Grammar and Vocabulary

The Chapters in both H.D.B and M.C.M. both concentrated on vocabulary and additionally, grammar was covered in the H.D.B. book. Both topics are something that I have been interested in as it seems the two areas are important in second language teaching.

H.D.B. discussed whether the inductive or deductive approach would benefit students more. He claims that inductive mimics the natural way in which language is acquired. That is, when people are learning their first language they are only implicitly aware of the grammar rules. If asked, many people cannot explain grammar rules and yet they apply many of these rules throughout any given day. In my own experience I learned grammar through the deductive approach. I have to say, after reading about the implicit approach I can see how that is favored. With deductive approach it seemed to add a lot of unneeded pressure on the students to use a certain grammar rule correctly. With the inductive approach students are able to learn over time what grammar rules to use and when to use them. Overall, I think the inductive approach is more conducive to communication.

The H.D.B. book also covered two different view points on vocabulary teaching; incidental exposure and intentional exposure. H.D.B. states that intentional learning proves to aid in student's vocabulary, however, I think both view points have their benefits. I believe that the old adage that we have all heard before sheds some light on the topic, "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer." It seems that with reading many people can improve their vocabulary without intentionally doing so. With that improved vocabulary they are able to understand more reading materials and are more efficient readers. The better these people are at reading the more they will want to do it and the snowball effect continues.

The M.C.M. book also covers vocabulary learning and the two view points of implicit and explicit. M.C.M. claims that many of the words that many of us have in our vocabulary have been explicitly taught, however; when proficiency is high enough in a second language that explicit learning can change into implicit. M.C.M. claims that the first 2,000-3,000 high frequency words of a vocabulary should be taught explicitly but after that many of the low frequency words can be acquired through reading and listening. I like to think of the first 2,000-3,000 high frequency words as the foundation and the many high frequency words to follow as the rest of the house. You need to have that foundation or you will not have a house (or implicit learning of other vocabulary).

Multiple exposure to a word is also important for that word to be considered "learned". This is important in both implicit and explicit learning. M.C.M. claims this lack of exposure is a common problem with many L2 learners and teachers can avoid that problem through more exposure or "book flood". AS a teacher I like the idea of "book flood" because it could target all the students' interests and the idea of finishing a book would give additional intrinsic motivation. Maybe it just my thought that reading could save the world one day.