ESLC2025ONTHEMOVE

Teachers and researchers agree that students need to develop a large vocabulary and that they need to be able to use words in a wide range of contexts. Yet many students struggle to develop the second language vocabulary they need to succeed academically in school. In order to achieve this goal, opportunities for both intentional and incidental learning are required. Using studies that show the nature of vocabulary in natural contexts, I will show why students are unlikely to “pick up” the vocabulary they need in ordinary school and out of school settings.  Then, I will show how research on how vocabulary is learned has led to a set of key principles that can guide teachers and materials writers in developing intentional learning activities to support vocabulary learning in classrooms.

Dual language learners (DLLs) are more heterogenous in their language development than their monolingual peers. This heterogeneity in their rate of development and their outcomes means some DLLs overlap with children who have communication disorders in their English second language (L2) abilities. In this keynote we will explore answers to the following questions: (1) What are the reasons that DLLs vary so much in their L2 abilities and what can teachers do to support slower DLLs? (2) What causes overlap between the profiles of child L2 speakers and children with communication disorders and how does this complicate identifying language differences versus disorders? (3) Do children with communication disorders have the capacity to learn two languages?

Vocabulary knowledge and acquisition has often been seen in black and white terms: a word is either unknown/unlearned or it is known/learned. But vocabulary knowledge is too complex to be understood in a dichotomous manner. Rather it is Complex (there are many things to know about a word), Integrated (different aspects of word knowledge are interrelated with each other), Incremental (vocabulary knowledge is learned incrementally over time in a bit-by-bit manner), and a Process (vocabulary learning is a process, rather than a one-off event).

By themselves, these characteristics are well-known to the field. But the implications of these characteristics have not generally been acknowledged. The presenter proposes a unified approach, called a CIIP perspective. He will then outline what a CIIP perspective means in terms of a range of pedagogic and assessment issues. For example, a CIIP perspective has implications for the way vocabulary exercises are designed over time to enhance both a range of word knowledge aspects, and their degree of mastery.