Teaching Vocabulary Vilma TAFANI University Aleksander Xhuvani, Elbasan Abstract This article is a combination of research work and long experience as a teacher of English as FL and it deals with efforts of novice teachers of English to teach vocabulary to their students. Being a key element in English language class it needs a lot of attention and a clear perspective. Teachers and students should know that without vocabulary no message can be conveyed. From our observations we have seen that this is a very neglected skill. In this article a lot of strategies for learning new vocabulary and vocabulary activities are offered to help student teachers in developing this very important skill. I would like to acknowledge the work of the professors of Hunter College, CUNY, especially those of the Department of Curriculum and Education, who helped me in carrying out successfully my research work in methodology of teaching and learning FL, as a Fulbright scholar. Key words: Teaching vocabulary, student teacher, direct and indirect vocabulary learning,

Teaching Vocabulary

We all agree upon the importance of vocabulary in learning a FL as a key element in the second language class. Without vocabulary no message is conveyed. I believe most of the teachers agree with this statement. It includes the knowledge of words and word meanings. As Steven Stahl (2005) puts it, Vocabulary knowledge is knowledge; the knowledge of a word not only implies a definition, but also implies how that word fits into the world. Vocabulary knowledge is not something that can ever be fully mastered; it is something that expands and deepens over the course of a lifetime. Instruction in vocabulary involves far more than looking up words in a dictionary and using the words in a sentence. While teaching new vocabulary teachers use any method that matches to students learning style. For example: Visual learners learn words best by seeing words repeatedly. Auditory learners learn words best by hearing words repetitively. Kinesthetic learners learn words best by writing words repetitively. In this case it is very important for the teachers to know the learning styles of their students. This is something that we focus a lot in pre-service teacher preparation. While dealing with the vocabulary student teachers should have in mind the word, its form, meaning and use. Form has to do with different derivation, spelling pronunciation, connecting sounds to spelling, etc. Meaning has to do with denotation/ connotation.

Example:

Chubby buko (Albanian) positive connotation

Heavy you are trying to be polite Fat negative connotation While use has to do with collocation, constraints (We cant say how short are you, or how young are you), expressions (in the meantime), idioms (a fish out of the water), etc. Language learners are faced on a daily basis with the task of acquiring, and retaining, new vocabulary. One of the main tasks of a language teacher is to help students develop a sufficiently large vocabulary. Nevertheless, as we have noticed some language teachers ignore this fundamental fact, assuming that the vocabulary will take care of itself through repeated exposure and classroom activities. As Steven Stahl (2005) puts it, Vocabulary is acquired incidentally through indirect exposure to words and intentionally through explicit instruction in specific words and word-learning strategies Direct vocabulary teaching occurs when teachers do exercises and activities in class that focus the learners attention on vocabulary, such as guessing meaning from context and vocabulary games. In direct vocabulary learning, therefore, a conscious effort is made by the learner to remember new words. While indirect vocabulary learning is still where most vocabulary acquisition takes place. In order to remember new words, students need to see the words in a variety of contexts, many times. They best remember them when they themselves manipulate with these words, repeat them, use them in sentences of their own, share sentences with their peers, use them in various situations, etc. We usually keep saying the student teachers that according to various surveys students learn well and keep in their long term memory not more than 10 new words at a time, and after some days keep repeating them every now and then. Though different scholars put differently I insist that building up the needed vocabulary is the most important part of a language learning process. If students don't have a base vocabulary to work with, they can't study grammar, they cant do spelling or pronunciation exercises, where as writing or reading is definitely out of the question without a certain vocabulary. That's why it's extremely important to have a good vocabulary and keep building it up with the passing of the time. Here are a few ways for you to improve vocabulary. Memory Strategies for Learning New Vocabulary1

New words need to be related to learners' existing knowledge, sounds, images, personal feelings/responses, diagrams, etc. The following activities can be used to reinforce the learning of new vocabulary:

Connecting words to a personal experience. Learners can think about the way they respond to new words by categorizing them into groups: the words they like/dislike, or the words they think will be easy (or difficult) to remember, and why.

Sorting and ranking activities. In the case of learning a list of animals, for instance, learners can separate the new animals by dangerous/not dangerous, or

1 EFL Vocabulary Teaching Tips: Direct Teaching Activities for Second Language Learners - http://esl-programs-lessons.suite101.com/article.cfm/tips_for_teaching_l2_vocabulary#ixzz0CCfNgKSS

eat/dont eat. For a list of food, learners can rank the food items from those they like most to those they like least.

TPR (Total Physical Response). Learners associate a verb to an action (or an emotion to a gesture) by physically acting out the word.

Pictorial representations. Small drawings in context (a picture of a house labeled with window, door, roof, etc.) can aid retention of new words. Imaging, where learners use the way a word looks to associate it with its meaning, also helps.

Grouping words by collocations. Another way for learners to manipulate and remember new words is to join them according to the words they are often found with. (i.e., idea: original, brilliant, unusual, great).

Vocabulary games are a great way to enhance our word base, but they should usually be used only as an additional method for this purpose. The vocabulary games especially may be used for reinforcing the meaning and helping the students to remember the new words they have learned before the vocabulary game. The fact with vocabulary games is that they cannot teach us the same amount of new words as say translated texts or other methods that deal with improving our vocabulary, but they can be a fun alternative to take during those study breaks. Also, remember that everything we learn while relaxing and having fun is assimilated a lot easier and for a longer period of time. We try to teach our student teachers to use various word-learning strategies including dictionary use, morphemic analysis, and contextual analysis.2*

- Dictionary use teaches students about multiple word meanings, as well as

the importance of choosing the appropriate definition to fit the particular

context.

- Morphemic analysis is the process of deriving a word's meaning by

analyzing its meaningful parts, or morphemes. Such word parts include

root words, prefixes, and suffixes.

- Contextual analysis involves inferring the meaning of an unfamiliar word

by scrutinizing the text surrounding it. Instruction in contextual analysis

generally involves teaching students to employ both generic and specific

types of context clues.

It seems a kind of a lot of repetition, but I insist in rooting in student teachers mind that, vocabulary development is especially and extremely important for students learning English as a FL. Poor vocabulary is a serious issue for these students. They might not understand the meaning of certain words and contexts where these words are used. * Ibid.

Scholars suggest several various strategies that seem to be especially valuable for building up the vocabulary of those students. Thus, we can take advantage of students first language, so we invite them find the meaning of the new words if there is an equivalent word in their mother tongue; teach the meaning of basic words, that is teach those words that have a high frequency (Consult the General Service List) and their meaning is crucial to understand a certain context; reviweing and reinforcment is of great importance as well.

Vocabulary Activities3

1. Whats on my back? You have something on the back. Another student explains, describes, this is for people

to use language. Try to make as many questions as you can, encourage speaking,

guessing game.

Whats on my back?

- person (food)

- waitress

- No, a person who takes the money

- Cashier?

- Yes

2. Bingo Preparation

1. Make up a Bingo grid for yourself with 5 rows and 5 columns. Put an X in the center square.

2. Fill in each square with a word or phrase or sentence. 3. Choose any word in the grid and label the grid with a 1. 4. Continue numbering each square, making sure that you do not have Bingo until

you must. 5. Write the word Bingo next to the first word that results in Bingo. 6. Now write the numbers 1 through 20 on a sheet of paper. 7. Write a definition for each one next to its number. 8. Write the word Bingo next to the first definition that results in Bingo.

Presentation 1. Hand out a Bingo grid to students or have them make up one. Check that they are

correct and large enough.

3 Some of these activities are suggested in Vocabulary Course, Hunter College, CUNY, Fall 2008

2. Dictate the words to students, making sure to tell them how to write the words in, either horizontally (across) or vertically (down). Check frequently that everyone is doing it right.

3. Write a large Bingo grid on the board and ask students to tell you what words to put in each square. (Not putting the grid on the board, first give students practice in the following directions).

4. Explain how the game is played. You will read a definition. Students should look for the correct square and circle it or put a chip on it or whatever else you can think of.

5. When you begin, students will undoubtedly yell out the answer! It will take several times telling them not to do this before they stop.

6. Continue until someone yells Bingo. Someone will likely yell Bingo before it is actually possible. Explain that its not Bingo yet.

7. When it really is Bingo, there should be several students yelling Bingo. 8. Congratulate the students and ???? (Use your own imagination here). 9. Now go over the whole thing. Re- read each definition and have students yell out the

word(s).

This is a good and fun way to review vocabulary teachers have already worked on, so it helps fluency development. But though it is valuable and fun, teachers need to be careful and plan it carefully because it takes a lot of time and teachers dont have so much time at their disposal. Teachers can use Bingo to practice not only vocabulary but grammar as well. We have played Bingo with various levels of students and it works especially with beginners for labeling words, while with more advanced we have used giving or finding definitions. It is important to stress that teachers must repeat the directions a lot till the students get used to its use.

3. Running dictation Everybody has to have a job Runners run out read memorize Writers write what the runners say Editors check the mistakes Checkers give the final, compare and correct with the original, how it should be. Sometimes the teacher writes with mistakes on purpose for the editor to correct. It may be done with three people. 1. runner 2. writer 3. checker (when the text is without mistakes) We have tried this activity and it was a real fun and the students learned a lot. There might be a lot of other activities that encourage enriching vocabulary as: Pick a card, Odd One Out, Dictation (thought chunks), Role-plays, Interviews, Building up Vocabulary through Reading and Writing Activities (doing some pre-reading and post-reading activities, summarizing, paragraph writing, free writing, letter writing, essay writing), In the series Welcome to AmBri (an imaginary island America - Britain) (Textbook for 3 - 5 grade, elementary school) and A Trip to AmBri (American - British), (textbook for 6 - 9 grade, elementary school), we have used a lot these types of activities besides those

mentioned above: A - Z Chart, Word Study Organizer, Vocabulary Jigsaw, Crosswords, etc. They have been introduced for the first time and have been very challenging. When we asked teachers and students to give feedback about vocabulary activities they were very enthusiastic and valued them a lot. We are organizing training sessions to help teachers and students that are not using these textbooks share these kinds of vocabulary activities, because they might be applied in various contexts and with various textbooks and with various levels of students. Of great importance are also activities for testing vocabulary as: Cloze test, vocabulary tests, diagnostic test, vocabulary knowledge test, multiple choice test, matching and supplying exercises, dictation test, By the end of the Vocabulary Course at Hunter College we came to some conclusions that we decided to use them as tips while teaching vocabulary to our students or helping student teachers in their future profession. Ideas for Teaching Vocabulary

Design activities that make students think for a word phrase. Dont allow one student in class to yell out answers all the time. This discourages other students. An example of this activity is using word cards. Provide students with lexical items, (word cards) to describe a picture. After describing the picture, students write a description of it from memory. Use Word Cards as often as possible! Encourage students to carry them around, and have them bring to class all the time. Design activities for their use. You can put any lexical item on a word card and have students do something with it: write sentences, write associated words, write a story around it. For example, put these lexical items on cards: Time is Money, Time Flies. I dont have time. Time is up. Each student in a group picks a card and must explain the expression. Use word lists to choose which words to design lessons around: general service list, frequency word list, phrasal words, collocations, etc. Give students the responsibility for some of their own learning by requiring them to teach themselves many words from these lists. Give them a weekly goal, such as 10 - 20 words. Focus words in a lesson to encourage noticing, so that students see the importance of a word/phrase in the input. Highlight or underline these words. - Design activities that require students to use words in different ways, forms and contexts to encourage generation (generating different words, keeping the root). Have students re-write sentences, changing the form of the word/s while retaining the same meaning of the sentence. Example: I have a hard time accepting criticism. It is really hard for me to accept critical remarks. - Vocabulary group work, the group is responsible for defining words/phrases that you have underlined. A representative from each group then teaches the lexical items to the class. - Make a list of 20 synonyms/antonyms/opposites for some words given. Synonyms should be of higher frequency. Give the students the beginning letter of each word to look for it on dictionary. Examples: aid (v) - h (look at the list or dictionary and find the word with almost the same meaning) aid - help, , simple - easy, simple - difficult, agreement - disagreement, etc. - Have students select 10 related words from one page of General Service List and write a story using these words.

For fluency development, after reading about and discussing an issue, have students read about the same issue, but from a different text, e.g., an article from a different newspaper. - Tape 3 large pictures on the board. Handout a list of adjectives that describe each picture,but dont separate them by picture. Students have to decide which adjectives describe which picture. (picture description) Have students categorize the general word lists by word class: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs. - Provide a text of approximately 100 words to groups of 3 students. Student A reads the text aloud while student B and C write down words/phrases they do not know. The 3 students then try to guess what their words mean. - Have students read 3 times a certain text. First time, write questions they have about it. Second time, summarize it. Third time, critique it or add more information, or re-write the ending, or write a letter to someone else about it. - Provide 2 or 3 short newspaper/magazine articles to students with headlines. Provide 2 or 3 other articles without headline and write them together as a class. Then have students do the same thing together in groups with 3 other articles. (matching) (Students may use other types of Media in this kind of exercise) - Test students regularly on vocabulary to encourage studying. Use a variety of tests: Matching, Cloze test, Multiple Choice, Diagnostic Test, and Sentence Completion. Give extra points to students using new vocabulary in essays. - Play Odd Man Out with students. Give them lists of words in fours. They have to choose the word in each group of four that is different from the other and say why. You can also do this as a dictation. For example: hand, eye, finger, body; hand, eye, finger are parts of the body. Teachers can create tens of this type of exercise. - Think of 10 collocations. Break them up and have students put them back together. You can do this by putting each part of the collocation on a separate word card, or by writing 2 columns of words on the board for students to match, or in a handout. - Provide students with a sentence beginning and have them write as many different endings as they can. Examples: Last summer I , If I had more time I would , Happiness is , I would like my best friend to , etc. - Use Vocabulary activities: Vocabulary journals, word maps, Whats on my back, Bingo, Running dictation, Role plays, Interviews, Pick a card, A - Z Chart, Word Study Organizer, Vocabulary Jigsaw, Crosswords, etc. - Use dictation as part of your vocabulary teaching. Dictate passages which include lexical items youve been working on. Have students dictate to one another too. - Tape something that repeats a key word or phrase several time. Discuss the lexical item first and then play the tape. Students raise their hands every time they hear the lexical item. Make sure to have it written on the board. Then provide a transcript of the tape. Students should scan for the lexical item and underline it. - Provide students with a list of adjectives. They make 3 lists. 1) Which adjectives would your friend use to describe you? 2) Which adjectives would you use to describe yourself? 3) Which adjectives would you like to be used to describe you, but are not used. For a word that has many different/related meanings (homonyms/polysemy), provide the dictionary entry. Write a sentence for each different use. Students match the sentences to the meaning. Then they write their own sentences for another word for which youve provided the dictionary entry.

- Use thematic groupings for words whenever possible. Semantic groupings can be used for practice once words are fairly well known. - Teach students strategies for guessing words from context, it must be modeled and practiced over and over again in class for it to be of any use. WHATEVER YOU DO, TEACH VOCABULARY IN EVERY CLASS!

Note: We have practiced a lot of different vocabulary activities with our student teachers during their teaching practice. If you want to see any of them please contact us at: tafanivilma@yahoo.com References: Read more: EFL Vocabulary Teaching Tips: Direct Teaching Activities for Second Language Learners - http://esl-programs-lessons.suite101.com/article.cfm/tips_for_teaching_l2_vocabulary#ixzz0CCfNgKSS. Cindy Wishengrad, a Course on Teaching Vocabulary, Hunter College, CUNY

Memory Strategies for Learning New Vocabulary