Vocabulary Instruction in CBI

Vocabulary is central to teaching and learning a language. Without sufficient vocabulary, language
learners cannot express themselves and understand others. The development of vocabulary plays a
crucial role for students of content-based instruction, as vocabulary development directly impacts their
academic achievement by meeting both content and language learning objectives. CBI students need to
learn general English vocabulary for communication, and they must also learn terms that are specific to
the content areas they are studying (Echevarría, Vogt & Short, 2016).

Learning new vocabulary requires some memorization, and learners must also be able to use their newly
memorized words in communicative ways in the correct contexts. In order to achieve this balance, CBI
teaching must be supported by strategies and activities that actively involve the participants and have
the following characteristics:

1. Repetitive
2. Hands-on
3. Progress from simple to complex
4. Equally focused on all the skills of language development (listening, speaking, reading, writing)

Repetition
In order to commit new words to long-term memory, a learner must be exposed to several repetitions
of the word (Criado, 2009; Wojcik, 2013). The more times a person is exposed to a word, the more likely
and quicker he or she will be to reproduce the word on demand. This is especially true if exposures to
words are spaced apart in time (Criado, 2009; Nation, 2013; Kornmeier et al., 2014). Another reason
why vocabulary learning requires several different encounters with each word is because there are
many layers of information that one must learn in order to truly know a word: “There are numerous
things to know about a word, namely its form (spoken, written, and its component affixes and stem), its
meaning (underlying concept, particular instantiations, and associations), and its use (collocations,
grammatical patterns, and constraints on its use)” (Nation, 2013, p. 682).

Hands-on
How many times have we complained that in most of our science laboratory sessions, we were never
allowed to touch the chemicals or only observed the teacher mixing the chemicals? Similar to the way
this practice impacted our abilities to conduct an experiment and understand the concept, when
learners are not given an opportunity to play or experiment with the language, they do not develop

© 2019 by World Learning. Vocabulary Instruction in CBI for the AE E-Teacher Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and
administered by FHI 360. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, except where noted. To view a
copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This is a program of the U.S. Department of State

administered by FHI 360 and delivered by World Learning

the competency to use the language in multiple contexts.

Simple to Complex
Repetition is essential, but repeating the same activity multiple times will not continue contributing to
vocabulary building, because after some time, it will become predictable. To make sure that activities
promote learning while being engaging, learners must be exposed to various tasks that are challenging
for them. When learners are first learning a word, recalling the word requires significant mental effort.
Therefore, the tasks they do with the words should be simple at this stage. As the learner becomes more
and more familiar with a word, recognizing and producing the word represent less and less cognitive
load. At this stage, the learner is able to perform more complex tasks while using the new vocabulary.

Equally focused on all four skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing
Given their primarily academic nature, CBI activities are frequently dominated by reading and writing
tasks, with little listening and speaking practice. This results in handicapping the CBI students and
leaving them unprepared to use the L2 in day-to-day communicative activities such as watching a movie
or carrying on a casual conversation on the street. Hence, while planning lessons and activities, we need
to make sure that we are focusing equally on all four skills.

Conclusion
To summarize, learning happens efficiently in an environment where the participants are given the
opportunity to participate and experience things. Thus, activities must not be isolated or happen just
once in the classroom. Vocabulary building activities must be brought into the daily routine, and they
should increase in complexity over time and provide ample practice not only in reading and writing, but
in speaking and listening too.

References I
(This content is Creative Commons-licensed with some restrictions. It is not compliant with the AE E-Teacher Program’s standards for openly-
licensed content. Feel free to save and read any of these resources, but please check the individual license before adapting or distributing a
resource.)

Criado, R. (2009). The distribution of the lexical component in ELT coursebooks and its suitability for
vocabulary acquisition from a cognitive perspective: A case study. International Journal of English
Studies (IJES), 9(3), 39–60. Retrieved from http://revistas.um.es/ijes/article/view/99511/95091

Kornmeier, J., Spitzer, M., & Sosic-Vasic, Z. (2014). Very similar spacing-effect patterns in very different
learning/practice domains. PLoS ONE, 9(3). Retrieved
from http://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC3946552&blobtype=pdf

Wojcik, E. H. (2013). Rembering new words: Integrating early memory development into word
learning. Frontiers in Psychology, 4(151). Retrieved
from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3612698/

This is a program of the U.S. Department of State

administered by FHI 360 and delivered by World Learning

References II
(This content is copyrighted, and cannot be adapted in any way, or distributed after the end of this course. It is not Public Domain or Creative
Commons-licensed, and therefore not for public use.)

Echevarría, J., Vogt, M., & Short, D. J. (2016). Making content comprehensible for English learners. The
SIOP model (5th ed.). Pearson.

Nation, P. (2013). Vocabulary learning and teaching. In P. Robinson (Ed.), The Routledge encyclopedia of
second language acquisition (pp. 682–686). New York: Routledge.

To cite this article:

World Learning. (2019). Vocabulary instruction in CBI. In “Content-based Instruction” [MOOC].

This is a program of the U.S. Department of State

administered by FHI 360 and delivered by World Learning