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TEACHING VOCABULARY WORKSHOP

FACTS AND FIGURES

Vocabulary: a definition

Words and ‘chunks’ → ‘lexical items’

Grammatical vs lexical items

‘Knowing’ vocabulary

Form, meaning, use

Form: pronunciation, spelling, grammar (receptive and productive)

Meaning: denotation, connotation

Use: collocations (how it ‘goes with’ another word), appropriateness (formality level, domain, context)

Most important: pronunciation, spelling, meaning

Receptive before productive

Connotation, collocation, appropriateness – later.

The number of items a learner needs to know

Fact 1:

For advanced reading: about 8000 word families. For informal spoken discourse: 6,000 – 7,000

Fact 2:

In order to understand a text: you need to know about 98% of the words in advance.

Extract from a speech by Obama, with 15% of the items not known:

That is the work we began last year. Since the day I took office, we renewed  our focus on the __________  who __________  our nation. We have made substantial __________  in our homeland __________  and  disrupted  _________ that threatened to take American ____________. 

• What about ‘inferencing’? Guessing from context?

• Pre-teaching difficult items?

Conclusion: our students need to learn A LOT of vocabulary!

Selection

700 most common words make up 70% of any (unsimplified) text: mostly grammatical items

1500 most common words → 76%

2500 most common words → 80%

Most important to teach the commonest words, to enable students to cope with and produce meaningful language as soon as possible.

Look at http://www.lextutor.ca/freq/lists_download/ to find basic frequency lists.

Other considerations: items we’ll teach because they are:

• useful for the classroom

• relevant to students’ lives

• interesting to students

• easy to learn (e.g. cognates, easy to hear and spell, ‘memorable’)

• easy to teach?

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How is vocabulary best taught?

Should you let students pick up vocabulary on their own through reading/listening, or have deliberate vocabulary-teaching activities?

Krashen’s (2003) position vs Laufer (2005), Nation (2000), and others

Bottom line: you need both, but certainly extensive reading is not enough.

Because: need for selection; need for re-encounter (Zahar et al., 2001, Cobb, 2007)

PRACTICAL TEACHING ISSUES

1. How do I select which items to teach from a text?

Textbook lists? But these may not select most frequent / useful items, may neglect ‘chunks’

So you need to check through yourself.

A useful tool: http://www.lextutor.ca/vp/bnc/.

One problem with travelling is not knowing about local customs. If you’ve travelled a lot you probably have lots of stories about having said or done the wrong thing when you met someone. So, in case you don’t want to risk offending the locals, we’ve collected some tips on greetings from around the world: 

Kissing is very popular here, between men as well as between women, and often when you say goodbye as well as hello. (Alessandro, Italy) 

Bowing your head is the normal way to greet others. (Michiko, Japan) 

Hugging is common between men. But if you don’t fancy being hugged, shaking hands is fine too! (Luis, Brazil) 

The normal greeting is saying Namaste (‘I bow to you’), after touching hands with the other person. (Krishnan, India) 

When you want to greet people here, I suggest nodding your head, although shaking hands is common as well these days. (Ming, China) 

We usually give each other a kiss on the right cheek, but the kissing can be complicated near the border with the Netherlands – kissing three times is quite common there! (Elise, Belgium) 

Shaking hands is very important and we don’t mind spending ages on greetings. In fact, not greeting everyone in the room personally is very rude. (Kinoro, Kenya) 

We greet people by putting our hands together in front of our chest. This is a sign of respect for the other person. (Chenda, Cambodia) 

So, greeting people around the world is obviously more complicated than many people think! I don’t know about you, but I’m looking forward to trying some of these greetings myself the next time I travel somewhere new! 

2. How many new items should I teach in a lesson?

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3. What items might I teach other than those that appear in the textbook?

• Ones that ‘happen to come up’

• Classroom language

Textbook, or classroom, instructions 

Complete the sentences  Correct the sentences Complete the table Use the words… Underline the correct word / option Put the words in order 

Circle the correct word / option Complete the table …in brackets Read the text Turn … into Add… Write sentences  

Delete… Match… Answer the questions True or false …in your notebook …means the same as … more than one answer is possible  

Useful teacher items for students to understand 

Listen / Read / Write / Talk about … Repeat … Do exercise … Right / wrong Do you understand? 

Are you ready? Raise your hands Open your books at page … Sit down Work with a friend  Get into pairs / groups 

Work on your own Write in your notebooks Do you have a problem? Can I help you? Shall I say that again?  

Useful interactive items for pupils to be able to say themselves:

I don’t understand Please say it again What’s the meaning of… What page? 

How do you say …. in (L1)? I don’t have (a pencil, a notebook, a book..) I have a problem .. 

Wait a minute, please! What’s another word for…? How do you spell…? 

• Ones deriving from vocabulary expansion activities:

1. ‘Word of the day’

2. Show and tell

3. How do you say… in English?

4. Other meanings

mean bear 

branch root 

close current 

act 

5. What other words with associated meanings? (thesaurus, or ‘Word’)?

think  idea  child  ask 

6. Greek-Latin roots

anthro auto cosm dic, dict duc, duct geo 

homo medi mono pathy scrib, script trans 

form sequ, secut man, manu pan soci fer 

sense graph log audio plen leg‐ lect 

47. Prefixes/suffixes

Prefixes  auto co‐ cyber de‐ e e, ex 

ex dis‐  in‐ (il / im / ir) mis‐ un‐ a‐   inter‐ mega 

micro mini mis‐ mono non   out‐ 

over‐  out‐   post‐ pre‐, ante‐ pro‐ re‐ self 

semi‐ tele‐ trans‐ under‐  sub‐ 

 Suffixes – making adjectives ‐able ‐al ‐en 

‐ful ‐ic ‐ish 

‐ive ‐less ‐like 

‐ous ‐y 

 Suffixes: changing nouns or adjectives into verbs ‐ate  ‐en  ‐ify  ‐ise  Suffixes: making a new noun ant   ent ar   er   or 

ess ful 

hood ism   

ist ology 

phobia 

8. Word-family tables

Noun  Adjective  Verb  Adverb   exact  ‐       grow  ‐       finally 

9. Can you find one word for…?

back up  blow up  bring about bring back  bring up  fill in get across  give back  give out give up  let down  look up to make up  pay back  put off ring up  set up  take apart take away  take in  think over throw away  try out  work out 

10. Google it!

4. How can I present the meaning of new vocabulary?

pictures

realia

gesture

mime

translation

definition

examples

used in context

hints

Task: How would you teach the following items:

yoghurt, cream, butter, milk; dog, animal, mammal; furniture, chair, wood, sit?

Question: What about using the dictionary?

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5. Is it a good idea to present items in semantic sets, like parts of the body, or colours?

No. Nor in any set of easily-confused items: synonyms (big/large/great) , antonyms (fast/slow), homonyms (bear/bear), homophones (accept/except) or homographs (lead [lεd] /lead [lI:d]).

But it may be useful to practice them using such associations.

For example:

1. Classify. Divide these words into groups:

agree, hero, believe, blame, cartoon, cause, channel, comedian, computer, effects, expert, movie, play, protect, solve, subject, program, violence, wife, respect, director, camera 

2. Find opposites. Which of the above words have opposites? What are they?

3. Put in order. radio, laptop, cellphone, Ipod, television: expensive, useful, pleasure-giving,

4. Odd one out. potato, tomato, apple, grape, lemon, pomegranate, banana

Which is the odd one out? Can you find a reason for each?

6. What are some good vocabulary-learning strategies I can teach my students?

• Vocabulary notebooks.

• Word Cards: new words or expressions on one side and the L1 translation on the other.

• Keywords. When learning a new word, try to find a word or name in your own language that sounds similar and invent a reason to connect the two.

• Ten minutes a day.

• Use a dictionary while you’re reading (paper or online).

7. Can I use translation when teaching vocabulary?

Yes. Not just ‘can’ but rather ‘should’! For presentation of meanings of new words, translation is at least as accurate as most other ways of explaining meanings, and much quicker.

Translation is also a useful means of testing students’ knowledge of the basic form and meaning of new items: if they can translate a mother-tongue item into English, or vice-versa, that’s a good indication that they know it.

It is also something that students feel comfortable doing, and may enjoy.

The phrase ‘a born teacher’ is not usually meant to be taken literally. People who use it do not  seriously mean that someone is born with a certain teaching DNA configuration in their genes.  They are, rather, referring to stable personality characteristics, resulting from a combination of innate and environmental influences, that the teacher brings to their professional practice and that produce something that looks like a natural bent for teaching. 

8. What are some ways of reviewing previously-taught vocabulary?

In principle: review activities provide students with lots of opportunities to encounter and use the target items successfully. They do not ‘test’.

So usually start off any review activity by reminding them of the new items!

Some quick techniques:

• Just write up the items on the board; ask students if there are any whose meaning they don’t remember, and tell them.

• Give students five minutes during class time to look through their notebooks / vocabulary cards and review recently-learnt items

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• Dictate the items in L1, ask students to say the English equivalents; or vice versa.

• Ask each student to say one word or expression they’ve recently learnt, round the class. (It’s often not necessary even to demand the meaning: the fact that they’ve remembered it is a good indication that they also know what it means – we rarely remember meaningless noises!)

More extended activities

• fill in the vowels: e.g. r_sp_ns_bl_ 

• connect two words

• make up a story with words

• complete ‘personalized’ sentences: e.g. I respect people who… I laughed when … 

• cloze using the target words, but with missing grammatical items: e.g.

I work in a restaurant.  I am ___ waitress, and I am responsible ____ special guests …. 

• Quick Bingo

• Recall and share

• Guess it …

References and further reading Cobb, T. (2007). Computing the vocabulary demands of L2 Reading. Language Learning and

Technology, 11 (3), 38-63.

Coady, J & T. Huckin. (1997). Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Ellis, R. (2005). Principles of instructed language learning. System, 33(2), 209-224.

Krashen, S. (2003). Free voluntary reading: Still a very good idea. In Explorations in language acquisition and use: the Taipei lectures (pp.15-29). London: Heinemann.

Laufer, B. (2005). Focus on form in second language vocabulary learning. EUROSLA Yearbook, 5, 223-250.

Long, M. H. & Robinson, P. (1998). Focus on form: Theory, research and practice. In Doughty, C. & Williams, J. (Eds.), Focus on form in Classroom Second Language Acquisition (pp.15-41). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nation, I. S. P. (2000). Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Schmitt, N. (2008). Instructed second language vocabulary learning. Language Teaching Research, 12(3), 329-363.

Zahar, R, T. Cobb & N. Spada. ( 2001). Acquiring vocabulary through reading: effects of frequency and contextual richness. Canadian Modern Language Review , 57(4), 544-72.