4 - Vocabulary and listening and speaking

Summary

Learning vocabulary through listening is one type of learning through meaning-focused input. Learners need at least 95 per cent coverage of the running words (around 3,000 word families) in the informal spoken input in order to gain reasonable comprehension and to have reasonable success at guessing unknown vocabulary from context clues. A well-balanced listening and speaking course includes opportunities to learn through listening to monologues and interactive communication, opportunities to learn from speaking and interacting with others, the deliberate study of pronunciation, vocabulary and multiword units, and grammar, and opportunities to become fluent in listening and speaking. This chapter includes a large range of activities to provide these opportunities, and describes how teachers can design speaking activities so that vocabulary is more likely to be learned. The research shows that those who observe speaking activities are just as likely to learn the vocabulary in the activities as those who actively participate