 The vocabulary expectation gap between coverage and comprehension
low stakes, should allow both learners and teachers alike to see progress where
this is occurring and to take confidence when learning can be seen to be on
track. The ability to input vocabulary checks into a vocabulary notebook app
and regularly check on knowledge is an important step in doing this. Where
this is done informally in the context of an app used privately, rather than a
formal high stakes test, then testing becomes a tool to aid learning. Learners
rarely understand the progress that they are making at the outset of learning.
The critical mass of vocabulary, which is needed before general, genuine com-
munication becomes a realistic possibility, is rarely appreciated. Most learners
recognise, however, that the highly rehearsed performances in exam-driven
scenarios, so much a feature of language learning in the UK, is not genuine
communication.
Chapter 5 makes it clear that if the goal of learning is to achieve communica-
tive levels of performance in the foreign language then several thousand words
are a minimal requirement with a spread across the frequency bands to allow
communication on a variety of relevant topics. There are well-constructed
vocabulary size tests, however, which make it possible for learners to under-
stand the progress they are making toward overall vocabulary goals. It is even
possible for teachers and learners to understand the frequency distribution of
the words that are known by learning, in addition to obtaining, an estimate of
the number of words known. The use of these tests should feature much more
prominently in the language teaching and learning process than currently they
do. A good curriculum should make it clear that tests of this kind should be
used in association with the interim and final vocabulary size goals which the
curriculum sets.
Meara and Milton (2003) put such a test into the public domain in Eng-
lish, and there are versions of this which now exist in a range of foreign lan-
guage including French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic and Greek. We have been
experimenting with a version of this in German, although the use of compound
nouns in German means that learners’ receptive knowledge may exceed their
productive knowledge more so than in other languages. These tests are fre-
quently used in vocabulary research but, perhaps are not as widely used in
teaching and learning as they could or should be. The Meara and Milton
(2003) X_Lex range of tests are Yes/No tests of passive receptive vocabulary
knowledge, usually in written form. These tests make an estimate of a learner’s
recognition knowledge of words within the range of the most frequent 5000
lemmatised words in the language being tested. They will not give a complete
picture of vocabulary size, therefore. The way languages are learned with word
knowledge spread across the frequency bands means there is a ceiling effect,
and the greater the learner’s knowledge then the greater the ceiling effect.
Nonetheless, these give an excellent, quick and effective characterisation of
a learner’s vocabulary size providing scores which can be linked to the CEFR
bands and to internationally recognised exams (as in Table 5.2). No single test
can provide a complete characterisation of every aspect of vocabulary knowl-
edge, and researchers often remind each other that multiple tests are needed
for this (for example, Nation 2007).
A Yes/No test typically presents words for testing, one at a time. In the exam-
ple in Figure 9.3, the word cracher, in the blue window at the centre, is the
test word. If the testee knows the word then the happy face is clicked; if they
do not know the word then the unhappy face is clicked, and a new test word
appears. The test makes a principled sample of words across the most frequent
Figure 9.3 Test word presentation in Meara and Milton’s (2003) X_Lex test
5000 words, 20 words from each 1000 word frequency band. The number of
Yes responses allows a preliminary estimate of knowledge out of the 5000 words
to be made.
There is an issue with all self-reporting tests, and this is one that there is
often little idea of how accurate, sometimes how truthful, the learner is being
in providing their responses. If a learner wants to maximise the score they
can answer Yes to all the words. This test, therefore, includes 20 false words
which are designed to look and sound like real words. The learner’s responses
should be No to these words since words they do not exist, will never have been
encountered and cannot be known. The responses to these false words allow
an adjusted estimate of size to be made. In software versions of the test, both
the preliminary estimate and the adjusted estimate are provided as feedback
to the test taker, and this is shown in Figure 9.4. Tests constructed this way
allow parallel forms of the test to be easily constructed and which, when well-
constructed, comparably perform high (David 2008).
In this example, this is a score produced by someone who took O level in
1971, CEFR B1, and has not used French communicatively since. The adjusted
score of about 2250 is typical of such learners and is much higher than the
scores of current students taking the equivalent exam. The results screen also
shows the test taker’s vocabulary profile. The downward slope from left to right
is clearly visible. The kink showing greater tested knowledge in the 5000 band
than in the 4000 band is noted elsewhere in the literature (for example, Milton
2006). In other studies (for example, Aizawa 2006) this shows the frequency
profile is flattening beyond the higher frequency bands. A feature of successful
Figure 9.4 Score reporting in X_Lex

learners generally is the balance of frequent and infrequent volumes of vocabu-
lary knowledge which allows for independent communication. The sixth col-
umn, on the right hand side, indicates the proportion of Yes responses to false
words, called false alarms, and explains why the adjusted score is smaller than
the preliminary, unadjusted score. In research studies, the false alarm rate is
used to exclude unreliable data, test results where the rate of apparent guess-
work suggests that the test taker is not trying to represent their knowledge
accurately. Anything over a 20% false alarm rate is generally considered unreli-
able (for example, David 2008; Richards et al. 2008). A high false alarm rate
may occur, however, where learners are very low level, and these learners may
be genuinely uncertain whether they know a word or not. False alarms may be
a product of ignorance, rather than guesswork, in these cases. The outcome
will be, probably accurately, a low score. A flat vocabulary profile and high
rate of false alarms, however, usually reflects a learner who is not using the test
properly. The virtue of using such a test for information and guidance is that
where this occurs, the learners can simply take the test again to form a better
judgement of their level and knowledge.
There are other vocabulary size tests and other test formats, and these can
work well too. However, it is these tests which have been used in research to
establish the kind of vocabulary sizes which link to CEFR levels and to perfor-
mance in formal exams as discussed in Chapter 5. These tests are also those used
to provide normative figures for knowledge and progress for MFL in the UK (for
example, Milton 2006; David 2008). They are also the tests which have been to
used to establish normative figures for vocabulary growth (for example Vassiliu
2001; Garnier 2014). They are a useful means for learners and teacher to estab-
lish knowledge and progress in relation to these figures. What they provide are
estimates of vocabulary knowledge, however, and the learner’s foreign language
lexicon is hard to characterise easily. Nonetheless, research establishes that they
are quick and easy to administer and give reliable results (David 2008). The com-
puterised forms of the test have the virtue too of being self-marking.

• The curriculum should set clear and measurable targets for input and
uptake so that tests can be created to assess whether these goals, both
interim and final, are achieved.
• The curriculum should be clear that learning is to be routinely followed up
and checked. Even in an informal way, both learners and teachers need to
know whether they are on target to meet curriculum goals or not so teach-
ing can be adjusted to make up for any shortfall.
• The curriculum should be clear also that checking uptake from teaching or
textbook materials is a formal part of delivery. Vocabulary is an important
part of successful language learning that to diminish, or avoid it, as in the
GCSE exams described in Chapter 7, is a mistake that leads to misplaced
goals in learning and to poor progress.
At the level of the textbook
• The textbook should produce complete lists of words in their materials
which can form the basis of simple tests so learners can check uptake and
progress. These should be part of good materials, but as both Tschichold
(2012) and Milton and Hopwood (2021) note, this is not routinely done,
and glossaries provided with teaching materials are often inaccurate and
incomplete.
• Teaching materials should present, as a matter of routine, low stakes tests
which can allow users to effectively monitor their progress.
Understanding and measuring lexical input

A recurring theme of this chapter and the previous one is the need to under-
stand and, where appropriate, control the vocabulary input given to learners:
through the textbook, through extension materials and through teacher talk.
Teachers need to know the numbers and the frequency distribution of the
words they teach to ensure they present vocabulary input that learners can
effectively learn from. They need to know that their input is something like the
model presented in Figure 6.4 through Figure 6.9, which we have illustrated as
a series of leaves which successively add coverage of the target vocabulary. We
are conscious, in advocating this, that this requires a degree of professionalism
in the management of vocabulary learning which most teachers do not have,
which teacher training does not think to provide, and which is rarely found in
any curriculum.
How can a teacher or curriculum designer judge whether they are achieving
this gradual lexical layering? In papers like the Milton and Hopwood analysis
of the Studio textbook (2021) we use a programme that, in effect, measures
the lexical sophistication of a text, the proportion of infrequent words a text
contains. There are various ways of looking at this, but Tom Cobb’s Vocab-
profile (Cobb 2008) is a good one. It is easy to use and can analyse French as
well as English. Vocabprofile allows you to enter a text – whatever the teach-
ing materials are or song lyrics to listen to outside of class (see Chapter 10) –
and it provides a breakdown of the vocabulary this contains into its frequency
bands. In Table 9.1 we have used the programme to analyse the first few verses,
201 tokens, of the Marseillaise. For reasons of space, we have presented only the
first ten 1000 word frequency bands here, but the programme analyses up to
the 25,000 word frequency level.
The programme presents an analysis of the text which allows the number of
flemmas and lemmatised word types at each frequency band to be seen. It also
presents a cumulative total of word types for successive frequency bands so that
an idea of the coverage needed for comprehension can be seen. It also tells you
which words are in each band. Knowledge of the words in the most frequent
1000 words in this programme will give about 70% coverage of the Marseil-
laise although, as with many texts, understanding the words, understanding the
Table 9.1 Vocabprofile analysis of the Marseillaise
Freq. Level Flemmas (%) Types (%) Tokens (%) Cumul. Token (%)
K-1: 112 (58.0) 115 (57.21) 238 (70.8) 70.8

K-2: 16 (8.3) 17 (8.46) 18 (5.4) 76.2
K-3: 14 (7.3) 14 (6.97) 15 (4.5) 80.7
K-4: 5 (2.6) 5 (2.49) 7 (2.1) 82.8
K-5: 9 (4.7) 9 (4.48) 10 (3.0) 85.8
K-6: 5 (2.6) 5 (2.49) 11 (3.3) 89.1
K-7: 7 (3.6) 7 (3.48) 7 (2.1) 91.2
K-8: 4 (2.1) 4 (1.99) 4 (1.2) 92.4
K-9: 1 (0.5) 1 (0.50) 1 (0.3) 92.7
K-10: 3 (1.6) 3 (1.49) 3 (0.9) 93.6
meaning and understanding their significance are three quite distinct achieve-
ments. These words comprise only about 57% of the lemmatised words in the
text; structural words are likely to be repeated, remember. In La Marseillaise, such
structure words include à, le, de, que, ne, notre and so on. This shows, amongst
other things, just how important the less frequent words are in most authentic
texts. Even if a learner knew all the 10,000 most frequent words in the diction-
ary, in this case Lonsdale and LeBras (2009) this would be insufficient to reach
the 95% level of coverage which is thought to provide adequate comprehension,
even in the literal sense. The reader would lack key words such as étendard, mugir
and égorger, which are arguably key elements of the song’s imagery.
There are other programmes and websites that allow teachers to carry out
the same kind of analyses. The important thing from the point of view of teach-
ing vocabulary, and building up the volumes and the right kind of vocabu-
lary for an effective lexicon, is that teachers, materials writers and curriculum
designers make use of these kinds of analyses to make sure that what they
teach is as useful as it can be. As the next chapter will show, this type of analy-
sis allows the precise vocabulary content of individual learners and groups of
learners to be understood so that bespoke vocabulary tests, with content pre-
cisely drawn from exposure, can be made to better inform an understanding of
learner uptake and progress.
Curriculum designers can help learning progress

At the level of both the curriculum and the textbook
• Curriculum designers and materials writers have to be much more aware of
these techniques and use them both in designing content and in describing
the content for users. It seems incredible that, decades after these tech-
niques were devised, these things are almost never part of the design of
curriculums and materials.
• It is incredible, too, that textbooks never describe for the user how the
vocabulary content is spread across these bands. Its use should be an auto-
matic part of a professional textbook design.
For teachers
• The use of these materials should form part of teacher training and teach-
ing practice. Vocabulary is so important for language learning and progress
that there is no excuse for teachers operating in the dark about the loading
of their courses and the progress their learners are making.
• Teachers would be well advised to develop knowledge and understanding
in controlling vocabulary input and uptake. This ought to be a routine part
of effective teaching practice. It is part of the systematic delivery of the
vocabulary curriculum. An anything will do approach is not good enough.
For exam writers

• To those who work in vocabulary study it is a constant surprise that exam
writers and examination boards show so little interest in assessing the vocab-
ulary knowledge of learners. In an area where assessment of language knowl-
edge is often subjective, there is the constant concern that standards will vary
from year to year or will decline, without any systematic way of recognising or
measuring this. The assessment of vocabulary size is much more objective and
should allow much greater control of standards over time, as well as providing
important insight into a crucial area of language knowledge.
Conclusion
This chapter has attempted to bring into focus an area of teaching where much
more can be done to benefit vocabulary uptake. It has also explained how the
curriculum should put in place the mechanisms that allow all learners to bol-
ster their learning from teacher talk and from extension materials and to moni-
tor the process of learning.
Many teachers, it seems, work within the lexical framework of the textbook
they use even if they know little about it. But this can still be useful provided they
model the new vocabulary of the textbook orally and provide opportunities to
recycle, practice and embed this new vocabulary. However, they do not seem to
extend the vocabulary the books use, and that is a missed opportunity. Really
good teachers, as in Donzelli’s (2007) study, can add a lot more to the text-
book. The research shows that these materials can be organised into regular
and manageable amounts of input and that, with appropriate learning tech-
niques, substantial amounts of this material can be learned and retained. The
use of extension materials, if properly managed, can further contribute to this.
A good teacher, then, can help the process of vocabulary acquisition a lot.
Part of this process must be to aid noticing and learning of oral material, or
indeed of any vocabulary materials, and the regular use of a vocabulary notebook
will aid this process. The use of simple tests will help focus learning and provide
opportunities for re-encountering words and will help provide feedback on the
progress of learning and will also help the vocabulary learning process. Curricu-
lum designers will probably need to provide guidance not just about the number
of hours that can be reasonably required to deliver learning, but might also need
to think of some way in their design of giving guidance about how many words
can reasonably be delivered in a textbook, how many might reasonably be added
by the teacher and how many might be built into explicit out-of-class learning.
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10 Vocabulary learning
outside the classroom
Introduction
This chapter is intended to explain the benefits of using informal and inciden-
tal activities outside the classroom. These activities can include things like:
• Extensive reading
• Watching TV and films, maybe with subtitles
• Listening to songs
• Playing digital games or using a virtual world
• Using word lists
• Using language learning apps.
The gains from using these activities will be explained, and they can be sub-
stantial and varied. For growing vocabulary size it seems that adding a word
focus to the activity is necessary. For developing aspects of vocabulary in terms
of structure, vocabulary depth and, in particular, fluency in reading and speak-
ing, it appears that a vocabulary focus may not be necessary, just lots of engage-
ment with the activity.
Vocabulary learning beyond the teacher and textbook

For a lot of learners, the content of the classroom and textbook is the entirety
of the language learning experience, and that is a pity. There are so many more
language learning opportunities outside the classroom than historically there
used to be, and the good curriculum will want to take advantage of these. It
may need to take advantage of these if curriculum goals are high but classroom
time is short. It is part of plotting the route to the goal of learning which, usu-
ally, is some kind of communicative fluency. Learning outside the classroom can
additionally offer something that is almost impossible to build into the class-
room learning experience, and that is exposure and interaction with a large
range of authentic language material. If learners are to become fully communi-
cative then this means gaining the ability to handle the language of real users
of their foreign language, rather than the artificial language of practice and
DOI: 10.4324/9781003278771-10
Vocabulary learning outside the classroom 179
the classroom. There are lots of things learners can do outside the classroom,
and the kind of gains learners get have been assessed and measured. They can
listen to songs, they can read comic books, they can play in 3D virtual worlds
or on internet games, they can watch subtitled films and so on. These activities
can have a variety of uses and benefits which may also vary according to the
kind of learners using these activities. Whatever the kind of learner, however,
these activities can have the profound advantage of being the kind of thing the
learners may actually want to do. They can be enjoyable and motivating. Lan-
guage learning is not something that is done quickly. These extra hours spent in
informal learning activities have the effect of increasing the learning time, and
learners will more willingly increase this time if they are doing something they
enjoy. As Milton and Meara (1998) demonstrate, progress in language can be
as much a product of time spent learning as what that learning is.
We have research which investigates the kind of vocabulary gains which can
come from informal activities carried out outside of class and using a range of
informal media. This kind of learning in vocabulary research is often called
incidental learning, and in Chapter 4 we discussed the difficulties with the term
incidental. In this chapter it is probably useful to distinguish informal learning,
where there is a deliberate learning focus, and incidental learning, where learn-
ing is not focussed and may not be deliberate. Whether learning is focussed
and deliberate or not can govern whether learning can occur or what type of
learning occurs.
For example, there is a widely held belief that growing a large vocabulary
in any language can be dependent on reading a lot (for example, Bright and
McGregor 1970; Krashen 1989; McQuillan 2016). Where extensive reading
is carried out with the intention of understanding the story in, say, a novel,
then there may be little reason for learners to pay attention to unknown words
provided the overall meaning is clear. Where unknown words are not noticed,
they probably will not be learned, so academic studies investigating inciden-
tal vocabulary size growth often conclude this is ineffective (see, for example,
Horst et al. 1998). However, where the guidance to the learner is changed so
there is a clear incentive to notice new words and remember them, then the
outcome is usually very different. Studies (for example, Horst and Meara 1999;
Milton 2008; Garnier 2014; Masrai and Milton 2018) repeatedly show that
vocabulary size gains can be considerable with this focus, perhaps ten times the
rate of uptake found in the normal classroom. Not every aspect of vocabulary
learning works this way, however, and research is increasingly suggesting that
gains in vocabulary depth and fluency will develop from activities like exten-
sive reading, regardless of whether there is a word noticing and learning focus
(for example, Dang et al. (forthcoming); Zhang and Milton (2022).
There is an important role for learning activities outside the classroom, there-
fore, as part of a well-constructed curriculum. If the goal is to learn new words
and increase vocabulary size, and this must be a principal goal of most curriculums
since growing the lexicon is crucial to overall language progress, then the success-
ful curriculum must plan for informal learning activities with a clear vocabulary
180 Vocabulary learning outside the classroom
learning strategy. The curriculum will want to address this since classroom time
is usually insufficient for vocabulary building of the scale needed for good com-
munication. But it will want to include, too, a wide variety of activities which can
achieve a wider range of beneficial outcomes but where a focussed vocabulary
noticing and learning strategy is not necessary. These activities can introduce
learners to a range of authentic language. It is thought they can develop collo-
cational knowledge (Dang et al, forthcoming), word processing speed and auto-
maticity (Zhang and Milton 2022), and spelling (Pellicer-Sánchez 2016). These
activities help provide the kind of repetition and recycling that enables words
to become firmly established in the lexicon across a range of dimensions includ-
ing form, structural appreciation and meaning (Van Zeeland and Schmitt 2013).
These are activities, then, that are essential for the development of fluency in a
foreign language, and the curriculum should be clear in establishing that these
activities occur in the course of teaching.
Infant and primary age language learners

Much of this book has concerned itself with the organisation of vocabulary
teaching around the formal teaching of other aspects of language, such as lan-
guage structure, and the presumption here is that learners will be sufficiently
mature to handle teaching like this. Not all learners are like this, of course, and
a trend is for foreign language teaching to begin with much younger learners.
With these learners, many of the activities considered in this chapter may form
part of the formal process of teaching rather than something additional and out
of class. Alexiou (2021) considers this kind of teaching with these learners as
CLIL, as many of the programmes used are intended to develop concepts and
vocabulary in the L1 and L2. Foreign language learning, then, is part of a wider
process of educational development, and the language learning occurs where
the materials used are in the foreign language. Large quantities of foreign lan-
guage vocabulary can be acquired by these very young learners. But, of course,
these materials are designed as learning materials for this age group in the L1.
There are lots of visual cues, dual coding, repetition, predictability and a slow
pace of delivery. It should be no surprise, therefore, that L2 learners can learn
well from this material too.
Young viewers, under the age of 3, watching programmes such as Sesame
Street have been investigated, and it is not clear that children at this age do take
much vocabulary from unsupported TV viewing (Krcmar et al. 2007). However,
Alexiou, in a number of papers, has attempted to quantify both the potential
for vocabulary learning through the words available for acquisition and lexical
uptake from this kind of input in a slightly older age group of preschool learners.
Alexiou and Kokla (2018), for example, constructed a corpus of 243 episodes of
Peppa Pig and concluded there was ample vocabulary for learning. The corpus
contained large numbers of both frequent and infrequent vocabulary, a balance
that Milton (2011) suggests works well in introducing new vocabulary to learn-
ers. They concluded, too, that the corpus contained ample exposure to lexical
chunks and structures, with high repetition, and suggested that this should
support both vocabulary learning and language learning more generally. This
background may help to explain the results of Alexiou’s (2015) study of Peppa
Pig where young learners, aged about 5, who watched the episodes were able to
acquire approximately one third of the vocabulary they were exposed to without
any further instruction. Alexiou attributes this uptake to the content which con-
tains situations involving preschool experiences in a setting familiar to learners of
this age and where the meaning, at least to some degree, is clear from the action.
Her conclusions are replicated in further studies using Cailou (Alexiou et al.
2015), Dora the Explorer (Kokla 2016) and Charlie and Lola (Alexiou and Yfouli
2019), which also demonstrate that learning is not just of receptive knowledge
of words but can lead to production also. In these cases, in addition to measur-
able gains in vocabulary and phrase learning, the studies highlighted the positive
attitude of the learners to learning language through this mechanism. Alexiou is
not alone in drawing these conclusions. Robb et al. (2009) studied young learners
watching Baby Wordsworth and concluded it promoted the building of words, as
well as individual lexical items and fixed phrases.
Alexiou (2021) reviews the use of other media in studies of preschool age
learners and draws similar conclusions. Studies in the use of picture books, story
sacks and games in the foreign language are all thought to contribute to language
development generally and vocabulary learning in particular. The point to be
drawn is that for learning to occur in this very young age group, this does not
have to be really formal or even in classrooms. Learning a modern language can
be interesting or fun and using these kinds of resources outside of the classroom
can lead to learning of vocabulary. With these very young learners, the abun-
dance of context and repetition may even make the need for formal pedagogical
intervention unnecessary for words and even whole phrases to be learned. It is
not clear whether this is genuinely incidental. Alexiou (2021) argues that part
of the process of interacting with these media in young learners is to search for
words to learn, to identify words and phrases and attach them to use and mean-
ing. The use of these activities at this level may not, of themselves, promote
fluency, but remember what constitutes fluency in a 5-year-old is very different
from fluency in someone who is 25. Part of that difference is very differently sized
vocabularies, whether in the native or a foreign language. But this should not
detract from the conclusion that this sort of activity with very young learners
provides an excellent background in the foreign language knowledge for learn-
ers to have when beginning for formal foreign language learning later on and in
school. A vocabulary base derived from this kind of material is clearly an enor-
mous resource of language which can be used for later vocabulary learning.
Activities for growing vocabulary size

The creation of a formal foreign language curriculum will mostly be done
in the context of formal school education and, therefore, with learners older
than the preschool learners in the previous section. These learners are likely
to have learning goals which are couched in terms of things like the CEFR
hierarchy of ability. But, regardless of age or the specific goal of learning, a first
task for any programme of learning is to acquire the numbers of words which
are needed for comprehension and communication. It is here that informal
vocabulary learning can have an important effect. The use of time outside the
classroom for vocabulary learning is certainly not new. The idea of sending
learners home with bilingual word lists to learn has long been a part of foreign
language learning. However, it is only now becoming clear how other activities
can also promote learning new words specifically. For a long time it was difficult
to measure the incremental gains in the lexicon, but improved methodology
now makes this possible. Teachers and learners alike can, with the right tools,
make good use of informal activities and can test and see the kind of learning
gains that, usually in language, are hard to see.
Horst and Meara (1999) is an early example of how research methods have
adapted. They reflect in their study of learning from extensive reading that
many research studies in this area had reported very little vocabulary gain,
contrary to accepted wisdom and expectations. They speculate, therefore, that
the reason may have been a methodological one. In previous studies, the prior
knowledge of learners was not well defined; the nature of the input in these
studies was not sufficiently well defined either, and the testing methodology in
place to search for lexical gains was also not designed to reflect the nature of
the input. They, therefore, trialled a case study methodology where all of these
factors could be controlled better. An intermediate learner of Dutch was given
a Lucky Luke comic book to read once a week, and for 8 weeks, this was the
entirety of the language input the learner received. Reading the comic book
took, he reported, about an hour each time. The text contained about 6000
running words in all. A test was devised of 300 of the 615 lemmatised words
in the text that occurred only once. A pretest showed that the learner was
confident of knowing 82 of the 300 test words, leaving 218 of the test words
available for learning. The learner, in addition to reading the text once a week,
was tested once a week also. Each week the test revealed vocabulary gains
and more and more of the 300 test words were reported known. This effect
was particularly prominent at the outset of the intervention. After 8 weeks,
the number of known words had risen to 223, a learning rate of over 30 words
per hour spent on task when scaled up to reflect all the unknown words in
the text. This number is important because it suggests a rate of learning that
is about ten times greater than the 3–4 words normally observed in classroom
learning (Milton and Meara 1998) and even higher than the one word per hour
attributed to incidental acquisition from extensive reading (Horst et al. 1998).
Where previous studies had struggled to demonstrate uptake from reading, this
study, with its highly controlled method, is able to do this and is even able
to quantify those gains which appear very substantial. The Horst and Meara
study, however, is a case study of one, probably very able and motivated, indi-
vidual. Can the results gained in this study be replicated with other learners
and with other types of informal input?
Milton (2008) reports two further case studies of uptake from listening
to songs and from watching a film with subtitles using Horst’s and Meara’s
methodology, repeated use of song and film input with vocabulary tests on the
content. The song study, like Horst’s and Meara’s comic book study, resulted
in uptake of about 30 words per hour spent in the activity and rather more
in the earliest stages of the activity. Watching a film with subtitles resulted in
an uptake rate of about 16 words per contact hour. Uptake appeared to result
from the activity, rather than the tests, since untested words were learned at
the same rate as tested words. A translation test suggested the words learned
could be recalled productively from a translation prompt, and a delayed post-
test suggested retention long-term of much of this vocabulary. Milton notes the
way collocation and idiomatic knowledge seemed to result from these studies in
addition to simple word gains. Garnier’s (2014) case study of a low-level French
user also produced vocabulary gains, although lower than in Milton’s studies,
with the learner, she speculates, hampered by the learner’s lack of understand-
ing of the rules for inflection in French.
Pigada and Schmitt (2006) conducted a case study in which an adult learner
of French whose level of proficiency was ‘lower than the typical intermediate
French learner’ (p. 8). The testee read one graded reader per week over a num-
ber of weeks. They found that ‘relatively widespread vocabulary acquisition’
occurred, with a pick up rate of around one word per 1.5 words tested. They
add a caveat, though, that full mastery of each word rarely occurred although,
as in the Milton (2008) study, they report that depth of knowledge, for example
spelling or grammatical use such as the gender of nouns, could be gained along-
side knowledge of a new word’s form and meaning. Peters and Webb (2018)
studied a group of learners watching TV with subtitles and report high vocabu-
lary gains which were produced, they think, by learners deliberately target-
ing and practicing unknown words in the programme, even though this was
not part of the experiment design. There are many studies which repeat these
kinds of findings, including Arndt and Woore (2018) in relation to YouTube
videos and blogs and Fievez et al. (2021) in terms of a French Netflix series
with glossed captions. Nation (2016, p. 305) is so convinced of the value of an
extensive reading programme for informal learning outside of the classroom
that he determines it to be the ‘single most important change a teacher could
make to a language course.’ Montero Perez (2020) asserts that students who
have a decent vocabulary in the first place are best placed to gain from informal
activities of this nature, however, Milton (2008) suggests learners at any level
can benefit from these kinds of activity.
Michael Rodgers tells the story that when he was still a schoolboy he
would spend much of his free time watching films and other programmes on
TV. His mother warned him he would never learn anything from watching
TV. Subsequently, his career as an academic has been spent, at least in part,
demonstrating that his mother was wrong and that you can learn a lot from
watching TV. The studies reported in this section, and these have been much
repeated with very similar outcomes, have shown that Rodgers is right and that
learners can learn a lot of new vocabulary from watching films and other TV
programmes with subtitles, and you can learn a lot from other sources of input
like songs and comic books. However, the vocabulary learning and rates of
learning reported here appear to be the product of the vocabulary focus given
to the activity. Learners learn new words when they notice new words and try
to remember them. Something like the weekly vocabulary tests, which were
part of the research methodology in some of these studies, helped provide that
focus. Here, tests appear to be part of a very effective learning methodology.
Tests are not normally liked by learners; they tend to reveal that learners do
not know something. But in this method, the test is able to show learning. Each
successive week the scores usually go up, and that is encouraging. Learners are
unusually positive about the tests in this context. Milton (2008) investigated
whether the high rates of learning were the product of the way the test recycles
words for learning so that learners are learning from the test as well as from the
rest of the activity. It appears this is not the case, but the test merely produces
the vocabulary focus that makes the activity successful.
The informal activities described here are just the tip of the iceberg in terms
of the variety of activities that can be carried out in a foreign language. We have
studies of interactive gaming, watching YouTube, activity in a 3D virtual world,
extensive reading and related techniques, to suggest just a few more activi-
ties. There are also language learning apps which deliberately attempt to teach
foreign language ability such as Duolingo and Memrise. These are interesting in
this context because they include, maybe even focus, on the development of
vocabulary in the language being taught. In the context of matching overall
learning goals to vocabulary size and input, these can form a useful element
toward the goal of growing learners’ vocabulary size. Some of them can make
a very large contribution. Our use of Duolingo Greek, for example, suggests an
input of 2000 to 2500 words, in specified and predictable topic areas such as
food and travel and which ought to provide the basis of communicativeness in
these subject areas.
This section has focussed on the contribution these activities can make to
vocabulary size but they can include other benefits. The use of songs is a good
example of this. They provide a model of how the foreign language words sound,
which links with the written form. Fitting a lot of this kind of aural activity, and
the productive act of actually singing, into normal classroom time can be dif-
ficult, but this kind of activity can provide it in abundance outside of class. This
can fill a gap where there is insufficient time in the formal classroom for every
learner to speak the language extensively. Songs also, often, provide extensive
repetition in the form of choruses, and this is known to aid learning (Milton
2008). Songs appear to provide repetition of higher frequency vocabulary, in a
range of contexts, which is thought to aid the development across the dimen-
sions of vocabulary. Studies of song also note that whole phrases, sometimes
whole songs, are learned as a result of this activity, and this may add some very
useful qualities to the learning process. In learning a language where nouns
have gender, for example, what seems to happen is that not only is the noun
recalled, but so too will be the relevant form of the article provided, of course,
this occurs in the text. This kind of activity may be useful therefore for all sorts
of learning which might be classed as vocabulary depth: collocation, gender
and structure and form. Memorisation of whole texts in the foreign language as
a learning strategy is not something that will be found in any modern textbook
on language learning. However, studies of really good learners (for example,
Stevick 1989) report that this is what successful learners often do, and it is
very much a feature, however unintentional, of studies using song. Last, these
activities encourage the development of vocabulary from across the frequency
bands, the type of vocabulary knowledge which is needed for communication.
The use of informal activities of this kind is clearly a powerful tool for foreign
language teaching and learning. They seem to offer, to motivated learners and
where the tasks are compatible with the learners’ tastes, a route to significant
vocabulary growth and to creating a lexicon of a size that allows easy com-
munication. Milton (2011) even speculates that the use of this kind of activ-
ity is what allows learners who become really good and really fluent in their
foreign language to achieve their high levels of competence. He notes that the
textbooks and the classroom rarely contain the volumes of vocabulary needed
for very large lexicons. However, these learners regularly report they read and
annotate books in the foreign language, they learn songs, keep vocabulary note-
books and adopt a range of other similar activities which will lead to extensive
vocabulary growth. With a technique so powerful that is available outside the
classroom, and with time inside the classroom in short supply, it makes good
sense for the vocabulary curriculum to make use of these activities. It may need
to define the volumes and nature of vocabulary to be covered in class and the
vocabulary that can be learned outside class and then ensure that the means
for delivery are in place. Where teachers and learners want to create and use
their own materials, to reflect their individual tastes and interests, then the
kind of contribution, over and above the class and textbook, can be assessed
using techniques such as the Vocabprofile described in Chapter 9.
How can teachers and learners make best use

of this kind of activity?
• A first requirement is probably to choose, or allow learners to choose,
something they like. Learners are far more likely to put in the extra time
outside class if they are using songs or films they enjoy rather than things
they do not. If they enjoy the activity then, as Peters and Webb (2018) and
Zhang and Milton (2022) report, they may even add other learning around
the topic, even when not specifically tasked to do this.
• A second requirement for learning new words is to make sure there are
plenty of new words to learn. Graded readers are a really useful tool for
the learner but will probably be unsuitable for this task since the texts
will have been lexically controlled specifically to avoid too many unknown
words. For lower level learners, however, many or even most authentic
texts will contain words for learning although songs may be lightly loaded
(Romanko 2017). In studies such as Horst and Meara (1999), the learners
are pretested on the lexis of the text to check this and to provide a basis for
measuring learning gain. A resource such as Cobb’s (2008) tools for lexi-
cal analysis will reduce text, at least in English and French, to lemmatised
word lists.
• The meanings of new words will have to be made plain. In Horst’s and
Meara’s (1999) comic book study, they assumed most of the vocabulary
would be made clear in the pictures, and with words like pitchfork, this
proved to be the case. They did note, however, that adverbs, which are
harder to demonstrate in pictures, were learned less well than nouns,
which are much easier to illustrate. In Milton’s (2008) study of songs,
learners were given a copy of the lyrics in the target language with fairy
literal, line by line translations.
• Repeated exposure to the target text is a feature of many of the studies that
lead to successful vocabulary uptake (for example, Garnier 2014; Milton
2008; Horst and Meara 1999), although this does not seem to be a neces-
sary requirement for success (for example, Wang 2012; Masrai and Milton
2018). However, in studies that did involve repeated exposure, the num-
ber of repetitions of a word clearly associated with the likelihood of a word
being learned and retained (for example, Garnier 2014). We think the
repeated exposure allows other elements of word knowledge, the feeling
for gender and for collocation, for example, to emerge.
• There has to be a vocabulary focus in the activity. The learners have to
know and agree that the idea is to mine the text for new words to learn. In
Horst and Meara (1999) and Milton (2008) this is achieved by repeated
testing. Nothing motivates like success, and in these studies the subjects
liked being able to see vocabulary gains week on week. It encouraged them
to go back and look for more words to learn. But learners and teachers will
want to know when to stop and move on to a new activity, and a record
of learning gains can help identify when this might occur. But it is a truth,
too, that some activities, like singing songs you like, can bear much more
repetition than watching the same film over and over.
• If these activities form part of a principled and systematic process of grow-
ing the lexical to fit with curriculum goals, then understanding the con-
tribution to vocabulary input and the profile of learning will be needed.
Again, the use of something like Cobb’s (2008) lexical analysis tools will
allow the teacher and learner to understand how these new texts can add
to the vocabulary of the textbook to reach the goals for input.
• It is probably a good thing to introduce variety into the activities which
are used. Variety will help maintain interest and motivation, of course, and
this is good. But it also allows a wider range of vocabulary knowledge to
be targeted. A reading activity, for example, will help learning the written
form of a word but may not contribute to knowing the aural form. But
use of songs or films, where you can hear the target language, can do this.
Reading and listening together may be useful since uptake from listening
alone is less than with reading (Brown et al. 2008; Vidal 2011). Songs, if
you sing along to them, allow the learner to articulate the target language
and to practice accent and delivery, something that there is little opportu-
nity for in the normal classroom.
Learning from lists

Learning vocabulary in a foreign language from bilingual lists does not appear
to be as obvious a route to communicativeness as singing songs and watch-
ing films. Nonetheless, in a chapter which is, essentially, considering the ways
learners can use time outside the classroom to get to language mastery quickly,
this is a technique that needs to be discussed. This technique is one that has
a long pedigree of proven effectiveness even if it has fallen into disrepute. It is
not clear why teachers avoid list learning but Folse (2004) includes the idea
that it is ineffective as one of his vocabulary myths. Milton (2009) also notes
that the technique has become unfashionable. In considering the technique,
Folse tells the story of a Japanese woman who learned English using the audio-
lingual method, a method that had included list learning. By this method she
had learned English to a good standard. The point he is making is that tech-
niques which are thought to be old-fashioned can, nonetheless, be very effec-
tive in helping learners acquire strong vocabularies. It is possible that list-based
learning fell out of favour because it is, or was seen as, a model incompatible
with modern understandings of good, engaging classroom teaching. This may
be true. But it does not detract from the value of vocabulary lists as a learner
strategy, particularly outside the classroom, and perhaps with the encourage-
ment and guidance of the teacher.
The academic literature can help illustrate just how effective the technique
can be. Fitzpatrick et al. (2008) report a study of a learner who set herself the task
of learning 300 Arabic words, 15 words a day for 20 days, spending 30 minutes
a day on the learning task. This is a highly vocabulary-focussed activity, of
course, and not surprisingly a lot of words were learned. At the end of the thirty
days of learning almost all the new words, 95%, could both be identified in a
recognition test and produced in a test of recall. The learning effect was not
transitory although recollection did diminish with time and without reuse and
reinforcement. Nonetheless, even after 10 weeks over 70% could be recognised
and half could be recalled. It is a highly efficient and effective way of adding
words to the foreign language lexicon.
The job of vocabulary learning is not completely finished with this kind of
learning. The learner has learned the form of the new word and, through its
translation, a meaning. This is a great start to the process of vocabulary learn-
ing. No wonder, then, that Folse recommends that teachers should not hesitate
to use vocabulary lists in teaching. However, he also counsels, very sensibly,
that the teaching of vocabulary should not rely on this technique. Subtleties
of use and combination may not be acquired through list learning, and other
techniques will be needed to address this area of knowledge. Probably, too,
teachers will want to use other techniques to introduce words in addition to
lists.
How can teachers and learners make best

use of this kind of activity?
• Usually, setting learners bilingual lists of words is designed to fit with
or complement textbook and classroom input. Where the textbook and
classroom does not contain all the words needed, or there are not suf-
ficient classroom hours to teach all the words, then learning supplemen-
tary lists of words is potentially very useful. Thimann (1959) designed
vocabulary lists of this kind to supplement the textbook and took care
not to replicate the structural and other vocabulary that textbooks would
likely contain.
• Scholfield’s (1991) regular and manageable advice works well with lists.
Handing out lists with hundreds of words on it is probably not a good idea,
but, breaking down this list into smaller lists and tackling one every week
or fortnight will probably work much better. Thimann (1959) divided his
list into sub-lists of 20–30 words and suggested one per week, something
he though would be an easily accessible learning load.
• As with other input activities, if these lists form part of a principled and
systematic process of growing the lexical to fit with curriculum goals, then
the contribution to vocabulary input and the profile of learning should be
calculated using Cobb’s (2008) lexical analysis tools or similar.
• Teaching does not end with handing out the list for learning. These words
will need following up. They will need tests, or something equivalent, to
check learning. They will need the same kind of systematic exploitation
in other classroom activities that words in the textbook need for optimal
learning.
Developing fluency and depth

The types of activity suggested earlier are designed to develop vocabulary
size. However, the songs, the reading, the films and other activities often have
another quality which teachers and researchers rather like; that of authen-
tic language use. Siyanova-Chanturia and Webb (2016) have suggested that
authentic language exposure ensures the development of lexical competence
as well as the uptake of incidental vocabulary. However, authenticity is a hard
concept to pin down. We could make an argument that the language of the
textbook and the classroom is also authentic language, in its own way. But
what these activities offer is far more exposure to a wider variety of language
use than the classroom can ever offer. These varieties of language, the songs,
the texts and the films, are the sort of things that first language users will also
use. In addition to providing new vocabulary to learn, part of the benefit of
this authentic language exposure will be to provide learners with recycling of
known vocabulary in the wide range of combinations, structures and colloca-
tions which fluent language use will need but which the classroom rarely has
the time to practice fully. It can also provide the volume of language exposure
and use, in sufficiently various forms and contexts, so as to maintain and even
enhance motivation. This kind of language exposure is also necessary for flu-
ency, the automaticity that allows words to be called to mind for use when
needed. Waring (2006) is firm in the view that this kind of activity should be
an indispensable part of all language programmes.
These types of gain, in depth and automaticity, from extensive and authentic
vocabulary use are harder to quantify, and harder to demonstrate therefore,
than gains in vocabulary size. Nonetheless, there are studies which can demon-
strate the kind of improvement in vocabulary knowledge that can result from
this kind of exposure. Zhang and Milton (2022) demonstrate the kind of quan-
tifiable gains that can occur even when a vocabulary focus is absent from these
activities. A 6-week study of extensive news reading produced a 30% improve-
ment in reading speed. In a different medium, Milton et al. (2012) report a sim-
ilar improvement in the speed of language production and interaction through
regular use of a foreign language in a 3D virtual world. Dang et al. (forthcom-
ing) report improvements in collocational knowledge through listening to lec-
tures. These benefits emerge too, however, where there is a clear vocabulary
learning object in the reading activity as in Masrai and Milton (2018).
These results should not come as a surprise since received wisdom, and long
experience in foreign language teaching, has produced similar insights. It is
even suggested that these kinds of extension activities are essential to foreign
language learning (Bright and McGregor 1970). A feature of the EFL learning
experience noted by Thornbury (2000) is the availability of a multitude of this
kind of extension material. This material exists, and teachers use and advocate
it because it can be effective. These are often produced to complement and add
to an EFL textbook series. A standard of the EFL teaching business for several
decades has been the availability of graded readers, books, often shortened ver-
sions of standard or classic texts, which are lexically simplified. The words used
will fall, mostly, within the most frequent, say, 1000 or 2000 words, and less
frequent words will be used only at a carefully controlled rate and are usually
glossed. A lexically reduced text of this kind is not, presumably, intended to
teach new vocabulary so much as use and recycle words that are already known
in meaningful contexts. It is part of the teaching and learning process which,
Milton (2011) argues, develop large lexicons for communication and fluency
in using this. By contrast, in foreign language teaching in UK school there is a
marked absence of such materials, still less those that are intelligently designed
to fit with a good textbook. Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that the lexical
size and the fluency of school foreign language learners in the UK are so much
poorer than equivalent learners elsewhere.
How can teachers and learners make best use
of this kind of activity?
• The object in these kinds of activities is to get as much exposure to natural
use of the target language as possible. It is probably better, then, to ensure
there is not too much new vocabulary. This is where things like graded
readers can be so useful since these texts are deliberately created to avoid
the burden of too many new words. Hilton (2008) analyses the barriers
to fluency and communication that unknown vocabulary produces. How-
ever, anything that learners choose to work with in the target language will
probably help.
• As with activities for vocabulary growth, choosing, or allowing learners to
choose, the materials they work with can be a real bonus for motivation.
Learners are much more likely to devote time and effort to materials that
are useful and important to them or even interesting to them.
• Again, as with activities for vocabulary growth, encouraging the use of a
wide variety of materials in different genres will help address the range of
knowledge needed for the three dimensions. A part of this advice would
cover the use of both aural and written materials. Learning a new word in
one form does not guarantee it will be known in another. Learners often
display knowledge of the written form of words far in excess of their knowl-
edge of the aural form, and this appears to impact on their spoken com-
munication (Milton et al. 2010). A mixture of activities and genres can
help address this. A mixture of genres and activities, too, will help provide
the range of language use that learners will need to learn the subtleties of
collocation and meaning that fluent users possess.
• Part of the mixture of activities will be to encourage the use of games
where participants can talk to each other directly. The opportunity for
real-time learner interaction in such games can produce measurable gains
in fluency and automaticity (Milton et al. 2012). There are issues of con-
trol here for the protection of young learners, but this is entirely feasible.
The direct learner interaction report in a 3D virtual world in Milton et al.’s
study restricted access to a virtual island so only learners from participat-
ing schools could enter.
Informal learning in the curriculum

The use of time outside the classroom, and the use of a variety of informal activi-
ties, clearly can contribute substantially to developing a lexicon of the size needed
for communicativeness. Actually, these activities have the potential to add very
substantially to lexical learning. Probably, however, they will work best in an envi-
ronment where the curriculum includes the use of a good textbook used in an
effective classroom environment. We see these activities as complementing but
not yet replacing the teacher in the classroom. There is more to these activities
and more use the curriculum should make of them. These activities are able to
add a quality as well as quantity of time to language learning that allows this
vocabulary to develop both in terms of depth and fluency. This, again, contrib-
utes to the ease of communication that learners strive for. Given the limitations
of time and the content of textbooks, Milton (2011) is able to assert that these
are the activities that can take learners from mere competence to real fluency.
The vocabulary curriculum, therefore, needs to understand this and build this
kind of practice more explicitly into its plans and specifications. The curricu-
lum will need to specify how much of the planned vocabulary can be covered
by teachers and textbooks, given the classroom time available, and what will
needed to be added outside of class. This is essential information for materials
writers and teachers to plan their lessons. It is also essential for planning the
volumes and suggested content of vocabulary that can be added by learning out-
side the classroom. Some of this activity outside the classroom might be highly
systematic, such as the use of word lists to bolster classroom instruction, but will
likely include a requirement that learning outside the classroom is directed and
checked inside the classroom. The curriculum might suggest which activities can
be used to develop depth and fluency and what the vocabulary content of these
should be. Such information is probably needed if materials creators are to be
encouraged to add the material with the vocabulary focus necessary for vocabu-
lary growth and things like popular films and songs within the curriculum so
these can be exploited more fully. If learners are making use of apps like Duolingo,
then liaison with these companies would make good sense so that the content
fits well with the goals of the curriculum. At present, these kind of considerations
form little or no part of curriculum planning, but if vocabulary teaching is to be
effective, then they should be part.
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11 Curriculum design,
implications and dangers
in delivery
Introduction
This chapter will summarise the vocabulary design process needed to produce
an effective vocabulary curriculum. It will consider, too, the implications of the
precepts provided in this book. There are implications for teaching and teacher
training to make plain how best to manage the vocabulary learning process
so it is effective. It will point out that other players in the system, too, will
need to understand and support an approach which prioritises and systematises
vocabulary delivery. It considers, too, the implications, for materials design and
for the assessment of foreign language performance through formal exams and
for the resourcing of teaching where following these precepts requires a change
in timetable time and in resourcing. Finally it will address the dangers in apply-
ing too rigidly the precepts, we suggest, and will emphasise that our approach,
ideally, includes giving teachers some autonomy in contributing to the content
of the curriculum to follow learners’ interests.
Vocabulary curriculum design process

In the course of this book we have described the ideas behind a well-formed
vocabulary curriculum and the principles and process by which such a cur-
riculum is created. Curriculum design is not easy. It often appears there are
many competing factors to consider in terms of the language that needs to be
covered. We have argued that some of these, such as finding a balance between
teaching structure and teaching vocabulary, are not in competition at all. They
are complementary. The volumes of vocabulary that are taught, year by year, in
instruction, and the coverage this gives, ought to help decide how much and
which structures can be taught alongside this vocabulary. Only when students
have appropriate vocabulary knowledge will they be able to encounter and put
to good use these structures in meaningful contexts. There is no point teach-
ing language structures in a vacuum of vocabulary where there are inadequate
words to illustrate and practice the structures. Structures which connect words
and ideas require the learner to know lots of words to be connected. Likewise,
a judicious choice of structural content can help in the choice of topics, themes
DOI: 10.4324/9781003278771-11
Curriculum design, implications & dangers 195
and words which can be included. Curriculum design is also beset by compet-
ing pressures that are non-linguistic. These include things such as how much
time can be realistically given to language learning in the curriculum? Can time
outside the classroom also be given over to learning? Are the materials in place
and are the teachers well enough prepared to deliver the vocabulary curricu-
lum? The principles and processes which we have described help define some
of these difficulties and point to answers.
The process of building vocabulary into the curriculum effectively is as
follows.
1 Decide the communicative goals
This seems obvious but often, it seems, it is not. For most learners in schools
this is likely to involve choosing a level from a hierarchy like the CEFR,
although there will be learners who are not in school and where this may seem
less appropriate. Nonetheless, there will always be a level of communicative
competence that is sought, and this can be described in terms of the CEFR.
This choice gives the curriculum designer many things to work with and to
include. These include the topics and the subjects of communication. The
primary purpose of learning a language is to communicate and understand,
so what is communication going to be about, and what will it involve? The
CEFR descriptors help define this while affording some flexibility. The goals of
learning will help the designer choose the structures and vocabulary likely to
be needed, as well as the level of accuracy which is realistic for that stage. If
the goal is A2 French, then the descriptors of A2 (which focus on the everyday
and the tangible) make it highly unlikely that the learner would ever require
proficient use of the imperfect indicative or present subjunctive. B2 French
would probably include these, as well as a range of impersonal expressions,
as these befit the contexts of the more advanced CEFR stages. B1 German
would require knowledge and understanding of prepositions but not necessar-
ily anticipate that the learner should use the case system perfectly. Adjective
endings, which are non-meaning-bearing, could be included or excluded. The
learner would not be expected to learn participle phrases until B2 or C1 when
higher-register texts would normally be in scope of the curriculum.
Part of deciding the communicative goals of learning has to be a motiva-
tional consideration. Learners do not necessarily want to learn the language for
which they have been put into lessons. The curriculum must, in many cases,
address this and, for the interactions with the target language and its speak-
ers to be successful, the teacher must nurture an affinity for the language, its
cultures and peoples (Hilton 2022). Language learning is a social as much as a
cognitive act, and in many settings, this will need to be reflected in the goals of
the course, and also in its vocabulary, therefore.
One of the things a choice of CEFR level is likely to give the curriculum
designer is the second thing in this list which is the likely scale of vocabulary
learning needed.
196 Curriculum design, implications & dangers
2 Calculate the vocabulary needed
Vocabulary size and competence in a foreign language are strongly connected.

In this book we have given the kinds of vocabulary knowledge, and particularly
vocabulary size, which associate with each level. Competence and communi-
cability in a foreign language will require working knowledge of thousands of
words, and there is no shortcut. However, when the curriculum designer has
this information, plans can be made to present and teach these words system-
atically. If the goal of learning is to achieve A2/B1 level and knowledge of about
2500 words, then double this will probably have to be taught. The expectation
would be that these words should include a good mix, therefore, of frequent
vocabulary from the most frequent 2000 structural words, but rather more from
the less frequent, content vocabulary. Without this balance of structural and
content vocabulary, the required numbers are impossible to attain. Part of that
design will be to plan the amount of time needed to deliver the vocabulary
load. We have a good idea about the rate at which words can realistically be
learned in the classroom, and this can help govern teaching hours and teaching
plans. Planners often think it is easy to squeeze time out of the foreign language
curriculum, but this has important consequences. If too little time is allotted for
learning, then the goals of learning will be compromised.
3 Spread out vocabulary presentation over the time for learning
Because the vocabulary learning load is high in achieving communicative lev-

els of knowledge, the vocabulary load will best be spread, more or less evenly,
over the course of learning. Vocabulary learning seems to be most effectively
achieved when presented in manageable amounts which are regularly presented
for learning and then followed up with extensive work that uses this vocabulary
in context and with the structural content of the course. This vocabulary will be
needed to achieve the other aspects of the curriculum. A strategy that tries to
cram vocabulary into learners just before an exam, to get to the required levels,
will fail in its goal of getting learners to the required level of knowledge overall.
4 Set interim targets for progress
Teaching a foreign language is likely to occupy years of instruction in school

but where a goal for learning is set that can be defined in terms of vocabulary
size, then it makes sense to set interim targets for words to be presented and
learned. Vocabulary size targets of this kind can be a double-edged sword, and
this is discussed later in this chapter. However, teachers should have an idea,
year by year, of the progress they should be making, and an idea too, of whether
this progress is being made. Teaching is not an entirely mechanical process and
the good teacher may want to respond to the individual interests and needs to
learners and to create their own materials. But they need to be aware in doing
this that progress to the goal of learning is being maintained.
5 Build lists of words and topics around these targets
Once the curriculum designer has a structure for the quantities of words
which are needed for delivery, the choice of words can begin. Language serves
the goal of communication and expression, and communication is always about
something. So, what is this something going to be? If the overall goal is some-
thing like CEFR B1 then that something will have to include the words for
things like self-identification, managing travel, describing appearance and fol-
lowing everyday events. These fit with the communicative levels the CEFR
describe. The time available is populated with topics, and these topics are pop-
ulated with words. They will need to cover vocabulary from both the frequent
and less frequent ranges because communication without both these types of
words is, effectively, impossible. And to reach the vocabulary targets, and to
maintain interest and motivation, a wide variety of themes and topics will be
needed. While highly frequent vocabulary will tend to recycle itself, the curric-
ulum will need to take account of a requirement to revisit the content vocabu-
lary of these topics and keep them in the forefront of memory, even when new
topics are introduced. These lists, in some instances, may also indicate the
depth of word knowledge, particularly where the word does not follow regular
grammatical patterns of the language.
6 Decide what it is realistic to deliver in class and what needs to be done

outside class
There are learning environments which have comparatively lavish amounts

of learning time made available for foreign languages. Most school systems will
have less time available, and the curriculum needs to consider how to manage
this since the rate at which vocabulary can be learned from classroom inter-
action appears limited. Where the time available in class is limited then the
curriculum must decide which vocabulary needs to be introduced in class and
which vocabulary can be usefully organised for learning outside class. Chap-
ter 10 has demonstrated just how effective vocabulary learning can be outside
of class but, nonetheless, classroom time will be needed to monitor this kind
of learning, and it needs to be planned and organised if the delivery of the cur-
riculum is to be effective.
7 Refine targets by textbook, teacher talk and informal input
This kind of division will need to be further refined. What vocabulary needs
to be included in the formal teaching materials, and what can the teacher use-
fully add? If textbooks are to deliver the curriculum effectively then they need
the details of what they should include. If the textbook delivers something
else, then curriculum goals may be missed. Is the textbook intended to include
the entirety of the vocabulary of the classroom or should the teacher supple-
ment it? If the teacher is to introduce vocabulary, then what is this vocabulary?
Or, is the teacher’s role merely to illustrate and recycle the vocabulary of teach-
ing? If classroom learning is supplemented with informal learning outside the
classroom, then what is the content to be?
8 Build language teaching into the timetable with appropriate time and
resources
The issue of the time available for learning has already been raised, and it is
a hugely important consideration, but there are other resourcing issues to be
tackled if vocabulary teaching and learning is to be effective. In a real sense,
vocabulary learning is a function of time and of classroom time in particular. If
more classroom time is made available for language learning then, in all likeli-
hood, more language learning will occur. If classroom time is reduced then,
probably, learning will diminish. The time available to a subject also signals
how important it is perceived to be. If the classroom time is small then, clearly,
the subject is unimportant and only a little learning is, therefore, expected and
acceptable. The understanding of the relationship between vocabulary uptake
and classroom time should help decisions of classroom time to be made on a
principled basis rather than by guesswork. The curriculum will also need to
work with knowledge of other resources available. Are the textbooks to deliver
the curriculum available? Do they include the extension and practice materials
that are also essential for effective learning? Is the range of foreign language
games, readers, songs, bilingual word lists and the like available to learners, and
are these supported by things like the tests of knowledge that can turn the use
of these things into really effective tools for vocabulary learning? It is essential
that these things are put in place because if they are not, then the curriculum
is undeliverable. It is a dream not an effective curriculum. This leads to the
next point.
9 Build/select materials that can deliver it: textbook, notebook apps, infor-
mal materials, etc.
In EFL teaching there is an abundance of the materials available for teachers

and schools to select from, and the issue is often one of choice and of choosing
an appropriate combination of formal and informal materials to achieve the
goal of learning. This is possible because the market of EFL learning is huge,
and it is cost effective for publishers to produce this material. For other for-
eign languages this material is not so readily available, and we have pointed to
its absence as an obstacle to effective vocabulary development in learners. If
these materials are not available then steps must be put in place for their crea-
tion. It may be appropriate for curriculum designers to require that textbooks
and other material declare their vocabulary loading and limit the adoption of
teaching materials to those that can demonstrate appropriate coverage of the
vocabulary needed to deliver the curriculum.
10 Train teachers and other users to deliver what is needed
If a curriculum is to be delivered effectively then the teachers who deliver

it must understand what vocabulary is and how best it is taught. It is not at all
clear that teachers do routinely understand this. It is not clear that the curricu-
lum gives them a good idea of how many words need to be taught, how these
should be sequenced across a course, nor of how to take advantage of the many
opportunities which are available to promote vocabulary development in their
learners. The training of teachers needs to take this in hand if the teaching of a
lexicon to learners is to be effective. But other users too need to understand how
a good vocabulary curriculum is to be delivered. We have pointed in previous
chapters to the Saudi example and the way a more vocabulary-oriented curricu-
lum description, when it is supported and resourced, can lead to measurable and
considerable improvements in the language attainment of learners. But even the
best curriculum cannot deliver what is needed if other participants in the system
are not also committed to this improvement. In England, we have pointed to
some unbelievably damaging guidance by school inspectors (for example, Wardle
2021b) which appears calculated to prevent the delivery of a good vocabulary
curriculum. There is really no justification for this guidance which is highly mis-
leading and probably damaging. All participants in the language teaching pro-
cess, from curriculum designers to learners, must be clear about the importance
of vocabulary in learning and how it is to be promoted in teaching.
Where these steps are put in place learners routinely grow a large lexicon
and become communicative and even fluent. In this book we have pointed
to the work of Vassiliu (2001) carried out in controlling and developing the
vocabulary content of his own courses. We might equally have pointed to the
Pagoulatou-Vlachou schools in Athens and their materials company, Express
Publishing, with whom tests like X_Lex are developed and published. In these
cases the CEFR goals of learning are tied to vocabulary goals we have suggested
here. The development of vocabulary is spread across the course of learning
and uptake is notably regular and large (Milton 2006b). Appropriate class-
room time is made available. The chosen materials use a wide range of topics
as a vehicle for the delivery of a large vocabulary (Milton 2011), and Express
Publishing books are noted for a comparatively heavy, but effective, vocabu-
lary load (Konstantakis and Alexiou 2012). Classroom texts are supported by
extensive materials, games, graded readers and the like for a balance of in-class
and outside class exploitation. The use of this is relatively programmatised.
Teacher training and preparation courses are run to make sure teachers under-
stand the content of the materials they use and can exploit them effectively.
The outcome of the process is an excellent record of attainment, usually one
of the Cambridge EFL exams which attempt to assess communicativeness in
line with CEFR levels. The exams require high vocabulary knowledge which
learners, in this system, routinely achieve. In the system we advocate for, the
delivery of a vocabulary curriculum can be highly effective.
A feature of curriculums where teaching is less effective is that these steps
in planning and delivery are routinely avoided. Foreign language teach-
ing to GCSE in English schools is, sadly, an example of this. The goal of
learning is unclear: is it teaching communicative language or grammatical
knowledge? Communication as a goal is increasingly sidelined (Gruber and
Hopwood 2022) often at the expense of correctness and sophistication. Is
the goal CEFR B1 or A1? The vocabulary targets have for some time been
unspecified (DfE 2015), but recent guidelines suggest they should be very
small (DfE 2021). Thematic and topical input is considered bad and to be
avoided (Teaching Schools Council 2016). Input of vocabulary is small and
irregular (Tschichold 2012; Milton and Hopwood 2021). The classroom time
available for language teaching is small (Milton 2006a; Milton and Hopwood
2021). There appears to be little attempt to systematically extend learning
beyond the classroom, and extension materials in these foreign languages
are not systematically tied to the curriculum. Teachers, as Woore (2021) and
Marsden (2022) suggest, are routinely advised to sideline much vocabulary,
particularly less frequent words, or circumvent its teaching. The schools’
inspectorate systematically advises against the teaching of a large lexicon
(Milton 2022) and against a curriculum which is sequenced on a commu-
nicative basis, preferring instead a synthetic grammatical curriculum which
some have described as cognitivist (Evans and Fisher 2022). Not surprisingly,
in these circumstances, the uptake of vocabulary is a fraction of that noted in
Vassiliu’s schools and the Pagoulatou-Vlachou schools (Milton and Alexiou
2009), and the overall language level is much lower. The exams taken at the
end of the course focus heavily on grammatical manipulation, as Chapter 7
has shown, rather than communication. Learners emerge from the system
with small vocabularies and largely uncommunicative.
Implications for teacher education and the

culture of learning
In writing any book on vocabulary teaching and learning, it is notable that a
careful explanation of the terminology usually has to be made. Even in writing
this book, a reviewer suggested that using terms like lemma and word family
was too technical for the readership, such as teachers and student teachers,
and might best be avoided. This says a lot about the place of vocabulary in
the training of language teachers. It is like suggesting, in grammar, that terms
such as present tense and passive voice are too technical for teachers and should
be avoided. It says a lot too about the culture of teaching which, in places,
continues to think that vocabulary is not really important, so teachers do not
need to know anything about it. It is quite unnecessary to simplify in this way –
because all languages teachers, we are sure, know that ont is not the same as
avoir, but part of it, and all language teachers, we are sure, understand the con-
cept of headwords, even if not by name. However, for effective language learn-
ing, teachers will need to become better and more critically informed about
the nature of vocabulary and its delivery. Ideally, they will need to understand
much more than is currently usual, even in effective systems with good lan-
guage uptake.
• Teachers need to know what is being learned when they teach vocabulary,
and how vocabulary input relates to vocabulary uptake. Teachers need to
accept that not everything that is taught will be learned and should be
confident in moving on, even where some gaps remain. This is to avoid
the stalling of lexical input which seems to typify unsuccessful approaches.
Specifically, teachers should be aware that students learn vocabulary at
different rates. A course should be planned to maximise every learner’s
uptake, including the highest and lowest attainers.
• Teachers would be well advised to begin to conceive of, plan and evalu-
ate their learners’ progress in lexical terms, or lexico-grammatical terms,
rather than in the purely grammatical means of measurement that has
come to typify progress assessment in some jurisdictions such as England.
The answer to the question, ‘How proficient is the student in the target
language?’ is better given in lexical terms and in terms of what the student
can do, say and understand and not in grammatical terms by measuring
how many tenses, pronouns or structures they master.
• Teachers need to understand the lemma and the dimensions of word
knowledge, described in Chapter 2, and they need to be reassured that
learning depth of vocabulary knowledge, in particular, is a gradual pro-
cess. Words are not learned in their full depth first time around and again,
imperfect or unfluent recall of a word does not mean the student is not
ready to continue encountering new words.
• Teachers would benefit from an understanding of how the vocabulary they
teach links to language performance and the learning of structure. A large
vocabulary is essential for both high levels of language performance which
includes good structural knowledge and control.
• Teachers should know the numbers and frequency spread of words needed
for achieving successive levels in the CEFR. An abstract notion of teaching
vocabulary is inadequate for effective delivery. Teachers will be empowered
when they know how many words they should be teaching to achieve the
goal of learning, and they need to have a good understanding of which
words they should be presenting and using. This will help teachers of mod-
ern languages claim and keep the timetable that they need to do their jobs.
• Teachers need to know the specific vocabulary goal of the courses they
contribute to. Learning may be spread over a period of years, so they have
to understand their own input goals in relation to the annual and global
targets designated in the curriculum.
• Teachers need to understand the learning process and appreciate the way
learning has to be both explicit for breadth, and with a wide range of, per-
haps, less formal (and in many cases authentic or semi-authentic) input for
the rather more incidental acquisition of depth and fluency.
• Teachers should be empowered to be in control of their vocabulary input,
and they should be able to monitor how effectively their learners’ vocabu-
lary uptake is. They need to be able to manage the tests and assessments
which show the frequency profile of learners. We have demonstrated in
this book the kind of knowledge and the kind of profiles which are associ-
ated with levels of the CEFR. Teachers need to understand whether the
progress of their learners fits with the norms we describe.
• Teachers need to have the knowledge to be able to choose, in a principled
way, the texts they want to use for teaching. They need sufficient under-
standing to choose texts which have the loading to deliver the vocabulary
goals of teaching and not something else.
• Where teachers choose to create their own materials, they ideally need
knowledge and experience in using analytic tools so they can be sure their
materials fit with the vocabulary targets of learning.
• They have to be able to build into the language learning process the use
of supplementary materials for learning, things like the use of a vocabu-
lary notebook app or mining popular TV series with subtitles for vocabu-
lary growth. The use of such materials needs to be principled and to be
directed. It will need, too, to be followed up to check that it has been
done.
It will be noticed we have not mentioned that a prominent place should be

given to the vocabulary substitution and avoidance strategies which feature in
UK teacher training (Woore 2021; Marsden 2022) and are designed to help
learners cope with ignorance of vocabulary. The goal of the vocabulary cur-
riculum is to teach vocabulary and to avoid this ignorance. Learning vocabu-
lary may well be tricky. But lexical gymnastics and elaborate circumlocution to
cover up the gaps is even harder.
The context of teaching also needs, in some places more than others, the
development of a culture that understands the importance of vocabulary and
its relevance in teaching. The kind of knowledge we suggest earlier should not
be the sole preserve of teachers but needs to be understood, too, by all the other
players in the system: the materials writers, the administrators, the curriculum
designers, the school owners and leaders and the school inspectors. Teachers
should not be put in the position, as in England (see Wardle 2021a, 2021b),
where they are put into conflict with their school inspectorate for deliver-
ing, quite correctly, an essential part of the curriculum. In England, it seems,
advancing the idea that vocabulary is important has become a shibboleth. It
is said, because it has to be said, but it has no meaning in much of what the
authorities require of Initial Teacher Education programmes. In England the
assertion that vocabulary is important is an empty one. It is something that is
not acted upon. If the delivery of an effective vocabulary curriculum is to occur,
then this needs to change, and this requires a change in the whole culture of
vocabulary teaching.
For success, there needs to be a culture that promotes the teaching of vocab-
ulary, in the right amounts, at the right time, in the right way. Part of this
will probably be a better understanding of the research evidence concerning
vocabulary learning. If this can replace the reliance on myths and the half-
truths which often underpin the teaching of the subject, then the teaching
of vocabulary and of language generally will improve. As Folse’s (2004) book
demonstrates, these myths are hard to eradicate even in the face of common
sense and empirical evidence about what makes for successful teaching. An
important part of this culture has to be that the delivery of sufficient vocabulary
is a priority and not an optional part of foreign language teaching.
Language teachers generally move into the profession with an idea that they
would like to do a good job. They are often hungry for the knowledge and
techniques that will allow their learners to make faster progress, become more
fluent communicators and do well in exams. A better understanding of the
importance of vocabulary and how it is successfully taught will allow them to
do this.
Implications for materials design

If the vocabulary curriculum is to be effectively delivered, then the teachers
will need to use course and supplementary materials which are well structured
and which contain the words which are needed to attain the communicative
goals of the course. Milton and Hopwood (2021) accept that that the crea-
tion of good and effective materials, such as a textbook, is a highly complex
task with a host of different forms of content competing for space and time.
Because of this competition, as Tschichold (2012) and Milton and Hopwood
demonstrate, some textbooks fail to meet the challenge for vocabulary that
this poses. It is all too easy to save time and space by omitting huge swathes
of necessary vocabulary, as was the case in both these studies. Or they can
focus on highly frequent vocabulary to the exclusion of subject and content
vocabulary, as noted in Konstantakis and Alexiou (2012). Our experience of
other, and rather better, writers is that their materials adopt an idea where the
textbook for use in class will deliver a core of structural and subject vocabulary.
Extension materials such as workbooks and readers are designed to use this
core vocabulary and extend the lexicon to levels consistent with the overall
goals of the course.
The delivery of the curriculum, therefore, depends on the choice of this
material to deliver, in a systematic way, the vocabulary that is needed. Textbook
and other materials need to make good choices but also need to make clear to
users what these choices are.
• The textbook and other support materials will need to have a volume of
words appropriate to the communicative goals of the course. This should
be transparent and they need to have sufficient words to deliver the ability
to communicate, and this includes sufficient and the right words to man-
age other elements of the curriculum such as structure. They need to
balance structural and content vocabulary well. These need to be appro-
priately organised, and usually this is in terms of a range of themes and
topics chosen to be interesting and useful to learners.
• These words will need to be spread consistently across the course of learn-
ing, so vocabulary growth is regular and consistent and with appropriate
revision and recycling. This allows, amongst other things, the development
of other aspects of the learning which are reliant on vocabulary growth for
their success. Trying to cram vocabulary learning, just before an exam, is
not a strategy which is likely to be successful. Not only vocabulary learn-
ing, but the development of language as a whole, will have been compro-
mised by then.
• They need to demonstrate that vocabulary delivery is systematic. The
shortcomings that Milton and Hopwood (2021) note should not occur:
things like words that are used once and never recycled or revisited, tests
and follow-up activities based on words that are not included in teach-
ing or the glossaries and glossaries that are inaccurate and incomplete.
The practice where publishers develop their core vocabularies and build
textbooks and support materials around this in a systematic way should
be normal. And this type of approach should be plain in the materials the
publisher produces. The Oxford 3000 (2019) is an example of a publisher
developing a core vocabulary of this kind and using this as the basis of
vocabulary content.
• The delivery of the curriculum is likely to require a range of coherent
materials, for use inside and outside the classroom, to achieve the kind
of vocabulary levels needed and the regularity of growth which is dem-
onstrated in Figure 6.2. EFL is fortunate in that there is a wide range of
textbooks, often with lavish extension and supplementary materials, from
which materials can be chosen. Other languages are not so well resourced.
However, success lies in having these good materials available, and the
creation and delivery of the vocabulary curriculum relies on coordination
with publishers and materials creators to ensure that they are.
• To help teachers make use of this material, materials writers must be clear
in providing descriptions of the content. Users need to know the word
numbers the materials contain, the profile of the words contained, word
lists, topic lists and good descriptions of the content in relation to learning
goals. Teaching materials should be clear about their likely delivery time.
• The textbook and other materials should contain monitoring and assess-
ment materials. These can be quick and informal to allow learners and
teachers to understand progress to the vocabulary goals of learning. They
should probably provide data on what learners generally attain in using this
material and what teachers might reasonably expect to get from this input.
• Materials writers need to be more consistent in providing teacher books
and training materials so teachers can make best use of the materials.
Implications for language testing
The previous section has included the idea that the teaching materials really
should contain informal assessment systems that allow learners and teachers to
understand whether the content they included is being learned, and whether
progress to learning goals is satisfactory. This idea should be extended to the
formal assessment system. We have noted in Chapter 7 that formal assessment
systems include references to the vocabulary expectations of learners. They
suggest in writing and speaking assessment that high scoring learners should
demonstrate a wide vocabulary, for example. However, we have pointed out
that these assessment systems are not good enough to be able to recognise a
wide vocabulary even if the learner possesses this. They do not systematically
reward this knowledge where it exists. In fact, the opposite is the case, and
in England there are moves to eliminate the linguistic advantage of having
a broad vocabulary in the first language which can benefit the acquisition of
vocabulary in a second language. The mechanism for doing this is to ensure
that all learners have a small vocabulary (Hawkes and Marsden 2021, p. 11).
Examination boards do not make use of tests which can assess the vocabu-
lary size of learners and, as the lexical content of exams becomes smaller, they
will find it harder to use vocabulary as a discriminating factor. This is despite a
generation of work in the design of tests which can measure vocabulary knowl-
edge reliably and well, exactly what the assessment system is trying to assess.
Does this candidate have a big vocabulary or a small one in the foreign lan-
guage? These tests are a staple of research but are routinely avoided by the for-
mal assessment system. Vocabulary is essential for language learning success, so
the exam system should recognise this with testing systems that can recognise
a good vocabulary and reward it where it exists.
Vocabulary size tests are at the objective end of assessment in an area, that
of language knowledge and skills, which is still, after more than a century
of formal language test development, still largely subjective. Assessments of
performance in, for example, formal exam essay writing, still rely heavily on
the attitude of the assessor as much as they rely on the quality of the work
being assessed. Vocabulary size measures can avoid this kind of problem and
can provide good, reliable assessments in a vital area of language knowledge
which should be important information in characterising how well a learner
has progressed toward learning goals. Because they link closely to overall lan-
guage performance, they should be better used, too, to help standardise the
scores produced in other, more subjective, areas of assessment. Language test-
ing is beset by doubts as to whether standards have changed over time, and the
subjective assessment measures currently used can offer little certainty that
standards are being maintained. A good vocabulary assessment measure can
offer much greater certainty in this area. If learners passing a formal exam, such
as Cambridge First Certificate in English, score on average 4500 words on a
vocabulary size test one year and approximately the same in subsequent years,
then a strong argument can be made that the standard of the exam has been
maintained over time. If the average score declines, then it would be suspected,
probably very strongly, that the standard of the exam as a whole is declining
also. We suspect that many players in the language teaching system are much
more comfortable with uncertainty in assessment systems, which allows inter-
pretation of scores to be manipulated. Objective-style assessment of vocabulary
size, they fear, might highlight the sometimes uncomfortable reality of a poten-
tial decline in the standard of learning.
At present there is little place in formal assessment of language through
exams for the systematic assessment of vocabulary knowledge. This is probably
a manifestation of the culture which does not yet fully realise the role vocabu-
lary plays in language learning and how assessment in this area could be so
much better and informative. Vocabulary assessment should be a central part
of the teaching, the learning and the feedback loop in language teaching, and
not something that is peripheral and unimportant.
Assessment bodies, such as exam boards, are reliant on the quality of the
curriculum in designing their materials. To make the changes we suggest would
require that the curriculum makes vocabulary a more visible and measurable
element of the curriculum. They rely on the existence of curriculums which
contain information on the themes, the vocabulary sizes and content which
learning, and hence assessment, should be built around. This information is
rarely expressed in terms of the numbers and descriptions we have provided
here. No wizardry in assessment design can make up for the errors of a poorly
conceived curriculum. Assessment organisations need vocabulary information
to help create fair, reliable, accurate and meaningful assessments of learner
abilities.
Implications for time and resourcing

We have pointed out, on various occasions in this book, that the time available
for teaching is a highly important factor in determining the volumes of words
and the level of ability that learners can achieve in their foreign language.
When Milton and Meara (1998) asked the question, ‘Are the British really
bad at languages?’ the answer that emerged was that UK learners looked bad,
in terms of knowing far less vocabulary, but they also had far less instruction.
Learners in the other countries investigated could spent double or even triple
the time in class learning languages than learners in the UK. Not surprisingly,
learners in these other countries learned more. Regardless of any other con-
sideration, sufficient time must be made available for the learners to learn and
achieve whatever the goals of the curriculum are. Time must be made avail-
able, too, for learning and language use outside of class so that effective use
can be made of the extension and supplementary materials. There is no magic
bullet in becoming communicative in a foreign language except, perhaps, time
devoted to learning. Prioritise the subject sufficiently so that it can have the
time and resources which are needed for success, then success can be achieved.
Deny this to learners, and they will not succeed. Creating a timetable to fit the
goals of learning seems an obvious thing to do, but a foreign language has to fit
with other curriculums and other timetable requirements. The time provided
has to be used well and wisely. However, the numbers and rationale explained
in this book provide guidance about what is needed if the curriculum is to be
delivered effectively. This should be a big help in prioritisation.
The teaching of EFL is fortunate in a variety of other ways in the range
of support that is available for learners. It is far easier to get access to subti-
tled films in English than in other languages, for example. However, some of
the things that the EFL industry has spawned can be used in other languages.
Something like the vocabulary notebook apps, considered in Chapter 9, often
lend themselves to this. The successful learning of vocabulary can make use of
these. However, in other areas for the teaching of modern foreign languages
other than English, these support materials may need to be created. If the cur-
riculum wants to promote the growth of vocabulary outside the class then the
films and TV programmes with subtitles, the songs with bilingual lyrics and
the computer games and virtual words need to be available in the language
for learning. They will need to be supported with the tests or other activities
needed to focus learning on the words if they are to be effective. If teachers
want to create their own materials then they will need the analytic programmes
like Cobb’s Vocabprofile and TextCompare (Cobb 2008) to help create their
materials and ensure they fit well with other materials and the demands of the
curriculum.
Last, the delivery of the curriculum needs to make sure there are formal
exams in place at the end of learning that reflect the goals of learning and
not something else. We have talked, in this book, about the goal of learning a
language being the development of communication and comprehension in the
foreign language. The exams, or other tests of attainment, need to make sure
that the exams test this quality. The Cambridge suite of EFL exams is clearly
trying to do this, while GCSE MFL exams clearly are not. But without this,
teachers are conflicted in what they are teaching, and learners are confused in
what they should be learning. The communicative goals of teaching in Vassil-
iu’s schools, described in the opening section of this chapter, fit well with the
exams the learners took. They were rewarded for their communicativeness and
the vocabulary that associates with this. By contrast, in England, the commu-
nicative aspirations asserted at the outset of the DfE’s (2021) subject content
conflict with the heavy grammatical focus of the content and the grammatical
focus of the final exams. The GCSE course does not deliver communicative-
ness, nor do the final exams test it. The exam goals of learners must be harmo-
nised with the vocabulary content and goals of the curriculum.
Dangers and pitfalls

In advocating this approach to prioritising vocabulary in the curriculum and
systematising its delivery so it can be effective, there are dangers and pitfalls
that need to be avoided in following this process.
A curriculum is designed to be prescriptive. It describes the content of
learning and the steps along the way to its delivery. A national education
system will want to give all learners an equal chance to progress and to dem-
onstrate their knowledge in formal exams, so having a standardised content is
essential. It is important in international systems, too, where something like
a formal language exam qualification will need to be transportable. The users
of a qualification in one country will want to have confidence they under-
stand what this qualification means in another country. The whole point,
then, of the curriculum is to be prescriptive. In some schools, in some entire
countries, many teachers do not have a choice in the materials they deliver.
Someone else, such as the school owner or education ministry, makes that
choice and the teachers use the materials they are given. Where the creation
of coherent and systematic materials is complex and difficult, it is perhaps
inevitable that this will occur. There are real dangers in encouraging the use
of ad hoc materials for language learning where these lead to a learning con-
tent that is not coherent, nor systematic, nor effective in achieving the goals
of the curriculum.
However, there is a danger in this that the curriculum can become overly
prescriptive. In prescribing language content, and training teachers and learn-
ers in the good practice needed to deliver this content, there is the risk of
turning teaching into an overly mechanical process. It gives the able and pro-
fessional teacher no opportunity to be agentive, reflective and to react to the
individual needs and interests of learners, and this kind of customisation of
learning ought to be a good thing. Woore et al. (2022, p. 1) rightly advocate
the ‘crucial importance of teachers’ professional judgement’ in determining
what works for their own classrooms and will want to add to the curriculum.
Language learning and teaching does not have to be entirely prescriptive to be
good. While the teaching process may reasonably want to monitor what goes
on in the classroom, and will reasonably expect the teacher to be doing the
things which are most likely to lead to good learning, there is much more scope
outside the classroom for individuality, invention and the following of learner
interests. Even if a teacher might reasonably be expected to follow the content
of a good and effective textbook, there is enormous scope for creating and
adapting extension and supplementary materials. If the learners like films, then
build work outside the classroom and the bespoke tests that makes use of what-
ever films are in vogue. If learners enjoy songs, then make use of this interest.
One of our university colleagues persuaded some of her French students they
would like the post-war ballads of Edith Piaf, Jacques Brel and Charles Trennet.
Listening to and singing these songs turned into a whole programme of French
songs and vocabulary learning done for fun and outside of class. The tested
French vocabulary of the singers at the end of study was statistically higher
than those who declined to undertake this activity. They were also more fluent
and scored better on aural tests and, as a group, gained higher class degrees.
Teachers can enjoy enormous freedom in this aspect of their teaching, and it is
unlikely ever to harm learning and will likely help. Part of a good curriculum,
and part of being a good professional teacher, however, is to have an idea what
you should be getting out of this kind of initiative and to monitor and adjust
these activities where needed.
There is a danger, too, in a reductive and number-driven approach to
the organisation of educational delivery, that teachers be unreasonably held
accountable for the delivery of things for which they have partial or no respon-
sibility. This can easily turn toxic. Success in delivering the curriculum is not
just a product of the curriculum itself and the teacher; it requires the learners
to want to participate, their parents to support them, the education system to
provide appropriate rooms to teach in with the right resources in place, the
intelligent support of the inspectorate, and the provision of sufficient class-
room time. The curriculum is a guide and a map; it should not be a millstone
where teachers are ranked, sanctioned or rewarded unreasonably in relation to
its goals. The object of setting targets is not to act as a means for pressurising
teachers and learners but is to help teachers and the planners of the educa-
tional process understand what is going on. Then, if things are not matching
the plan, they can set about changing things to put them right.
Conclusion
In this book we have explained why learning vocabulary is so important to the
language learning process. We have explained the vocabulary sizes that will
need to be taught for learners to attain successive levels in the CEFR. A vocab-
ulary of several thousand words is essential if learners want to become com-
municative or, better, fluent in a foreign language. We have explained how a
lexicon of single words needs to be transformed into one where words combine
and where there are multi-word structures so that fluency can be achieved.
And we have explained how these words and word combinations can best be
selected to build an effective vocabulary curriculum. We have done this on the
basis of research evidence and the evidence of successful practice in school sys-
tems in a variety of different countries. It is rare for language curriculums to be
as explicit in their vocabulary goals and choices as we suggest. However, where
there is a culture of learning that includes an understanding that vocabulary
is important and teaches a large lexicon, then teaching, generally, is more suc-
cessful. We hope that this book will supplement this good practice with evi-
dence and will provide a greater systematisation for vocabulary delivery so that
success can be institutionalised in language teaching everywhere.
Not all language teaching cultures are as comfortable with an evidence-led
approach to the creation of a good vocabulary curriculum. We have pointed to
England where language teaching can be characterised as having a doctrinaire
and heavily structuralist approach to language teaching. A consequence of this
is to deny the evidence of research and best practice in language teaching and
to remove much of the vocabulary from the teaching curriculum, indeed almost
all vocabulary beyond the most frequent levels. The evidence of research is
that this is catastrophic for learners who aspire to learn a foreign language so
they can use it for communication. A recent article (Milton 2022) provides a
reality check of attainment in the English system and points out that while the
curriculum aspiration is for learners at school to become expert users of their
foreign language, they attain only 5% or 10% of the 8000 or 9000 words com-
monly associated with expert attainment in the CEFR. Rodusaki and Alexiou
(2021) put this level of attainment into perspective in pointing out that for-
eign language learners in Greece at school routinely attain at age 8, and after
1 or 2 years of instruction, vocabulary levels which in England require 11 or
12 years of instruction and are only attained at age 17 or 18 and if the learners
specialise in languages. Learners can never progress beyond elementary levels
of performance through instruction in English schools. This example of prac-
tice in England is a sorry illustration of what happens where the approach to
vocabulary teaching we describe here is avoided. It does not have to be like
this. Historically, as we have shown, it was not like this in British schools. And
we have demonstrated, too, that in a low-achieving system and when a cur-
riculum is recast applying the type of precepts presented here, then low levels
of performance can become much higher.
We hope that readers of this book will learn that a vocabulary curriculum,
though large and complex, can be successfully designed and delivered. Learners
can succeed in learning a good lexicon and becoming fluent and communica-
tive in their foreign language.
References
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French Language Studies, 16(2), 187–205.
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Advanced American Dictionary at OxfordLearnersDictionaries.com [accessed
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EFL young learners. Journal of Applied Linguistics 34. Available from Investigating
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(auth.gr).
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com/watch?v=kC3tedqn6y4 [accessed 18/11/2021].
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concern/parent/js956f98v/file_sets/3b591987f [accessed 25/09/2021].
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cal response to Ofsted’s 2021 curriculum research review for languages. The Language
Appendix
Comparison of more and less frequent adjectives and verbs

in French, based on Lonsdale and Le Bras (2009)
Verbs Adjectives
Word Observations Word Observations
Most être Highly irregular; leur Occurs high in frequency

common often used only as list because the same
in top an auxiliary to the word can mean them
5000 meaning-bearing verb as an object pronoun;
words in compound tenses appears more common
than mon, ton or other
possessive adjectives
avoir Highly irregular; nouveau Irregular feminine
often used only as forms (and irregular
an auxiliary to the form when preceding
meaning-bearing verb masculine noun
in compound tenses; beginning with vowel)
used in specific and one of the few
idiomatic expresses adjectives which
such as when giving (usually) precedes the
one’s age, saying one noun which it describes
is hot, cold, hungry,
thirsty – tricky for L1
English learners
pouvoir Highly irregular, aucun Use requires ne preceding
including specific the verb – i.e.
question form puis-je grammatical knowledge.
One of the few negative
constructions which
agrees with the noun in
gender
faire Highly irregular, and quelque Polysemous adjective,
occurs in certain often used in highly
structures expressing idiomatic structures
causality or agency including with
(faire faire, faire faire à subjunctive
quelqu’un)
Appendix 213
Verbs Adjectives
Word Observations Word Observations

mettre Irregular polysemous bon Irregular feminine forms
verb (put, place, wear, and one of the few
hang, take, spend, turn adjectives which
on, and so on) precedes the noun
which it describes;
occurs in some idiomatic
phrases (bon appétit!),
interjections (bon!) and
phrasemes (enfin bon)
dire Irregular polysemous seul Polysemous adjective:
verb (say, tell, claim, alone, only, on one’s own,
order) lonely
devoir Irregular polysemous fort Polysemous adjective:
verb (must, owe) strong, good, large, hard
prendre Irregular polysemous certain Polyemous adjective
verb (take, pick, seize,
nick, catch, mistake)
donner Regular verb, often fin
Word more commonly
requires direct and occurs as a noun
indirect object; some meaning finish, end
polysemy (can mean and rather rarely as an
yield, blare out) adjective meaning fine
aller Irregular verb, often
tel Commonly occurs in
used in interjections phraseme tel que
(allez-y!) meaning such as;
otherwise has indirect
translation as like this,
requiring placement
before the noun
Least écrouler Regular verb, clear ferroviaire regular adjective, clear
common meaning meaning
in top détériorer Regular verb, clear solidaire regular adjective, clear
5000 meaning meaning (albeit no easy
words L1 translation)
expérimenter Regular verb, clear inisignifiant regular adjective, clear
meaning meaning
rigoler Regular verb, clear performant regular adjective, clear
meaning meaning
aménager Regular verb, clear civique regular adjective, clear
meaning meaning
dépouiller Regular verb, some atroce regular adjective, clear
polysemy meaning
décoller Regular verb racial regular adjective, clear
meaning
agréer Regular verb, idiomatic réglé regular adjective, clear
meaning meaning
hisser Regular verb, clear vigilant regular adjective, clear
meaning meaning
revivre Irregular verb écrasant regular adjective, clear
meaning
Lonsdale, D. and Le Bras, Y. (2009) A Frequency Dictionary of French. New York; Routledge.
Index
Alderson. J.C. 30, 119 coverage 31–43, 63, 65–66, 86–88,

A level 68, 69 98, 120–122, 136, 101, 168–169.
Alsaif, A. 53, 74–75 173–174, 194
AQA 125
aural vocabulary knowledge 40–41, 57, Daller et al. 8, 25
129, 160, 163, 186, 190, 208 David, A. 15, 68–69, 119, 124, 125, 132,
automaticity 46, 49, 54, 57, 139, 151, 163, 172
167, 180 Department for Education (DfE) 2–3, 29,
Alexiou, T. 3, 29, 64–68, 79, 85, 88, 33, 35, 42, 69, 86, 90, 91, 96–98, 100,
100, 141, 147, 180–181, 199, 104, 106, 109, 121, 123–5, 127, 133,
203, 210 147, 166, 200
active knowledge 19, 20, 23, 26, 58, 109, depth (lexical depth) 25–26, 46–47, 49,
170, 183 51–52, 58, 79, 105, 131, 140, 160, 178,
179, 186, 188–189, 191
Basic English 94 derivation 11–17, 19, 23, 45, 57, 58,
Bauckham, I. 126 104, 127
breadth (lexical breadth) 25–26, 46, 49, dimensions (of vocab knowledge) 19–26
51, 52, 63, 80, 128, 131, 141, 201 Duolingo 149, 185, 191
CEFR 2, 16, 24, 26, 39, 62–69, 72, 76, Ellis, N. 2, 47, 55, 140, 166
77, 79, 90, 92, 94–96, 109, 122, 132, Encore Tricolore 147
142, 145, 146–147, 152, 163, 165, EVST 64–65
170–172, 195, 197, 199, 201, 209 explicit learning 9, 10, 15, 45–52, 54–55,
CEFR vocab input norms 70–72 57, 78–79, 87, 104, 129, 131, 150, 159,
CEFR vocab size norms 62–68 176, 201
CILT 123 extensive reading 9, 50, 58, 78, 88, 165,
Cobb. T. 95, 111, 151, 186, 188, 207 178, 179, 182, 183, 184
cognates 55–56, 66, 75, 102, 128
collocation 22, 24, 57, 63, 150, 183, 185, false words 171–172
186, 190 films 51–52, 58, 71, 72, 78, 130,
comic books 48, 52, 78, 179, 183–186, 188, 191, 207–208
182–184, 186 Fitzpatrick, T. 26, 78, 187
comprehension gap 168–169 Flemma 10, 12, 173
comprehension thresholds 24, 33, 37–38, fluency 9, 15, 16, 25–26, 36, 46–47, 49,
40, 67, 87 51–52, 55, 58, 79, 91, 93, 100, 122,
concreteness 25, 55, 102, 149 125, 128, 130, 139–142, 160, 178–181,
Cook, V. 2, 140 1188–191, 221
Coste et al. 63, 69, 96, 110 focus on form 51, 140
Council of Europe 2, 25, 35, 64, 95, 122 Folse, K. 116–119, 187, 203
Index 215
forgetting 53–54 manageability 139, 142, 145–147, 154, 161
Français fondamental 93, 96, 109 Marsden, E. 26, 98, 122, 127, 131, 132,
frequency 10–12, 15, 16, 19, 32–35, 42, 200, 202, 205
54–56, 66–67, 69, 74, 79, 85–112, Martinez, R. 19, 24, 47, 86, 105, 139
118, 120, 122–124, 127–128, 131, 141, Masrai, A. 64, 123, 160, 179, 186, 189
151–152, 159, 169–171, 173, 184, 185, McQuillan, J. 48, 179
201, 202 Meara, P. 1, 18, 25, 26, 36, 40, 47, 48, 64,
frequency effects 55, 89–91, 127 65, 71, 73, 75, 89, 90, 130, 132, 159,
frequency profiles 89–92 170, 169, 179, 182, 183, 186, 206
memory 10, 15, 45, 50, 51, 53, 54, 107,
GCSE 68 127, 128, 150, 166, 197
generative processing 46, 141 minimalist program 2, 140
grammar 1–2, 15–18, 31, 39, 42, 48, morphology 11, 57
52, 58, 72, 74, 84, 92, 933, 103–104,
116–120, 123, 125–127, 129, 131–133, nation, 1.S.P. 1, 11, 12, 19–23, 32, 33,
140, 166, 51, 166, 200 35–39, 47, 50, 65, 67, 78, 79, 86–88,
Gruber, A. 3, 69, 75, 78, 80, 109, 118, 105, 121, 122, 149, 150, 170, 183
119, 125, 152, 200 NCELP 21, 87, 120, 121, 168
news broadcasts 34, 35, 47, 55, 69, 189
Häcker, M. 78, 94, 124, 130, 158 noticing 9, 46, 47, 51, 52, 57, 130, 140,
Hilton, H. 18, 48, 56–58, 72, 85, 103, 148, 149, 162, 175, 179, 180
126, 149, 151, 190, 195 noticing hypothesis 140
Hilton’s 4 propositions 56–58 notional syllabuses 63, 94, 96, 97, 109
Horst, M. 48, 50, 51, 78, 131, 160, 172,
179, 182, 183, 186 O’Dell, F. 85, 86, 93, 94, 95
Hulstijn, J. 51–52, 140 Ofsted 21, 54, 69, 130, 131, 134, 145
Ogden 94
idiom 21, 22, 24, 31, 92 O level 9, 74, 75, 79, 93, 99, 104, 119,
imagability 113, 149 133, 134, 142, 166, 171
implicit learning 45–52, 57, 78, 86, 131, 140 Oxford3000 2, 95, 96, 111, 204
incidental learning 48–52, 78, 116,
129–131, 159, 178, 179, 181, 182, passive knowledge 17, 19–23, 26, 41, 42,
188, 201 170, 181
individual variation 74, 87, 185, 196, 208 Peppa Pig 180
inflection 9–10, 15–19, 23, 32, 45, 66–67, periodicity 53, 139, 142, 143, 147, 154, 167
103, 109, 127, 132, 151, 161, 183 phraseme 47, 213
informal learning 50–52, 57, 62, 76, Pienemann, M. 9
77–79, 120, 169, 172, 178, 179, productive knowledge 19, 20, 23, 26, 58,
182–185, 190, 197, 198, 204 109, 157, 170, 183
interaction hypothesis 140–141
involvement load 45, 52 redacted text 33–37
regular input 53, 73, 130, 139, 142–148,
Kilgarrif, A. 34 152, 154, 161, 163, 166, 175, 188, 196,
Krashen, S. 1, 9, 19, 48, 140, 179 200, 204
repetition and recycling 45, 46, 49,
Lexical Learning Hypothesis 2, 140 52–55, 56, 57, 100, 101, 111, 127–129,
list learning 197–188 141, 150–152, 158, 160, 163, 180, 181,
Long, M. 30 184, 186
Lemma 9, 10–17, 33–34, 45, 64, 66, 70, retention 45, 46, 49, 52, 53, 54, 70–72,
74, 104, 132 75, 109, 127, 128, 129, 160, 164, 165,
Laufer, B. 9, 30, 36, 42, 51–52, 55, 88, 175, 183, 186
121, 140 retrieval 46–48, 54, 55, 80, 102, 141
links (between words) 21, 25–26, 47 Richards, J. 30
216 Index
Saudi Arabian curriculum 6, 62, 75, Thornbury, S. 3, 55, 79, 80, 165, 189
76–77, 111, 152, 153, 199 textbook vocabulary 5, 51, 53, 70–72, 80,
Scholfield. P. 53, 73, 142–147, 166, 167, 188 84–86, 100, 130, 141–154
S-curve of comprehension 37, 38, 41, 87, Tschichold, C. 5, 53, 71, 72, 78, 79, 84,
121, 168 100, 101, 109, 124, 125, 141, 142, 153,
Seaton, J. 36 173, 200, 203
size (vocabulary size norms) 62–68
Stæhr, L. 39–41 Van Ek, J. 63, 94, 95, 98, 110
structuralism 3, 117, 119, 127, 128, 131, Vassiliu, P. 53, 70–74, 78, 80, 99, 119,
132, 209 124, 130, 131, 14, 145, 146, 147, 172,
Studio text book 124, 144, 173 199, 200, 207
Sweet, H. 30, 43 verb lexicon 131–132
sequencing 5, 17, 23, 56, 72, 78, 79, 80, vocabulary difficulty 55–56
87, 96, 102, 103, 124, 139, 163, 199, vocabulary myths 4, 116–135, 187, 203
200, 209 vocabulary notebooks 163–165, 169, 175,
songs 17, 48, 51, 52, 55, 58, 72, 130, 178, 198, 202, 207
179, 183, 184, 15, 186, 187, 188, 191, vocabulary profiles 89–92, 108, 111, 112,
198, 207, 208 158, 171, 172, 173, 186, 188, 202, 204
Snow, D. 21, 48, 72, 129–131 vocabulary rate plot 143–144
Schmitt, N. 18, 19, 21, 23, 37, 53, 54, 80,
180, 183 Wardle, M. 21, 118, 159, 199
Waring, R. 189
teacher input 158–163 Waystage materials 63, 64, 98, 109, 110
Thimann, I. 9, 74, 75, 79, 93, 111, 142, White, R. 85, 86, 95, 97, 101, 102
166, 188 Wilkins, D. 30, 94, 119
Threshold materials 63, 97–98 Woore, R. 21, 67, 98, 121, 122, 160, 183,
Tonkyn, A. 3, 69, 75, 78, 80, 119, 152 200, 202, 208
Trim, J. 63, 94, 95, 97, 98, 110 word family 10–17
TV 50, 57, 71, 72, 122, 130, 178, 180,
183, 184, 202 XKLex 64
topics and themes 2, 18, 24, 64, 68, 86, X_Lex 40, 41, 65–66, 73, 76, 132, 170, 199
93, 94, 96, 99–110, 120, 123–124, 127,
145, 148, 154, 173, 194, 204 young learners 180–181
TSC (Teaching Schools Council) 3, 33,
94, 118, 123, 126, 127, 128, 131, 200 Zipf curve and distribution 32–33

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Vocabulary in the Foreign

James Milton is Emeritus Professor of Applied Linguistics at Swansea

Oliver Hopwood is Head of Modern Languages at Westminster School, UK.

James Milton and Oliver Hopwood

ISBN: 978-1-032-24488-4 (hbk)

1 Introduction and background 1

2 Vocabulary – what is meant by word in teaching words? 8

3 Why is vocabulary so important in the foreign

4 How vocabulary is learned 45

5 Vocabulary and attainment – setting vocabulary goals 62

6 Selecting vocabulary for the curriculum 84

7 British vocabulary myths 116

8 Vocabulary in the textbook 139

9 Vocabulary beyond the textbook 158

10 Vocabulary learning outside the classroom 178

11 Curriculum design, implications and dangers in delivery 194

We have two reasons for writing a book on vocabulary in the curriculum.

Background – why is a book on vocabulary

How this book is organised

1 What a word is and how knowing this relates to the curriculum

The unit of count

Lemmas, flemmas and word families

a Be regular and frequent, so they are clearly rule governed.

week weeks weekly, mid-week

Nouns Gender coiffeur, coiffeuse coiffure

Vocabulary – what is meant by word?

Vocabulary – what is meant by word?

Dimensions of word knowledge

Form Spoken R What does the word sound like?

at all (prep phr)

Within this framework of existing vocabulary knowledge, the beginnings of

Bands Levels Range

Proficient user C2 Has a good command of a very broad lexical

These many aspects of word knowledge make modelling the vocabulary

The importance of a good vocabulary curriculum

Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing

Long and Richards (2007, p. xii) write

The greatest problem which a learner faces in learning a foreign language

Laufer herself reflects (Laufer and Sim 1985, p. 410)

Vocabulary knowledge is the most important area of knowledge required

The idea that vocabulary is so important it should feature prominently in the

Language ability can be largely described as a function of vocabulary size.

You cannot learn a foreign language for communication without learning

What does a cow eat?

Number of words Text coverage (%)

Figure 3.2 Student self-reports of comprehension and vocabulary knowledge

Figure 3.3 Nation’s vocabulary thresholds

Figure 3.4 The vocabulary comprehension S-curve

Vocabulary, general ability and the four skills

Listening Reading Writing

A-Lex read listen write speak overall

.456* .699** .479** .761** .347* .683**

Learning individual words

Retrieval practice and generative processing

Incidental and explicit learning

In class Outside class

Deliberateness Explicit Explicit learning e.g. Informal learning e.g.

Spaced and massed repetition

Hilton’s four propositions

1 Introduction and background 1

2 Vocabulary – what is meant by word in teaching words? 8

4 How vocabulary is learned 45

5 Vocabulary and attainment – setting vocabulary goals 62

6 Selecting vocabulary for the curriculum 84

7 British vocabulary myths 116

8 Vocabulary in the textbook 139

9 Vocabulary beyond the textbook 158

10 Vocabulary learning outside the classroom 178

11 Curriculum design, implications and dangers in delivery 194

.456* .699 .479 .761** .347* .683**

1. Personal identification 1. Identification et caractérisation

Table 6.5 Multi-word expressions beginning in . . . in Cambridge PET word lists