Publication Type: Session Presentation
Abstract: Do your students have the words they need? The trend towards Communicative Language Teaching necessitates that learners have a solid lexical foundation. Learn about word knowledge, lexical memory, and practical research-based steps to help your students acquire the vocabulary they need—and learn a new language in the process!

Publication Type: Session Presentation
Abstract: Vocabulary acquisition is the single most important tool for communication. All students need multiple repetitions to acquire new words, but research indicates that challenged learners may require 250-350 repetitions in order to become competent.The presenter will share vocabulary acquisition strategies and activities designed to engage and address the needs of all learners.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The English school’s contribution to international relations is often seen in terms of its unusually rich and flexible conceptual vocabulary. Few see that vocabulary as perfect, however, and a significant effort is currently under way towards the reconstruction of the school’s central concepts, in which Barry Buzan has figured prominently. Buzan’s approach develops a ‘social structural’ form of English school theorizing, and appears to adopt a broadly (although not explicitly defined) positivist method of concept formation that emphasises definitional precision and operationalizability. This paper employs a more interpretivist method of concept formation, based on Weber’s notion of the ‘ideal type’. The method of ideal-type formation works through two steps: evaluative interpretation, which identifies the relevance of actual phenomena to cultural values; and historical interpretation, which explores causal and axiological connections between events. The paper compares the English school’s approach to concept formation with this method, and argues that, despite some important differences, it closely approximates to the ideal-typical method. The paper concludes with some brief observations on how, considered in this way, the school’s conceptual vocabulary might be reconstructed through the development of new evaluative interpretations of world politics that build upon other, relatively neglected, insights of the school’s members.

Publication Type: Individual Poster
Abstract: Background and Aims: Several dimensions of temperament have been found to be significant predictors of infant vocabulary size. In particular, high attentional focus, high smiling and laughter, high soothability, and low perceptual sensitivity have been associated with large vocabulary size. Birth order in infancy has similarly been linked to vocabulary growth, with first-borns enjoying a vocabulary size advantage over later-born children. One might expect that different aspects of children’s temperament would come into play in accounting for vocabulary acquisition for first-borns relative to later-borns, to the extent that only the latter have to compete with their siblings for parental attention.
Methods: Parents of 21 first-born and 18 later-born children participated in a study of temperament-language relationships at child age 22-months. Parent-reported temperament was assessed via the Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire, and vocabulary measures were derived from the McArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory. Parents also reported whether their children were first- or later-born. Because previous research has reported attentional focusing, smiling and laughter, soothability, and perceptual sensitivity, to be reliably associated with vocabulary size, we focused primarily on these temperamental dimensions. However, to explore birth order differences, we considered all 18 temperament dimensions
Key Results: Although the two groups were not found to differ in terms of vocabulary size, first-borns were found to differ from later-borns on 5 of the 18 temperament dimensions. First-borns were higher in attentional focusing (p = .037), attentional shifting (p = .023), and impulsivity (p = .024); but were lower in fear (p = .030) and sadness (p = .077). Most interesting was that temperament predicted vocabulary different for the two groups. For first-borns, only high intensity pleasure was associated with vocabulary (r = .66, p = .001). However, for later-borns, measures of attentional control were also significantly predictive of vocabulary. Attentional focus (r = .52, p = .026), attentional shifting (r = .55, p = .017), inhibitory control (r = .51, p = .031), and soothability (r = .59, p = .010), in addition to high intensity pleasure (r = .52, p = .029), were all significantly predictive of vocabulary size.
Conclusions. These results suggest that different temperamental dimensions may be involved in word learning as a function of birth status. For later-borns, who must compete with their siblings for parental resources and who likely must tolerate a noisier environment than first-borns, individual differences in attention deployment may be more relevant for vocabulary development than for first-borns.

Publication Type: Session Presentation
Abstract: The automoticity of Chinese word recognition is essential for both listening and reading. It should be included in vocabulary instruction. In response to the needs for improvement, this presentation features the design, pedagogical rationale and functions of "Web-based Vocabulary Builder", with special focus on building the automoticity of word recognition.