Microsoft Word Interactive Approaches for Vocabulary Te

Literature Review 
One important question which remains unresolved concerns whether a functional reading 
lexicon in a second language can itself be acquired through reading (Nagy, 1997), or is more 
likely to result from some kind of direct teaching, or instructionally enhanced reading. This 
question actually is asking us how to what level and how well a learner should be qualified 
from perspectives of her/his personal lexical list in order to learn and make progresses by 
her/himself and also to smoothly apply English in reading and speaking in daily life. 
Moreover, if most of our progresses are contributed from our teacher’s training. If it is 
possibly that the learners can automatically accumulate new vocabularies into their mind 
without teacher’s contributions?
Zahar, Cobb and Spada (2001) have provided their answers to this question. Zahar, Cobb 
and Spada (2001) declare that one part of the answer to this question depends on what is 
meant a functional reading lexicon, i.e. the minimal recognition vocabulary knowledge 
needed to facilitate reading comprehension. Moreover, the other part of the answer depends 
on how many words learners can be expected to acquire in a given period of time and 
whether there is any reliability to this learning rate.
Based on the above two answers as well as the factors of functional reading lexicon, and 
reliability to learning rate, the researcher of this study would like to firstly, investigate how 
many words is a student’s basic quantity for comprehending a general reading article, making 
progresses by his/her own and delivering a common conversation in our daily life. Second, 
this study will explore how many words learners can be reasonably expected to absorbed in a 
certain period of time.
In previous studies (E.g., McCarthy, 2003) , we can concluded that 2000 words families 
has been widely accepted as the amount of basic vocabulary in a learner’s lexical list if he/she 
would like to interact and read without too much blocks. Since these 2000 words are 
statically measured as the most frequently appearing words in reading and spoken languages. 
Hence, the minimal recognition vocabulary knowledge needed to facilitate reading 
comprehension should be the most used 2000 words. Conclusively, if a learner has a list of 
2000 words in his/her lexical list, he/she will be able to recognize more words and acquire 
functional lexicon when reading or listening. Furthermore, Schmitt and Zimmerman (2002) 
offer apparent confirmations that university ESL learners have at unsurpassed partial 
acquaintance of the generated forms from stem words (e.g., persistent, persistently, and 

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The 2009 AE Conference Iso University, Kaohsiung
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persistence from persist). This means that to a quantity of expansions, the learners are 
well-known with the other members of a word root family. For that reason, the 2000 and 
3000 words statistics significantly understated the actual number of words that need to be 
learned in some sense.
On the other hand, how many words a student can absorb as well as the rate of learning 
provides an answer for students who can automatically learn by themselves. When a 
student is reading if she/he can learn vocabulary at the same time and how well she/he can 
learn. To this part of Zahar, Cobb and Spada’s (2001) answer to automatically acquiring and 
developing lexical proficiency, A British study conducted by Milton and Meara (1995) 
revealed that language learners learning in the non-native speaking background could learn at 
a rate of 2500 words each year, while the tempo of those studying in classrooms at home in 
the native-speaking countries was only about 550. Besides, Horst, Cobb and Meara (1998) 
reveal that after reading, participants can typically select a definition for a little more than one 
out of every 12 words tested. This implies that after reading each time, a learner might be 
able to absorb 12 words.
Based on above theories, this study brings to a close that a leaner should be able to 
self-study and gain around 2190 words, as well as the basic lexical list a person should have, 
through reading and absorbing 12 words every two days. The formula can be revealed as the 
following:
365 days X 1/2 (every two days) X 12 (learning words after each reading occasion) = 
2190 words.