• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1Theoretical Underpinnings
• Chapter 2Learning and Teaching Materials
• Chapter 3Voc Games and Activities
• Chapter 4References
• Appendix 1Preamble & Wordlists
• Appendix 2Learning Targets

Chapter 1

Theoretical Underpinnings of Vocabulary Learning and Teaching

 

3. Some Principles Explored in this Vocabulary Resource Package

 

3.2 Creating associations — paradigmatic and syntagmatic approaches

For a word to become fixed in a learner’s mental lexicon, it needs to have associations with other words already acquired. The stronger and more stable the associations, the more firmly the word will be anchored . There are two main types of association: (a) paradigmatic and (b) syntagmatic. Examples of paradigmatic associations are: (1) musical instrument – piano / guitar / violin / drum, and (2) vehicle – car / bus / train / plane. ‘Musical instrument’ and ‘vehicle’ are hyper-ordinates, i.e. they are names of categories which help to group together the members of the category. The arrangement is hierarchical, with a hyper-ordinate term at the top (such as ‘musical instrument’ or ‘vehicle’) and, at the next level down, a group of co-hyponyms such as ‘guitar’ and ‘violin’ or ‘bus’ and ‘train’. This type of hierarchical arrangement can have many levels and it is always possible to add new words. For learners of a second language, storing words in a paradigmatic arrangement is a logical and efficient exercise. All of the words in a paradigm are related semantically, so the guiding principle of association is meaning. Since the system is open-ended, it is relatively easy to add newly-acquired words to the paradigmatic networks in a learner’s mental lexicon. This type of association promotes efficient expansion and retrieval of words and is particularly valuable in developing a large receptive vocabulary. Some of the materials in this resource package are intended to strengthen students’ development of paradigmatic associations.

 

Syntagmatic associations, on the other hand, refer to word combinations, such as ‘play football’, ‘go shopping’, ‘film star’, ‘high temperature’, etc. These associations are based on the ways words are used and on the patterns in which they typically occur. This type of association is related to productive vocabulary use, since learners need to know possible word combinations when putting words together to form sentences. Research into word associations in a second language has been stimulated by Meara’s (1983) seminal work in this area. The results of the various word association studies suggest that paradigmatic and syntagmatic associations are important in both first and second language vocabulary acquisition. If teachers can help to promote students’ word associations, they are likely to support the long-term retention of vocabulary.

 

Making students aware of a word’s collocations is an obvious way to promote syntagmatic association. The teaching of typical word combinations has been given strong support from research into the way vocabulary is used in texts, in particular, the recognition that English is a highly formulaic language. Wray (2000) estimates that as much as 80% of English text is formulaic in nature. She also argues that multi-word units (or ‘chunks’) are processed by the human brain with the same amount of effort and attention as free-standing words. Wray, therefore, recommends that vocabulary teaching should include multi-word units, which are not necessarily analysed by learners in detail.