We all
have a greater or lesser awareness of the problems and waste of time that vocabulary
teaching implies. When we decide to check our students´ vocabulary, the first question we
ask ourselves is how? we are going to test it, if we never or hardly ever use specific
activities for this area, and most textbooks only offer word lists or word translations.
The second question is when? , we only have a few hours a week and grammar, phonetics,
spelling, functions, reading, writing, oral and written expression. How much time should I
employ in teaching a vocabulary, that when all’s said and done, I am working with
every day?. And the last question is with what material, if, as I have said before,
textbooks do not provide us with variety or with quality activities? we have to prepare
them ourselves or look for them among publications and bibliographies, only to find that
we are going to need dictionaries, vocabulary cards, posters,……
These are
the reasons why, in this first edition I have decided to begin by showing some easy to do
activities thought up in order to improve and reinforce vocabulary.
1.- Creation of our own class
vocabulary file.
We only
have to dedicate a few minutes at the beginning of the class.
Nowadays we are surrounded by
English everywhere - T.V., cinema, songs, advertisements, restaurant menus,
…………. which provides us with a useful resource. We can ask students to
bring to class any word they encounter which they don´t know or whose use they don´t
understand.
Then we
write the words and the context they have they been taken from on the board, to discuss
with the rest of the class if they know or can guess their meaning and use.
To finish
with, we write down the words, meanings and different uses on cards and keep them in a
classroom file. We can then refer back to these cards from time to time to recycle
vocabulary, and to let the students see that their own contribution to class is of value.
2.- Songs
This
activity is actually a listening, so the first thing to do is play the song .
Then, before giving out a copy of
the lyrics where we have omitted the words we want them to learn or recall, we ask
students to write down all the words they can identify from just listening to the song.
Afterwards, we check the results,
brainstorm the words onto the board and talk about what is the song about.
Give out a copy of the lyrics to
each student and ask them to fill in the blanks, from memory or logic, before playing the
song again.
Finally if there are still some
words they cannot fit, we can set up a jumble with the missing words from the song on the
blackboard, or hand out a wordsearch (a ‘sopa de letras’) with all the missing
words hidden in it, and play the song for the last time.
We must be very
careful in selecting the song or this activity could turn out repetitive and boring. We
must take in account two main factors in selecting songs: on one hand, songs must be
interesting and motivating for students, that is, either songs known by them, sung by
their favourite singers or just up-to-date ones; on the other hand lyrics and vocabulary
must fit our purposes, we want to practise a predetermined vocabulary or lexical field and
we want lyrics to be workable (to tell something). Depending on ages and levels, songs
that have worked in my classes are: Sade´s “By Your Side”(personal and
possessive pronouns) , Rolling Stones´ “Anybody Seen My Baby”(past
participles), Enya´s “Exile”(weather vocabulary and the future simple tense)
Led Zeppelin´s “Stair Away to Heaven”(drugs as a transversal theme) .
3.- Predicting meanings
The aim of
this activity is to treat vocabulary before the students meet it in a reading text. It can
be used from elementary to advanced levels. We need from 10 to 20 minutes to do it.
We choose
a text and select from it 8 – 10 words that we think will not be familiar to our
students.
Put up the unfamiliar words on the
blackboard.
Tell the class that we have
selected the words from a text that they are about to read, and give them a brief outline
of its content.
Ask them to take a sheet of paper
and rule it into two columns.
Ask them to write down each of the
words on the blackboard in the left-hand column and then in the right-hand column to write
tree or four other word that are suggested by it. Tell them the words they write can
be suggested by sound, spelling, possible meaning, or in any other way .
Ask the students, in groups of
three or four, to compare what they have written.
Give out the text.
Alternatively, before handing out
the text, with the original vocabulary items still on the board after discussing the
meaning, ask them to predict the content of the text still in their groups. This is
unlikely to be very successful with younger students, but any age from about 15 up will
manage this activity, especially if the text is obviously morbid, sordid, or simply a good
story. You could be surprised by what they come up with.
One thumb rule to bear in mind
here, particularly in the case of adults, who are not so used to the rigours of regular
study, is not to try to overload the learner. Psychologists suggest that we tend to
remember around seven items from any one sitting, so that is why 8-10 new items is a fair
aim –they’ll probably forget two or three, but nobody’s perfect.
4.-Newspapers.
We can
bring an English language newspaper (a sensationalist one could be good) to the classroom,
as a way of showing authentic material to students.
We can
prepare activities from elementary to advanced level:
Headlines.
We write a headline on the
blackboard. Then we ask the class to guess its possible meaning.
Once we have the meaning we get the
students tell us words that might appear in the article and we write them on the board.
We read the article twice and ask
the students to write down every word they understand or know. Write them on the
blackboard with the others.
We should do this with more than
one headline.
Finally, in groups, we ask students
to choose any theme and write words related to it, The rest of the groups must write
headlines.
Another way of working with
headlines is:
We select a short, easy article (it
will depend on our students’ level). Erase the headline and give out copies to
students.
In groups, they read it and
underline the words they think necessary for the understanding of the article.
Then we ask them to produce a
headline.
Finally all can choose the best and
discuss the words they don´t know.
Testing
After a few weeks, in order to test
vocabulary, a simple, informal test consists of writing all the vocabulary they can
recall, haphazardly on a piece of paper (discourage lists). In order to help them, on the
board you can write the headline from the newspaper you used in one class, the title of
the song, a picture cue, anything to trigger memories.
When they are satisfied that they
cannot remember any more, they exchange papers, and, in colour, circle the items
colour-coding them to indicate a category e.g. purple = vocabulary related to transport.
They are free to impose the categories they want, as in this way they not only test
themselves, but reinforce associations which help them to recall the items at a later
date.
Tomás.
We would like to hear your ideas
for use in the classroom, whether for children, teenagers or adults, so do write to us at forum@atlanticls.com