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chunks. These lexical chunks reveal patterns that can be identified
and used, and favour retrieval from memory. Some pedagogical
implications of this approach are quite interesting, such as the
focus on collocation and fixed or semi-fixed expressions, which are
often used as exponents of communicative functions.
Words and chunks convey meaning and provide reference to con-
cepts. By organizing concepts in our mind, we build up categories to
understand the world and to be able to communicate with others.
3. How we learn words
Hunt and Beglar outline three basic approaches to vocabulary
learning:
The incidental learning of vocabulary requires that teachers pro-
vide opportunities for extensive reading and listening. Explicit
instruction involves diagnosing the words learners need to know,
presenting words for the first time, elaborating word knowledge,
and developing fluency with known words. Finally, independent
strategy development involves practicing guessing from context
and training learners to use dictionaries.14
Most of the words we know, both in L1 and L2, have been acquired
by incidental learning, after being exposed to a large number of
texts, where unknown words have been inferred and interpreted, then
stored in our memory. Learning words from context is a gradual
process; it takes time and requires many exposures to a word for
understanding its meaning. This approach is more suitable to profi-
cient learners, because beginners would feel discouraged facing too
many new words. A good tool to overcome this problem is offered by
graded readers,15 where the vocabulary is accurately selected from
the most frequent and common words and used according to the lev-
els of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.
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14 Alan Hunt and David Beglar, “Current Research and Practice in Teaching Vocabulary”, The
Language Teacher Online 22(1)/1998, http://www.jalt-publications.org/tlt/articles/1998/01/hunt
(accessed June 10, 2009).
15 A choice of Italian graded readers is offered by publishers such as CIDEB, Bonacci and Guerra.
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