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ING303 Teaching Language SkillsLECTURE 5: TEACHING VOCABULARY

2A Joke

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3Aims of the Chapter

What is vocabulary?: A definition of the word vocabulary in the context of English Language Teaching.

What students need to learn: aspects of vocabulary knowledge: Aspects of lexical items that learners need to learn, associated with their form, meaning and use in context.

How best to teach vocabulary: some facts and figures: Research-based information about how vocabulary is most effectively learned and taught.

4Aims of the Chapter (cont’d)

Presenting new vocabulary: selection and presentation: The selection and initial presentation of new lexical items.

Vocabulary review: consolidating and extending lexical knowledge: Later practice and enrichment activities to enhance vocabulary learning.

Vocabulary assessment: Different methods of testing the various aspects of vocabulary knowledge.

5A good saying

A word is not fully learned through one meeting with it…

even if this meeting involves substantial

deliberate teaching.

6What is vocabulary?

Vocabulary can be defined as the words in a language. It may include items that are more than a single word. bicycle, tree, phone; door handle, brother-in-law

Multi-word expressions: call it a day, be that as it may, get along (with)

A useful convention is to cover all such cases (e.g. single word, double word and multiple word) by talking about vocabulary items rather than words.

Vocabulary, or the lexicon, refers to the information stored in memory concerning the spelling, pronunciation, meaning and the use of words in a language.

7What is vocabulary? (cont’d)

The term vocabulary is taken to include grammatical items: Pronouns: she, they, someone, nobody

Determiners: a/an, the, that, those, any

These are contrasted with lexical items: Nouns: book, car, friendship, love

Verbs: go, feel, jump

Adjectives: big, expensive, round

Adverbs: fast, often, carefully

Grammatical items are closed set while lexical items are open set.

8What students need to learn: aspects of vocabulary knowledge

The most important things to know about a lexical item are:

pronunciation spelling

book

meaning use

Form: pronunciation and spelling

The learner has to know what a word sounds like (its pronunciation) and what it looks like (its spelling).

Meaning of a word may be viewed as more important than form but meaning is useless without knowing the from it is attached to.

9What students need to learn (cont’d)

Meaning (denotation)

The meaning of a language item is what it refers to, or denotes, in the real world. This is given in dictionaries as its definition.

Sometimes a word may have a number of meanings: most often these are metaphorical extensions of the meaning of the original word. foot of a mountain deriving from foot as part of body

Sometimes a word such as bear has multiple meanings: bear the animal

bear meaning ‘tolerate’ / they come from different words that developed into the

same form.

10What students need to learn (cont’d)

Grammar

The grammar of a new item will need to be taught if this is not obviously covered by general grammatical rules. An item may have an unpredictable change of form in some contexts: the plural form of foot and goose; sheep and fish

the past tense form of learn and burn

the comparative and superlative form of good and bad

The verbs that take –ing forms and the verbs that take the to infinitive: admit and consider, expect and deserve

11What students need to learn (cont’d)

Collocation

Collocation refers to the way words tend to co-ocur with other words or expressions. For example, we normally say: tell the truth but not say the truth

do the cooking but not make the cooking

make a mess not do a mess

throw a ball but toss a coin

a tall man but a tall mountain is inappropriate

Collocations are often, but not always, shown in dictionaries under the headword of one of the collocating items. (look at p. 61)

12What students need to learn (cont’d)

Connotation

The connotations of a word are the emotional or positive-negative associations that it implies. Moist / dump: (slightly wet) have the same basic meaning

Moist has favorable connotations: a moist chocolate cake

Dump has unfavorable connotations: a dump cake

slender / skinny – energetic children / wild children

13What students need to learn (cont’d)

Appropriateness

To know how to use an item, students need to know about its appropriateness in a certain context. My uncle cried all night when his dog ran away.

My uncle wept all night…….

chew and munch ‘to eat something’ The boy chewed his food before swallowing / crush food with teeth

The buy munched his food / eat food audibly

(do the Task on page 62)

14Meaning Relationships

Synonyms: Two or more items that have similar meanings smart, bright and clever are the synonyms of __________

Antonyms: Two or more items that have opposite meanings rich is an antonym of poor; risky is an antonym of __________

Hyponyms: Items that serve as a specific example of a concept dog, lion and mouse are the hyponyms of animal

rose, poppy and carnation are the hyponyms of __________

Superordinates: General concpets that ‘cover’ specific items Animal is the superordinate of dog, lion and mouse

15Word Formation

Words can be broken down into morphemes: The word unkindly is composed of the prefix un-, the root kind and

the suffix -ly. (disappointment, unlockable)

You may want to teach the common prefixes and suffixes: con- / co- : ‘together, with’, connect, correspond, cooperate

inter-: ‘between’, interval, international, interstate

-let: ‘diminutive’, booklet, pamphlet, piglet, eaglet

Another way vocabulary items are built is by combining two or three words to make one item: bookcase, follow-up, swimming pool, four-wheel drive

16How best to teach vocabulary: some facts and figures

How many of its words do you need to know in order to understand a text?

The claim was that if you understand 80-85% of the words of a text, then you can probably guess the rest and understand the text as a whole.

This is now known to be an underestimate. It is now believed that in order to understand a text, you need to be able to understand between 95% and 98% of its words (Schmitt, 2008).

If there is more than one word every two lines that you do not understand, you may have trouble understanding the text. (Task. 64)

17How best to teach vocabulary: some facts and figures (cont’d)

Knowing about 98% of an unsimplified text means knowing a huge number of word families: 5,000 and 8,000. Word families: groups of words which have a common root: nation,

nationalize, national, international

The number of single words to be learned is even larger. It will still be larger if we include idiomatic expressions.

The challenge that faces the teacher is how to help students achieve such a huge vocabulary. The learners of English learn three or four hours of English, meaning

they need to learn about 20-30 word families every week.

18How best to teach vocabulary: some facts and figures (cont’d)

It is not enough for learners just to read, hear and understand a new item once. We need at least 6, as many as 16 re-encounters with an item in order to learn it (Zahar et al., 2001).

Incidental and deliberate teaching and learning

A large vocabulary is learned incidentally only through listening, reading and conversation in L1. In the context of a formal school course, this is inefficient: very slow and unreliable. We need to include some deliberate, focussed vocabulary-teaching

procedures

19Presenting new vocabulary: selection and presentation

Selection and sources of new vocabulary

Usefulness of the vocabulary items is the most important criterion. One helpful measure of the usefulness is frequency i.e. how often a word, or expression, is used in conversation or writing.

There are vocabulary lists based on frequency avaliable to teachers online: www.oxfordadvancedlearnersdictionary.com/oxford3000/

http://vocabularypreview.englishprofile.org/staticfiles/about.html

http://intra.collegebourget.qc.ca/spip/IMG/doc/AWL_complete_list-2.doc

20Presenting new vocabulary: selection and presentation (cont’d) Selection and sources of new vocabulary

Frequency is not the only criterion. You might want to teach new words because they are important for students’ culture or present situation.

Sometimes you teach words because they are easy to learn (short, easily pronounceable and similar to a word in L1).

Or simply because they are fun and interesting items in themselves.

When you have a long list of new vocabulary items in a text, we do need to distinguish between which items are important to teach and review so that our students remember and can use them.

21Presenting new vocabulary: selection and presentation (cont’d) It is important to provide activities whose focus is simply

vocabulary expansion. We might have a spot in the lesson, perhaps at the beginning, called

‘word of the day’ or ‘expression of the day’ where we teach a new item.

We might have students themselves ‘show and tell’: find out about new items and teach the rest of the class.

A useful website for introducing new vocabulary:

http://busyteacher.org/4197-5-best-ways-to-introduce-new-vocabulary.html

22Presenting new vocabulary

Once we select the items to teach, we then have to get students to perceive their form and understand their meaning(s).

We want to do this as interestingly as possible so that students pay attention and take the items into the short-term memory. Some key practical principles are;

Include both written and spoken form, both receptive and productive: New items have to be written up on the board, and said as they are being written. Some students find it easier to learn new items by seeing them,

others by hearing. Providing both spoken and written forms will make the target item more memorable.

23Presenting new vocabulary (cont’d)

Ensure understanding of meanings: Make sure your students learn the intended meaning, not the wrong meaning. At the beginner level, the meanings of new words are more concrete. You can use: Pictures (flashcards, posters, google images!)

24Presenting new vocabulary (cont’d)

Ensure understanding of meanings (cont’d) Realia (actual objects or toy objects)

25Presenting new vocabulary (cont’d)

Ensure understanding of meanings (cont’d) Gestures and Mime (Works great with kids who like to move their

body)

You can get students physically engaged in the lesson. It gets them out of their seats and shakes things up.

You say “The elephant was very…” with outstretched arms and your students should say ______.

If you use the same gesture when you say “Please stand up.” students will become accustomed to it and stand up when you use that gesture even if you occasionally leave out the oral instruction.

26Presenting new vocabulary (cont’d)

Ensure understanding of meanings (cont’d): At intermediate level, you could use translation, definition and

description, giving examples, hints and sample uses of the item.

Friend: arkadaş, a person who knows and likes another, Ahmet is my friend.

The most effective in most cases is translation (if you have a monolingual class and are fluent in your students’ L1).

27Presenting new vocabulary (cont’d)

Optimize impact: Use mnemonic devices, use ‘keywords’: students link the target word with an image involving a similar word in their own language.

Suppose you are teaching the word shelf to a group of German speakers: tell them to imagine a cat sleeping (schläft) on a shelf.

The next time they come across the word, or need to use it, the image of a cat asleep on a shelf will help them remember it.

How do you teach the word love to Turkish kids? How about fork?

28Presenting new vocabulary (cont’d)

What helps students remember individual items? How does the memory work?

Experiment: memorizing contrasting lists of vocabulary: all with three letters, but of varying difficulty and meaning-value.

Look at the words in List A and List B on p. 67. Which list of vocabulary do you think is learned easily? Why?

(do the task on p. 67)

List B produces near-perfect scores; List A noticeably less. There are two main reasons for this.

The uniform (fairly low) level of difficulty of the items in List B in contrast to the more advanced and varied level of List A.

The fact that the words in List B are grouped according to meaning or sound association whereas there is no such grouping in List A.

29Practical Tips

Get students to use vocabulary notebooks Students should write down the new vocabulary they have learned.

The best way to do it is to have a vocabulary notebook, which can be used for later review.

They can also list the items in a file on their computer/laptop, cellphone.

They should note down the meaning of each item beside it / cross out

Do not insist on students writing detailed entries for each item It is suggested that students add to each item an English definition

as well as an L1 one, a sentence contextualizing it, maybe a drawing, PoS.

However, experience shows that students rarely keep this up over time and find it more tedious than helpful.

30Practical Tips (cont’d)

Encourage students to think up their own ‘keyword’ devices for remembering words Students are more likely to remember keywords that they have

devised themselves.

Do not teach more than ten new items at a time at intermediate classes and even fewer for younger classes. There is a limit to how many

items can be taken on board in one lesson.

Teach new items early in the lesson Students are faster and better at learning new material at the

beginning of lessons than they are later.

31Vocabulary review: consolidating and extending lexical knowledge

A learner needs to re-encounter a new item several times in order to remember it permanently. Very common items like go, put, person, and day are likely to be met

again in the texts or interpersonal communication.

When you start teaching even slightly less common vocabulary like cook or business, you need to create opportunities to review.

You need to use effective learning tasks whose focus is multiple, meaningful encounters with the target items.

‘Expanding rehearsal’ (Baddeley, 1997) It is a useful techinque that is used when students still remember the

item but need a slight effort to recall it. Do review at regular intervals!

32Vocabulary review (cont’d)

Reviewing, not testing: It is important to ensure that review tasks are not just tests. Tasks that review vocabulary aim to consolidate and deepen

students’ basic knowledge. Their aim is to teach.

Tests aim to find out what students know; they may not result in much learning.

The aim of vocabulary learning activity is that students should engage successfully and meaningfully with target items.

There is plenty of room for peer-teaching and collaboration but there is NO particular need for assessment or giving of grades.

33Types of Review Tasks

Single-item

Review of single words or expressions does not have to be done through encountering them in full sentences.

Reminding students of the meaning or form of individual items is also very useful and a lot quicker than working on full contexts.

Going through the target items and reminding students of what they mean.

Giving students a few minutes so that they look through their vocabulary notebooks during lesson time.

Writing up the items on the board and asking students to identify those they do not remember so that you can re-teach them.

34Types of Review Tasks (cont’d)

Items in context

Asking students to engage with (understand and produce) items within a sentence takes longer. However, it provides for review and deeper learning of aspects of the word (grammar, collocation etc.).

Some examples

Compose sentences: Students compose sentences that contextualize items.

Compose a story: In groups, students make up stories that contextualize as many as possible items from those recently taught.

Find collocations: Students are given single words and find collocat.

35Practical Tips

Get students to review on their own: Explain to students the importance of vocabulary review and urge them to use vocabulary notebooks to remind themselves of the vocabulary items at home.

36Practical tips (cont’d)

Use word cards: Word cards are slips of stiff paper with the target item on one side and the L1 translation on the other.

37Practical tips (cont’d)

List new items on mobile phones: Tell students to note the new items either on their mobile phone or any other electronic equipment.

Display new vocabulary (semi)-permanently: New vocabulary can be displayed on the classroom wall or on the board.

Recall at the end of the lesson: Use your lesson summary time to remind students of the new items they have learned.

Go back to earlier items: Remember to occasionally review items you taught a month or two ago.

38Vocabulary Assessment

We need to check how much of the vocabulary we have taught has been mastered by students.

It is useful to do an assessment of how much vocabulary students know overall.

This is done by way of a variety of vocabulary tests.

39Vocabulary Assessment (cont’d)

Tests of target vocabulary

Most vocabulary tests target specific sets of items, but how and what they test often varies. For any particular test you need to ask: Does this test only check understanding (receptive knowledge) of the

target items or does it find out if students can actually say or write them when needed (productive knowledge).

Does it test spoken or written knowledge of the item, or both?

Does it require students to contextualize the item or just understand or produce in isolation?

Does it provide for objective assessment (such as multiple-choice) or does it need some measure of subjective judgment (open sent. writing)?

40Common vocabulary test formats

Multiple-choice: Students mark the right option of several possibilities.

Gapfills: Students fill in a single gap in a sentence with the right word.

Focused cloze: A full, coherent text is supplied with the target items missing; students fill in the appropriate items.

One-to-one matching: Students match appropriate items from parallel lists: this could be matching a word to its definition, or matching opposites.

Dictation: Students write down items from the teacher’s dictation. A variation of this is translation-dictation. Q. How does it work?

41Common vocabulary test formats (cont’d)

Sentence completion: Students are given the beginning of sentences that include the target item, and complete them to demnstrate understanding.

Say if you know it: Students simply state whether they know the given item or not. If they say they do, they use it in a sentence.

Translate: Students translate the item, isolated or in a sentence context, to or from L1.

Read aloud: Students read aloud the items, showing they can pronounce them properly

What is in the picture?: Students tell orally what items they can see in the picture.

42Common vocabulary test formats (cont’d)

Do the task on page 73.

How many words do you know?

43Vocabulary Teaching

Suppose you are about to teach a set of new vocabulary items to elementary students in the lesson. Here is the vocabulary list:

Vocabulary

boy door girl picture wall

clock floor person room window

Prepare a lesson plan that shows how you would introduce these new words to your students.