Teaching the language system: vocabulary & GrammarDr. Abdelrahim Hamid Mugaddam

Vocabulary Task of vocabulary learning is

substantial to EFL learners Native child at the age of five/six has a

productive vocabulary of 2000 to 3000 words

Basic lexicon of similar size for adult learners.

Questions to be answered! What strategies learners use to acquire new

words or to retain them? How second language learner’s mental

vocabulary is organized and how it develops over time?

In the initial stages of learning a foreign language, which words are the most useful to learn?

Why are some words easier to learn than others? How do leaners build an understanding of the

relationships among words?

Lexical system of English Denotation & connotation Meaning relations Syntagmatic relations Paradigmatic relations

How do second language learners acquire vocabulary? A range of strategies used: Cognitive: 1.direct mental operations

concerned with working on new words in order to understand, organize, and store them (making association, learning words in groups, and exploring range of meaning)

Using key-words; a word from the first language that looks like the new word in the second language (Swedish word trasko is similar to the English word trade)

3. lexical inference When a word is encountered for the first

time, learners start unfencing in order to establish its meaning.

Factors affecting vocabulary learning. Input, the way in which vocabulary presents

itself to the learners (teacher presentation, reading words in texts, learning words during peer exchange or self access work).

Storing, organizing, and building vocabulary Features of inpute: frequency,

pronunciation and contextualization (isolation: no point of support, list-difficult to infer, no linguistic reality, no psychological reality).

Cultural factors affecting vocabulary building! Association e.g. dog… as a family pet

will not be familiar to learners from cultures where dogs are not domestic animals but are seen as scavengers.

Prototype: the foremost example of a particular conceptual category, the one that springs most easily to the mind when a learner hears a word, for example , ‘tree’.

Implications for teaching vocabulary Which teaching procedures seem to

enhance particular learning strategy, which strategies are effective for which aspects of vocabulary learning.

A number of principles and techniques need to be revised and reviewed.

encouraging the development of an effective vocabulary;

developing a variety of techniques for the teaching of meaning;

exposing learners to vocabulary through reading and training lexical differencing,

teaching the effective use of dictionaries, evaluating vocabulary components,

teaching vocabulary explicitly through a range of activity types;

developing resources for vocabulary teaching.

Teaching grammar The role of grammar in English teaching:

a central role in classroom methodology Anti-grammar movement: grammar can

be acquired naturally from meaningful input and opportunities to interact in the classroom

Learning grammar? Noticing Reasoning and hypothesizing (analysis of

new language, create hypotheses about the rules and revise their hypotheses as learning is going on).

Reasoning deductively (application of rules already known to work out meaning).

Analysing contrastively Translating transferring

Structuring and restructuring (stages of grammar learning)

1. No bicycle. No have any sand. I not like2. He don’t like it. I don’t can sing3. Learners begin to place the negative element

after auxiliary verbs like are, is , can… you can’t go there. He can’t eat nothing. She don’t like rice.

4. Do performs its full function as a marker of tense and person:

It doesn’t work. We didn’t have supper.

Automatizing Once the learner can achieve regular

and consistent responses in conversation to a certain type of input, then it can be said that the language involved has been automatized.

A Did you get my messageB Yes, I did. I’ll let you know today

Selection and presentation of grammar Information that helps us select and

present grammar:1. Grammar as meaning2. Grammar in discourse: how sentences

can be combined in written texts and how utterances link in speech:

Linking signals Familiar signposts which signal what

comes next, for example, incidentally for changing the subject or that is to say to signal an explanation.

Linking construction Includes conjunctions to co-ordinate and

subordinate clauses, such as and, if, because, and adverbial links as however for contrast,

3.General purpose links: particles and verb less phrases:

Being a farmer, he has to get up early 4. Substitution and omission: use of

pronouns to refer back to noun phrases: I like this coat better than the one you

showed me. A why don’t you come and stay with us? B I’d love to (do so)

Presenting and focusing information This includes the ways in which we

create contrastive focus in spoken language by using stress:

Peter ate the food but left the drink

Order and emphasis This includes variations in presenting

information in order to create emphasis:

It was by train that we reached Istanbul Never have I seen him before.

Grammar and style! Different grammar for different styles!

I suppose he’s a nice little boy, isn’t he? (tentative , polite)

Nice Kid. (informal, spoken) In all, he was a pleasant child (formal,

written) A cheerful child of pleasant disposition.

(literary)

Principles in teaching grammar Readiness Amount of time to learn varies from a

learner to another as a learner links forms to function during the learning process.

The process is a lockstep one with progressive and complete mastery of structures in sequence. Learners can suddenly start making errors.

Presenting grammar! Contextualizing grammar Order of presentation Use of terminology Degree of explicitness