Deliberately teaching vocabulary is an important part of a well-balanced vocabulary programme. There are several ways of quickly having learners' attention to words.
Quickly give the meaning by:
1. Using an L1 translation;
2. Using a known L2 synonym or a simple definition;
3. Showing an object;
4. Giving a demonstration;
5. Giving several example sentences with the word in context to show the meaning;
6.Commenting on the underlying meaning of the word.
Draw attention to the form of the word by:
1. Showing how the spelling of the word is like the spelling of known words;
2.Writing the word on the board in colour;
3. Showing the prefix, stem, and suffix of the word;
4. Giving the stress pattern and getting the learners to repeat the pronunciation;
5. Pointing out any spelling irregularity in the word. Taken From Dec. 2005
Corpora, plural term of a "corpus", refer to electronic authentic language databases that can be available via the internet or as software installed in desktops. Language corpora can be either collections of written or spoken discourse.Language corpora can be used by anyone who is engaged in language learning, teaching and research.Teachers can utilize the authentic collections of data as classroom materials for students. There are two major benefits of using corpora in vocabulary teaching and learning.
Firstly, corpora provide high speed searching tool. Looking up words in dictionaries is often laborious and time-consuming. By using the concordance tool of corpora to search for word contexts, learners are involved in a more speedy and efficient learning experience.
Secondly, corpora provide better quality of language samples. It is suggested that language learning is more likely to happen when adequate examples are processed by learners. Dictionaries often provide limited and artificial examples. Using a concordance to search for word examples enable users to obtain mixed types of authentic language examples including phrases and collocations. Learners not only develop their breadth but also depth of lexical knowledge.
Personal Vocabulary Notes (PVN) is a way of developing student vocabulary in a personalized way while encouraging them to become autonomous learners. The basic activity is very straightforward.
Step 1. Give students a daily journal or personal vocabulary PVN paper to record their vocabulary items.
Step 2. Tell students that the class will be "English only".
Step 3. Engage students in some kind of fluency activity and encourage them to write words in L1 that they do not know how to say in English.
Step 4. As homework have the students look up their PVN and find the English translations. They then should write sentences in their PVN.
Step 5. The teacher collects the PVNs, checks them, and hands them back to students.
Step 6. Students keep a section in their notebook for PVN and do follow-up activities with it such as peer teaching and reviewing.
When correcting PVN, the teacher only focuses on what the students are trying to say. Keep the feedback clear and simple. Just make sure the sentences they have written are grammatically correct and naturally express their ideas.
Learner-centreed Vocabulary Building Practice
Vocabulary is one area, which requires constant attention at all levels of the English learners. I tried a learner-initiated vocabulary building exercise and it really worked well. The aim is to familiarize students with words they commonly hear or read. Since, the students are in the same class, a difficult vocabulary item for one student is generally difficult for all the students.
The procedure is as follows:
Step 1.The students' name list is typed out in an alphabetical order and they are expected to remember their turn by referring to the list.
Step 2. Students are asked to create a 100-page dictionary totally on their own.
Step 3. In each English class two students choose a word from their dictionaries to share with their classmates. The words brought to the class can be words that the students encountered and are unaware of their meanings, or words they have heard often but are not sure of the right meanings. They could bring any word from the newspapers.
Step 4. The students write the words and their meanings on the board and other students make sentences for each word.The sentences should be then written down in the students' personal dictionaries.
At the end of the term the students will display their dictionaries and they can borrow from each other.
