Seven steps to vocabulary learning
You might expect that, after having been exposed to a word in ten, twenty, or maybe at the very most thirty, contexts, a learner will gradually piece together the word's meaning and start to use it correctly, appropriately and fluently. Classroom context Seven steps to vocabulary learning Conclusion Classroom context Of course we cannot expect a learner to acquire difficult words in the same way as a young child acquires their first language, but, perhaps as teacher we can somehow help learners to arouse their 'learning monitor' by, for example, providing rich contexts containing the target language and by giving our learners time to reflect on what the language item means. In this way teachers can use the EFL classroom to replicate the real world and nurture strategies to help students understand and produce difficult language items which often seem beyond their grasp. Seven steps to vocabulary learning Here are some practical steps that I have used to help my students.
Checking Understanding
Analysis of the language consists of two sub-stages, often known as highlighting and concept checking. Highlighting is taking the model sentence and showing, telling or eliciting what the problems are in terms of form, function, and phonology. Concept checking is checking the understanding of difficult aspects of the target structure in terms of function and meaning. Concept checking is vital, since learners must fully understand the structure before any intensive practice of form and phonology is carried out. Ways of checking understandingConcept questionsSome examplesLearning to construct concept questionsConclusion Ways of checking understanding Concept checking is normally achieved by the use of a set of questions designed to ensure comprehension of the target language, raise awareness of its problems, and to indicate to the teacher that the learners have fully understood.
Make and Do – Collocation Revision
This is a quick lesson, including a couple of games, to practise and revise collocations with ‘make’ and ‘do’. There’s very little preparation required and it’s highly adaptable for use with other lexis or grammar points. The example below is with a group of intermediate teenagers, some stages could be skipped or extended depending on your students’ level and the support they need. Preparation Before the lesson, or while my students are working on something else, I write the following on the board:
Koprowski - Ten Good Games for Recycling Vocabulary
The Internet TESL Journal Mark Koprowskimarkkoprowski [at] yahoo.com Introduction Learning is remembering. If we respect this axiom, the review and recycling of new language items will be critical if they stand a chance of becoming readily accessible in long-term memory. In fact, students do the majority of their forgetting shortly after the lesson and then the rate of forgetting diminishes. To avoid this lexical vanishing act, one solution offered is to follow the 'principle of expanding rehearsal'.
“Grammaring”: The Fifth Skill In Language Teaching and Learning
Fez – Language teaching and learning has always been a controversial area within applied linguistics. According to Corder (1973), “what to teach or learn can be described in linguistic terms as grammar […] or in psychological terms as language skills” (p. 137). Although grammar refers to what we know about a language such as phonology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics, language skills are about what we do with language. This includes listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
Fun ways to teach English collocations
Do your students have difficulty deciding which words go together in English? Tim Warre, who won our most recent Teaching English blog award for his Mr Bean video lesson plan, lists his most effective tips for making learning collocations fun. Students frequently have problems with collocations for a number of reasons; the most common being direct translations from their native tongue. An example I come across regularly while teaching in Spain is problems with do/make collocations due to the fact that, in Spanish, the verb ‘hacer’ is used for both. However, if you were to ask anyone teaching English as a foreign language, the most common mistake they hear while teaching Spanish speakers, I’d bet my house it’d be this one: ‘I have sixteen years old.’
My current understanding of how grammar is mastered – the ‘theory’
This is the first post in series of two posts in which I review my current understanding of how grammar is mastered. In this post I’ll overview some research on grammar acquisition and in the second one I’ll give a concrete example of how some of these ideas prompted me to tweak the way I teach a particular grammar topic (the patterns used with ‘I wish’). To summarize these changes, I have stepped away from the ‘pure’ PPP lesson shape with its initial ‘presentation’ stagemodified some of the practice activities in order to change the way the structure is retrieved from memory
Six low-preparation vocabulary activities for the English classroom
Cristina Cabal, winner of the British Council's TeachingEnglish blog award, has new and improved games for revising English words. Turning passive vocabulary (the words you know) into active vocabulary (the words you use) is one of my main concerns when teaching. To do this, I keep three key words in mind – internalise, retain and retrieve.
Tim's Free English Lesson Plans
Image credit: teaching.berkeley.edu Follow me on twitter @RobbioDobbio I’m running the Barcelona Half-Marathon dressed as David Bowie to raise money for Cancer Research, sponsor me here: This is a vocabulary lesson originally designed for higher levels (C1+) but the method can be adapted for any level and any set of vocabulary. The idea is that students teach each other a set of phrasal verbs, analyse them and then put them into practice in a gap-fill and a discussion.
A Task-based approach
This article also links to the following activity.Try - Speaking activities - Task-based speaking - planning a night out Present Practice ProduceThe problems with PPPA Task-based approachThe advantages of TBLConclusion Present Practice Produce (PPP) During an initial teacher training course, most teachers become familiar with the PPP paradigm.
Learning Vocabulary With Word Forms
There are a wide variety of techniques used to learn vocabulary in English. This learning vocabulary technique focuses on using word forms as a way to broaden your English vocabulary. The great thing about word forms is that you can learn a number of words with just one basic definition. In other words, word forms relate to a specific meaning. Of course, not all of the definitions are the same.
50 Popular English Idioms to Sound Like a Native Speaker
To understand English as it is spoken in real life, you have to be familiar with idioms. They are used so much in everyday English that it is important to be aware of them. You need to learn what they mean, and how to use them to become an ‘insider’.
