Second language vocabulary teaching and learning: A commentary on four studies for the JALT vocabulary SIG

Abstract

Four papers by Brandon Kramer, Tohru Matsuo, Aaron Sponseller, Young Ae Kim, Suzuka Nishiyama, and Stuart McLean, Stuart Benson and Naheen Madarbakus-Ring, Michael McGuire and Jennifer Larson-Hall, and Atsushi Mizumoto, Geoffrey Pinchbeck, and Stuart McLean were presented in the morning session of the 2021 Vocabulary SIG Symposium held in Kyoto, Japan, on 04 December 2021. As discussant, it was my pleasure to comment on each of the papers. The fours studies were investigations of the attrition of productive vocabulary knowledge, the lexical composition of two English for Academic Purposes (EAP) textbooks, the relationship between high-frequency multi-word sequences, speech rate, and listening perception, and the use of various word lists with the New Word Level Checker. After reviewing and summarising each study in this paper, I present suggestions for further developing the studies and expanding the research agenda of each study.