In the pre-reading stage, if a teacher covers more than seven or eight vocabulary words, what is likely to happen?

• A. The text is too difficult for learners
• B. The text becomes too easy
• C. The text length increases
• D. The students lose interest

Answer: (A)

In the pre-reading stage, the goal is to prepare learners to access the text by activating background knowledge and introducing only essential vocabulary. If more than seven or eight new words are taught before reading, students can experience cognitive overload. Their working memory is burdened by trying to hold many unfamiliar meanings at once, which makes it harder to grasp the text’s ideas when they read. That drop in comprehension is why the most likely outcome is that the text feels too difficult for learners.

The other options don’t fit as the natural consequence of too many pre-taught words: simply changing the length of the text isn’t caused by vocabulary quantity, and while interest can waver, the immediate and direct effect of excessive new vocabulary is reduced understanding rather than increasing ease or altering the text’s length.