As an EFL/ESL teacher, you might wonder what vocabulary to teach your students. Should you go with lists? Should you find the most common English words? How do you know if the words you’re teaching are valuable and relevant to your learners’ needs?
Organic acquisition is the process of identifying new vocabulary as it appears in natural situations and recording it for future learning. It ensures students learn personalised and appropriate vocabulary. The technique applies to classes of all sizes and levels and is easy to implement while increasing the likelihood of retention.
The term “organic acquisition” may seem complex and advanced, but in practice, it’s extremely simple. It’s step 2 of my Best Method to Improve EFL/ESL Students’ Vocabulary: 9 Steps and naturally produces valuable vocabulary.
Learning valuable words is vital
Valuable words are those which are relevant, meaningful, and appropriate for the learner.
We’ve all seen long lists of vocab online or in textbooks. Dozens of words which, while all perfectly valid things to learn, lack any connection to the person who has to memorise them.
The brain doesn’t consider them worthwhile. This is because it doesn’t need them for anything in the short-term future. Sure, they could be useful for a test, or in a conversation we’ll have in five years, but the brain can’t find a tangible function for them right now. It has no reason to remember them.
Valuable words, on the other hands, are important for the brain. They apply to what’s happening in the moment, and it’s clear they’ll be useful in the short term.
As a result, the brain opens up space to create memories. It pays more attention to them, and thus the ability to recall is much stronger.
In simple terms, when assessing a new word, the brain asks: “Do I care?” If the answer is no, it won’t bother putting the systems in place to remember it. Your students will forget.
For more on why EFL/ESL students forget vocabulary, click here for my article on that exact subject.
What is organic acquisition?
Now we know the importance of finding words our students care about, how do we go about discovering those words? Where do they come from?
In my Best Method to Improve EFL/ESL Students’ Vocabulary, the acquisition phase covers this. Organic acquisition is step 2 of the process and describes the identification of new words as they appear naturally.
In practice, this involves making a note of new or challenging vocabulary which students struggle with. It takes place during:
- Conversation
- Role plays
- Games
- Writing activities
Essentially, any activity which involves the production of English by the student, and therefore the potential for a lack of vocabulary. In other words, the active skills of writing and speaking.
It lies in contrast to the first step of acquisition – vocab elicitation. Elicitation techniques centre around the passive skills (listening and reading) as well as brainstorming and exploration activities.
For more on how to elicit vocabulary, my post on the subject covers everything you need to know.
How to apply organic acquisition
Using the organic acquisition technique in any class is remarkably simple, but there are a few things you need to consider in order to get the best results.
Essentially, it boils down to writing the words as they come up.
Let’s say you’re in a private one-to-one class talking about the best restaurants where the student lives. Your student is busy talking when they come across something they don’t know the word for, e.g. “takeaway”. Simply tell the student what the word is, then write it down for later study.
Or, maybe you have a group of 5 in the midst of a role-playing adventure into a dangerous dungeon. There’s a small tunnel, and the players want to crawl through it – but they don’t know the word “to crawl”. Again, give them the word and write it down.
Perhaps you teach a class of 35 children. You’re doing a writing where they have to tell a friend about their summer holiday. One of your students went windsurfing, but they don’t know the word for it. Guess what? Tell them the word, then write it down.
You get the idea. It’s extremely simple, but there are a few things you can get wrong. Here are some tips to get the best out of the technique:
- Always have plenty of space to write words. Mark off part of the blackboard, have paper to hand, or, my personal favourite – get an A4 dry erase pocket which you can wipe clean afterwards.
- Take a photo of the words at the end of the class so you don’t forget what the students have to learn.
- Write words in their dictionary form. This mostly applies to verbs. Keep things consistent with “to crawl” instead of “crawls” or “crawling” no matter what form they appeared in during the lesson. This also helps students recognise different word types.
- Keep words visible to students. Having them on the board or on the table allows them to use them again in the lesson and lets them keep track of what they’re learning.
- Omit words which are too specific or inappropriate. In one of my classes, I made the mistake of having children learning the words “halberd” and “scimitar”. They’re far too specific to provide any real value.
Forced organic acquisition
Sometimes, as a teacher, you need your students to learn certain words. Maybe your school insists on providing lists of vocabulary which every student has to memorise, or perhaps you’re preparing your class for an exam with specific vocab requirements.
Organic acquisition doesn’t normally allow for this. However, with a bit of skill, you can force organic acquisition and get your vocabulary to have value. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than just thrusting a list in your students’ faces.
The trick is to introduce the vocabulary in a natural way. This could be through conversation. For instance, if you need your students to learn “tram”, you could ask them: “How do people get around in this city? Is there much public transport like buses and trams?“
They might ask you what a tram is, in which case – bingo! Alternatively, you can ask them if they know what you mean by “tram”. If they tell you, they don’t need to learn the word. If they have trouble giving you an answer… you know how it goes by now… tell them the word and write it down!!
With writing activities, you can give your students a model writing which you prepare to include target vocabulary. As you explain what you want them to do in the writing task, probe whether they know the words and make a note of the ones they don’t.
What comes after organic acquisition?
You’ve gained all this great vocabulary and made a list of dozens of valuable new words. Is that it? Are you done now?
Absolutely not. Acquiring words is just the first phase of learning vocabulary. If you stopped here, students would remember very few of the words you wrote down. It would all be a waste of time.
The next phase is memorisation. This is where you take the vocabulary you’ve acquired and embed it into the minds of your students. There are a whole bunch of ways you can do this. They’re outlined in the Best Method to Improve EFL/ESL Students’ Vocabulary: 9 Steps article, and you can see the first memorisation step here: How to Use Images for Deep Vocab Memorisation in EFL/ESL.
For all the information you could ever possibly want on teaching EFL/ESL vocab, take a look at all my articles on the topic.
BIG OVERALL GUIDE: Best Method to Improve EFL/ESL Students’ Vocabulary: 9 Steps
Why EFL/ESL Students Forget Vocab: Causes and Solutions
How to Elicit Vocabulary in EFL/ESL: 7 Effective Activities
What Vocab Should You Teach in EFL/ESL: Organic acquisition
How to Use Images for Deep Vocab Memorisation in EFL/ESL
How to Use Gestures to Embed Vocab in EFL/ESL + 2 Games
How to Test EFL/ESL Vocabulary: Best assessment methods
Sounds and Audio Hooks for Lasting Memorisation in EFL/ESL
How to Teach Vocab in EFL/ESL with Memorable Moments
Supercharge EFL/ESL Vocab With Spaced Repetition (Anki)
How to Make Vocab Last Forever: Reinforcing connections
9 High Energy EFL/ESL Games for Boosting Vocabulary
