TEACHING VOCABULARY TO A 2 AND B 1 LEVEL LEARNERS

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TEACHING VOCABULARY TO A 2 and b 1 LEVEL LEARNERS
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Lecture outline
National Standard on FL requirements to graduators’ vocabulary competence
Vocabulary exercises.
Vocabulary subskills assessment
Working with vocabulary: Denotation and polysemy
Connotation and Sociocultural context
What a student may need to know about an item
Ways to present vocabulary
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National Standard on FL requirements to graduators’ vocabulary competence
The studies show that not surprisingly the learners’ main approach is simply to try to remember the words they do not know. Beginners prefer learning words in a list, while more advanced learners find context more effective. Exercises to acquire vocabulary are meaning interpretation (facilitating word understanding), word reinforcement (making learners practice the use of vocabulary in vocabulary focused activities) and communicative use (creating communicative conditions for using the instructed vocabulary), mnemonic exercises (using the technique to facilitate organization) are used.
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The activities for teaching vo cabulary are given in the table
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The activities for teaching vo cabulary are given in the table
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Meaning interpretation can be done with the use of the context, synonyms and antonyms. E.g. “object” – “making one feel pity”. It is useful to enumerate some words to lead the learner to understanding a more general word (superordinate). E.g. dress, shirt, trousers, skirt, coat – CLOTHES. Some words need a cultural interpretation of meaning, e.g. the word “silly” sounds milder in English than a corresponding word in a language like Russian. Other words can have an indication “rude”. A word can be guessed from context or explanation. It can certainly be translated if necessary.
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Word reinforcement can be done in translation exercises. Learners can do word association activities (associate as many words as you can with the key word “hunting”). In rating activities the students are asked to rate a number of words (e.g. food items) in order of importance and to prove one’s chosen order. Students can derive word forms from the given stem. E.g. turn the following words into nouns: compete, respond, press, retire, defer, secure, deter, demolish, capable etc. Completing the gaps can be done in separate sentences and in the gapped versions of the whole text.
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Communicative word use can be organized with the help of pictures for description (communication becomes more meaningful if the pictures have a “deep” or vague meaning and can be interpreted differently thus boosting a debate). Situational circumstances and drama activities can also stimulate the use of certain words. Imagination and story telling can be useful tools. E.g. “imagine a birthday cake of your dream and describe it”. Cloze activity (completing the gaps in the texts) can be applied to both prose and poetry.
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Communicative games can be helpful. E.g. the learners get the cards with objects on them such as “a car”, “a telephone”, “a watch” etc. Their task is to ask for a favour, mentioning the object on the card, e.g. “Can I use your telephone?” etc. On the back of each card there are words “Yes, please” or “No, sorry”. The one who collects most of the cards ahead of others is the winner (After Hadfield, J. l995. Advanced Communication Games. Nelson. P. VIII).
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Mnemonic exercises can help organizate the words. Learners can try remember the words using association pairs with other familiar words. They can practice organized words by using rhyme, rhythm and motion (marking the rhythm with wavering one’s hand etc). They can place the words in the imagined locations (e.g. an elephant can be placed in the fridge) and name the organized words by recalling the imagined places where the objects stay put. They can use imagination and think of a horror story with the newly remembered words.
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Insights into indigenous cultures and experiences
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Elicting from meaning and form acrossword
Words are often elicited from meaning and form in a “crossword” activity. Exploratory task Read the sentences. Then give the names of the jobs and write them in the form of the lexical grid to cross correctly with the word “policeman” (the word “policeman” has been written for you going “down” in the crossword:
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1. He/she works in reception at hotel (from here on the words are written across).2. He/she looks after people who are ill.3. He/she works with electrical things.4. He/she looks after people’s teeth.5. He acts in the theatre.6. He/she cuts hair.7. He/she plays music.8. He/she plays football.9. She works in business.
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Exploratory task Imagine and describe to your partner the items given below. Do not name them! Let your partner guess from description what you have imagined.
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Exploratory task Fill in the words denoting injuries:
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A frequent lexical activity is lexical mind map. A mind map is the result of lexical associations with a key word.
Labeling: Students are given a picture. They are to write the names of objects indicated in the picture. A competitive element can be introduced by making the first student to finish the winner.
Vocabulary exercises and activities
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Spotting the differences: Students are put into pairs. Each member of the pair receives a picture which is slightly different from his partner’s. Students hide the pictures from one another and then, by a process of describing, questioning and answering, discover what the differences are.
Describing and drawing: Students are put into pairs. One student has a picture, the other a blank piece of paper and a pencil. The student having the picture must tell his partner what to draw so that the drawing ends up the same as the original picture. The student must not show the picture until the drawing is completed.
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Playing a game: Students are shown a picture or a tray with many objects on it, or a series of different flash cards or magazine pictures. They have one or two minutes to memorize as many of the objects as they can. The cards, pictures or tray are taken away and the students have to say what they saw, or write down everything they can remember seeing, then compare their answers with the rest of the class.
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Word bingo: The teacher thinks of an area of language that the students have recently been studying. Students draw nine squares on a piece of paper and put 9 words connected with shopping in the squares. The teacher then calls out, one at a time, words connected with shopping. If the students have the word in the squares, they cross it out. The first student to cross out all the words in the squares is the winner. The game can be played for more than one round. (shopper custom client bargain seller pay shop buy money store sell sale market price discount supermarket goods receipt) A different version of word bingo is that the first student to cross out a line of three words either horizontally, vertically or diagonally should shout out “Bingo”, and he or she will be the winner.
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Word association: The teacher says a key word. The students then have to write down all the words they can think of connected with traveling. They have a time limit. When time is up, the person with the highest number of acceptable words is the winner.Odd one out: The teacher writes a set of words on the blackboard and asks the students to find the “odd man out”. For example, in the set “cheese, eggs, oranges, bread, soap, and meat”, the word “soap” is the “odd man out”.
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Working with vocabulary: Denotation and polysemy
Teaching the meaning of individual words, however, will not ensure that learners can read a text with understanding. “Words enter into meaningful relations with other words around them”(Sinclair 1996:76). To understand a text, learners need to know words, and knowing a word involves knowing: “Its spoken and written contexts of use, its patterns with words of related meaning” (Carter, 2001:43). When teaching vocabulary it is then necessary to consider aspects like denotation, polysemy, connotation and sociocultural aspects when teaching a second or foreign language so that learners are able to get meaning from texts.
• Denotation and polysemy • Connotation • Sociocultural context
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Denotation and polysemy
“The meaning of a word is primarily what it refers to in the real world, its denotation.”(Ur 1997:61) For example, the denotation of the word cat is an animal with soft fur, and whiskers. Nevertheless, words can have many different meanings; in fact, one word in English often has more than one denotation. This phenomenon is called polysemy. The word issue, for instance, refers to a subject that people discuss or argue about, but it also refers to a magazine that is published at a particular time. To solve this problem of polysemy, students need to see and practise words in context, since it is the context that allows them to understand the meaning of a word.
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Felicity O’Dell (1997) suggests the following activities to deal with polysemy:
– finding one word to fit all the gaps in a set of sentences which illustrate a range of meanings of a polysemous word;
– finding a word that fits two synonyms or definitions;
– explaining puns in newspaper headlines;
– explaining jokes;
– matching two halves of jokes;
– choosing which meaning fits a particular context;
-ordering meanings in a dictionary extract in terms of usefulness/interest.
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Connotation
Connotation, on the other hand, refers to ‘the associations, or positive or negative feelings it evokes, which may or may not be indicated in a dictionary definition.’ (Ur: 1997:61). This means that words can suggest different things depending on the context they occur in. A learner who fails to understand the connotation of a word will probably fail to get the message of the text.
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To handle connotation O’Dell (1997) suggests the following exercises:
• asking students to give their own connotations for particular words;
• classifying words with a positive, neutral or pejorative association;
• finding words in a text that show attitude;
• explaining straight meanings, unusual headlines, metaphors, puns;
• discussing words in a text with regard to their connotations;
• adding words to a text;
• changing the attitude conveyed in a text.
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Sociocultural context
Another important aspect to consider is sociocultural context which refers to the fact that the language used by a sociocultural group is closely connected with its values, attitudes and beliefs. Consequently, learning a language involves understanding and interpreting the culture of which it is part. It is important, therefore, for students to develop the ability to interpret texts from perspectives other than their own.
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Some of the activities suggested by O’Dell (1997) to deal with sociocultural context are the following:
explaining newspaper headlines, adverts, graffiti. with hundreds;
asking students to compare words and expressions used in various englishspeaking contexts with those used in their own l1 context;
students comment on the sociocultural associations of lexis in a given text;
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Some of the activities suggested by O’Dell (1997) to deal with sociocultural context are the following:
students write glosses for text
students research a given set of items with sociocultural associations;
quizzes focusing on sociocultural lexical items;
true or false questions;
explaining newspaper headlines, adverts, graffiti. With hundreds.
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What a student may need to know about an item
What it means
The form
How it is pronounced
How it is spelt
If it follows any unpredictable grammatical patterns
The connotations that the item may have
The situations when the word is or is not used
How the word is related to others
Collocation or the way that words occur together
What the affixes (the prefixes and suffixes) may indicate about the meaning
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Ways to present vocabulary
Illustration
Mime
Definition
Translation
Context
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Alternative ways of teaching vocabulary
Give your students a few items of vocabulary and tell them to find the meaning, pronunciation and write an example sentence with the word in. They can then teach each other in groups.
Prepare worksheets and ask your students to match words to definitions.
Ask students to classify a group of words into different categories. For example, a list of transport words into air/sea/land.
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Ask students to find new vocabulary from reading homework and teach the other students in the class. Other things to consider
Review the vocabulary you teach through a game or activity and encourage your students to do the same at home
Encourage autonomy in your learners. Tell them to read, watch films, listen to songs etc. and note the useful words
Have a section of your board for vocabulary items that come up as you are teaching. Use different colours for the word / the phonemics / the prepositions / the part of speech
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Cats are the most highly specialized of the flesh-eating mammals. They are powerfully built fibbics, so well coordinated that they almost always land on their feet when they fall or are dropped. The brain is large and highly quimmed. The most characteristic and specialized features are in the teeth and claws. All cats (except the cheetah) pide strong and sharp claws. Although most cats are night fibbics, a few are more frandid during the day, like the cheetah. Typically solitary while hunting, a cat steals up on prey on padded feet and overwhelms it in a short, quick rush or leap. It can vode very fast in a short dash but is not built for sustained speed. Cats differ in their reaction to dinth: the lion and the leopard don’t like to enter it (theycan swim when they must). House cats do not dislike dinth but react negatively to being chilled with cold dinth.
Cats!
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fibbics – a broad definition of cats: ‘cats are powerfully built fibbics’; -s at the end suggests it is a noun in the plural form.
quimmed – the passive form of a verb, used here as an adjective to characterise ‘a large brain’. It also goes with ‘highly’.
pide – goes with ‘claws’ as in ‘cats have claws’. (Compare the form with ‘ride’ and ‘hide’)
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frandid – the phrase ‘a few are more frandid’ suggests it is an adjective, and the sentence context that contrasts day and night activity of the cats enables us to guess its meaning. (Compare with ‘candid’ and ‘stupid’)
vode – following ‘can’, it can only be a verb, and the words ‘fast’ and ‘speed’ suggest that it is a verb of motion.
dinth – the meaning is not clear from the first sentence, but the phrase ‘they can swim if they must’ and the background knowledge about cats’ reaction to water helps to guess its meaning.
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It is a good idea to teach/learn words with associated meanings together
Encourage your students to purchase a good dictionary and use class time to highlight the benefits of one
Teach your students the grammatical names for the parts of speech and the phonemic script
Always keep a good dictionary by your side in case a student asks about a word you don’t know
If you don’t and have never heard of the word, tell the student you will check and get back to them. Do get back to them
Give extra examples sentences to the students if they are unsure and encourage them to write the word in an example sentence (maybe for homework)
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Thank youfor you attention!
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