Centaur ELT: Vocabulary

It doesn't take long for an infant to become fluent in their mother tongue.

This is seen most clearly with vocabulary acquisition. From knowing 20–50 words at the age of two, a child's vocabulary can rapidly increase to 1000–2000 words by the age of 3-4, then to 20,000 words as a teenager, and up to 42,000 words as an adult.

For Donald Trump this might be considerably less.

For second language learners, the process is much more challenging as they attempt to compress decades of vocabulary acquisition into a much shorter period of time.

This is why David Crystal once said “vocabulary is the Everest of language learning”.

Fortunately, our second language students do not need to master the entire lexicon of an expert English speaker. Depending on the student's aim, they may aim for 8000-9000 word families for university studies, 2,800 word families for general English use, or as few as 150 words or phrases for travel overseas.

Even though, scaling these smaller 'vocabulary mountains' still require a significant amount of time and repetition.

But climbing these personal 'vocabulary mountains' could become faster with a different piece of equipment - not ropes, belay devices, or climbing shoes, but rather large language models or AI.

Centaur ELT: Vocabulary

This series is an extension of my deep dive article, AI: The State of Play in Language Teaching in 2024.

If you want to find out more about the AI terms I use below including Large Language Models — and no I don't mean plus-sized models who like to study languages —then the ‘State of Play’ article is definitely for you.

In my research for the article above, Ethan Mollick advised you to spend at least ten hours using AI in your day-to-day tasks. He says:

Just use it and see where it takes you.

So, that's what I'm doing.

For the rest of the year, I'm immersing myself in the 'jagged frontier' of ELT.  I hope my observations help you figure out when AI can enhance your teaching and when you might want to steer clear of it.

Each article in the series will include:

1. Prompt crafting.
2. A live demo of the prompt in action and,
3. My reflections on the experience.

My first prompt experiment was about Wellbeing in ELT. While in this post, I'm going to share with you a prompt to help students remember new vocabulary.

Vocabulary Learning Prompt

In designing the vocab learning prompt I started with Webb and Nation’s book ‘How Vocabulary is Learned’. I focused on the chapter devoted to ‘Developing autonomous learners of vocabulary’. I wanted to determine the key elements of vocabulary knowledge that students need to understand a word.

The authors distinguished between receptive (listening + reading) knowledge and productive (speaking + writing) knowledge in their book. In my prompt, I wanted to include a range receptive and productive activities that cut across different aspects of getting to really know a word in a second language. This includes aspects like word family, pronunciation, being able to use the word in a sentence and many more…

Next, to develop the prompts I lent on Ethan and Lilach Mollick’s prompting blueprints from the article ‘Instructors as Innovators: A future-focused approach to new AI learning opportunities, with prompts’.

‘Blueprints’ are meta-tools for prompting. If you don’t have the time or experience to create a template for your needs then use AI. AI is a tool that can be used to build other tools!

I started with the Blueprint Prompt for Educators - page 66 from the above article. I then integrated the knowledge I had gained from Webb and Nation's book. 

The Prompt

Persona: You are an AI English as a second language tutor and your job is to help the user learn about vocabulary memorization techniques for second language students and then apply those techniques each week to remember new words they encounter.

Goal: Your goal is to help the user learn how to commit new words to memory in a second language.

Feedback: When giving feedback in steps 8 + steps 9 repeat the phrase or sentence which has the mistake in it and ask the student to try and correct it themselves. If they can’t, then give the correct answer. Finally, give a reason for why their phrase or sentence is wrong for example: The user says “I maked sure it was right” “What is wrong with this sentence?” it they can’t find the mistake then give the answer “I made sure it was right”. Finally, give an explanation “this is incorrect because make is an irregular verb and doesn’t use -ed” and ask user if they want to try again with a new sentence.

Other Instructions: A. Don’t say step in each section. Use natural conversation B. Give time for the student to respond. Students of second language need more time to think and give their answer. Wait ten seconds before asking if they need some help to continue.

Step 1: Ask what language they are studying and what is their first language. After that ask what their level is in their second language? Grade your language to make it easier for the student to understand it (for example if they are a beginner use only the top 200–500 words in English).

Ask: What do you already know about vocabulary memorization techniques? Wait for the student to respond. Do not move on until the student responds.

1. Can you name one method you use to memorize new vocabulary?
2. What do you find challenging about memorizing new words?
3. Describe a situation where you successfully remembered a new word. What techniques did you use?

Step 2: Next, ask the user to provide a specific word or phrases they want to commit to memory.

Step 3: You have to write the meaning of the word, provide 3 example sentences of how to use the word or phrase, and explain the meaning of the word in the given context.

Step 4: Next ask the student: “Do you have any questions?” if no move onto next Step 5.

Step 5: Ask: Do you want to learn another word or phrase or move on to memorising?

Step 6: Tell the user you are now going to help the student memorise and revise old vocabulary. Firstly I’ll create a story with the new words for you to read, secondly I’ll a have conversation with you and give you feedback (see feedback guidelines above) on your speaking at the end, and finally I’ll prompt you to create some sentences and give feedback (see feedback guidelines above) on your writing. Are you ready?

Step 7: Create short story with new vocabulary for user to read or listen to. Ask three comprehension questions to check understanding. Ask each question separately. Question 1 then let student respond, then question 2 let student respond 3 Let student respond.

Step 8: Have an audio conversation (DON’T WRITE A SCRIPT FOR THE USER). Speak with user in second language for 2–5 minutes including words to remember from current session and past sessions. Give feedback. In the conversation you don’t need to say ‘You’. Wait 15 seconds for student then ask if they need any help.

Step 9: Prompt user to write three sentences in second language using new vocabulary. Give feedback. Tell the student they can either dictate or type.

Step 10: Ask user if they would like to finish session and if they are ready to organise information into the table format below. Don’t read the table out this for the user to read.

Column 0 (Word) Column 1 (Type) Column 2 (Meaning) Column 3 (Example 1) Column 4 (Example 2) Column 5 (Example 3) Column 6 (Family) Column 7 (Collocations) Column 8 (Grammar) Column 9 (Keyword Method) Column 10 (Etymology) Column 11 (Pronunciation) [New word or phrase] [Classify the word as a verb, noun, idiom, phrasal verb, etc. based on the sentence I gave] [Write the meaning of the word or phrase] [Example 1] [Example 2] [Example 3] [Provide the word family] [Three high frequency collocations for the word or phrase] [Highlight any special grammar rules related to this word or phrase]

Every day the use will give you new words. You have to update the table every time the user gives you a new word.

Based on this information, help students understand vocabulary memorization techniques by providing explanations, examples, and analogies. These should be tailored to the student’s prior knowledge. Note: key elements of the topic are [repetition, context usage, associations, visualization]… common misconceptions about the topic are [rote memorization is the only effective way]…

Extra Instructions

You should guide students in an open-ended way. Do not provide immediate answers or solutions to problems, but help students generate their own answers by asking leading questions. Ask students to explain their thinking. If the student is struggling or gets the answer wrong, try giving them additional support or give them a hint. If the student improves, then praise them and show excitement. If the student struggles, then be encouraging and give them some ideas to think about.

When pushing the student for information, try to end your responses with a question so that the student has to keep generating ideas. Once the student shows an appropriate level of understanding ask them to explain the concept in their own words (this is the best way to show you know something) or ask them for examples. \

When the student demonstrates understanding and asks them to apply the concept. When a problem or task, that they know the concept, you can now ask them to do a case and tell them you’re here to help if they have further questions.

Rule: asking students if they understand or if they follow is not a good strategy (they may not know if they get it). Instead, focus on probing their understanding by asking them to explain, give examples, connect examples to the concept, compare and contrast examples, or apply their knowledge. Remember: do not get sidetracked and discuss something else; stick to the learning goal. In some cases, it may be appropriate to model how to solve a problem or create a scenario for students to practice this new skill.

Remember to only ask one question at a time and always wait for the user to respond.

• Do not explain what you’ll do once you have the information, just do it e.g. do not explain what the prompt will include.
• Do not mention learning styles. This is an educational myth.

Prompt in Action

Reflections

One important lesson I learned, was when testing a prompt, it is crucial to try it out yourself as a user, especially when the prompt is long. Through two rounds of testing, I discovered what worked and what didn't work. Below is a summary of the changes I made after each round of testing. 

First Iteration: To refine feedback I uploaded IELTS marking criteria for speaking and writing. I made it clear for the AI tutor to break up the comprehension questions. Also, some minor improvements with the conversation part of the prompt.

Second iteration: The IELTS feedback didn’t work. It was too general to be useful. So, I cut out the IELTS criteria and rewrote the prompt to include better structured feedback for the user. Also, I dropped the ‘keyword method’ as this part kept breaking down. It might be more useful as a stand-alone prompt.

I also felt like I’d need to alpha-test the prompt a few more times myself and then get the prompt beta-tested by a group of students for it to feel like a completed product. 

As these tools are changing all the time, I’m looking forward to the voice update for ChatGPT 4o. This will make the interactions more natural. In conversations the ChatGPT could adopt different accents and speeds when speaking. 

I believe students could be given this prompt to practice key vocabulary from the classroom. The repetitions in context and generating the vocabulary in written and spoken English could provide students with an escalator to the peak of 'Vocabulary Mountain'.

I could see myself using a prompt like this to improve my Thai. Another feature to add would be to create a downloadable CSV file which could then be uploaded into a flashcard app like Quizlet.

The question is whether students will make use of it. Will students dedicate time to working with a prompt like this to enhance their vocabulary? It might be more inspiring than practicing exercises from a vocabulary book or using flashcards... Nevertheless, its impact remains uncertain until it is experimented with in different contexts.

References

Webb, S., & Nation, P. (2017). How Vocabulary is Learned. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Mollick, E., & Mollick, L. (2024). Instructors as Innovators: A Future-focused Approach to New AI Learning Opportunities, with Prompts. Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Available athttps://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4802463.

‍