When learning any forms of language, vocabulary plays a cornerstone role. However, the process of learning a handful of words can be intimidating, especially for English learners (ELs) who do not know how to effectively implement word learning strategies. Fortunately, the use of word cards is one strategy ELs can utilize to learn vocabulary effectively.

Why Word Cards?

According to Nation (2001), word cards allow learners to consciously focus on an aspect of word knowledge that is not easily gained from context or dictionary use. Words do not have one direct translation but layers of word knowledge, such as written and spoken forms and grammatical patterns which need to be encountered to understand word use. Furthermore, an EL can change the order of the cards, which eliminates serial learning—learning words in a set order.

How to Effectively Create Word Cards

Choosing Which Words to Learn

High-frequency words or words for immediate language use are the most effective words to put on cards (Nation, 2008). Tertiary to these are the words that have been met before yet are still unknown, for example a word that has been looked up two or three times in a dictionary. However, Nation (2001) cautions that ELs must be aware that certain kinds of words may interfere with one another when learned together, such as words similar in spelling or sound (e.g., kitchen and chicken), words similar in meaning (e.g., suggest and tell), opposites (e.g., give and receive), and words in a lexical set (e.g., apple, orange, banana).

Adding More Than Just Direct First-Language Translation

Research has shown that using a learner’s native-language meaning on a word card allows for rich and straightforward associations (Nation, 2001). However, students must be encouraged to write more than just one-to-one correspondence of the definitions. Including additional information, such as sample sentences, gap sentences, or the word’s collocation can help build meaningful foundations to knowing a word. One important caveat is not to put too much information on the cards because it may make reviewing cumbersome (Zimmerman, 2009).

Using Pictures

Picture use can aid the learner in imagining a real instance of the meaning of the word. This does not mean that pictures are alternates for translation but rather as complimentary resources that should be used simultaneously with translation (Nation, 2001).

See the Appendix for examples of word cards in English and Japanese.

Using the Word Cards

Number of Word Cards in a Pack

How many word cards to start with depends on two factors. First is the current stage of the EL’s vocabulary learning. If a learner is just beginning, then it is best to start with a small number cards (no more than 20). As proficiency grows, the EL can add more cards, up to as many as 50 (Nation, 2008). The second factor is difficulty. If the overall difficulty is low (i.e., abundant amount of time, less use of cognitive processing), then it is easier to process large groups of words. On the other hand, if the difficulty is high (i.e., limited time for learning, learners must recall, heavy use of cognitive processing), a smaller group words should be used (Nation, 2001).

Spaced Repetition

According to Nation (2001), spaced repetition is key to memorizing a group of words. For example, if a learner only has 15 minutes to learn a group of words, it is more efficient to spread the allotted time out into five 3-minute intervals in which the repetitions become increasingly further apart (Nation, 2001). The significance in this type of learning is that students apply the practice of spaced repetition and learn new strands of the word to build a richer foundation of word knowledge. This is important because “if we acknowledge that learning a word is incremental, we will approach it realistically as a process rather than a single act of memorization” (Zimmerman, 2009, p. 2).

Conclusion

An important part to using word cards or any other word learning strategy is that ELs know how to implement the strategy well. As teachers, we must not only direct the introduction of the strategy, but also scaffold learners’ understanding through effective modeling and show the benefits of effective strategy use to enhance their word knowledge and language learning ventures.

References

Nation, I. S. P. (2001). Learning vocabulary in another language. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Nation, I. S. P. (2008). Teaching vocabulary: Strategies and techniques. Boston, MA: Heinle, Cengage Learning.

Zimmerman, C. B. (2009). Word knowledge: A vocabulary teacher’s handbook. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Richard Christopher Gray is a recent graduate from California State University, Fullerton’s MS TESOL program and works for an IEP program in Rowland Heights and an adult education program in Anaheim, California. He has taught ESL and EFL to adults and children in Japan, Korea, and the United States for 10 years. He is fluent in English and Japanese and is currently learning Korean.