NOW, SHALL WE FINISH THE SPEAKING AND LISTENING ACTIVITIES?
Let’s check the text on pages 166 & 167 and let’s share the
materials/ ideas about the topic of respect and
discrimination.
Now let’s do the Speaking Activities
Discuss (P. 165)
Useful language + discuss (P. 171 Ex 18 & 19)
Useful language + discuss (P. 172 Ex 20a & b)
Discuss (P. 172 Ex 21a)
Exam Practice: Individual long turn (P. 173 Ex 26)
CORPUSBased on Teaching Vocabulary by Jeanne Mc Carten
How do we help our students in their learning process?
5
Work individually and then share in groups.
Write down 3 words you learnt in this course
Any coincidences? Write down 3 expressions/ phrases you
learnt in this course Any coincidences?
Write down 3 concepts you learnt in this course
Any coincidences?
Let’s focus on learning and teaching vocabulary.
Interesting data
Written Writen Spoken 0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
Nº of most frequent words a learner knowsNº of words a learner can understand in an average text
Corpus Frequency: Which words and expressions are most frequent
and which are rare Differences in speaking and writing: Which vocabulary
is more often spoken and which is more often written Contexts of use: The situations in which people use certain
vocabulary Collocation: Which words are often used together Grammatical patterns: How words and grammar combine to
form patterns Strategic use of vocabulary: Which words and
expressions are used to organize and manage discourse
What do we need to teach about vocabulary?
The meaning(s) of the word Its spoken and written forms What “word parts” it has (e.g., any prefix, suffix, and “root” form) Its grammatical behaviour (e.g., its word class, typical
grammatical patterns it occurs in) Its collocations Its register What associations it has (e.g., words that are similar or opposite
in meaning) What connotations it has Its frequency
To these we could add whether a word has a strategic use and if it has any special uses that are different in registers such as conversation or academic writing. So we can already see how important it is to use a corpus in order to give our learners all the right information they might need to master a word or phrase.
It would be unrealistic to teach everything there is to know about a word the first time it is presented to students – and any such attempt would make for some very tedious lessons. Obviously we need to make choices about how much we teach on a first presentation.
The choices we make are influenced by factors such as frequency, usefulness for the classroom, and “learnability” – how easy the item is to learn (and teach!).
FOCUS ON VOCABULARY: N…ing
Which words should be learnt What each item is, i.e.:a word, a phrase, a
collocation What its purpose is: active use or passive
recognition
OFFER VARIETY
Pictures Sounds Stories Conversations
Webpages Questionnaires News reports …………………..
“Materials should achieve impact” (Tomlinson,1998)
Offering variety means catering for different learning styles
Repeat & Recycle
Most reseachers agree that: Repeating aloud helps more than
silently Having to retrieve a word is more
effective than exposure
From 5 to 20 encounters may be necessary
Therefore: Review vocabulary as often as possible in activities that have students actively recall words and produce them rather than merely see or hear them.
Provide opportunities to organise vocabulary
Real-world group Language-based group Personalised groups Any other?
Tips:
Make vocabulary learning personal, but be aware of the learners’ age
Don’t overload them Help learners become independent:
Vocabulary notebooks Research tools Everyday usage
We need to help students understand that learning is a gradual process that takes place in small, manageable increments over time, and to encourage them to seek additional information on their own, personalizing the learning experience and tailoring it to their own specific needs.
You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives.
~Clay P. Bedford