Teaching Vocabulary

Pronouns verbs adjectivesAdverbsconjunctions preposition

Words and word classes

Content words are the ones that carry the information

Grammatical words are words that contribute to the grammatical structure

UnderstandUnderstandingUnderstoodMisunderstanding

Affixation

Once againThe biggest threat

Collocations

I like it A place like that

Homonyms

Meat and meet

Homophones

Tale and tail

Live concert

Homographs

I live in Norway

age

Synonyms

old

Young

antonyms

old

Police officer is a occupation

Hyponyms

Occupations

Police officer Firefighter

Co-Hyponyms

Christmas

Christmas eveChristmas tree

LightsCarols

Lexical fields

We have to learn it at two

levelsForm and meaning

How are words

learned?

Form means knowing the written and

spoken form of a word.

Form

Meaning refers to the meaning of the words and how they

are used.

Meaning

Knowing the 200O most frequent words

in the English language provide

familiarity with 9 of every 10 words of spoken and written

English

Most frequent words

Short term memoryWorking memory

Long term memory

Words are stored randomly in our

brains

Short term memory: retains the information for a few seconds

Working memory: retaining long enough to perform operations

Long term memory: it can be compared to a filing system

Information can be ensured in our brains through:RepetitionPersonal organizingImagingMotivationAttentionAffective depth

Forgetting words

At the beginning 80 % of the words are forgotten within 24 hours and it gradually slows down.

Form related: My girlfriend is very hungry with me

Meaning related: I like to see the TV

Mistakes

PronunciationSpellingGrammarLengthMeaningRange

Things that make learnig difficult

The optimum number of words studied at

one time

Difficult words: small list sizes

Easy words :large list sizes

Repeating aloud helps retention better than Repeating silently and even repeting aloud with written recall. Seibert(1927)

Incidental Learning

Intentional Learning

Sources of words

Monoligual dictionaries are encouraged more than bilingual dictionaries (Hartman 1991)

Translation : very economical

Illustrating: concrete words

Explaining meaning: through examples, synonyms, full definition

How to present vocabulary

Vocabulary exercises

Vocabulary exercises

Affixation errors: I felt unsatisfy.Compounding errors: I took a two floor bus and crossed the city in the highest floor.Error of multi -word units: we have also a buses network.Collocation errors: I don’t like when they do mistakesPhrasal verbs error: Don’t get up youIdiom error: I don’t like to blow my own horn

Error Categories

A Syllabus should be organized around meanings.

The most frequent words.

Word typically co-occurs with other words.

The Lexical Approach

The sentences I don’t understand and I don’t know are learned before students have been taught the grammar rules of the simple present

Teaching lexical chunks

Testing VocabularyMultiple choice test

Conceptualized multiple choice test

Gap fill test

Production Vocabulary test

Vocabulary Notebooks

Language Learning Theories

PersonTask

ContextStrategy

Method and Approaches in

vocabulary learning

Grammar Translation Method

It received criticism because it neglected the learning of realistic and oral language

The Direct Method

Use of every day vocabulary

Grammar is taught inductively

Teaching points were introduced orally.

The Natural Approach

acquisition will not take place without comprehension of vocabulary (Krashen)

The Audio-Lingual Method

Items are selected according to its simplicity and familiarity and new words are introduced through drills

False Assumptions

All words have an equivalent in other languages.

A word is a single meaning unit.

All words have a real and basic meaning and others are figurative.

Traditional vocabulary lists rarely provide context, students are thus unprepared to use the words they have learned in isolated units in any approximation to authentic communication (Wilga Rivers)