What are the some of the issues involved in vocabulary acquisition for adult English language learners?
Keith S. Folse (2004) reviewed the research on teaching vocabulary in semantic sets (e.g. colors, foods, furniture, days of the week) and found that grouping words in this way can actually impede the learning of vocabulary. This is because if similar new words are presented together, such as a set of colors or the days of the week, the learner is likely to confuse the words. The same is true if antonym pairs such as hot/cold, fat/thin, right/left are presented together. Folse suggests grouping new vocabulary around looser themes such as going out to eat, planning a trip, or celebrating an anniversary. Nation (2000, 2005) recommends teaching high-frequency vocabulary first. For example, rather than presenting red, yellow, blue, black, white, etc. at one time, he suggests beginning with one color, and starting with one that is more frequently used, or salient. In this way red, which is used more frequently than orange, would be taught before orange. Tuesday, which is used more frequently
