Wednesday, August 28th, 2024
(9:25~9:50) Room 1A1
Louis Lafleur
Kwansei Gakuin University

The Selection of an Appropriate Word Counting Unit
for Vocabulary Teaching and Learning in CALL Projects

Why?
..very few studies address
teacher/researcher practices and perspectives regarding WCUs

What is a word?
according to Google

What about word knowledge? What can be learnt? What should be taught?

3How do we or should wecount words?

How many words(do you believe)
are there in this list?

drank, drink, drinks, drinkable, drinker, drinking,drunk, drunker, drunkest, drunkenly, non-drinker,undrinkable(a) 204(b) 12(c) 9(d) 5(e) 1Word Counting Unit Reference(Your roadmap to WCUs)→QR link

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What word counting unit
is best for EFL students?

(Literature Review)

The word family (i.e., single headwords such as “drink” but not other word forms such as drinks,drank, drinker, and so on…) has for long been the WCU yardstick (e.g., General Service List;
West, 1953) for ESL/EFL teaching as it was assumed students could infer other word forms.
However, recent studies such as McLean (2018); Stoeckel et al. (2020) question the pedagogicalappropriateness of the word family as a counting unit for lower-level language learners, and point
to other WCUs such as the flemma which presents/counts derivational forms of words as separate
entries or the lemma which additionally considers variance in parts of speech as separate entries
as being more appropriate alternatives as they permit derivational word forms to be included asadditional items.
7What word counting unit
is best for EFL students?

(Literature Review)What word counting unit
is best for EFL students?

(Literature Review)

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Do on-the-ground teaching practices & perspectives
reflect these recent recommendationsin the literature?
This mixed-approach study
surveyed 30 ESL/EFL
teachers in Japan andcollected both quantitativeand qualitative data throughan online questionnaire.
The questionnaire surveyed
their vocabulary teachingexperience and views
regarding ﬁve categories ofWCUs:
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
11(5)

All Forms & Meanings
PlemmaLemma
FlemmaWord Family

RQ1:
On a 5-point Likert satisfaction scale,
how do teachers in Japan rate the various
word counting units they have utilized intheir teaching?

12What word counting units have they utilized
when teaching vocabulary?

13

Word Counting Unit Satisfaction(per WCU type & Overall Rank)“As long as
contextual
examples areprovided, they
seem to help
students
remember thevocabulary.
(P#16)”
14

RQ2:
What are teachers’ opinions of the various
types of word counting units in terms of theirappropriateness for students in Japan?
15

16

“Less useful entries (such as the moth [drinker] and the inflected adjectives) can be omitted whilemore useful ones (irregular verb forms) [could be] included. (P#20)”.
17

RQ3:
What are the teachers’ perspectives about
including additional word forms (e.g.,gerunds and irregular verb patterns) as
additional vocabulary/study items?

18

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Lafleur, L. (2023). Teaching practices and perspectives regarding word counting units.
Vocabulary Learning and Instruction, 12(1), 31-49.
https://doi.org/10.29140/vli.v12n1.1210

Q & A time, contact Information,
presentation slides & moreLouis LaﬂeurIdeas, ressources & research arefree to use:

(researchgate.net) Louis Laﬂeur
4.0(academia.edu)(email)21

Louis Laﬂeur

Louis Laﬂeurlouislaﬂeur333@gmail.com
Thank you and feel free to contact me anytime!