Redalyc. The effect of explicit vocabulary teaching on vocabulary acquisition and attitude towards reading

Artículo recibido
: 18 de octubre, 2005 
Aprobado
: 12 de diciembre, 2005 

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Revista Electrónica “Actualidades Investigativas en Educación” 
______________________________________________________________Volumen 5, Número 2, Año 2005, ISSN 1409-4703 
2
from grammar as the central anchor of language teaching to the lexicon. David Wilkins (cited 
in Thornbury, 2002) aptly sums up this change as follows: “
Without grammar very little can be 
conveyed; without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed
.” 
After the publication of 
The Lexical Approach
 
by Michael Lewis in 1993, there was an 
evident revival of interest in vocabulary acquisition. What this author suggests in his book is 
definitely compatible with the claims of the communicative approaches; however, in Lewis’ 
proposal there seems to be a greater emphasis on the meaning and use of the different 
language items. He argues that “the Lexical Approach is not a new all-embracing method, but 
a set of principles based on a new understanding of language.” Since Lewis’ claims make so 
much intuitive sense, the main goal of the present study is to investigate whether the kinds of 
activities and strategies proposed by Lewis (1993, 1998, 2000) and others like Nation, (1994, 
2001), and Thornbury (2002) facilitate vocabulary acquisition and whether explicit teaching 
and incidental acquisition of vocabulary make EFL reading more effective. 
1. Review of the literature 
1.1 What to teach 
 
Most people think of vocabulary as lists of words. However, besides single words, 
vocabularies include numerous multi-word items. The review of the literature reveals that we 
do not have a universal definition of the term vocabulary. For instance, Folse (2004, pp. 2-9) 
discusses set phrases, variable phrases, phrasal verbs and idioms. Thornbury (2002, p. 6) 
mentions the term “lexeme” which he defines as “a word or group of words that function as a 
single meaning unit.” Additionally, he talks about lexical chunks, which vary in the degree in 
which they can be fixed or idiomatic, sentence frames, and phrasal verbs. Despite the 
differences in terminology, it is obvious that the above-mentioned classifications highlight the 
fact that words require their neighboring words to express meaning. 
Learners need to keep in mind that these multi-word units are necessary if natural 
communication is to happen. For example, in order to acquire phrasal verbs, students need 
to understand their form, their meaning and their use. Larsen-Freeman (2001, p. 254) 
mentions that knowing the form of a phrasal verb includes knowing whether it is followed by a 
particle or by a preposition, whether it is transitive or intransitive, whether it is separable or 
not, and what stress and juncture patterns are used. Knowing the meaning encompasses 
literal, figurative and multiple meanings. Finally, knowing the use covers understanding the 
fact that phrasal verbs are part of informal discourse and that they operate by the principle of 
dominance. For example, if learners encounter the verb “look” in a reading passage and 

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Revista Electrónica “Actualidades Investigativas en Educación” 
______________________________________________________________Volumen 5, Número 2, Año 2005, ISSN 1409-4703 
3
have trouble understanding what it means, their chances of guessing the meaning from 
context are minimized if they ignore the particle or preposition that follows it. If then they 
decide to look it up in a dictionary, they will not necessarily find the definition that fits the 
context since “look” is a good example of what is called a de-lexicalized verb. Its meaning 
changes depending on the particle or preposition that follows it (for a discussion of the topic, 
see Lewis, 1993, p. 143). The following table illustrates the complexity of the problem. It 
presents only the most frequent of the possible phrasal verbs starting with the verb “look” that 
Cowie & Mackin (1993) include in their dictionary.