LD SIG Realizing Autonomy Conference Proceedings

EX P L O R I N G L EA R N E R S ’ C H A N G I N GLEXICAL LANDSCAPESA N D L E A R NE R AU T ONOM Y
Andy Barfield
This paper presents the concepts of school knowledge and action knowledge (Barnes,
1992, 2008) and certain basic principles of learner autonomy as a necessary
background for exploring learners’ lexical development in different pedagogies forautonomy. Using a case study approach, the lexical landscapes of a single student in acontent-based learning course are explored as the student develops her vocabulary
practices over an academic year through experimentation, interaction and reflection
with her peers. The student’s emerging preference for using collocations, word
associations and short paraphrases reveals an original combination of different
vocabulary practices. It also suggests that learners, under appropriate conditions, willreadily move beyond word-by-word translation and the simple listing of L2-L1
equivalents that entrance exam cramming requires them to do. Further researchquestions about the relationship between lexical development and learner autonomy are
addressed in the final part of the paper.
本論は二つの「知識」に関するコンセプトschool knowledgeとaction knowledge(Barnes, 1992, 2008)及び学習者オートノミーの基本的理論が 自律性重視の教育において語彙発達の探求に不可欠であることを論じる。ケース・スタディ手法を使い、content-based learningの年間授業で、一人の学習者の語彙学習を追った。 クラス
メイトたちとの交流の中での試行錯誤、自分の学びの振り返りを通しての語彙(lexicallandscape)の発達を研究した。学習者がコロケーション、単語の関連性、短いパラフ
レーズなどを中心にする独自の学習スタイルを確立していく様子がはっきりと伺えた。これは適切な環境と指導があれば、学習者が単純な単語リストや英和対応などの入試対策として行ってきたもの以上の語彙学習を実践することができることを示唆するものである。語彙の発達と学習者オートノミーの研究に向けて、今後の方向性についても考察する。

Introduction
While we seem more than ready to discuss nonlinguistic dimensions to the realization oflearner autonomy, we are curiously reluctant to get specific about processes of lexical
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development that may be involved in that realization. One eﬀect of this separation is that
diﬀerent positions around issues to do with learner autonomy and lexical development become
lost or silenced. It is interesting, for example, that discussions of autonomous learning cansometimes go hand in hand with uncritical assertions that students should be assigned 20, even50, words a week to record and learn, without further consideration of the contradiction
between such demands and the realisation of learner autonomy. For these reasons, it seems
useful to me to revisit certain fundamental pedagogic principles of learner autonomy inrelation to fostering learners’ lexical development. This may allow us to consider, in a detachedway, possible relationships between learner autonomy and lexical development. In this paper, I
first look at the distinction between school knowledge and action knowledge that Barnes(1976, 2008) makes and connect this to three basic, commonly held principles of developing
learner autonomy in practice. I then consider how these principles might be applied to lexicaldevelopment, before reviewing some classic examples of learner autonomy practices where
vocabulary learning and use are highlighted. My aim is to question how lexical development isaddressed and represented in certain pedagogies for autonomy. Following this, I present thecase of a single student in a content-based learning course so that we can explore in some detailthe lexical landscape that she moves through as she pays conscious attention to developing her
vocabulary practices. In the final part, I identify a few important questions that it may be
helpful to address further in exploring learners’ changing lexical landscapes in relation to thedevelopment of learner autonomy.

Some Basic Principles of Learner Autonomy in Language Education
Within formal education, an important distinction has been made between two modes oflearning. These modes are known as school knowledge and action knowledge. Barnes (1976)
comments:
School knowledge is the knowledge which someone else presents to us. We partly grasp
it, enough to answer the teacher’s questions, to do exercises, or to answer examinationquestions, but it remains someone else’s knowledge, not ours. If we never use thisknowledge, we probably forget it. In so far as we use knowledge for our own purposes,
however, we begin to incorporate it into our view of the world, and to use parts of it tocope with the exigencies of living. Once the knowledge becomes incorporated into thatview of the world on which our actions are based I would say that it has become “action
knowledge.” (p. 81)

Barnes (1976) associates school knowledge with the knowledge of others (e.g., teachers, texts
that learners read, books that learners study) and action knowledge with the constructivist
capacity of the learner to reinterpret others’ knowledge, reshape it to their own purposes, andmake it part of their understanding of the world where “the pupil’s ability to reinterpret
knowledge for himself is crucial to learning” (p. 142). The concept of action knowledge leads

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into questions of how new understandings of the world are managed by learners. Barnes (2008)
explains:
It is only the learner who can bring the new information, procedures or ways ofunderstanding to bear upon existing ideas, expectations and ways of thinking andacting. That is, the learner actively constructs the new way of understanding. (p. 3)
Given the emphasis on the active role of learners in shaping their knowledge of the world, it is
not surprising that the school knowledge/action knowledge nexus has been taken up by
diﬀerent learner autonomy theorists and practitioners as a way of understanding the capacityof learners to be authors of their own learning.
David Little, in particular, has theorized from Barnes’s work and put forward three generalpedagogic principles for the development of language learner autonomy: learner involvement,
learner reflection and appropriate target use (e.g., Little 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009). What Little(2007) means by learner involvement is that learners “are brought to engage with their learningand take responsibility for key decisions” (p. 7). This principle highlights the importance oflearners determining for themselves their learning purposes and goals, as such selfdetermination can directly influence their motivation and sense of control. From the principleof learner reflection follows the need for learners to be “taught to think critically about theprocess and content of their learning” (p. 7). Learners should therefore be guided to consider
cognitive processes of learning and develop insights into their own ways of learning; theyshould also have freedom to choose (or at least the right to negotiate) the materials they use
for their learning. The third principle, appropriate target language use, refers to learners “using
the target language as the principal medium of language learning” (2006, p. 2). Learners should,
in other words, use the target language not only for their own communicative purposes, butalso for the metacognitive functions of reflecting on and evaluating their performance anddevelopment in the target language. These principles are seen by Little as operating in dynamic
relationship to one another: the development of autonomous learning may take place, heargues, only under conditions where all three principles are followed in practice.

Addressing Questions of Learner Autonomy and Lexical Development
Relatively little has been written about the diﬀerent pedagogic and learning practices that theabove principles might entail with regard to vocabulary learning in the development of learnerautonomy. Following Little, we may make the following assumptions, however: (a) learners
should be guided to engage with their vocabulary learning and take responsibility for key
decisions about the vocabulary that they decide they need to develop; (b) learners should betaught to think critically about the vocabulary that they want to learn and about diﬀerent
processes of lexical development, as well as have the right to choose (or at least negotiate) how
they wish to learn vocabulary; and (c) learners should use the vocabulary that they learn (ormake decisions about what vocabulary they need to use) and should be guided to reflect on
their lexical development. With these theoretical principles as initial reference points, I look
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next at three examples of learner autonomy practices where vocabulary learning and use have aprominent role.
The first example is from a class of English beginners under Leni Dam’s tutelage in a secondary
school in Denmark. In the description of her own practices for developing learner autonomy(Dam, 1995; Dam & Legenhausen, 1996), Dam shows how the very first English lessons with aclass of Danish 11-year-old learners in a state school focus on what the learners want to say in
English, and on how they are asked to bring into the classroom and use English words they findin the world outside. From the first lesson, the learners also use The Oxford English Picture
Dictionary (Parnwell, 1989) to find funny, exciting or useful words that they need for their own
purposes (Dam, 1995, pp. 13-19). Within a few lessons, the lexical choices that the learners
make are written up by Dam on posters and displayed in the classroom, so that the whole class
can use this shared vocabulary to write brief profiles of themselves in English. Other times,“making word cards” and “practising words” (p. 19) are among the activities that learners
choose to do. Here, they are guided to write down words in their learning diaries that theywould like to know/remember, to make drawings and write short texts, regularly sharing theirwork with each other (Dam & Legenhausen, 1996, p. 269). The learners also produce wordcards1 with “a drawing, photo or L1 equivalent on one side and the corresponding English
expression on the other side” (p. 269) and make word games that can be used by others in theclass. A couple of weeks after starting to learn English, learners are further encouraged to use
new vocabulary in writing stories (Dam, 1995, pp. 19-20). Dam’s account shows how learners
can be asked from the very beginning to be self-directed in their lexical development. She also
illustrates how learners can actively explore with each other diﬀerent ways of learning andusing vocabulary. They do not need to be restricted to one single way. Overall, a notably
distinctive feature of Dam’s practice is that learning vocabulary is closely (but not exclusively)
connected with use, as well as with learners making decisions themselves about the vocabularythat they need and how they want to use it. A very important point to keep in mind here isthat the vocabulary focus in these classes is part of an overall approach leading towards projectwork.
In a diﬀerent take on autonomous learning and vocabulary development, Little (2009) shares
examples from a vocabulary list by a 30-year-old Ukrainian student at the A1 beginnerproficiency level2 in an intensive course organized on autonomous learning principles. The list
includes vocabulary such as operation, inflamed, tablets and temperature. These relatively lowfrequency words are directly related to the young man’s need to consult a doctor about healthproblems (pp. 163-6). Thirty-three items are listed by the young man on the top half of aworksheet called My Personal Dictionary with the instructions, “Write 60 words. Find apartner. Test your spelling” (p. 166). Little makes the important point that “… learners acquire
the vocabulary appropriate to their personal interests and priorities, which may entail the earlylearning of low-frequency words and technical terms” (p. 163). A similar claim is made in a rare
quantitative study by Dam and Legenhausen (1996); they also report that “vocabularyacquisition in the autonomous approach is very successful and compares favourably with
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results from more traditional textbook-based approaches” (p. 280). In Little’s 2009 account,the specific vocabulary task of listing 60 words lacks the creative dimension that we saw in theexample from Dam’s practices; at the same time, it includes peer review and recycling toconsolidate basic vocabulary knowledge. There is, however, no discussion, as far as vocabulary
learning and use is specifically concerned, of what learners do beyond recording words in a list
for their personal dictionaries. This makes it diﬃcult to get a more detailed sense of how
diﬀerent pedagogic principles may apply in practice, unless we assume that learners are able touse the listed vocabulary for later action knowledge tasks that they do and assess themselveson.
Dam (1995) also reports on the vocabulary practices of a diﬀerent intermediate class of 14- and15-year-old learners at a Danish secondary school. In one example, some learners are describedas noting down new English words after reading a poem they have chosen as part of theirgroup project. However, how they do this is quite diﬀerent from the creative vocabulary
activities with the beginner class detailed in the first example. The intermediate learners
simply write in their learning diaries the English words in a list next to the respective Danishtranslation equivalent each time. Dam does not mention any other ways in which the learners
in this intermediate class record vocabulary. Clearly, in both of her classes, self-directed
vocabulary development plays an essential part in the learners’ engagement with content indoing project work. The children are regularly asked to evaluate the strengths and weaknessesof how they are learning and using English in the group-based projects that they do. Yet, while
we may assume that Dam’s learners develop a critical awareness of learning and using the
vocabulary that they need for their projects, the evidence from the intermediate class suggeststhat some kind of shift has taken place in these learners’ vocabulary practices towards“banking” vocabulary in L2-L1 lists. It is almost as if the learners have started collecting
vocabulary for its own sake rather than for their own learning purposes.
This points to some gaps in the lessons that we can draw from these examples, particularly
with regard to what learners do after recording vocabulary that they choose as important, andwhy learners tend to list vocabulary in L2-L1 columns as they gain in language proficiency. Is
listing a function of increased lexical proficiency, in that intermediate learners may not need toorganize vocabulary in any particular way in order to learn and use it? Is it perhaps an eﬀect offurther schooling and the greater institutionalization of learning as school knowledge so thatvocabulary development starts to be separated from learner interest, purpose and use? Whatplace does explicit attention to the development of learners’ vocabulary practices have as
learners become more lexically proficient and go on through the formal education system?
University students have necessarily had to reconcile their own purposes with theinstitutionalized learning that the education system has required of them over several years.
The pressure to cram vocabulary for university entrance exams in Japan is one example of how
an overbearing emphasis on school knowledge forces learners into specific vocabulary practices
that distance them from using the language meaningfully for their own purposes. How does
this impact their later vocabulary practices and goals when they continue learning English
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beyond high school? Some possible answers to such questions may be provided by looking at
the single case of a second-year student, Reiko, in a content-based learning course where shedoes self-directed research projects over cycles of several weeks.

The Lexical Development and Vocabulary Practices of One Student
In the 2011 academic year, I tracked the vocabulary practices and goals of several students
doing a content-based learning course, a small but important part of which was devoted toencouraging students to explore and develop their vocabulary practices in diﬀerent ways forthemselves. The proficiency levels of the students ranged from high intermediate to advanced.
Here I focus on one student in particular, Reiko, and her changing vocabulary history over theyear (Barfield, 2011, 2012). A vocabulary history (VH) is similar to a language learning history(Benson & Nunan, 2005; Murphey, 1997; Murphey, Chen, & Chen, 2005; Pavlenko, 2001) inwhich a learner narrates their personal story of language learning and formulates their futurelearning plans and goals. What is diﬀerent about a VH is that the learner gives much greaterattention to how they have learned vocabulary at diﬀerent stages in their L2 development andwhat positive and negative experiences they have had in doing so.
After discussing her own VH and reading some near-peer role models of vocabulary histories
produced by other students, Reiko presented her own VH in the following way:
I started to learn the vocabularies from elementary school. I was very young, so there aremany pictures in textbook of the cram school. At the cram school, we pronounced the words
I learnt again and again, and after that we looked the sentences including the new words. I
think this is the best way of remembering the words. Pronouncing is very useful to remember
the words, and I could know how to use the word looking the sentences.
At the junior high school and high school, I learnt the vocabularies in bad ways. I just makethe vocabulary notes that there are the vocabularies I didn’t know and remembered thewords before the exam by writing again and again. This was very easy to forget the words.
After the exam, I forgot all of words I learnt. I just learnt for getting score of exam. This wasvery bad motivation. Also I couldn’t know the pronunciation of the vocabularies.
At the university I could know a lot of words in the writing & speaking classes so far. I readso many articles and books written by English in the classes. And I have a lot ofopportunities to explain the words I found out to other students. So I think that I have tounderstand definitely the words’ meanings. So the classes give me a good motivation oflearning and remembering the vocabularies.

One of the interesting points about Reiko’s vocabulary history is that her practices are quite
specific to each stage and context of her formal education. Early on, her vocabulary learning isfocused on remembering, pronouncing, and using lexical items; however, in junior high andhigh school, as her vocabulary development becomes exam-driven, memorization throughrepeated writing takes over completely from use. At university, her way of learning vocabulary
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comes from a great deal of reading, as well as from using words to explain their meaning toother students. All in all, Reiko shows a greater concern with meaning as her English
proficiency develops and as she becomes more concerned with using English. Anotherinteresting point is that repetition of one kind or another (either to herself or to others—
repeated pronouncing, repeated writing, and repeated explaining) figures as the most
personally significant lexical development process for Reiko. Beyond that, however, she does
not really articulate any other specific details about learning and using vocabulary for herself
and her own purposes.
From the start of the second research cycle onwards, the students spend some (limited) timeeach week looking and experimenting with diﬀerent ways of recording, learning and using
vocabulary. The main focus is on their research into NGOs, working on issues to do with
developing countries. Explaining and paraphrasing key ideas in their research notes to otherstudents are a key part of the process by which they build their knowledge of NGOs. Reiko
researches Save The Children, and, at the start of the cycle, she chooses a few key words fromher research notes in English before listing diﬀerent collocations in which they can be used(see Figure 1).

Children

Education

help( disadvantaged children

provides a ( broad education( special-needs children

delivercare for ( difficult children( general

received no formal education

help the (contribute to ( child malnutrition( child maltreatment( child trafficking

tradition of ( religious education( legalFigure 1. Reiko’s way of recording vocabulary in early June 2011.

Although Figure 1 shows that Reiko records several diﬀerent collocations, she tends to limit
the number of possible combinations that she records with either key word. It appears that
Reiko is becoming concerned with the quality of her vocabulary knowledge, rather than justwith increasing the size of her vocabulary. This change from quantity to quality is one of the
crucial changes that most students go through as they attend more consciously to their lexicaldevelopment in a self-directed way (cf. Benson & Lor, 1998, who note a similar shift in learners’
general conceptualisations of language learning as they become more autonomous).
A couple of weeks later, Reiko starts experimenting with using word associations. Here she
mentions in her notebook the importance of trying to create a concrete image and ofconnecting words actively with other words. The new words that she chooses are shown on theleft in Figure 2, with the word associations that she makes shown on the right.

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Reiko’s word associations are made with highly frequent vocabulary, revealing how she is trying
to connect new words to vocabulary that she already knows very well. When, later in the same
research cycle, Reiko chooses to record advocacy, advocate, address and lobby, we begin to see
how her way of recording key vocabulary now includes short paraphrases, associations andcollocations as she continues to experiment and try to find ways that work best for her (as in
Figure 3).

measles

infection, fever, children (はしか,	
 麻疹)

notablyimportant, outstanding, remarkablestrap

belts, fasten

bureaucratic(官僚的な) rules, official, complicated, arguments

squabblingargue, girls, quarrel(squabble)
livelihood

money, important, protect

burdenheavy, load

Figure 2. Reiko’s way of recording vocabulary in early July 2011(v) address

to speak to someone directly

話しかける,	 	 言う

to make a formal speech to a large group of people
talk, complain, speak(ex a meeting/conference etc

similargovernments about
an audience(v) lobby 働きかけ

- to try to persuade the government or someone with
political power that a law or situation should be changes
government, campaign, addressex.: lobby ( for a reduction( our leader to support --( against a bill

Figure 3. Reiko’s way of recording vocabulary in late June 2011.

In this example, to speak to someone directly and to make a formal speech to a large group of people are
Reiko’s short paraphrases for address, whereas talk, complain, speak are her personal
associations, and a meeting/conference governments about and an audience are collocations that she
feels are important for her to learn and use. Figure 3 also illustrates how, within a short periodof experimentation, Reiko has started to combine diﬀerent subprocesses together in the waythat she records vocabulary for herself.
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By being asked to consider what she is doing to develop her vocabulary knowledge and to
think about the strengths and weaknesses of what she does decide to do, Reiko begins tobecome critically aware of the eﬀectiveness of her choices and actions. In a short reflection
written in her notebook about her changing vocabulary practices, Reiko notes at this point:
Today I researched similar words, but I found the way that of using is different each other.
So I think my way is good for understanding, and also this way shows me the meaning of thewords in both of languages, so I can understand the meaning absolutely. By doing theassociation, I can have the image of the words.
Then, a few weeks later at the end of July, as she looks back on the development of her ways oflearning and using vocabulary in the previous two months, Reiko interprets the changes in thisway:
At first of learning and using vocabulary I just wrote down the word and the meanings of thewords in English. But I realized that this way was not useful because I couldn’t remember
the word through this way. I found that association was very helpful and it was very fun!
And using collocation was also very useful! So finally I wrote down the word that I want toresearch and the meaning of that in English and Japanese, association and collocation. I
think this way was the most useful for me. My goal in the third cycle is to increase my
vocabularies which is in the field that I’m interested in.
In the autumn, Reiko continues using short paraphrases, associations and collocations as themain way of organising her vocabulary notes. She believes that taking time to create several
connections helps her “know a lot of words” and “know how to use the word clearly”; her way,
she observes, also helps her to “use diﬃcult words in conversation”. An example is shown in
Figure 4.

competition

1. when a company or person is trying to be more
successful or better than otheradj + N – intense
keen

V+N
competition

globalface, be up against

competition

beat oﬀ
N + V competition → heat up
2. an event when people try to win prizes

destroy stop

organizegive up take out

compete in→ competition

be banned from

Figure 4. Reiko’s way of recording vocabulary in October 2011.

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The vocabulary notes shown in Figure 4 come from a research cycle where Reiko has chosen tolook at how green businesses are developing their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
policies to address diﬀerent social and environmental issues. At the end of the third cycle,
roughly six months after she started reflecting on her vocabulary history and diversifying her
vocabulary practices, Reiko sees her lexical development like this:This time I found lots of specific words which is related to CSR. These are difficult, but I
could remember and know how to use it by changing my vocabulary notes and using thewords a lot. Also I could learn more words through learning one word. I tried to find therelated word with the words which I researched so I could learn the meaning of the words inother words.
It is important to note that, within this content-based learning course, no other student madethe same choices as Reiko as to how to develop their vocabulary practices. Each student foundtheir own new pathways through their lexical development. One of Reiko’s main concerns was
making connections between what she was trying to learn and what she already knew; here sheused word associations in conjunction with short paraphrases and simple collocations to create
multiple connections between new vocabulary and known vocabulary. She also used Japaneseequivalents at times to consolidate those connections. Over time, Reiko gradually became
more astute in selecting useful and important vocabulary for development rather than focusing
exclusively on unknown lexis as she did early on (as shown in Figure 2, for example, with her
first set of word associations). From the outside looking in, it seems that Reiko was able to finda growing sense of creativity in using word associations eﬀectively. She also achieved, it seems,
a strong sense of communicative accomplishment in developing short practical paraphrases
and small sets of useful collocations around key words and ideas in her research.

Concluding Questions
It needs to be emphasized that the focus on self-directed lexical development was only a smallpart of the content-based learning course. The main focus in the course was on the research
projects that the students did, as well as on their co-constructing knowledge of the diﬀerent
issues that they researched. For the lexical development part of the course, however, students
were guided to engage with diﬀerent ways of developing their vocabulary practice and takeresponsibility for the vocabulary that they wanted to learn and use. Starting fromreconstructing her own vocabulary history and becoming aware of the strengths andweaknesses of diﬀerent practices she had tried in the past, Reiko started to find a criticalstance towards her own lexical development. She then continued to experiment with, andfurther develop, vocabulary practices that worked well for her, by building her awarenessthrough discussion, short written reflections, and using key vocabulary to explain her research
to her peers. Reiko’s story shows that there is no necessary reason why young adult learners
cannot develop their own eﬀective ways of learning and using vocabulary for themselves as partof the overall process of their becoming more autonomous in how they learn and use English.
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Are the processes of lexical development and restructuring (Henriksen, 1999) that Reiko
embodies in her vocabulary practices available to learners at other levels of overall language
proficiency? These processes include (a) connecting up new with known vocabulary, (b) moving
between associative lexical knowledge and conventionalized collocation knowledge, (c)focusing on both individual words and multiword phrases, and (d) learning to create shortparaphrases in English of key ideas. If they are available, in what ways might they be diﬀerently
realized by others? If not, in what ways might those processes of lexical development andrestructuring be restricted? Is the development of these processes (either individually or in
combination with each other) possible in formal education contexts only under conditions that
support autonomous learning? What further connections can be made between lexicaldevelopment and the development of learner autonomy? These are, I believe, some of theinteresting questions that the journey through Reiko’s lexical landscape invites us to explore in
the future.

Notes
1. Kramsch (1979) reports the use of index cards where vocabulary items are chosen by students
and recorded “together with a synonym, antonym, or translation, and an example sentence” (p.
154).
2. The A1 level is part of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) scheme ofproficiency levels (A1 and A2: basic user; B1 and B2: independent user; C1 and C2: proficientuser). For more details, see the Council of Europe European Language Portfolio website (n.d.).
Acknowledgement
My thanks go to Alison Stewart, Hugh Nicoll, Kay Irie, Mike Nix, Phil Brown and Steve
Brown for their great comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Andy Barfield teaches in the Faculty of Law at Chuo University in Tokyo. His pedagogic and researchinterests include learner/teacher autonomy, content-based learning, students’ vocabulary practices anddevelopment, and co&aborative curriculum development. Andy is currently co-editing a multivocalic
anthology of teachers’ stories to do with their engagement with learner autonomy, due to be published thisautumn by the IATEFL Learner Autonomy SIG.
To cite this article: Barfield, A. (2012). Exploring learners’ changing lexical landscapes and learner autonomy. In
K. Irie & A. Stewart (Eds.), Proceedings of the JALT Learner Development SIG Realizing Autonomy
Conference, [Special issue] Learning Learning, 19(2), 18-30. Retrieved from http://ld-sig.org/LL/19two/barfield.pdf

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LD SIG Realizing Autonomy Conference Proceedings

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Special Issue of Learning Learning, Volume 19, Issue 2, July 2012（学習の学習特別号）!

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