Re-thinking vocabulary instruction: What research says (original) (raw)

Despite the current importance attached to vocabulary instruction (Beck, McKeown & Omanson, 1987; Laufer, 1994; Nation, 2001; Read, 2002), language teachers are still not clear about the answers to numerous questions about teaching vocabulary. Some of these questions are: (1) Do students learn vocabulary incidentally through reading/listening or is explicit vocabulary instruction a necessity?; (2) What vocabulary exercises are the most effective?; (3) What is the role of prefabricated chunks in students' language competence?; (4) What does corpus linguistics say about vocabulary instruction?; and (5) What are the key problems facing Arabic-speaking students with vocabulary use? The current paper aims to address the abovementioned problematic issues from an empirical perspective. Research-based answers are provided to important questions in relation to vocabulary instruction in order to allow English language instructors to re-think their classroom practices and introduce research-based innovations.