The Vocabulary Problem

1,500 to 5,000 and beyond: How to manage reading with a limited vocabulary?

In his article ‘Scaffolds for reading in French: lessons from history, guidance for the future?’, Ian Maun discusses the great bugbear, the linguistic lurking leviathan that is lexical.

As Mann points out, secondary school students at intermediate level studying French (but this goes for all second languages) struggle with reading.

Maun cites the well known research that has shown that intermediate learners need knowledge of some 5000 word families for reading graded texts for their level. Advanced readers of more authentic texts need upwards of 10,000.

The specification for the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), taken at age 16 in England, lists only some 1600 words.

Most GCSE students only learn a small percentage of even these. Most typical college courses and online programs across the world are similar.

In his article, Mann looks at historical precedents for creating understanding of French texts, and these methods are examined. Mann is of the view that a mixture of old and new methods such as interlinear texts, may increase students' understanding and ultimately lead to the learning of a greater body of words.

The solution, or part of the solution, he concluded, is the interlinear glossed text, the type you find here at Latinum . These texts allow for extensive reading, and overcome the vocabulary problem.

But, apart from.making reading easier, do they do any good? Can a student learn from them?

Other evidence based research has shown that the system works.

Abbas Ali Zarei and Maryam Hasani wrote a paper called ‘Does glossing work for vocabulary learning?’ published in Iraq (journals.shirazu.ac.ir, Teaching English as a Second Language Quarterly 30 (2), 209-233, 2011

To investigate the effects of different glossing conventions on vocabulary recognition and recall, 158 participants were given a pre-test to make sure that they did not have any prior knowledge of the target words.

Reading passages with four different glossing conventions (interlinear, marginal, pre-text, and post-text) were given to eight groups. Four groups received interlingual glosses and four groups were given intralingual glosses.

Receptive and productive post-tests were administered to measure vocabulary recognition and recall. The collected data were analyzed using two one-way ANOVA procedures. The results showed that there were no significant differences among the effects of different types of intralingual glosses on vocabulary recognition and recall.

As to the affect of the interlingual glosses on vocabulary recognition, the post-text group performed significantly worse than both the pre-text and the marginal groups. Moreover, the interlinear gloss was shown to be more effective than the post-text gloss in vocabulary recall.

A study similar to this was carried out in Korea by Sungmook Choi. This is another country where glossed texts of various types, including interlinear, are still used in educational settings.

Sungmook Choi’s paper, Effects of L1 and L2 glosses on incidental vocabulary acquisition and lexical representations’, published in Learning and Individual Differences 45, 137-143, 2016 is encouraging.

Sungmook Choi’s research found similar results to the earlier work of Laufer and Shmueli (1997), who demonstrated that L1 glosses were more effective than L2 (English) glosses in short- and long-term vocabulary retention, and Miyasako (2002) also had reported similar findings.

Sungmook Choi also found, in addition to a number of other studies that having the word glossed multiple times increased retention when tested four weeks later.

The vocabulary learning worked best when glosses where in the student’s native language, and did not work as well when in L2 (the language being studied).

The words also appeared to be processed differently when glossed in L1 (Korean) or L2 ( English).

It is fashionable to teach L2 in L2, but there is conflicting research on how good this is for accurate vocabulary learning.

Sungmook Choi’s hypothesis is that:

(a) more stable form–meaning associative links may be formed for L1 glosses, possibly resulting in more refined and more highly interconnected episodic memory traces and

(b) L1 and L2 glosses may foster noticeably dissimilar lexical form–meaning representations in the learners' lexical entries

In other words, glossing in your native language works better, and even better again when there is repetition of the glosses.

The Latinum Institute interlinear glossed texts do both of these things: glossed words are repeated, using different types of glossing, and the gloss is always in your home language.

I believe this presents an efficient system for language and vocabulary learning. More research needs to be done on the effect of layout and presentation of the glosses on language learning

The system Latinum is using is found in texts that were published in the late 1600’s, known as a ‘construed’ text. This was a specialised type of intra-linear that was only in fashion for a short period. Not many surviving examples exist, as most were destroyed through classroom use, or eaten by the proverbial dog. . Construed texts were used to teach Latin. In this format typography is used to set apart the two languages, and the gloss is written on the same line as the text. The older texts try to cram as much onto a page as possible to keep printing costs down. This makes them uncomfortable to read, but with good spacing that issue is easily fixed.

This type of text gives a more natural glossed extensive reading experience. Latinum’s view is that a gloss below the line is unfamiliar, and requires more mental processing effort. It is tiring on the eyes. The goal is to create texts for extensive reading, where new vocabulary can be learned pleasantly, previously learned vocabulary can be reinforced, all while giving the feel of pleasant natural reading.