You know that student who swears they’re studying vocabulary every single night but still bombs the quiz? Yeah, I had Mesfer. This guy was COMMITTED. He proudly told me he was learning 30 words per day. Eeevery. Siiiingle. Daaay. That’s 210 words per week because weekends are for quitters, apparently.
His vocabulary scores? Yeah, not great. (big surprise)
I’ve watched too many students pour hours into vocabulary study and retain almost nothing. I’m not sure if they’re more frustrated or we are. (They’ll say it’s them.) But seriously? The way we’re asking them to learn vocabulary is setting them up to fail.
Here are three reasons your adult ESL students struggle with learning new vocabulary, and more importantly, what you can do about it.
FIRST: Their Go-To Strategy Is Straight Memorization…and duh, it doesn’t work.
Mesfer wasn’t exactly doing anything wrong. He was studying hard. But at 30 words per day, he was basically speed-dating vocabulary. Quick hello, maybe a definition, moving on. No depth or relationship. No authentic use.
Was this learning? Or was it just… looking at words?
Timothy Shanahan, ↗ when summing up research on repetition, said students need about 10-15 exposures to truly learn a word. Sounds reasonable, right? So Teng took that to heart and wrote each vocabulary word 20 times. Problem solved!
Except Shanahan also said those repetitions need VARIATION. Writing the same word 20 times in a row isn’t variation. It’s punishment.
And this is where most ESL textbooks completely drop the ball. They’ll give you four different exercise types (if you’re lucky), but each exercise only uses a handful of the vocabulary words. Your students aren’t getting enough practice with ALL the words in enough DIFFERENT ways. They’re getting shallow exposure to scattered terms, and we’re wondering why nothing hangs around in their memory.
SECOND: The Practice is Limited in Both Variety and Scope
Textbooks aren’t designed to reach individual students. They can’t be. But if we want our students to really learn, we need to adapt what those books offer.
I had two students, Saad and Shimin, who shared a textbook that presented vocabulary with a tiny picture, the word itself, and one measly exercise. That was it. Seriously…nothing else! Both of them were beginners, so they couldn’t just go out and start using these words in authentic conversations. They were stuck. They needed more practice, more variety, more SOMETHING, and the book wasn’t giving it to them.
So what do we do instead?
Teach Vocabulary Within All Four Language Domains
If your vocabulary practice only involves reading sentences or writing sentences, you’re leaving out more than half the picture. Students need to hear the words, say the words, read the words, AND write sentences with the words. Bonus points (okay, ten gold stars) if you manage to do all of this in context.
Don’t just have them fill in blanks silently. Have them listen for the words in a dialogue. Make them say the words out loud in their own sentences. Give them reading passages that use the vocabulary naturally. Then have them write about it.
Hit all four domains, every time.
Mix Vocabulary Into Your Grammar Lessons
You’re already creating example sentences for your grammar lessons, right? Start tailoring those sentences around the vocabulary your students are learning. Add the new words to their fill-in-the-blank exercises. Give them level-appropriate grammar structures that make it easy to plug those vocabulary words into full sentences.
This isn’t extra preparation. This is just being strategic about what you’re already doing.
Use Vocabulary to Teach Pronunciation
Your students struggle with certain sounds. You know which ones. (My students? It was always /r/ and /l/, among others.) So use the vocabulary they’re learning to practice those sounds.
You want to embed these words into everything you’re doing until they’re solidly in your students’ brains. Never assume that just because they’re adults, they’ll pick up terms with a quick glance. They won’t.
THIRD: The Vocabulary Doesn’t Interest Them
Look, not all vocabulary is going to be fascinating. Some of it is going to be boring. Unfortunately, that’s reality. But if you can show students how to make vocabulary USEFUL, they’ll find it worth learning.
Sometimes you can use required vocabulary to help students accomplish something they care about. You need to know your students as individuals to pull this off, but let’s be real…you’re probably already making that your mission anyway.
Use the Vocabulary to Help Them Reach Their Own Goals
Byung-Jin hated sports. HATED them. He wanted to major in business, and he deeply resented our sports-themed unit. Learning sports vocabulary felt like a complete waste of his time.
But he wanted to improve his spelling.
So I used the sports vocabulary to teach him spelling patterns. He studied those patterns, practiced with those words, and quite accidentally ended up learning most of the sports terms anyway. Despite this being almost against his will, he did well on the unit test, but more importantly, he accomplished HIS goal…better spelling.
Meiko also had zero interest in sports vocabulary. But she really wanted to improve her pronunciation. So we used those same sports terms to practice the sounds she struggled with. By the time she had nailed her pronunciation of those tricky sounds, she’d also learned the vocabulary.
Different paths. Same destination.
Individualizing Pays Off in Multiple Ways
All of my students were still learning the required vocabulary. But because I didn’t force them all down the same path, they learned it in ways that were meaningful to them. I could keep the whole class in the same chapter (if not on the exact same page), and students were motivated to participate.
One more thing. When I met students where they were and helped them reach their own goals through the vocabulary, they were way more willing to participate in everything else. Byung-Jin and Meiko both showed up for the class discussion on sports, performed the sports-related role-plays, and interviewed classmates about their favorite teams. They didn’t love sports any more than before, but they trusted that I wasn’t wasting their time.
That trust? That’s what makes everything else possible.
The Bottom Line
Your students aren’t failing at vocabulary because they’re not trying hard enough. They’re struggling because the way we typically teach vocabulary—repetitive, shallow, and disconnected from their own goals—doesn’t give their brains what they need to retain new words.
Give them varied practice across all four language domains. Weave vocabulary into your grammar lessons and pronunciation practice. And whenever possible, help students use vocabulary study to accomplish something they DO care about.
When you do that, vocabulary stops being a chore they endure and becomes a tool they can use.
That’s it from me. See you in the next post!
Read more about learning new vocabulary for adult ESL!
Stop Pre-Teaching Vocabulary All the Time!
2 Vocabulary Games That’ll Get Even Your Skeptical Adult ESL Students Excited
Stop Selling Academic Vocabulary. Start Selling This Instead.
How to Teach Academic Vocabulary with Videos and Not Just Kill Time
