Robert Sheridan & Laura Markslag

Creative & Innovative Vocabulary Card Activities
A small number of words make up the greater part of the English language. We know that about 2000 word families cover about 85-90% of the running words in general written texts (Nation, 2001). Several studies have been performed revealing that a word must be encountered anywhere from 6, in the study by Sargi, Nation, and Meister (1978), to 20 in Herman, Anderson, Pearson, and Nagy’s (1987) study for a learner to be able to “learn” the lexical item. Unfortunately, most EFL textbooks do not adequately recycle words. Therefore, learners do not have enough encounters to give them the opportunity to “learn” the word. In this workshop, we show how student vocabulary cards help students initially learn the lexical items found in the first 2000 words of the General Word List (GWL). We will also present a variety of innovative activities that reinforce the learning of these lexical items, thereby overcoming the lack of recycling in most EFL textbooks. These exciting activities have been well received by learners in a variety of EFL contexts.
Robert Sheridan (M.S.Ed Temple Univesity) is an EFL instructor at Otemae University, Osaka Shoin Women’s University, and the Osaka Institute of Technology. His research interests include vocabulary acquisition, motivation, and assessment.
Laura Markslag (M.S.Ed Temple University) works as an EFL lecturer at Osaka Gakuin University. She is interested in vocabulary acquisition and assessment, multilingualism and the development of motivating classroom materials.