Paul Nation: Learning Vocabulary in Another Language

Having heard Mr. Nation speak at a conference of English teachers some years ago, and having been impressed with his approach, I suspected this to be the definitive work on the subject.  Accordingly, I checked it out from the library to read over the summer, but life happened and I didn't finish it before it was due to be returned.  As fate would have it, it then appeared again on the reading list for one of my classes this semester, and I was called upon to not only write a paper on it, but also to give a thirty minute presentation in Korean. 

I won't bore the reader with reproducing here my paper or my presentation, but I will say that it was at once the most stimulating and the most frustrating treatment of the subject.  Stimulating because it adresses the topic from multiple nooks and crannies, and gives each topic a thorough and grounded treatment.  Frustrating because in the course of finishing it, I discovered that the very experiment I wanted to conduct for my thesis next year had already been done, and referred to offhandedly by Nation here.  If only I had finished the book over the summer, my disappointment would not have been reduced, but the time lost would most certainly have been.  It's difficult not to think of all the research I did before Mr. Nation unknowingly popped my bubble as being in vain, but of course, no knowledge is in vain.  I have to start over on a new topic, it is true, but I do so with a fortified understanding that it juuuuuuust barely beginning to make sense of the strange and seemingly inexplicable process of second language acquisition.