Page 37 - Apuntes de Investigación en la Enseñanza de Idiomas

21 Apuntes de Investigación en la Enseñanza de Idiomas

Academic Vocabulary Development through Vocabulary

Notebooks

Patricia María Guillén Cuamatzi
Yamina Flores Meneses

Iraís Ramírez Balderas

Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala

Key words: academic vocabulary, vocabulary notebooks.

One of the objectives of higher education is to develop academic competencies, which involve giving
presentations, reading comprehension and writing academic texts. This is one of the main cross-cur-
ricular competencies that are being strongly fostered recently. Tlaxcala is not only the smallest state
in Mexico but also has the youngest public university. This research is carried out in the Autonomous
University of Tlaxcala in the School of Philosophy and Literature. The objective of this project is to
develop students’ literacy through the use of vocabulary notebooks (VN) to facilitate their inclusion
in other communities of practice where membership includes knowledge of academic vocabulary.
In addition, due to the fact that the educational policies in Mexico are setting a B2 level of English
proficiency as a requirement for working as an English teacher, it is also necessary to address the
issue of vocabulary learning. Together with other language skills, vocabulary provides an important
foundation for the development of literacy. Consequently, the research questions for this project are
1) Is the use of VN effective in the development of pre-service Non-Native Speaker (NNS) student
teachers’ vocabulary in L2? What are the pre-service teachers’ perceptions of the VN as a potential
learning and teaching tool?

Vocabulary notebooks

Language teachers regularly strive to guide students on the acquisition of vocabulary. They are very
likely to use different strategies when dealing with new vocabulary. Certainly, vocabulary knowledge is
essential in terms of academic achievement that is made evident in students’ comprehension of writ-
ten and oral texts and written communication. Nation (2001) argues that there is an interconnected
relationship between vocabulary knowledge and language use because they complement one-an-
other. The increasing interest in these aspects has led to researching about vocabulary notebooks
and their different aspects, for instance: what constitutes a good vocabulary notebook and the note-
book as a way of promoting learner independence (Schmitt & Schmitt, 1995; McCrostie, 2007); as
an effective tool for developing students’ lexical competence and learner autonomy (Vela & Rushidi,
2016); and the effects of keeping vocabulary notebooks on productive academic vocabulary growth
(Kömür & Özdemir, 2015).