Earlier today I asked my
A1-A2 students to complete a short fun quiz. The questions were pretty basic but,
from a language point of view, the activity was suitably challenging for their
level of proficiency. Thus I’d handed out dictionaries so that anybody could
find any unknown vocabulary if necessary. I monitored during the activity and
observed which words they were looking up. They were doing fine until they got
to a simple question: How many sides does a square have? Almost simultaneously, they all started flicking through their dictionaries.
It was a couple of years
back when, for the first time ever, I asked my students to take the Nation’s
Vocabulary Level Test. It was a group of pre-intermediate learners (A2-B1) and my
intention was to find out how large their vocabulary was. I remember I was pretty
surprised that although they were familiar with lots of academic vocabulary
items, they didn’t know the word square. They knew one of the
meanings - a large open area in the centre of a town - but they were genuinely
amazed that it also refers to a geometrical shape (they obviously got it that
there was a relation between the two meanings as soon as they'd learnt the new
meaning). According to the Longman Communication 3000, the word is one of
the 2000 most common words in spoken English and one of the 3000 most common
words in written English.
I wondered why my
pre-intermediate weren’t familiar with such a common word but they knew, for
example, what persuade means – a word that is less common in spoken English than the word square. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure Czech students are familiar with the word circle or round at fairly early stages of learning English. These
words are present in most coursebook instructions, as in circle the correct word, or put a circle round the correct word. This is usually demonstrated visually. I tried to go through
all the coursebooks my students had used up to that moment but I couldn’t find
or remember a context in which we had talked about squares.
What I find interesting
is that in most proficiency listening tests, the word square is included at very
early stages, i.e. in the KET exam or at A1 level. As if the test designers
knew that this is a general problem. Thus my students invariably fail to answer
the corresponding question whenever they sit a mock test, and I always realize
that I forgot to teach this word – again! I think I forget because the
coursebook authors don’t remind me. But why don't I actually need the word in
the classroom context at all? Why does it rarely emerge during the lessons if it's so frequent and common in everyday life?
Maybe I’m wrong and
maybe we use the wrong coursebooks. Maybe the word can already be found in
elementary coursebooks, but at the school where I teach we usually start with
higher levels so it's so easy to miss it. Nevertheless, even if the students
had been told earlier, by somebody else, say, their primary school English
teacher, I can claim that the word is not even part
of their passive vocabulary because the low-level tests are designed using lots
of visuals and the question is usually something along these lines: Look at the picture and circle the correct answer. Do they want the round
table or the square one?
Why is the word so
elusive? In my view, the problem is the discrepancy between the visual and the
verbal aspect. The truth is that kids learn to distinguish basic shapes at very
early stages of their cognitive development, so they definitely are familiar with the
concept. However, in L2 learning, we must also consider the verbal aspect. To
put it simply, the word square is not easy to pronounce and thus it’s not easy to remember. Moreover, the
spelling of the word is rather confusing for a beginner, and there seems to be
little relation between the written form and the actual sound. If you compare
it to other words introduced in early stages such as cat, dog, pen, desk, red, swim, walk or book, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Is
it the reason why coursebook writers avoid this word early on? And why do test
designers like to include it in proficiency tests then? I’d say that it’s
because they know the word is pretty frequent and quite useful – not only does
it describe a common shape but one can use it to define nouns, especially
everyday objects.
We teach what's in the
coursebook because we trust the coursebook writers. We believe they know what
is frequent and useful. But I'm not convinced all coursebooks are written
according to this philosophy. Thus we're sometimes made to teach things which
are easy to learn but which are pretty useless in a larger context. I
understand that it's good to teach words that represent objects which the
learners can see and touch on the spot, but we easily forget other, more
important ones. Why teach a long list of animals when it'd be much handier to present, for example, lots of adjectives and actions to describe two or three most common/popular pets? Am I trying to square the circle?
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