The Academic Vocabulary List (AVL) was produced by a rationale for word inclusion improved from the methodology used to generate Coxhead's AWL (Gardner & Davies, 2014). It offers a comprehensive view of high frequency academic vocabulary that could greatly benefit ELLs if implemented into ELL curricula (Gardner & Davies, 2014). However, because of the newness of the list, there are few learning resources currently utilizing the AVL. The major objective of this thesis project was to create digital flashcards for the first 500 words of the AVL to increase the list's accessibility to ELLs and teachers worldwide. These flashcards were made available through Quizlet's online interface. This paper describes the two types of flashcards developed: AVL words paired with simplified English (learner) definitions, and AVL words paired with L1 translations into seven languages. It further describes an evaluation of these flashcards by ESOL teachers working at a U.S. intensive English program, and concludes with suggestions for the future development of AVL learning resources.

This study examined the mathematical thinking of English learners as they were taught mathematics vocabulary through research-based methods. Four English learners served as focus students. After administering a pre-performance assessment, I taught a 10-lesson unit on fractions. I taught mathematics vocabulary through the use of a mathematics word wall, think-pair-shares, graphic organizers, journal entries, and picture dictionaries. The four focus students were audio recorded to capture their spoken discourse. Student work was collected to capture written discourse. Over the course of the unit, the four focus students used the mathematics vocabulary words that were taught explicitly. The focus students gained both procedural and conceptual knowledge of fractions during this unit. Students also expressed elevated confidence in their mathematics abilities.

This research study explores to what extent reading aloud is beneficial for vocabulary acquisition. Based on research statistics provided by Eurostat (2020) the majority of students in Sweden learn English as a foreign language. Therefore, the focus of the study is based on investigating the EFL classroom in Sweden. The research question this study is based on is to what extent reading aloud is beneficial for teaching English as a foreign language in the Swedish school from grade one to three in terms of children's ability to learn vocabulary. The method used for this research to collect scientific journals, dissertations and related research that can contribute to this discussion and result of this study is collected through different electronic databases. The access to studies conducted in an EFL classroom was rather restrictive and therefore the majority of the studies used were conducted on children who studied English as a first language in preschool and grade one to three in primary school. Whilst the selected studies target groups differed in age, findings indicate that the benefits of only reading aloud have little influence on children’s vocabulary acquisition. However, findings also presented that using word explanation and repetition during read aloud is shown to be more beneficial for vocabulary acquisition.

This study investigates the impact that reading aloud has on receptive vocabulary for youngerlearners. It takes the current environment of English language learning within Swedish schoolsinto account and explores several language acquisition theories that are deemed instrumental indeveloping a foundation for receptive vocabulary, as well as contrasting and comparing with howthe method of reading aloud has an impact on language learning. The study will also investigatehow this method differs among first- and second- or foreign-language learners. Through thesynthesis of multiple research articles that have been made on the subject, we discover that thepositive effects of a read aloud experience translate to a greater understanding of receptivevocabulary, and that there are ultimately only positives to draw from the experience. However,conflicting sources regarding second-language or foreign-language learners’ performances pointsto the importance of ensuring the material and exercises be carefully selected and structured inorder to foster an equal ground for everyone’s developmental trajectory.

As the world and society evolve into a more digitized era, school systems have to follow. Sweden the national board of education has started to include digital tools into the curriculum and to place demands on the digital competence of Swedish teachers. The consequences that follow are that teachers are expected to implement digital tools of varying kinds into their lessons, which is done with varying success. This thesis aims to examine how software tools such as Kahoot and elevspel are perceived by English teachers in Sweden as tools they can use as they teach learners in grades 4-6. More specifically, this thesis will focus on how English teachers in an EFL setting perceive that they can use these tools to facilitate vocabulary development. In this essay, we have conducted quantitative research by using a questionnaire to gather data from English teachers in Sweden. Along with this, we have also examined previous research in this field to review the scientific background and take this into consideration. The results from this questionnaire showed that English teachers in Swedenincorporate software tools in their lessons and perceive software tools as necessary. However, a majority of the participating teachers noted that more support and ideas are needed for them to incorporate these tools to a fuller extent.

This study aimed to analyse Swedish EFL students' efficiency on connotations. Connotation isa word's implied meaning which brings neutral, positive, or negative associations in aconversation. In this study, connotations were examined in terms of their appropriateness ifused in different contexts. The purpose of this research was to investigate whether Swedishstudents of an intermediate level showed sufficient skills in comprehending a word'sappropriateness when compared to a native speaker. Furthermore, this study also aimed toanalyse in what ways students engaged in English during their spare time show a correlation tohigher test scores. The results indicate that the Swedish students' combined score on theconnotation test showed less than half of the full score. The results also highlight that thestudents who are engaged in English more frequently compared to those who are not showedhigher test scores.

This study investigated the role of vocabulary size in assessing learners from various L1 backgrounds and for institutional placement. Participants included native speakers of Spanish, Korean, Japanese, and Mandarin, who took a test that estimated the size of their productive English vocabulary. First, the vocabulary size of students from each language group was compared and the relationship between vocabulary size and institutional placement level was examined. Then, scores were analyzed to determine how cognates and loan words influenced the participants' performance on the vocabulary test. Further, students' vocabulary size scores were correlated with their placement scores that evaluated reading, writing, speaking, listening, and grammar. Finally, the vocabulary size of new students was compared to returning students within the same institutional placement level. Within the same institutional placement levels, speakers of Spanish and Korean had larger English vocabularies than speakers of Japanese and Chinese. It was also found that there is a clear distinction between students at varying institutional placement levels in terms of their vocabulary size. The cognate analysis revealed that students learn cognates faster than non-cognates. The correlation analysis revealed that vocabulary size correlated most with speaking, and listening, followed by grammar, then reading and writing. Finally, the cross-sectional analysis indicated that the vocabulary size of newly placed students was generally larger than that of continuing students.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of explicitly teaching students how to recognize and use context clues in content-area texts through a six-week instructional program. Quantitative analyses were performed to reveal any difference between a control and treatment group. Results indicated that students in the treatment group abilities to determine the meaning of unknown vocabulary words were increased significantly more than students in the control group. Students who received the six weeks of instruction more effectively used context clues to determine the meaning of unknown words than students who did not receive the instruction. Recommendations for further research are discussed.

For students of English as a foreign language (EFL), a certain level of knowledge of vocabulary is required for successful communication to occur. Based on personal experiences in the classroom which have shown that students often lack language variation, accuracy, coherence and descriptiveness, this paper deals with the issue of teaching vocabulary in a more conscientious and focused way to help ensure that students will become more competent in using the language effectively. The Swedish curriculum for English, LGR11, is built up around the ideology known as communicative language teaching (CLT). This entails that as long as a learner is exposed to a foreign language, and has sufficient opportunities to use that language, the learning of the language will occur. The results of this paper suggest that we cannot only rely on a pure form of CLT for students to reach higher ability levels, but that a certain amount of focused vocabulary teaching, in context with classroom activities, is also necessary.

This degree project aims to investigate how teachers negotiate their teaching practices and what determines their choice of working methods when it comes to teaching vocabulary. Since we are interested in teachers’ thoughts and opinions regarding vocabulary teaching, a selection of English teachers were interviewed. Our theoretical background is rooted in Nation’s (2001) theories on what it means to know a word, Schmitt’s (2000, 2007) theories on how vocabulary is acquired and on Lundahl’s (2012, 2014) perspectives on traditions in the English classroom. Additionally we used research articles for our analysis of the results. The results from our findings indicate that vocabulary is being taught in both a revised traditional- and a non-traditional way. Our results also show that education and contextual factors influence how teachers teach vocabulary. From our results, we can conclude that our informants teach vocabulary for communicative purposes, but that there is a considerable difference in their approach to vocabulary learning. In addition, we can also conclude that the informants all expressed the need for further professional development in English, and that there is a need for more research on how contextual factors affect teachers in their work.