[1] Paul Nation is a member of the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies department at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
[1] Previously in his career, Nation instructed courses on "pedagogical grammar, curriculum design, and teaching and learning vocabulary".
[4] Nation has been featured on the BBC News along with John Read in an article titled How many words do you need to speak a language?.
After the communicative approach of the 80's, his works have been instrumental for second language courses design and current teaching methods, relying mainly on fast vocabulary acquisition of frequent words.
[11] Together with Batia Laufer, James Coady, Norbert Schmitt, Paul Meara, Rebecca Oxford, and Michael Swan, his position is linked to Stephen Krashen's Natural approach (emphasis on frequent grammatical and lexical items first) and to the proposed Lexical approach (emphasis on vocabulary) of language teaching.
[14][13] In this framework, it is recommended that twenty-five percent of class time is spent working on language development from each individual strand.
[10] Contrastingly to Krashen's views on comprehension based-instruction, Nation insists that only a quarter[13][14][10] of class time should be dedicated to meaning-focused input.
During this time, students should be encouraged to engage with the input being presented to them in order to create a deeper understanding of the language material.
Activities that utilize meaning-focused output include free writing in a journal, or telling a story using oral communication.
[10] Additionally, the meaning-focused output strand provides language learners with the opportunity to develop discourse skills such as turn-taking and the negotiation of meaning.
[14] Activities that utilize language-focused learning include dictionary searches, memorizing vocabulary, and mimicking correct word pronunciation.
[10][14] Activities that utilize the fluency development strand include speed reading, repetitive writing and speaking exercises, and watching familiar movies.
This involves examining "frequency of occurrence, coverage of the text, size of the high-frequency group, overlap between various word counts, and the starting point of specialized vocabularies".
[26] A notable area of methodological contribution from Paul Nation is his research and theory surrounding extensive reading and vocabulary acquisition.
[27] Through his 1997 literature review, Nation has determined that in order for extensive reading to be valuable, the proper level of book must be selected for the learner.
[27][9] Nation suggests that in order for the new vocabulary to remain present and understood in the learners mind, the quality of the meetings with new words must be memorable.
[4] These contributions cover topics such as language learning fluency,[29] oral classroom activities,[30] research surrounding receptive vocabulary capabilities[31] and many more.