How to teach Vocabulary...!!!*

HOW TO TEACH VOCABULARY

Considering the number of new words students have to learn per course, this means us teachers have our work cut out for us. We all know that although it is important for students to use correct grammar and structures, words are the main carriers of meaning. This means that the more words students are able to handle accurately, the better their chances of understanding English and making themselves understood.

To effectively acquire new vocabulary, students must go through four essential stages:

• first, they notice a new word with help;
• secondly, they recognize the word at first with help,
• then later on their own;
• and lastly, they are able to both recognize and produce the word.

.        
 

It is essential that you, as the teacher, make use of activities that target each of these stages; more often than not, we make the mistake of merely introducing new vocabulary, and we don’t give students the opportunity to put these new words to use.

Stage 1: Noticing and understanding new words

Introducing nouns, things, objects, animals, etc…

Visual elements work best with concrete nouns, but try to go beyond flashcards and illustrations. Try to use real objects whenever possible, or even sounds, smells, and tastes. Appeal to all of your students’ senses. 

Introducing adjectives

Opposites, like “big” and “small”, “long” and “short”, are usually illustrated with pictures, but here’s another case where realia will help you teach new adjectives; the use of real life objects is wonderful for words like “soft” and “rough”, adjectives that may take precious minutes of class time to explain. For more advanced adjectives, like “stunning”, “gorgeous”, “spectacular”, “huge”, or “immense”, bring in photos of famous sights from around the world like the Louvre, Egyptian pyramids, the Eiffel Tower, etc…then use these new adjectives to describe these places in ways that clearly illustrate their meaning. 

Introducing abstracts

There are things you simply cannot teach with a flashcard. What works best in these cases are synonyms, definitions, substitutions, or simply placing students within a given context. Consider this simple example: To teach the difference between “early” and “late”, remind students what time class begins, then state that those who arrive before this time are “early” while those that arrive after this time are “late”.  

Stage 2: Recognizing new words

Bingo

Bingo is one of the most versatile games employed by ESL teachers. For younger learners, make bingo cards with illustrations, and call out each word. For those who can read, do the opposite, make the cards with words, then draw the flashcards from a bag. For teens or adult learners, you can make cards with the definition and call out the words, or vice versa.

Matching

Another type of exercise with countless possibilities. Students may be required to match opposites, synonyms, or a word with its definition, as well as a picture to a word.

Fill in the blanks (with options)

Hand out a piece of written text (anything from a description, song, letter, to even a short story) with blank spaces that must be filled in from a list of words. You can adapt this to longer texts, and also have longer word lists.

Stage 3: Producing vocabulary  

Descriptions

 From a newspaper photo of a recent event to a personal account of a recent trip, there are countless things students can describe while putting new vocabulary to good use. This goes for both oral and written descriptions. You may give them some guidance, like indicating that they have to use at least five adjectives in their description, or five words related to sports, weather, etc…to no guidance at all.

Fill in the blanks (no options)

Supply students with a piece of written text with blank spaces that have to be filled in with any word that fits. You may give them indications for each space, like “noun”, “adjective” or “adverb”, if they’re advanced students. You can then read several out loud to compare the different words used to fill in each blank.

Mind maps or brainstorming

Tell students they need to think of words they can use to describe the weather. Write “weather” at the center of a blackboard or whiteboard and circle it. Write every word supplied by students as “rays” that shoot out this circle. They should reply with previously taught words, like “chilly”, “scorching”, or “mild”. You may even have sub-circles shooting off to the side for winter, summer, etc…words. This works great for vocabulary review lessons

Guess what I'm thinking

Students take turns describing something, like a place: “I’m thinking of a place that is so huge it takes visitors hours to see all of it. It has stunning works of art. It is a breathtaking building, very old, but with a modern glass pyramid in the front.” Students choose to be as obvious or as cryptic as they like. Even little ones can do this with simple descriptions: “It's an animal. It has a very long neck and big brown spots.” Or simply state a series of words: “Africa, black and white, stripes”.
It’s better to teach vocabulary in context, in other words, teach highly descriptive adjectives when the lesson is about travel. Or clothes and accessories when you’re talking about shopping. Never teach a list of words just because, or students won’t have a chance to practice this new vocabulary.
    

Reflection:

There are many ways to teach vocabulary to young learns, but the most important thing to keep in mind is " make to understand the new word". We as teachers have to work with pictures, flashcards and specially with songs. Though Grammar structure is important," vocabulary" is an important skill in teaching English too.

     

 





 

How to teach Grammar..=)

.

HOW TO TEACH GRAMMAR TO YOUNG LEARNERS 

Teaching grammar to young learners requires an extensive knowledge of a great number of issues. Not only is it crucial to be aware of various teaching methods and approaches but also it is fundamental to be familiar with the principles of the development of children’s intelligence.

This work deals with the ways how to present and teach grammar to young learners. Learning, acquiring new pieces of information and using new skills in practice is strongly connected with mental abilities of children. Fully developed mental skills are not inborn. They are influenced by many factors, such as personal abilities of a child, family, both physical and mental health etc.

• Game-like activities

.

For children at primary school is a game one of the crucial activities. They enjoy playing games but what is more, games are important as they serve as tools of socialisation. Children learn to communicate with their friends, they have to accept others´ opinions and they learn how to present their own ideas. In our English lessons we can use games for the development of communicative skills as well as for the revision of vocabulary and grammar.
 

Nevertheless, activities presented in our classrooms are not typical games. If we use the term “game”, we usually mean just playing for fun and it is something completely different from the activities we do with young learners. Although we have fun, the main purpose is educative and therefore it is better to call such activities “game like activities”. 

Although a game-like activity seems to be a very easy and natural way of learning, it is not an easy task for a teacher to prepare a good activity. We have to be aware of two basic aspects. Firstly, what we expect from the particular activity. We should consider whether the game-like activity is for children only to make the lesson more attractive and protect them from being bored or whether we tend to revise and practise some particular part of grammar, vocabulary etc. Secondly, it is important not to waste our time. Some activities have too complicated rules or on the other hand, some activities are too simple and both the cases make children speak their native language, which we definitely want to avoid.

•  Drama

 Let us draw our attention to the topic of drama in a language classroom. There are many advantages in integrating drama into our lessons. The most remarkable advantage is that role playing leads to the internalisation of a language. Role playing prepares young learners for unexpected situations they can face in the foreign language. They learn how to react if they meet a foreigner, if they travel, if they go shopping etc. All the vocabulary and grammar which they have already been taught suddenly gains the quality of something
real, something which really exists and is useful for their lives.

 There are several types of activities which concern drama. Actually all the activities which are based on movement and imagination could be included into this category. The ways in which we present drama in our lessons can involve very simple activities, such as miming. Other activities are more difficult and they deal with speaking as e.g. in the cases mentioned above.

We try to imagine that we are in a shop and we want to do some shopping. Firstly we have to teach the student all the necessary phrases and expressions and then we let them act the real situation in a shop. It is more interesting for them if we tell them a lesson before so that they can bring all the things they need. They enjoy if they have some real goods to sell and buy, if they can change their clothes etc. The most demanding way of presenting drama in our lessons is to perform real plays adapted for young learners. Either we can prepare the script ourselves or we can use some specialised literature

 Some drama-based activities do not have to be so complicated. If we tend to practise a particular area of grammar, e.g. the past simple tense, we prepare “one word story”. The teacher says the first word, e.g. “yesterday” and each student adds one word.

Teacher – Yesterday   
  Student 1 – An                                 St. 7 – Took
Student 2 - Old                                  St.8 - Pizza
Student 3 - Man                                 St. 9 - And
Student 4 - Was                                 St. 10 -Ate
Student 5- Hungry                              St. 11 – It
Student 6 - He
  

Young learners  finally make a whole story, they can draw the story on sheets of paper and then they describe the story once more. Finally, one student reads the story and the pupils actwhat the teacher is saying.

 REFLECTION:

It is always up to a teacher to decide which methods and approaches he/she is going tointroduce. Every teacher has a different way of teaching, presenting new information and dealing with children. Nevertheless, there are some basic and fundamental rules which ought to be followed by all the teachers. Although young learners differ from adults, they are not without any previous experience, knowledge and they have several skills, abilities and instincts which facilitate teachers’ attempts to present new information and make children be able to use this information in practice.