Section 11 Chapter 24, 25

While I did enjoy reading these chapters and learned a lot about effective ways to teach vocabulary, I found that a lot of the information was contradictory.  I will discuss this later in the post.

In chapter 24, I was very surprised to learn that there is only a 10% chance of a student learning the meaning of a word through the context (Richards, 259).  After learning this I realized how important it is that the vocabulary be explicitly explained in order for learning to occur, at least in the case of low proficiency learners.  When it comes to vocabulary, I am an avid believer in the quote "practice makes perfect".  From personal experience with my L2 learning process, I know that being repeatedly exposed to a word was very beneficial.  I remember making vocab cards and breaking them into piles of 7 to study them; this strategy helped me temendously and I still use it today.
On page 260, the "beginner's paradox" is mentioned.  this stated the contradiction of how a beginner student is supposed to learn vocabulary through reading, yet they don't know enough words to read well.  I feel that it is necessary to start off with directly teaching the vocab, and then branch off to have the students use other resources such as extensive reading and their own strategies.  When you teach the vocabulary, it is important to not only just show the word, but also to let the students hear the correct pronunciation, practice saying it, and seeing a visual.  Repeated exposure to vocab in a manner like this can help students not only expand their lexicon but also improve their reading fluency.
A strategy I currently use with a 1st grader is sight word flash cards.  I took a list of high frequency words and wrote them on cards.  Every lesson, we add 10 cards to the pile and she reads them aloud.  We then sort them ased on whether she knows them or not.  This has had an amazing effect on her fluency because she no longer hesitates at these certain words. 

A lot of the contradicting information I thought of was in chapter 25.  On page 268, Richards said that the students are more likely to learn more vocabulary if they read a text with which they are not familiar.  In my opinion, if you want a student to actually learn vocabulary, it should be in a context that they have some background knowledge in so they can relate to it.  If they have difficulties with what they are reading, then how are they supposed to learn the vocabulary?