Once a week my students have a homereading lesson. Though the main aim of such kind of lesson is to develop reading skills, I find it useful to provide vocabulary practice for those words and phrases that can be of interest or use in the text.

To focus the students’ attention on the vocabulary, that is, aid noticing, I give my students a list of phrases in Russian and ask them to look for those phrases in the text. After checking the task, I ask them to do some more exercises, in which this vocabulary is practiced at the recognition level. They are:

§         True or False statements;

§         Putting the sentences into the correct order of events;

§         Matching sentences to the paragraphs they belong to;

§         Matching phrases or parts of a sentence;

§         Who said it.

Then I ask the students to complete some exercises for production:

§         Fill in the gaps with appropriate words;

§         Finish the sentence;

§         Multiple choice;

§         Summarizing;

§         Paraphrasing, etc.

These are some example exercises for the text “The Big Red Apple. Part 1”, from English 4 (authors: Bogoroditskaya, Khrustaleva) textbook.

Find the phrases in the text:

1)      однажды __________________

2)      пошел на прогулку _________________

3)      карман ____________

4)      взошел на холм ________________________

5)      сбежал с холма ________________________

6)      выпало из кармана ________________________

7)      мог бегать быстро ______________________

8)      около холма ________________________

9)      искать что-нибудь ___________________

10)  оно перевернулось _____________________

Put the sentences into the correct order:

1. The fish looked at the apple and didn’t like it.
2. One day he went for walk.
3. The apple fell out of his pocket.
4. In his pocket there was a big red apple.
5. The boy went up and down the hill.
6. A frog wanted to sit on the apple, but it rolled over.
7. Once upon a time there was a boy.
8. The apple rolled into a pond.

Fill in the gaps:

Once upon a time there was a _________. One day he put on his ________ and cap and went for a ___________. There was a __________ in his coat. There was an ___________ in the pocket.

The boy went up the __________, then he ran down the _________. The apple fell out of the ___________. The apple rolled and fell into a ___________. Two ___________ looked at it, but they didn’t eat the ___________.

A frog wanted to __________ on the apple, but it __________ over and the apple fell into the water.

One of the tools of vocabulary practice, that I found useful while studying foreign languages and advise my students, is Anki, a spaced repetition system. A spaced repetition system, or flashcard software, is a great tool for vocabulary memorization.

In this program, you make your own deck of flashcards, or download the ones available on the Net, and begin your study. You set how many words you want to learn each day. You customize the feedback you want to have: whether it is a translation of a word or a phrase, an example sentence, or the pronunciation, or all the mentioned.

Every day you start revising your vocabulary, and the software shows you a word or a phrase. You have to remember its translation, context, or pronunciation, then check the right answer and choose one of the options given. If you don’t remember this information at all and choose this option, the programme will present this very word again soon. If are doubtful, the word will be repeated in a few days. If you had no problem recognizing it, the repetition will be put off for a longer period.

The advantages of this kind of vocabulary practice are the following:

1)      You can do it whenever you have a free minute, on your computer or on your smartphone.

2)      You can quickly enrich your vocabulary, at least, at the recognition level.

3)      It’s free.

However I would like to warn everyone, that if you don’t revise words for some period, say, several days, flashcards seem to accumulate, so the revision should be on a regular basis. Also, I would advise to supplement such kind of vocabulary work with extensive listening and reading to help noticing.

As this kind of vocabulary work requires a high degree of autonomy, I recommend it to young adults and adults. You can learn more at: http://ankisrs.net/ . I know ABBYY has a similar software, but haven’t used it, unfortunately.

The common way of introducing new vocabulary is giving a list of words with translation. This kind of exercise does not require a lot of mental effort, that is why retention is not too long. There are other ways of presenting vocabulary to students, one of which is making them deduce the meaning of words from context.

The essence of this approach is that students study a text with the target vocabulary highlighted, and infer the meaning of words from context. However, students have to be taught what contextual clues can help understand the meaning of a word. Let us consider some of them.

1)                           Synonyms, that can be introduced with the phrases in other words, also known as, sometimes called, or;

2)                           Antonyms, which can be preceded by the phrases but, in contrast, however, instead of, unlike, yet;

3)                           Definition or rewarding – is defined as, meaning, the term for, that is;

4)                           Morphology: prefixes, roots and suffixes;

5)                           Parts of speech – which part of speech it is and surround it;

6)                           Proper names – help to use the students’ prior knowledge to understand context;

7)                           and Punctuation – synonyms, antonyms and definitions are often separated by a comma or a column.

Other techniques of vocabulary inference:

Substitution – think of a familiar word that can fit well within the context.

Use of general knowledge of the world and logic.

Though some researches state that it is not proper to guess vocabulary from context, as guesses are not always right, I think, vocabulary inference techniques should be taught. They are especially useful for those students who are going to take exams in the nearest future.

References:

http://www2.aasa.ac.jp/~dcdycus/LAC97/guessing.htm

http://www.mc.cc.md.us/faculty/~steuben/public_html/vocabularycontext.htm

There are three stages of vocabulary acquisition. They are the following:

1.     Noticing: the learner notices the new word in a context or with the help of visual clues.

2.     Recognition, first, with help, then, the student’s own.

3.     Production, that is the ability to use the word in appropriate situations.

Researches say that a word has to be encountered in different settings 10-16 times before it is put in the long-term memory. Thus, we have to provide plenty of activities at different stages of vocabulary acquisition.

To aid noticing, we, teachers, are to provide plentiful exposure to the language. Any learner can say, that, after they paid attention to a new word, they start to come across it in multiple situations. This way, the word becomes something familiar.

To help recognition, the following types of exercises can be used:

1)               Circle the word you hear. I usually write about 20 words on the board, then ask my students to circle the words I pronounce. It can be a team game.

2)               Pointing.

3)               Matching.

4)               Total Physical Response activities, when, for example, the teacher gives a command, and the students obey.

5)               Drawing activities. Today I asked my students to draw fruit I named, then they compared their drawings. Next time I’ll also include numbers.

6)               Sorting/categorizing the words.

7)               Multiple choice.

8)               Students guess what/which person the teacher is describing.

     To transfer to the production stage, the following activities are of use:

1)    Dictation.

2)    Translation.

3)    Picture description.

4)    Using the word in dialogues.

5)    Answering questions.

6)    Open-ended tasks.

7)    Filling-in the gaps with appropriate words.

For proper vocabulary acquisition it is necessary that all the stages follow each other.

References:

Harmer J. The Practice of ELT, Longman, 2007

http://doritsasson.suite101.com/how-to-teach-vocabulary-a13089

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

Today I am going to describe the activities and resources I use to teach and drill the Clothes topical vocabulary.

In my opinion, songs and chants are great for practicing structure and vocabulary. These are the links I find useful:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cBmnRsh8Hw&feature=related - a nice song

http://www.dreamenglish.com/clothing - a chant

http://www.esl4kids.net/chants/clothes.html - a chant

http://elt.oup.com/student/surprise/level3/songs/song5_1?cc=global&selLanguage=en - a chant

I introduce chants the following way:

- teach or revise the vocabulary using flashcards;

- teach and choral read structures;

- give a while-listening task, for example, to say what colour the clothes are, after listening give feedback;

- sing the song/chant whole-class, using mime (for example, pointing to the piece of clothing we are singing about).

Games:

·         musical clothes: the teacher turns on the music, when it stops playing, she names a piece of clothing, and the children wearing it, sit down;

·         memory: one of the students stands with his back to the classroom and describes what one of his classmates is wearing;

·         description: the students are divided into teams, one team describes what one of their classmates if wearing, other teams try to guess who it is.

Activities:

-          categorizing: sorting the clothes wordcards into different categories, such as things we wear to school/to a party/for a walk or in summer/winter;

-          you have a washing line, and your students hang pictures of clothing onto it; the students close their eyes, the teacher takes off one item, and the students guess what it was.

Worksheets:

http://www.esltower.com/VOCABSHEETS/clothes/clothes.html

http://simpleesl.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/php8wazc5PM.jpg

http://bogglesworldesl.com/clothes_worksheets.htm

On-line games and books:

http://genkienglish.net/clothesgame.htm

http://genkienglish.net/picturebookclothes.htm

There are lots of games that can be used for vocabulary practice and revision. Here are those which I usually use in the classroom.

• The teacher begins to draw something, the students guess what it is. It can be practiced in pairs.

• The teacher hides a picture card behind a sheet of paper, and begins to draw it out slowly. The students guess what it is. You can also use a piece of paper with a little hole for this purpose.

• Snowball Game: the teacher starts: ‘I want to go shopping and buy some apples’, the first student: ‘I want to go shopping and buy some apples and oranges’, the third adds one more to the list, and so on. The student who stumbles is out of the game. The winner is the last student left. This game can be used for revision of almost any topical vocabulary.

• I Spy: The teacher says:  I spy with my little eye/ I hear with my little ear something that begins with ‘s’. The students guess what it is. The student to have guessed the word correctly, thinks of another word. It’s great for practicing classroom vocabulary. It can also be used with any set of picture cards.

• Key-Jug Language: This activity is aimed at secondary students. One student thinks of a word and spells it, but in an unusual way. After each letter he says key, and, after the last letter, key-jug. Thus, the word plane will be presented as p-key, l-key, a-key, n-key, e-key jug. The rest of the class guesses. It can be a team game.

• Standing Dictation: All the students stand up, the teacher says a word in Russian or shows a picture card to each of the student, the one who can’t translate or name it, sits down. The winner is the student who is standing while the others have sat down.

Of many of the games I use at my lessons I learnt from the Way Ahead (Macmillan) and I Spy (Oxford) textbooks.

As we have seen in one of the previous posts, multi-sensory approach allows a teacher to introduce the new vocabulary in a meaningful way without resorting to the native language. Now I am going to speak about the tasks that are used for activating the vocabulary in the multi-sensory way.

I give my children picture cards or word cards, and give commands, such as Raise the bear! Bring me the star! Put the plane on your head!. This way my kids revise the vocabulary and move at the same time.

I have a bag, where I put little toys of, e.g. animals. Children their hands, grope for the toys, name the animal they are holding, and take it out to check.

With their eyes closed, kids try different fruit and name them.

I show my students a wordcard, they mime it (I ask the group not to say it aloud). If they mime it successfully, it means they understand the written word. If not – they look at their peers and remember.

Mushroom picking – I hide some picture or word cards around the room. The students are in teams, and they start looking for them. When they find a card, they name it or read it out. The team with the greater number of cards wins.

Matching: students come to the blackboard one by one and match pictures to words or words to pictures.

And, the best vocabulary game ever: Bingo! I use it very often. Students go through the vocabulary that needs to be revised, then they write out any 6 items from the list. Then I name the vocabulary items randomly. When the students hear a word they have written out, they cross it out. The one to be the first to cross all of them out is the winner!

In this post I am going to describe activities and resources used for teaching the Food vocabulary in a primary classroom.

Food flashcards are abundant on the net. To introduce and practice them I use activities I described in the previous posts, such as matching, pointing, odd one out.

One more practicing activity is called “smiley or sad”. I draw a smiley face on the board (which corresponds to yes), and a sad face (no). I show a flashcard or wordcard and ask “Do you like…?”, and the kids point to the smiley or the sad. I like it that everybody is involved and there is an element of movement.

Food topic also allows for categorizing and sorting activities. For example, students have a pack of wordcards and categorize them into fruit and vegetables; food for breakfast, dinner, lunch; healthy food and junk food.

We can’t do without songs when teaching primary students. I use this one for teaching the Food topic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaqISEs_uj0 .

The wonderful story about the hungry caterpillar can’t be ignored. It can be watched on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48kywlA0gqw&feature=related ; or downloaded as a Power Point: http://www.slideshare.net/silviagrasa/cfakepaththe-very-hungry-caterpillar . Colouring pages for the tale are also available: http://www.eric-carle.com/ColoringSheet.jpg . Some tips on using the story: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/tips/flashcards .

This method implies that the more senses are engaged when you train vocabulary items, the better. These senses are: visual, audial, kinesthetic, smell, taste and tactile. The author of the idea is Herbert Puchta, but I extended and altered it a bit to suit my classroom situation.

When vocabulary items are introduced, it’s better to engage more channels of perception to provide more connections in the brain. What I do when I introduce new words to young learners:

1)                          I use a set of picture cards for the vocabulary that is going to be introduced, and put them on the blackboard;

2)                          I name the words one after the other and add movement and sound that can be helpful in remembering it (for example, if you introduce the word rabbit, you can show long ears, or when it is train, make ‘chu-chu’ sound and move the hands as if they were wheels);

3)                          when I come to every third word, I revise the items from the beginning (e.g. rabbit-fox-wolf- rabbit-fox-wolf-duck-bear-squirrel- rabbit-fox-wolf-duck-bear-squirrel);

4)                          then I ask 3 or 4 of my pupils come to the board and point to the pictures I name;

5)                          then I say the word, and the kids mime it or make the appropriate sound;

6)                          after that I introduce the word card for every picture: I name them (at this stage the students help me in chorus) and the students tell me which picture each card goes to;

7)                          then 3 or 4 of my students match the word cards to pictures on the board (with my help at this stage).

In my next post I am going to describe the activities that can be used for multi-sensory to activate the vocabulary in the multi-sensory way.