EESL 614 - Module #5: Annotated Bibliography (2)

Citation 9:

Cynthia, B. J., & Drew, D. J. (2000). Why teach vocabulary? Promoting Vocabulary

Development. Austin, TX: Texas Reading Initiative/ Texas Education Agency.

Summary & Review:

Cynthia Brantley Johnson and Drew, D. Johnson are working together as Anaxos Inc. The Johnsons have written numerous student books with a strong focus on vocabulary.  They authored the Worldly Wise 3000 test series for EPS.  These writers indicate that limited vocabularies prevent students from comprehending a text.  Good readers often acquire much of their vocabulary through wide independent reading, also known as incidental learning.  Direct vocabulary instruction is useful for students at all ability levels, but it is particularly useful for beginner students who have a limited exposure outside of school.  Experts agree that a combination of direct instruction of word meanings, discussions about words and word parts, and encouragement of wide reading is the best way to help students develop their vocabularies.  Studies have shown that the key to increasing vocabulary is exposure to new words – not an innate ability to learn from context.  These writers also suggest that some general strategies and specific techniques for teaching vocabulary: encouraging wide reading; emphasizing learning from context; using prefixes, suffixes, and roots; using graphic organizers; extending instruction through reading aloud; and discussion.

Citation 10:

Alemi, M., & Daftarifard, P. (2010). Implication of studies on bilingualism for SLA. Journal

of Language Teaching and Research, 1(5), 671-677.

Summary & Review:

This article describes and studies bilingualism from different perspectives of social, individual, cognitive, psychological and political issues. To this end, this article goes through the following stages: What is Bilingual and Bilingual Education and Cognitive Processing? There are several factors which indicate what kind of decision (selective or nonselective) might be made.  These include L2 proficiency, language intermixing, task demands, and instruction.  Language intermixing refers to whether an experiment contains exclusive items that belong to one language (block presentation) or items from two languages (mixed presentation).  Therefore, lexical codes from different languages are activated in parallel on the basis of an input string, selection of the lexical candidate that is identified appears to take place rather late in the recognition process, and several factors affect the ultimately arising result patterns, the most important of which are a participant's L2 proficiency level, the requirements of task, and the blocked or mixed presentation of items from different languages. The most striking similarity between comprehension and production in bilinguals is the overwhelming evidence for nonselective access to words in both languages, regardless of whether the task logically permits the language of processing to be selected in advance.  In both processes, the consequences of the lower L2 and L1 proficiency are in unbalanced bilinguals.

Citation 11

Urquhart, S., & Weir, C. (1999).  Reading in a second language: Process, product, and

practice. New York: Longman.

Summary & Review:

Much of the research referenced above will be included in the National Literacy Panel survey of research on how children learn to read and write in English as a second language.  This survey is a project of SRI International and the Center for Applied Linguistics and it seeks to address those learners who were not included in the National Reading Panel's study (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1988).  Diane August is the principal investigator of the study which will include only those learners whose L1 uses the Roman alphabet.  The publication from this study is expected in late 2003. For this bibliography, unless otherwise indicated, all of the studies included were conducted in the United States.  While no English as a Foreign Language (EFL) research is included, some research on English language learning conducted in other English-speaking countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom) is included.  Some of the studies included in this bibliography are less than rigorously conducted.  We acknowledge, therefore, that all the studies are not rigorously conducted, but they are a true picture of what has been done.  More importantly, they point to research needs that exist in the field of adult ESL instruction.