Hi Will,
and everyone reading this.

Being a new member I hope I reached the right discussion board.
For a start, I just copy Will's opening idea here.
"The percentage of language students who have a long-term strategy
for vocabulary development seems to be very low. Why?"

Well, my teaching experiences correspond with this. One answer might
be that adults' learning habits are so different from that of a
child. On the other hand language abilities ( and enthusiasm for
languages) differ greatly. I mean when one student has good learning
strategy it may not be obvious to (most)others in that class that by
doing the same could easily jeopardise their progress on the long
run.
My thought is Word Surfing strategy can prove successful only if the
teacher insists on doing this from as early as possible. Learning new
vocabulary purposefully is so much beyond the capacity of most
ordinary students that they must be helped right from the start.
Word Surfing or other methods could well serve this objective.

That's all from me now.
Miklos