Teaching and learning vocabulary

This chapter looks at the teaching and learning of vocabulary both in classrooms and in independent learning. It recommends a principled approach based on a small set of well-established principles of learning and curriculum design. The chapter is organised around the principle of the four strands which include learning through meaning-focused input, meaning-focused output, deliberate study and fluency development. There is a description of the conditions that are needed for each strand to occur. The chapter also describes the activities that are involved in each of these four strands and how they are applied in a language course, with a focus on vocabulary learning.