Choosing Words to Teach: A Novel Method for Vocabulary Selection and Its Practical Application

Vocabulary learning materials and vocabulary learning research have a common objective of promoting effective vocabulary instruction (Schmitt, 2008), but in practice vocabulary learning materials tend to reflect materials writers' repertoire and intuition primarily (Tomlinson, 2011). In an effort to develop a stronger interface between research and practice, this article introduces a novel method for word selection based on words' frequency, usefulness, and difficulty (Laufer & Nation, 2012). The researchers retrieved the frequency of 191 words and collocations targeted in a North American intensive English program from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and COCA-Academic, and collected usefulness and difficulty ratings from 76 experienced ESL instructors. Frequency correlated moderately with usefulness and difficulty, which supported the value of including usefulness and difficulty ratings as word selection criteria. A cluster analysis revealed five distinct groups of target words, which differed in frequency, usefulness, and difficulty. Teaching of the target words could be prioritized according to this sequence. This study introduces a step-by-step approach for materials writers, curriculum designers, and teaching professionals to identify word groupings in a potential list of target words, using a combination of objective and subjective data, with the prospect of creating more effective and more efficacious vocabulary learning materials.