reading this story might come from the lexical dimension of the text, however, with teachers’ supports, students would benefit more from this reading text, in terms of vocabulary development.
2. Analysing the lexical dimensions of the text with a view to anticipate
This story is quite suitable to the learners’ proficiency level of intermediate. As intermediate learners, they are expected to know the family word from K1 to K4, that is the coverage of 95% of the tokens of this story, which should be sufficient for comprehension.
The optimal lexical coverage that learners should have for text comprehension should be 98% of the total running words or tokens (Hu and Nation, 2000; Schmitt et al., 2011);
however, research to support this figure is still small. Another research by van Zeeland and Schmitt (2012) also argues that 95% coverage may be enough for spoken narrative texts.
Word families from K5 onwards are of relatively low-frequency, which might be challenging for the students to comprehend the story. These word families are summarized in the table below:
Word lists Word families
K-5 Words Dreadfully, cradle, sorrow, flakes, goose (x4), rags, numbed, stove (x3), ornament, transparent, splendid, reeled, ascends, stark
K-6 Words Slipper (x3), maiden (x4), apron, plums, behold, radiant, K-7 Words Hitherto, splendour
K-8 Words lustre
K-9 Words Scuffled, urchin, cowered, K-10 Words burnished, porcelain K-14 Words farthing
Off-List Hans Christian Andersen, bareheaded, capitally, livelong, oh (x2), rischt
Among the total 9 tokens classified off-list, 8 tokens do not affect comprehension of the story: the first three tokens are proper name of the author; “bareheaded” and “livelong” are transparent compound, whose meanings are transparently related to the meanings of the parts;
“oh” is a marginal word which is common in spoken language but not in dictionary; “rischt” is the sound heard when making fire with match (this could be easily inferred from the context).
The meaning of the last word in this off-list - “capitally” – could also be inferred from the context given in the sentence: “One slipper was nowhere to be found; the other had been laid hold of by an urchin, and off he ran with it; he thought it would do capitally for a cradle when he some day or other should have children himself.” The word “capitally” could not be found in Oxford dictionary may be because it is an old-fashion word.
Not counting those 8 word families, the other words ranging from K5 to K14 available in the text account for 3.96% coverage of the story. This relatively high coverage could be considered challenging for story comprehension. However, most of Vietnamese students have read the translation of the story when they were kids; hence, they could still remember the plot of the story. However, some lexical items still pose comprehension problems when it comes to details.
Still focusing on the story comprehension problems, I would like to continue to examine the whole story to identify words or strings of word that may cause confusion or are likely to be misinterpreted for three reasons regarding the learners’ characteristics and background, properties of the “input” in which the lexical item occurs, and the properties of the lexical item. Challenges regarding “idiomatic” expressions are also discussed.
2.2. Comprehension problems coming from the learners’ characteristics and background
2.2.1. Proficiency
Some students in the same class have slightly lower proficiency level. Therefore, some words in K3 and K4 may even be unknown to them, which in turn make the guessing meaning of the lower frequency words more difficult. Frank Boers (personal conversation, Aug 9, 2017) also claims that learners with a growing vocabulary will be better at recognizing recurring word parts and similarities between new words and already familiar ones.
2.2.2. Familiarity with the topic
Although students know the plot of the story, they may find it hard to read the story because of unknown words. In addition, this story was written long time ago, there are some old-fashioned words, such as “urchin” (a young child, who is poor and dirty, often one who has no home) and “farthing” (in the past, British coin worth one quarter of an old penny), which may make comprehension more challenging.
2.2.3. L1 influence at the level of ‘typology’
Some lexical categories in English appeared in the story are not present in Vietnamese, which may cause confusion to some extent. Some students may get confused when it comes to phrasal verbs, irregular past form of verbs or irregular past participle form of verbs.
Phrasal verbs: learners may be familiar with the verb but when they come with a preposition, the phrasal verbs may have different meaning, which may pose comprehension problems (supposed that there is not enough context to infer the meaning):
stopped up with (straw and rags):
“stop up” means “to stay up late”, but learners may not know the exact meaning of “stopped up with”.
draw it (the match) against (the wall)
some lower level students may infer that the little girl draw something on the wall.
drew (one – one match) out: some students may recognize that “drew” is the past form of “draw”, they may infer that “drew (one) out” means the little girl drew something.
(the small flame) went out some students may get confused at how the flame can “go” out.
In addition, some learners may know the base form of verbs but possibly cannot recognize the verbs in past form or past participle form as the story is a narrative written in past tense, using some passive form:
Irregular past form of verbs: (creep) crept; (smell) smelt; (draw) drew;
Irregular past participles: (wear) worn, (find) found, (fly) flew, (rise) rose.
2.3. Comprehension problems related to properties of the input in which the lexical item occurs
2.3.1. Frequency of occurrence
A study of incidental vocabulary learning by Brown, et al., (2008) indicates that a word that is met more frequently will have more chances of being learnt. Brown et al. also claim that unless the words are met a sufficient number of times and are met again soon after in listening and reading, then “the word knowledge gained will decay”. “The Little Match Girl” is a short story; although some lexical items are repeated a few times, there need to be subsequent encounters with these items in later reading and listening experience. The results from Tom Cobb’s website reveal the frequency of word families from K2 onwards with two or more times of occurrence:
K2 - 13_match 2_flame 2_joy 2_nor 2_rub 2_stretch K3 - 2_naked
K4 - 2_brass 2_candle 2_magnificent 2_vanish 3_roast 4_bundle K5 - 3_stove 4_goose K6 - 3_slipper 4_maiden K7 - 2_farthing
Most of the words are repeated twice, which are also from K2 or K4, which might be familiar with the learners already. Other word families from lower frequency (K5, K6, K7) are repeated two, three or four times in the story. Therefore, if these words are new to the learners and there is insufficient context to infer the meaning of these words, comprehension of the story may be impeded.
2.3.2. Context
Learners may not infer the meaning of some word families which are possibly unfamiliar to them because of insufficient context. Some of them even appear only once, which makes guessing the meanings more challenging. According to Webb (2008), if
unknown words appear in insufficient informative or misleading contexts, knowledge of word meaning could be difficult to achieve. Some of those words in the story (from K5 onwards) are listed as follow:
- “splendid”, and “porcelain” as in “On the table was spread a snow-white tablecloth;
upon it was a splendid porcelain service, and the roast goose was steaming famously with its stuffing of apple and dried plums.” “Service” is a polysemy, and in this case, together with “splendid porcelain”, students could not guess its meaning.
- “apron” as in “She carried a quantity of matches in an old apron, and she held a bundle of them in her hand.” Some learners may think that “apron” is a type of bag.
- “lustre” as in “She drew another match against the wall: it was again light, and in the lustre there stood the old grandmother, so bright and radiant, so mild, and with such an expression of love.”
2.3.3. Comprehensibility of the text or vocabulary coverage?
In order to comprehend the story, learners should have the vocabulary coverage from 95% to 98% (Frank Boers, personal conversation, Aug 9, 2017), which means, they have acquired the word families from K1 to K4. However, students’ levels vary in one class, some word families in K3 and K4 may be unfamiliar to them, such as “trembling”,
“carriages”, and “brass”.
2.4. Comprehension problems related to properties of lexical items 2.4.1. Degree of distinctiveness in form
Some studies reveal that learners tend to confuse words that are similar in sound, script, or morphology (Laufer-Dvorkin, 1991). Laufer (2013) refers to words with similar lexical forms as “synforms”. This confusion when reading or listening to the story may interrupt with comprehension. For example, “trail” as in “The lights of the Christmas tree rose higher and higher, she saw them now as stars in heaven; one fell down and formed a long trail of fire” could possibly be mistaken as “train” if learners are not careful while reading or listening to the story. Homographs may also cause confusion in the story, with “rose” as a verb in that sentence and “rose” as a noun.
2.4.2. Degree of distinctiveness in meaning
There are two words from K5 onwards describing movement with slightly different shades of meaning, which may require more attention: “reel” (to move in a very unsteady way, for example, because you are drunk or have been hit) and “scuffle” (to move quickly making a quiet rubbing noise).
2.4.3. Degree of consistency in form-meaning connection (polysemy)
There are some words that are in K1 or K2 but used with different meaning, which may cause confusion while reading or listening to the story. These words are listed below:
Words and their more common meaning that learners may know
Meaning in the story
Service (n): a system that provides something that the public needs, organized by the government or a private company
a complete set of plates, dishes, etc. that match each other
Capital (a): involving punishment by death; (of letters of the alphabet) having the form and size used at the beginning of a sentence or a name
(old-fashioned) excellent
Advance (v): if knowledge, technology, etc. advances, it develops and improves
[intransitive] to move forward towards 2.4.4. Compositionality
Word-part analysis might be helpful but there are deceptive cases, such as “slipper(s)”,
“hunger”; students may think that they refer to someone because of the ending “-er”.
Similarly, “ornament” could be referred to as an action or result of something because of the ending “-ment”. In the case of “transparent” although it looks as if it is combined of meaningful morphemes “trans-” and “-parent”, they could not be broken into parts. That word is referred to as “deceptive transparent word” by Laufer (2013).
2.5. Comprehension problems related to ‘idiomatic’ expressions
The story contains some “idiomatic” expressions that are likely to pose comprehension problems even though their constituent words look familiar.
Idiomatic expressions
Meaning Sentence from the story If only used to say that you wish
something was true or that something had happened:
“if she only dared take a single one out of the bundle, draw it against the wall, and warm her fingers by it.”
Nothing but only; no more/less than “nothing but the thick, cold, damp wall was left behind.”