How to Teach Vocabulary

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How to Teach Vocabulary

• Alice Chiu
• 2005.03.07

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Main menu

• Teaching Tips
• Step One presenting new words
• Step Two helping students remember new words
• Step Three making sure students make the new
  words their own
• Online resources

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Step One presenting new words
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using visual images

• realia
• pictures
• masking
• drawing
• scales

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using gestures and actions

• mime
• gesture
• facial expression
• action

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showing lexical relations

• synonyms
• antonyms
• collocation
• prefixes and suffixes

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words in context

• dialogues
• role play
• drama
• stories
• songs
• rhymes poems
• videos

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guessing / predicting

• Example 1
• Example 2

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Other techniques

• Using a dictionary
• Explaining
• Describing
• Defining the context
• Translating

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Step Two helping students remember new words
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usinge memorizing games and activities

• giving directions
• picture dictation
• matching words
• labeling words
• searching words
• sequencing words
• guessing words
• eliminating words
• classifying words

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Review Games

• wordsearch games
• picture labeling
• crosswords
• Bingo
• dominoes
• puzzles
• charts or survey for their peers
• Example 1
• Example 2

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Socio-affectively, students can

• practice words with a classmate or in a group
• teach a word to a member of the family or peer
• make and play word game with friends
• peer test

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Step Three making sure students make the new
words their own
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Vocabulary record system-1

• Vocabulary books
• in an alphabetical order
• by topic or situation
• by grammatical groups
• by color sets
• by story features

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Vocabulary record system -2

• personal dictionary (word notebooks)
• marking word stress
• adding pictures
• putting an L1 translation
• putting the word into context
• adding a synonym
• mapping a word family
• Example

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personalize the new words

• Keeping a learning log (blogs)
• Keeping a diary (blogs)
• Creative writing by using newly-learned words or
  phrases
• Looking for recently learned words in storybooks,
  the Internet, the newspapers, etc., and noticing
  how they are used.

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Meta-cognitively, learners learn how to

• self-test
• look for patterns in words
• plan and organize a vocabulary record keeping
  system
• Learn words in their preferred ways
• reflect on learning and reviewing regularly
• monitor vocabulary learning

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Online Resources

• Teaching VocabularyTwo Dozen Tips and
  Techniques
• English Vocabulary Word Listswith Games, Puzzles
  and Quizzes
• LearnEnglishKids
• An authoring tool HOT POTATO
• Example 1
• Example 2

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End of this session