Developing an English vocabulary curriculum for Hong Kong schools

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Developing an English vocabulary curriculum for
Hong Kong schools

• Arthur McNeill
• Hong Kong Baptist University

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Outline of the presentation

• How the project came about
• Aims of the project
• Design principles
• Procedures for compiling the wordlists
• Some problems and issues

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PART 1How the project came about
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Evidence of low attainment in vocabulary size
tests
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Native/Non-native differences in vocabulary
acquisition

• Native English speaking students acquire about
  3000 words per year at secondary school (ending
  up with about 20,000 word families in adulthood)
  .
• Hong Kong secondary pupils acquire about 300
  words per year.

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Vocabulary and the CGs

• Lexical relations
• Synonyms (e.g. happy, glad)
• Antonyms (e.g. bright, dark)
• Homonyms (e.g. catch a bus, catch a cold)
• Collocation (e.g. make a wish, watch TV)
• Lexical sets (e.g. furniture table, chair,
  desk, cupboard)

please refer to CG (CDC, 2004) pp. 168-171
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Vocabulary building skills recommended in CG

• Word formation
• Affixation (e.g. unhappy, careless)
• Compounding (e.g. footballfootball)
• Conversion (e.g. cook a meal, a cook)
• Derivation (e.g. excite, exciting, excited,
  excitement)

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Quality, YES. Quantity, NO.

• Curriculum guidelines stop short of identifying
  lexical targets.
• Main concerns about inadequate vocabulary come
  from the tertiary sector.

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PART 2Aims of the project
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The Vocabulary Curriculum Project

• EMB/CUHK collaborative project to develop an
  English vocabulary curriculum for 12 years of
  compulsory education.
• To set vocabulary targets for each KS.
• To identify the English words to be known by
  students by the end of each KS

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Proposed Vocabulary Targets
Key Stage Stage Target Cumulative Target
KS1
KS2
KS3
KS4
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Proposed Vocabulary Targets
Key Stage Stage Target Cumulative Target
KS1 1000 1000
KS2 1000 2000
KS3 1500 3500
KS4 1500 5000
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Outcomes (Phase 1)

• Four wordlists, each available in different
  formats
• Alphabetically arranged
• Thematically-arranged
• e-list (software which allows greater
  manipulation of the content)

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Research Questions

1. How many English words should HK students know at
   different stages of their education?
2. Which words should they know?

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PART 3Design Principles
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Knowing a word? Working definition

• Ability to recognize a word (in written or
  spoken text) and to know its meaning

Type of knowledge Details
Form Written (orthographic) spoken (phonological) most frequent morphological variations
Meaning Only one meaning introduced at a time additional meanings added as new items
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Sources of input?

• Teachers familiar with the respective KS
• Frequency data about how vocabulary is used in
  English
• General English
• Academic English
• Topics and themes listed in CGs
• Vocabulary content of the approved textbooks

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Frequency-based lists/corpora
GSL
General words
BNC
AWL
Academic words
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GSL
Classic list of the most frequent 2000
words. Very widely used and respected.
BNC
100 million word collection of written and spoke
English. A new standard.
AWL
570 words which occur frequently in academic
texts across disciplines
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Textbook Corpus(currently stored as separate
files)
KS1 Textbook A Textbook B Textbook C
KS2 Textbook A Textbook B Textbook C
KS3 Textbook A Textbook B Textbook C
KS4 Textbook A Textbook B Textbook C
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Principles guiding final selections

• Relevance to learners (now and later)
• Usefulness
• Combinability (collocations)
• Word class distribution
• Superordinates

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PART 4Procedures for compiling the wordlists
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Design of the vocabulary selection procedure
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Teacher Input
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Data gathering (from teachers)

• 70 schools at each KS
• Option of on-line task or submit hard copy for
  KS1 and KS2
• Secondary teachers invited to CU to attend a
  seminar and workshop

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Teacher Seminar, plus
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Vocabulary decision-making task
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--------------------------- Microsoft Internet
Explorer --------------------------- It may take
some time to submit the form, please be
patient. --------------------------- OK
---------------------------
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Data analysis

1. Collation of the results of the teacher surveys.
2. Calculating a score for each word based on the
   number of times it was selected by teachers
3. Deciding on a cut-off point for each word score
   to determine whether it is representative of the
   teacher sample or not.

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PART 5Issues and Problems
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1. Basing a school curriculum on frequency data

• Relating a corpus of naturally occurring L1
  language to an L2 curriculum is less
  straightforward than it first appears.
• Refer to handout for examples of BNC items which
  do not transfer readily to an English language
  curriculum for HK students.

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What is the BNC? The British National Corpus
(BNC) is a 100 million word collection of samples
of written and spoken language from a wide range
of sources, designed to represent a wide
cross-section of British English from the latter
part of the 20th century, both spoken and
written.
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Would a corpus of international English be more
appropriate?

• In applied linguistics, there is strong support
  for basing achievement standards on successful L2
  users rather than on native speakers.
• But, there is no corpus of international
  English. Should we encourage one?

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2. Degree of consensus among HK teachers about
target language

• Analysis of the data revealed variation among
  teachers concerning the vocabulary items which
  should be included.
• Should we look in more depth at the patterns of
  selection?

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3. Should Hong Kong words be added?

• Examples
• shroff dim sum dai pai dong - gweilo

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Vocabulary Curriculum Project Phase 2

• Phase 2 Pedagogy (materials development and
  teacher development)

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Seed ProjectThe Magic of Words Enhancing
Effectiveness of Vocabulary Learning and
Teaching at Primary Level

• Aims of the project
• To explore ways and pedagogies to improve the
  quality of vocabulary L/T
• To promote the development of vocabulary building
  skills
• To encourage the application of vocabulary in
  speaking and writing
• To enhance pupils and teachers competence and
  confidence in handling vocabulary

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Seed Project

• Target group
• Two classes of P.4 pupils

• Some ideas for making use of the wordlists in
  lesson planning
• Building on pupils previous knowledge (i.e.
• words they have learnt)
• Selecting words to be taught in a particular
• module / unit (by making reference to the
• relevant categories in the wordlists)

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