How Words Mean: Guessing From Context
Several Suggestions for Narrow Reading Tasks
In the midst of a recent TESL-L debate regarding how
much new vocabulary ESL students can encounter in their
reading without diminishing their ability to guess meanings
from contexts, UCLA's Lida Baker sent a clear and practical
message to the list. She has submitted her remarks in the
following article to share with ESL MiniConference readers.
In response to Dave Kees, who asks for "practical ideas on how to
create a 'narrow reading' plan or course for a student" in order to
facilitate vocabulary acquisition: I have a couple of ideas. One way is
to select a news story and follow it over the course of several days. I
have used natural disaster stories (earthquakes, hurricanes) for this
purpose with great results. A second and rather obvious idea is to have
students read books (as opposed to clusters of unrelated articles - what
is normally found in most ESL reading texts). Specialized catalogues
(such as clothing catalogues) and food packages expose students to a wide
range of vocabulary within notional categories such as color, dimensions,
shapes, etc. while also providing lots of repetition, thereby promoting
vocabulary acquisition.
Report by Lida Baker
2002 ESL MiniConference Online
lbaker@ucla.edu
UCLA Extension