The word count, done by the AntConc 3.2.4 software on the three 45-min recorded lessons for each teacher, was in terms of both word tokens and word types. While word types counted each single word once no matter how many times it appeared in the text, word tokens counted each word as many times as it appeared. Much token-type variation was indicative of many different words being used without being repeated, and little variation signalled use of fewer words repeatedly. The greater the token-type variability, the greater the word recycling. Ideally, the Type-Token Ratio (TTR) should be about 51.1% calculated as (number of types/number of tokens) × 100 (see Table 2). While acknowledging the sensitivity of TTR to text length (Koizumi 2012) where longer texts were more likely to have greater variability than shorter texts, the TTR was meant to give an indication of frequency and variability in teacher talk vocabulary.

That the highest quantity of English words exposed to learners in 45×3 min was 4036 tokens (an average of 1345 words per lesson) evinced low exposure to English vocabulary. The highest TTR of 23.8 fell even below half the 51.1% expected signifying low recycling of vocabulary. The quantity of English vocabulary exposure was compromised by the over-reliance on the learners’ HL by both the teachers and learners. While the TTR gave some indication of the frequency with which some words recurred (word recycling), it did not indicate whether the word was a mere repetition several times at the same point in the lesson, which would not constitute recycling. A systematic way of capturing the extent of the HFWs’ recycling, to allow for repetitive exposure, was employed to determine how many of the 60 HFWs were recycled in 5 min intervals (see Table 3). The 45 min lessons had nine 5-min intervals and, using our discretion, a word had to recur in at least four of the nine intervals to qualify for a sufficiently recycled word to allow for rudimentary acquisition. Recycling of words at regular intervals was needed to entrench the words into long-term memory (Linse 2005).

The 60 HFWs had a fair mix of content and function words and it was interesting to note that of the 15/60 (25%) recycled words, only one, ‘look’, was a content word. This was possibly owing to function words abounding in speech and writing as they bring grammaticality to, and show the structural relations of, some words, which are the function words. It was less likely, therefore, that their use was deliberate on the teachers’ part. Word recycling, especially content word recurrence was, therefore, lacking.

In the classes observed, there was a manifest lack of a variety of books and no time was set aside for reading or being read to. Opportunities to expose learners to new words and recycle them was lost in the use of the first language for sayings like giving commendation, classroom control, beginning or ending the lesson, giving instructions and asking for information etc. These routine classroom activities were open to multiple ways of communication. Calling learners to silence and attention could have been done in half a dozen ways that could be repeated often until all the vocabulary involved was part of learners’ own vocabulary.

Word consciousness was achieved by the word flagging strategies or strategies for drawing attention to novel or key English words. Noticing words precedes learning word meanings (Christ & Wang 2010).

Repeated word reading: This was the most prevalent strategy used in every English FAL lesson. It took the form of choral word reading after the teacher to note how the word is pronounced and how it looks. Beauty had a word list on the board that she pointed to and read for learners to read after her and learners would continue to read it as many times as she pointed at it; usually twice or thrice (depending on the length of the word that she evidently took to imply its complexity). This was typical of all the teachers and the whole class would stand close to the board for such choral repeated readings. The smallest word list thus read was six (Anne) and the biggest list was 23 words (Beauty).

There was little variation to this pattern, as when Anne combined the choral repeated word reading with word spelling. The learners read each word twice after which she read out each letter making up the word while the learners said it after her. After the reading of the last letter, she read the whole word again and had the learners repeat it. The other variation manifest once in Carol’s class was when the choral repeated reading was led by a more competent learner after the teacher’s initial demonstration. The variations were too minor to warrant being a different form of the strategy. Sometimes what was meant to be word reading degenerated into word saying for some learners who would merely parrot the teachers’ reading when they were not even facing the board.

Repeated word saying: In repeated word saying, learners relied on the auditory rather than the visual form of the word from the teacher. The teacher said the word or phrase more times than the learners would repeat after her. Anne on one occasion repeated the words ‘present continuous’ five times with the learners repeating after her thrice. She then had them repeat the word ‘continuous’ on its own twice. Word or phrase repetitions were done consecutively and not recycled within intervals in discourse. In only a single observed instance did Carol and Beauty end up writing the repeated words. The word was supposed to be known at the aural level. Word selection did not seem to follow specific criteria. That learners were not told about the purpose repeated word readings and sayings were meant to serve, whether pronunciation or spelling, made it doubtful that the formal aspects intended to be recognised in a word were actually recognised.

Word spelling: Word spelling was prevalent especially in Carol’s class where repeated word reading preceded word spelling. She would just say ‘how to spell…’ and the learners, while looking at the word on the chalkboard or chart, would spell the word in unison. Beauty would ask learners to look at the word momentarily and then ask them to close their eyes and spell the words in chorus. There was not much spelling activity in Anne’s class.

Word stress or emphasis: All three teachers used stress or word emphasis to draw attention to particular words within a context. This was the only ‘word flagging’ strategy that was contextualised. Beauty stressed the word ‘wearing’ in the following exchange:

The ‘wearing’ was meant to elicit a response in which the same word was used. Sometimes the stress was meant to model pronunciation or to distinguish one word from a similar sounding one. The stress/emphasis took the form of higher pitch or longer stress. Sometimes the word was enunciated slowly emphasising its syllables, for example, ‘vo-we-ls’. The stress was meant to engender word recognition at the phonological level.

Segmentation of polysyllabic words: The segmentation of polysyllabic words was only used by Beauty and Anne and once and twice, respectively, for that matter. It almost straddled between a flagging strategy and a vocabulary episode in that something was done to the word learners’ attention was being drawn to. Anne’s syllabification was ‘toothbrush, tooth, brush, tooth, brush, toothbrush’. Word knowledge was facilitated at the orthographic (where the word was written), phonological and morphological levels. Even the semantic dimension was hinted at in the segmentation of compound words like toothbrush.

Leaving out blanks for learners to complete: The strategy was exclusive to Carol who habitually would have exchanges like the following:

The teacher’s stem or frame of the response gave the clue of what word was being sought. Sentence reformulation was meant to provide sufficient clues to the word she wanted noticed.

What was common about the use of all the flagging strategies was the choral nature of learner responses and their decontextualised nature. There was a manifest overemphasis on nouns on account of the ease with which their meanings could be demonstrated at the expense of novel words in other word classes. Sometimes words that were too basic, like ‘cow’, were isolated for direct instruction, which raised the question about the criteria for word selection and whether word choice had more to do with teacher convenience than learner needs. Though much concrete vocabulary was drawn attention to, there was very little done to represent the words in some concrete form, be it miming, use of pictures, diagrams or realia or even gestures.

Sometimes isolation of words for direct teaching during a reading session detracted from textual comprehension. Sometimes the words taught in isolation were not highlighted when they were encountered in text for consolidation. Some unfamiliar words in a text were isolated for direct instruction when they were not terribly important to textual comprehension. Graves (2006:69–70) identifies a cocktail of effective vocabulary instructional strategies including both definitional and contextual information, involving students in active and deep processing of the words, providing students with multiple exposures to the word, reviewing, rehearsing and reminding students about the word in various contexts over time, involving students in discussions of the word’s meaning and spending a significant amount of time on the word.

As most instructional strategies are structured around first language vocabulary acquisition, second language vocabulary instructional practices needed much scaffolding in the form of realia, verbal and visual cues, body language, among other things, to accommodate the apparent lack of tacit knowledge of the language that native speakers have.

Translation: Translation of English words into isiXhosa, the HL of both the teachers and learners, was the most prevalent vocabulary meaning episode. Translation afforded acquisition of word meanings directly from an already known HL equivalent. Learners’ familiarity and knowledge of the meaning of the HL equivalent would transfer to the novel word in English. The bulk of the translations were of decontextualised words as in Beauty’s Uthetha ukuthini uvisited? Ukuhambela or Anne’s Imountain yintaba andithi? (where the words mountain and ntaba were juxtaposed five times to enhance understanding). In such instances, there were clear one-to-one correspondence between the English and isiXhosa words. In fewer instances, translations were made on a whole sentence leaving the learners to work out which word in English corresponded with which one in isiXhosa. An example of such from Carol is ‘what is the difference between these books? Yintoni umahluko phakathi kwezincwadi, nazi incwadi? In such instances, the assumption was that some of the English words and their isiXhosa equivalents were already known and the novel word ‘difference’, as can be assumed here, would be related to the word ‘umahluko’. While such contextualised and indirect translations enhanced global understanding of the utterance, they could have minimal effect on vocabulary development where learners could not establish which word in the target language corresponded with which in the HL. A compromise between decontextualised and contextualised translation would be where the translation of the sentence would be followed by an explicit isolation of the words concerned in both languages, which was not manifest among the three teachers.

Synonym or antonym: Direct and indirect use of synonyms was employed by all three teachers to mediate word meaning. An example of the use of direct synonym was Beauty’s ‘huge means the same as big’ and its effectiveness depended on one of the words (big) being known. In the single instances where direct synonym was used by each of the three teachers in the observed classes, only one synonym of the target word was given. Indirect or implied synonyms facilitated comprehensibility of utterances more than they did the understanding of novel words as learners needed to identify which known words corresponded with which novel ones. For instance, Carol’s ‘[W]rite some key words, the important words that we…’ left the inference of the words being juxtaposed to the learners, a feat that was aggravated by the absence of any emphasis or repetition of the synonymous words.

Contextual word use: Contextual word use made word meanings apparent, as in Anne’s example ‘brushing. Brushing (with learners repeating after the teacher). We brush our teeth everyday’. The initial repetition of the word ‘brush’ was meant to draw attention to it before the sentence to illustrate its use. The contextual word use strategy was normally preceded by some strategy be it a flagging strategy, as in this case, or a vocabulary episode like giving the synonym or direct explanation of the word. In all the contextual word uses, the teacher illustrated word use only once.

Analogy: Analogy was used once by Carol and once by Beauty in the examples ‘A pool is similar to a dam’ and ‘snow is ice which falls as rain’, respectively, in the observed lessons. The assumption was that ‘dam’ and ‘ice’ were the more familiar terms that could facilitate the understanding of the terms ‘pool’ and ‘snow’.

Non-verbal demonstrations of word meaning: Non-verbal demonstrations included the use of visual or concrete media to mediate learner word knowledge. Anne’s physical demonstration of the meaning of ‘slow’ and ‘fast’ in the statement ‘When you walk fast, you walk like this, but when you walk slow you just walk like this’ is a case in point. In another instance, Beauty asked learners to demonstrate knowledge of the word ‘swim’ by miming the art of swimming. Non-linguistic representation was meant to make word meanings apparent. Although Carol used drawings to teach words with –oo– letters, some drawings were too vague to bring clarity to some word meanings. Examples of such are drawings of sofas, table and chair that were supposedly meant to represent the word ‘room’ when ‘furniture’ was more appropriate, the shape of the sun used to explain the word ‘noon’ and ‘zoo’ being represented by a bus with passengers as well as an elephant and rhino nearby. Such ambiguities in representations detracted from the purpose they were intended to serve.

Direct word explanations: Direct explanations were evident from the prefacing word explanation with ‘The word X means…’ or ‘X is…’, It was supposed to be apparent that such phrases were precursors to the word meaning embodied in the later part of the utterance. Word meaning was given explicitly and learners were not required to infer it from contextual use. Carol’s example was ‘Past tense is the verb we use when something has already happened’. Direct word explanation was mainly employed for defining word classes like nouns, tenses, verbs that could not be accommodated by other strategies.