What does it mean to know a word?

What does it mean to know a word?

Firstly, to know the form of the word, that is, the spelling, the pronunciation, the morphological structure.

Secondly, the meaning of the word (and, more often, different meanings).

Thirdly, to know how the word is used, in which type of context, what grammatical features it has.

Now, I want to suggest different types of activities that can be used to practice all the features mentioned above.

Form:

1. Jumbled words, that is, when students have to put the letters in a word in the correct order.
2. Spelling dictations.
3. Finding spelling mistakes.
4. Filling in the letter gaps in a word.
5. Wordsearches and crossword puzzles.
6. Analysis of the morphological structure of a word (prefixes, suffixes, roots).
7. Recitation of poems.
8. Reading aloud.
9. Filling in the gaps with the appropriate form of the word.

Meaning:

1. Matching words with images or definitions.
2. Word maps.
3. Inferring meaning from the context.
4. Prediction.
5. Jumbled sentences (students put the words in the right order).
6. Matching/replacing the word with synonyms/antonyms.
7. Translation.

Use:

1. Filling in the gaps with appropriate words.
2. Matching collocations.
3. Finding collocations in a text.
4. Choosing the word that fits into a sentence from several variants given.
5. Making topical/functional word lists.

References:

Harmer J. The Practice of ELT, Longman, 2007

http://www.headsupenglish.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=88&Itemid=72

Written by :

Боголепова Светлана Викторовна