Words, words, words - Learning English Words
How to Develop Students' Vocabulary?
Using different strategies for developing student's vocabulary is essential as an English teacher. There are many learning strategies out there and it is easy to get lost in the forest of words as you walk along the path of strategies. In this blogpost, I will present one way of developing student vocabulary in lower secondary school in Norwegian compulsory education. I will also describe a recycling of the vocabulary given in the activity.
In this particular lesson the overall topic was segregation in the USA. Before the vocabulary activity, the students read facts about segregation out loud in class. Those who wanted to read sentences from the whiteboard could read for the rest of the class, because this is highly motivating for some of the students. A discussion of English vocabulary began quite quickly, when the use and meaning of the word "segregation" was discussed in both English and Norwegian. After some discussion the class agreed that it is better to use the phrase "etnisk skille" as a Norwegian translation, rather than the commonly used translation "raseskille". The argument is that the Norwegian use of the word race is an outdated word based on what modern racial theories has concluded with, thus that the separation of race is none-existing then discussing human beings, because our race are Homo Sapiens. This is a topic they also have discussed in their social studies.
Discussions like this can be useful, but in my opinion the teacher has to know the group of students well for it to be successful. After discussing we listened to an audio recorded text about Rosa Parks' protest and bus boycott. They listened to the text at the same time as they follow the text with their index-finger. Hearing the words and seeing how they are written in the text. By co-operating with their learning partner, the students discussed the content of the text in pairs, followed by a group discussion in class and English video clips about the topic. The aim of this strategy is to activate a general knowledge about the topic, before diving further into the language.
Now, the vocabulary activity. Let's play ALIAS! I printed out and laminated cards with English lexical words from the text we listened to, called Segregation. The cards have a list of five English words and a definition or a description of the word. The students work in pairs with their learning partners, taking turns describing the word without pronouncing the word. The other student guesses until he or she gives up or guess the correct word. By playing a game like this, the student who explains the word needs to read and to produce oral output. The use of the word needs to be understood and the meaning must be described. Knowledge of English synonyms will be activated, if the student can come up with any. The student who listens gets input and practices listening as a skill, in addition activating an existing vocabulary and a newly learned vocabulary for guessing. Producing output. Many students think this way of practicing new words can be a lot of fun!
Three recycling activities of the vocabulary activity. As a further development of the vocabulary given in the Alias card, I could give the students the three following activities.
Now, the vocabulary activity. Let's play ALIAS! I printed out and laminated cards with English lexical words from the text we listened to, called Segregation. The cards have a list of five English words and a definition or a description of the word. The students work in pairs with their learning partners, taking turns describing the word without pronouncing the word. The other student guesses until he or she gives up or guess the correct word. By playing a game like this, the student who explains the word needs to read and to produce oral output. The use of the word needs to be understood and the meaning must be described. Knowledge of English synonyms will be activated, if the student can come up with any. The student who listens gets input and practices listening as a skill, in addition activating an existing vocabulary and a newly learned vocabulary for guessing. Producing output. Many students think this way of practicing new words can be a lot of fun!
Three recycling activities of the vocabulary activity. As a further development of the vocabulary given in the Alias card, I could give the students the three following activities.
- Work in pairs. Write 5-10 complete English sentences where you use at least one word per sentence. We'll go through some sentences on the board.
- Work in pairs. Read the sentences you have written out loud in English, one by one. Your partner translates the sentences into Norwegian out loud. You'll help eachother.
- Individually. Open the collocational dictionary Ozdic, search the words on your Alias card and find two other ways each word could be used in "word chunks" in the English language. Write one new sentence for each word on your card, where you use a collocation from Ozdic.