Koprowski - Ten Good Games for Recycling Vocabulary

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. Paul Bress

Vocabulary revision activities One of the things we do for professional development in the school where I work are so-called ‘experimentation cycles’, where the team chooses a topic, we pool resources (books, resource packs and blog posts with all sorts of activities on the topic), after which everyone who is interested in the topic picks a few activities and tries them out in class. Finally, we organize a workshop to share the activities we liked. This post is a summary of one of these workshops, which was focused on Vocabulary revision activities. As I mentioned above, the activities mostly came from books and the Internet, and I’m sure you’ll see here quite a few ideas that you’ve tried too – so if you have a variation that you love, could you share it? ‘Vocabulary revision’ is a very broad term and activities could be very different in terms of what the learners need to do with the words: am I given something or do I need to retrieve something from memory? Recalling the meaning of an item Test-teach-test Tip. Tip.

FCE: 10 Vocabulary Revision Games Prepare your students for their FCE exam with these 10 vocabulary revisions games. Preposition Pelmanism Write 20 (Or more/less if you want) verbs or words that have a dependent preposition on cards. Write 20 prepositions on cards.Put the cards face down on the table, the prepositions on one side, the verbs on the other.Students must choose 1 card from each pile. They must decide if the word and preposition go together and then give a definition of the word. The rest of the group should decide if it is correct. If they are correct they keep the cards.If they are incorrect or the verb and preposition don’t form a phrasal verb, the cards should be put back on the table. Write half a collocation on 1 post it and half on the other.

4 szuper nyelvtanulós játék otthonra! Így tanulja meg a gyerek könnyedén a szavakat Angol szakos tanítóként sokszor kapom a szülők részéről a kérdést, hogy miként segíthetik a gyereküket az angol nyelvben, ha ők nem vagy csak nagyon minimális szinten beszélnek angolul. De gondot okozhat a gyermek angol leckéjében való segédkezés néha akkor is, ha a szülő beszéli a nyelvet, de nem tudja, hogyan „adja át a tudását”, milyen módszerekkel, ami közel áll az iskolai tanuláshoz, mert nem szeretné például összezavarni a gyermekét. Ebben a bejegyzésben az iskolás gyerekek szüleinek szeretnék mankót adni, néhány ötletet, hogy miként segíthetik a gyerekeiket az angol nyelvben. Még a nyelvtanulásnál is számít a szülői minta Az első és legfontosabb, amit a szülő tehet, hogy jó példát mutat. Ezzel valószínűleg nem mondok újat, hiszen a sportban és az élet egyéb területein is meghatározó, hogy milyen mintát lát a gyermek a felnőttektől, a szüleitől. Elsősorban nem abból tanul, amit mondunk neki, hanem amit csinálunk, azt fogja utánozni. Tanulj játszva a gyerekkel! 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Teens and reading skills The Reading skills section on LearnEnglish Teens helps teenagers to improve their reading skills for their school studies and English exams. There are activities for a range of levels from A1 to C1. Find out more about CEF levels here: Here are some activities you can use with students before, while and after reading a text. Before readingThere are lots of activities you can do before students read a text to help enhance their comprehension, such as ones that activate the students’ schemata or background knowledge, arouse their interest in the topic or prepare them linguistically. 1. Before Ss read a text, choose four topics that relate to the text that would be useful for Ss to think about before reading. Take a large piece of paper and divide it into four triangles by drawing diagonal lines from opposite corners. Four students sit around the piece of paper and are given a time limit e.g. one minute. 2. 3. 4. 5. 1. 2. 1. 2. 1. 2. 3.

Realia Here are a few suggestions for activities using realia and to consider why we may want to bring things into the class. Why use realia in class? The main advantage of using real objects in the classroom is to make the learning experience more memorable for the learner. To give a couple of simple examples, if you are going to teach vocabulary of fruit and vegetables it can be much more affective for students if they can touch, smell and see the objects at the same time as hearing the new word. This would appeal to a wider range of learner styles than a simple flashcard picture of the fruit or vegetable. A second example would be if you are going to teach some functional language for asking for the timetable for a train. Here is a selection of activities involving realia. Tourist information Gather some city/town maps from the tourist information bureau wherever you are. ConcentrationSee these instructions on how to play this game:www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/concentration Further reading

Peer-Taught Phrasal Verbs | 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. Preparation Print out the phrasal verb cards and one copy of the worksheet for each student. Lesson Plan Word doc – Peer Taught Phrasal Verbs LP phrasal verbs peer teaching CARDS Peer taught phrasal verbs worksheet Peer Teaching Put students into groups of three and give each member of each group 2 phrasal verb cards. to hazard a guess – make a guess to put sb out of their misery – kill someone who’s suffering/give sb who is guessing something the answer When everyone has finished move onto the next stage. Analysis and Processing Invite students to come to the board and write a phrasal verb they have learnt and a definition.

Questions Grammar and vocabulary: using dictionaries in the EFL/ESL classroom By Tim Bowen Advice and discussion about using dictionaries in the EFL/ESL classroom. Few people would deny that dictionaries are an effective aid in the language learning progress. Much will depend, however, on the kind of dictionary and how and why it is used. Certainly, there is some merit in the latter argument. It is, however, not uncommon for some teachers to forbid the use of bilingual dictionaries in class simply because they believed monolingual dictionaries to be more beneficial to the learner. The use of the dictionary itself also involves a number of learning strategies from basic reference skills (alphabetical order as the most basic) to advanced reading skills. From the learner's point of view, this may present some difficulties at first. This is not to say that bilingual dictionaries should not be used.

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