Vocabulary Matrix: Understanding, Learning, Teaching

M. McCarthy, A. O’Keeffe, and S. Walsh

Heinle Cengage Learning 2009, x + 165 pp., £18.00

isbn 13: 978 1 4240 5253 0

This book is an essential contribution to the growingliterature on vocabulary knowledge since it clarifies,in simple language, the very concept of ‘vocabulary’,the subject of much recent discussion and research(for example see Albrechtsen, Haastrup, andHenriksen 2008; Takac 2008). Special issues onvocabulary have also appeared in journals recently:Language Forum (a journal of language and literature)(Basanta, Perez, and Jaen 2007) and LanguageLearning Journal (Milton, Daller, Malvern, Meara,Richards, and Treffers-Daller 2008). In spite of all theresearch-based endeavours to facilitate learning andteaching this component, the infinite nature ofvocabulary is indeed daunting for language learners.It might be why ‘when students travel, they don’t carrygrammar books, they carry dictionaries’ (Krashen, ascited in Lewis 1993: iii).

While academic and specialized research on differentdimensions of vocabulary knowledge abounds, therehas been a need for a user-friendly source to tacklethose technical issues simply and clearly. By lucidlyshowing the essence, significance, and challenges oflearning vocabulary to language learners andteachers, McCarthy, O’Keeffe, and Walsh have filledthis gap in a timely manner.

Vocabulary Matrix: Understanding, Learning, Teachingincludes ten chapters, uniformly structuredthroughout, based on three parts—Part A: What dowe know about this? Part B: What are the problems forlearners? Part C: How do we teach it? So, the authorsfirstly provide background information and theoryconcerning each topic. Then, they identify theproblems that learners might have in relation to it.Finally, they discuss ways of applying the theory inPart A to teaching and of addressing the challengesraised in Part B. To contextualize the theoretical andpedagogical concepts, adaptable tasks, along withtheir commentaries in the chapter or at the end of thebook, are used throughout. A short note, called‘Vocabulary file’, gives important information relatedto each topic, where necessary. Also, a ten-questionreview section wraps up each chapter. The reviewAnswer Key and commentary, plus a glossary of all keyterms, are given at the end of the book to ‘aid self-study and review’ (p. vii). As such, the book fostersindependent vocabulary learning. Another usefulfeature is that the chapters are structured from thespecific to the general.

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The authors outline the book in the preface. Chapter 1,‘Words and their forms’, looks at what Englishwords are, how they are formed, and the number ofEnglish words. Then, it identifies the problemslearners might face and the number of words learnersneed to and can learn (highlighting the core of2,000 more frequently used words), and suggestsways in which teachers can tackle the problems.

Chapter 2, ‘Words and their meanings’, discussesword meanings and the complexities involved interms of the arbitrary relationship between form andmeaning, polysemy, the change of word meaningsover time, antonymy, synonymy, hyponymy, andconnotation and register that lead to meaningvariation in different contexts. These complexconnections raise challenges for learners, to whichthe chapter suggests activities, like note-takingstrategies, extensive reading, and concordancing, sothat learners learn more new words and increase theirdepth of knowledge of common core, frequent,words.

Chapter 3 covers ‘Collocations’, suggesting at theoutset that they ‘do not just happen by chance’, and‘are difficult to predict, or to guess from intuition, andthis is true for native speakers and non-native usersalike’ (p. 29). It then covers the relation betweencollocations and word frequency, and register(meaning change). Learner problems withcollocations might result from language level,translation from L1, creating language bottom-up,and overuse/underuse of collocations. A dauntingproblem is learning special registers. In Part C, theauthors suggest raising awareness throughdeductive (noticing) and inductive approaches.

Chapter 4, ‘The grammar of words’, concerns therelationship of words with one another, i.e. ‘howwords go together in grammatical rather than lexicalpatterns’ (colligation, not collocation). ‘Knowing thecorrect pattern in which a word is used adds anotherlevel of vocabulary learning’ (p. 41). Given that,modern dictionaries provide meaning(paradigmatic) plus grammatical (syntagmatic)information about a word. As the chapter shows, thegrammar of words can also differ across registers. Allthis puts demands on learners, such as graspingsyntagmatic plus paradigmatic information andavoiding L1 transfer. Part C suggests building‘noticing’ strategies in learners, exploration of newwords systematically through gap-fill and cloze tests,and concordancing to meet these demands.

Chapter 5, ‘Multi-word items’, deals with compounds,prepositional phrases, and lexical chunks, along withtheir characteristics. For instance, lexical chunks, for

example ‘you know’, have functions such asmaintaining the flow of the interaction and enablinglearners to be fluent. The problems associated withmulti-word items include the degree of meaningtransparency and of fixedness, and pronunciation.Teaching them might depend on context andproficiency level. Thus, the authors suggest adoptingan inductive approach with advanced learners andproviding support concerning their form, function,and pronunciation for lower level learners.

Chapter 6 on ‘Idioms’ highlights that idioms ‘can beplaced on a scale, from more transparent to moreopaque’ (p. 63), are fixed in form, and come in manyforms. Some idioms are frequent while others are not.Coming at the end of a segment of text, idioms areused to sum up or evaluate a series of events or anargument. So, they ‘seem to present learners with animpossible mountain to climb’ (p. 69). To alleviatethe above problems, the chapter suggests developinglanguage awareness, taking ‘learners from the single-word stage to an understanding of larger stretches oflanguage’ (p. 70), i.e. idioms, and usingconcordancing with advanced learners.

Emphasizing that semantic connections betweenwords aid memory, Chapter 7 describes ‘Wordrelations’, including synonymy (and cognates),antonymy, hyponymy, hyperonymy, homophones andhomographs (coincidence relations, not semantic),and metaphor. Challenges for learners are as follows:(a) no ‘one-to-one relationship between words’(p. 82) due to factors such as register and collocation,(b) colligation, and (c) false friends. The suggestionis to teach word relationships less in isolation so asto reduce errors of over-generalization.

Words in spoken and written discourse performimportant functions in establishing meanings. Thus,Chapter 8, ‘Words in text and discourse’, deals withsome elements giving texts unity, such as lexicalcohesion, lexical chains and topics, stance of thespeaker or writer, and register. Words in continuousspoken or written English pose problems that theauthors address in relation to the skills: listening,reading, speaking, and writing. Some strategies areaccordingly suggested to both process and producethe new language, such as inferencing, identifyinglexical relations, and dictogloss (interactivedictation).

Chapter 9 looks at ‘Words in the mind’ or the mentallexicon. Though difficult, an analogy with a computerand different metaphors (dictionary and thesaurus)can help us understand the phenomenon. Thechapter discusses the various processes determiningthe ways in which words are organized in the mind:

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input, storage, and retrieval. Accordingly, Part Bdiscusses learner problems as relating to these veryissues (i.e. the ways in which we record, retain, andrecall words) and to what it means to know a word.To tackle these challenges, the authors refer to themore salient theories, in terms of vocabularyacquisition, such as behaviourism, cognitivism, andinteractionalist and sociocultural theories, whilesummarizing their implications for teaching andlearning.

Finally, Chapter 10, ‘Words in society’, is concernedwith vocabulary change, mostly influenced by themedia, and formality versus informality as in writingand speech and in social life. Thus, the authors adviselearners to be aware of the appropriateness oflanguage to the situation. Learners face problems indealing with words in society that include, amongothers, not knowing: (a) when a word is new orunusual, or an archaism; (b) the variety and registerof a word; and (c) when a word is taboo, sexist, orpolitically incorrect. To overcome these challenges,Part C recommends raising awareness of the issuesof words in society, encouraging good learningstrategies for new words, and engaging with real datafrom corpora.

Vocabulary Matrix: Understanding, Learning, Teachingis systematically structured, clearly written, reader-friendly, and straightforward. The uniform pattern inwhich knowledge is introduced throughout the bookis another good feature. Furthermore, the activitiessuggested for language teachers to adopt in theirclassrooms are evidence based and supported byrecent empirical research. And last but certainly notleast, the authors introduce resources on the internetto teachers. This might have a double-edged benefit:(a) access to the resources and (b) familiarity with thescholars producing them. In the long run, teachersmight be connected with these scholars to use theirresearch-based findings and thus obtain insights intolanguage teaching.

The book does have some limitations but these donot by any means decrease its value. A majorproblem, however, is that the book does not includea chapter on proverbs and sayings, not to mentioncliches. Since the book sketches a matrix, then itshould have addressed them, too. Proverbs conciselyand effectively express a truth relating to everydayexperience, a word of advice or warning, or a wisegeneral comment on a situation. Therefore, they aresentences or appear as sentences. Yet, they are fixedand learners do not have much freedom to makevariations on them (Gramley and Patzold 1992).However, if learners are not cognizant of [the]proverbial expressions, they will be considered

outsiders to the culture, lacking target culture literacy(Hirsch 1988). The fact that there exist a number ofdictionaries of proverbs makes them worthy ofattention. As an instance, the onlineOxfordDictionaryof Proverbs (Speake 2003), with 2,438 total articles, isa reference book containing text, meanings,attributions, and origins of selected proverbsthroughout history. The mere publication of sucha dictionary by Oxford University Press is a goodargument for including proverbs in a vocabularymatrix.

A very minor non-content point is that a number oftypos and missing, or extra, words can be found in thebook, for example the word ‘be’ in line 4, theparagraph under Task 2 on page 41, is extra (‘. . . all ofthe patterns are be possible’).

All in all, Vocabulary Matrix: Understanding, Learning,Teaching, emerging from the experience and long-time investigations of the authors, makes a timelycontribution to the area of vocabulary knowledge andtherefore would be an invaluable resource for a wideaudience, including language teachers, teachertrainers, graduate students, curriculum writers, andresearchers.

ReferencesAlbrechtsen, D., K. Haastrup, and B. Henriksen.2008. Vocabulary and Writing in a First and SecondLanguage: Processes and Development. Basingstoke,Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.Basanta, C. P., B. C. Perez, and M. M. Jaen. (eds.).2007. ‘Vocabulary learning and teaching’ (Specialissue). Language Forum 33/2.Gramley, S. E. and K. M. Patzold. 1992. A Survey ofModern English. London: Routledge.Hirsch, E. D. 1988. Cultural Literacy: What EveryAmerican Needs to Know. New York: Vintage Books.Lewis, M. 1993. The Lexical Approach: The State of ELTand the Way Forward. Hove: LanguageTeaching Publications.Milton, J., H. Daller, D. Malvern, P. Meara,B. Richards, and J. Treffers-Daller. (eds.). 2008.‘Vocabulary’ (Special issue). Language LearningJournal 36/2.Speake, J. 2003. The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs.(Fourth edition). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Available at http://www.highbeam.com/The+Oxford+Dictionary+of+Proverbs/publications.aspx (accessed on 3 November 2009).Takac, V. P. 2008. Vocabulary Learning Strategies andForeign Language Acquisition. Clevedon:Multilingual Matters.

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The reviewerIs’haaq Akbarian is an assistant professor in theDepartment of English Language and Literature atthe University of Qom, Qom, Iran. He has taughtreading courses and introductory research methodsto undergraduate students. His research interestsinclude learning, teaching, assessing vocabulary, andself-assessment.Email: i-akbarian@qom.ac.ir;ishaaq.akbarian@gmail.comdoi:10.1093/elt/ccq010

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