ACTIVITY 1 PRELIMINARY

INSTRUCTIONS

Please read carefully, follow the instructions and ask if you have

questions

STRATEGIES TO IMPROVE VOCABULARY ACQUISITION IN ENGLISH AS A SECOND

LANGUAGE.

      The first step in Language acquisition is the learning of

general vocabulary in an effective way. 

1. Learners must handle a rich vocabulary in English language and the amount of vocabulary has to include words that name everything surrounding the environment of the learner in his/her daily life as a human being.

2. Then, the knowledge and handling of a big amount of vocabulary will improve and speed up the development of the listening and reading understanding process as well as the improvement of the speaking and written communication skills.

  

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3. There are several ways to approach the process of vocabulary acquisition, but in this General English Course, students will develop practical activities in class and out of class to search and acquire vocabulary as well as to clarify doubts toward previous vocabulary knowledge.   In order to speed up the process strategies will be used for traditional course work through your English Spanish  and web based dictionaries

BASIC STRATEGIES FOR ENGLISH- SPANISH DICTIONARY USAGE

 The English-Spanish dictionary has been a traditional tool in English Language classroom since the very

begin of this kind of educational activity.  It is considered a traditional tool and resource that many

English language learners as well as teachers “are not” using these days. 

1. Traditional English Language Dictionary use has taken the form of a word by word translator at present.  That is one of the reasons why this traditional tool has been replaced by free digital and virtual translators that perform the same job that any traditional dictionary performs in a more effective faster way. 

 

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2. However, for this English Language Course students need to learn new strategies to take advantage of this traditional resource available at any Panamanian household .

3. Before beginning the Our Dictionary Learning Strategy, it is important to mention that there are many different brands, sizes, and prices of English-Spanish dictionary as well as prices.  However, in the Part A. of this course we are not going to highlight those variations, but we will only focus in the technique to apply for vocabulary acquisition bringing to class any dictionary students have available

 

MY DICTIONARY LIST INSTRUCTIONS

 This is what you will do first:1. Select a variety of “songs” of your

preference in English Language2. Find the song lyrics in “lyrics.com”3. Paste the lyrics to a blank MS word

document4. Use the MS Word highlighter feature5. Use any Spanish English dictionary

These are “more” steps you have to follow in order: 

1st Step:   play any of your favorite English songs

2nd Step: open the English Spanish Dictionary in any letter of the English section

3rd Step:  While you listen to the song, read the song lyrics of the page under that letter of the dictionary selected.

4th Step: Use the highlighter feature to mark the words you find in the song lyrics that you recognize and know in Spanish very well

5th Step:  when the music ends, select another letter and do the same from step fourth

6th Step: Include all the familiar words in your dictionary list

Now change the song and move on to another dictionary letter:

7th Step: Listen to the songs and read the lyrics again but now look for unknown words that you have never studied before and you consider could be useful for communication

8th Step:  Use the MS word highlighter feature to identify them

9th Step:  Copy in a piece of paper the new words in pink in order to have them available for further study. These words will also be part of your dictionary list

PLEASE ASK IF YOU ARE IN DOUBT …