{"id":380,"date":"2016-10-31T17:06:08","date_gmt":"2016-11-01T01:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/backseatlinguist.com\/blog\/?p=380"},"modified":"2016-10-31T17:06:08","modified_gmt":"2016-11-01T01:06:08","slug":"how-many-words-can-you-acquire-in-a-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/backseatlinguist.com\/blog\/how-many-words-can-you-acquire-in-a-year\/","title":{"rendered":"How Many Words Can You Acquire in a Year?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There is an exchange in the current issue of<a href=\"http:\/\/nflrc.hawaii.edu\/rfl\/October2016\/\"><em> Reading in a Foreign Language<\/em><\/a> regarding papers that Paul Nation and I published on\u00a0the number of words\u00a0one can acquire through free reading. The original papers are here:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/nflrc.hawaii.edu\/rfl\/October2014\/articles\/nation.pdf\">Nation (2014)<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/nflrc.hawaii.edu\/rfl\/April2016\/articles\/mcquillan.pdf\">McQuillan (2016)<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The exchange is here:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/nflrc.hawaii.edu\/rfl\/October2016\/discussion\/cobb.pdf\">Tom Cobb&#8217;s critique<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/nflrc.hawaii.edu\/rfl\/October2016\/discussion\/nation.pdf\">Paul Nation&#8217;s response<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/nflrc.hawaii.edu\/rfl\/October2016\/discussion\/mcquillan.pdf\">My response<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I will add just two brief\u00a0comments:<\/p>\n<p>(1) Nation agrees with Cobb that there is no \u201chard evidence\u201d that second language (L2) students can acquire 1,000 words a year via free reading. If by &#8220;hard evidence&#8221; he\u00a0means a longitudinal study of a group of students measuring their vocabulary growth exclusively from reading, then I agree completely. I would only add that we also lack any such evidence that direct instruction can result in a gain of 1,000 words a year. In fact, we lack long-term studies of this sort for most pedagogical interventions in the L2 field.<\/p>\n<p>All estimates &#8211; mine, Nation&#8217;s, Cobb&#8217;s &#8211; extrapolate\u00a0from the results of short-term studies and corpus analyses of the sort Nation carried out. Specifically, an\u00a0estimate of the\u00a0number of words you can acquire in a year\u00a0is based on (a) how many occurrences\u00a0are needed to acquire a new word family (Nation estimated 12); (b) how many words are read (the product of time spent reading and reading rate); (c) how many unknown words occur in a text; and (d) how often words\u00a0at\u00a0different word-family levels occur in running text. A change in any of those variables changes the final estimate.<\/p>\n<p>My estimates assume that Nation&#8217;s numbers and logic are correct.\u00a0If they are wrong, I am happy to revise them. But that case must first be made, and Cobb in my view does not make it.<\/p>\n<p>Even better would be an affirmative case that direct instruction or some &#8220;balanced&#8221; approach would be a better use of class time than free reading. As I noted\u00a0in my response, the current evidence\u00a0suggests that they are not.<\/p>\n<p>(2) My rebuttal fails to mention a paper by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.benikomason.net\/content\/articles\/the_reality,_robustness,_and_possible_superiority_of_incidental_vocabulary_acquisition:_another_look_at_file_and_adams.pdf\">Mason and Krashen (2010)<\/a> in which they make essentially the same points I do regarding the fragility of learning versus acquisition and the time inefficiency of direct instruction for vocabulary. They do in a few paragraphs what takes me several pages.<\/p>\n<p>Mason, B., &amp; Krashen, S. (2010). A reader response to File and Adam&#8217;s &#8220;The reality, robustness, and possibility superiority of incidental vocabulary acquisition.&#8221; <em>TESOL Quarterly, 44<\/em>(4), 270-293.<\/p>\n<h1 class=\"title\"><\/h1>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is an exchange in the current issue of Reading in a Foreign Language regarding papers that Paul Nation and I published on\u00a0the number of words\u00a0one can acquire through free reading. The original papers are here: Nation (2014) McQuillan (2016) The exchange is here: Tom Cobb&#8217;s critique Paul Nation&#8217;s response My response I will add [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/backseatlinguist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/backseatlinguist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/backseatlinguist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/backseatlinguist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/backseatlinguist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"http:\/\/backseatlinguist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":399,"href":"http:\/\/backseatlinguist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions\/399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/backseatlinguist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/backseatlinguist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/backseatlinguist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}