Book review：Jeanne McCarten’s TeachingVocabulary： Lessons from the Corpus， Lessons for the Classroom

朱瑶

【Abstract】Corpus is now playing a significant role in various researching fields，pedagogy included.Jeanne McCarten introduces her corpus-based method of vocabulary teaching in the book Teaching Vocabulary：Lessons from the Corpus，Lessons for the Classroom.This book review introduces you this book and makes some pertinent comments on it.

【Key words】English teaching； vocabulary； corpus； Jeanne McCarten

Corpus linguistics，which refers to the study of language as expressed in samples of“real world”text stored in computers，was a hit to the field of linguistics decades ago.Now corpus is playing a more important role in various research fields，including pedagogy.Under such circumstance，Jeanne McCarten tells us how to use corpus to guide vocabulary teaching and how to put it into practice in her book Teaching Vocabulary：Lessons from the Corpus，Lessons for the Classroom.

The book was published by Cambridge University Press in 2007.The author Jeanne McCarten focuses on the publication of grammar and vocabulary teaching materials and has made an outstanding contribution to Cambridge International Corpus for developing the spoken language part.With a deep understanding of vocabulary teaching and corpus study，she combined these two perspectives to finish this book.

As the title suggests，the book is composed of two parts，lessons from the corpus and lesson for the classroom.In the first part，the writer mainly explains the question of“what to teach”from the perspective of corpus.It talks about how to select the words to teach from a total of nearly one million words.The writer suggests that corpus can tell people about a words frequency，differences in speaking and writing，contexts of use，collocation，grammatical patterns，and strategic use of vocabulary.And interestingly，when the writer talks about a quantitative analysis，which most corpus researchers focus on，she at the meantime lays stress on a qualitative analysis，i.e.，how people use vocabulary in context.In the second part，the writer moves the core from corpus to classroom.In this part the writer discusses deeper into what to teach and how to teach.She offers a great deal of methods to help students learn vocabulary with many examples.Finally，she emphasizes that it is equally important to help students with how to learn vocabulary as well as with what to learn.

Generally speaking，this book，though short in length，is worthy of being appreciated.First，it is a very smart way to direct vocabulary teaching by applying corpus.Corpus has drawn a lot of attention in linguistic studies，nevertheless，seldom has it been applied to vocabulary teaching.Cambridge International Corpus is a billion-word corpus of English language which contains data from a number of sources including written and spoken，British and American English.Thus，taking corpus as a reference to teach vocabulary provides students with a chance to approach the most authentic English.Students will learn not only the exact words，but also the appropriate context to use them.

Secondly，the examples about what and how to teach are abundant and listed in detail in this book.Take strategic vocabulary as an example，the writer lists simple conjunctions like and and however，adverbs such as first，secondly，and expressions such as in conclusion.Also，by providing information in neat charts or figures，the author helps the reader to have a better comprehension on what she means.The abundant examples and figures in this book make a great contribution in making the book an appealing and easy-reading one.

Thirdly，while concerning teaching practice，the book does not neglect theories of teaching methodology.In the second part of the book，namely，lessons for the classroom，the writer proposes several approaches，such as focus on vocabulary，offer variety，repeat and recycle，and so on.When talking about“offer variety”，she cited Tomlinsons（1998）opinion that teaching can be done with unusual and appealing content，attractive presentations，and variety.Teachers can use different ways to present vocabulary including pictures，sounds，and different text types with which students can identify：stories，conversations，web pages，questionnaires，news reports，etc.As we know，there are visual learners，auditory learners，tactile learners，kinesthetic learners，and so on.Instead of tediously meeting the need of only one or two kinds of learning styles，the variety of presentation caters to the appetite of students of various learning styles.

In a word，building a syllabus and teaching vocabulary according to authentic corpus is definitely a way worth trying.And you may choose an appropriate corpus by yourself as your basis of teaching for students of different learning motivations.