Teaching vocabulary technologies

TEACHING VOCABULARY TECHNOLOGIES
Ways of presenting vocabulary
Look at the following ways of presenting vocabulary and answer the questions that follow.
Classroom activity 1.
The teacher shows the class pictures of different types of transport. For each picture the teacher asks the class if they know what it is, and if not says the word, and then the class say it together before the teacher moves on the next picture. There are six pictures in all. Afterwards, the teacher goes through the picture again – the class say the word and the teacher writes it on the board.
1. Who gets the opportunity to say the word first?
2. Would this activity suit high level learners or low levels?
3. As well as pictures, are there any other types of visual stimulus a teacher can use?
Classroom activity 2.
The teacher distributes words on cards to each student. For example, one student has arrogant on a card and another has self-confident. Another has terrorist and someone else has freedom-fighter and so on. The learners circulate, looking at each other’s words and trying to find their “partner”. When they do, they stick them on the board next to each other. There is a space on the board marked “words we don’t know”. The techer deals with these at the end of the activity and checks the understanding of the other words.

1. 
   What is the difference between a terrorist and a freedom-fighter? What is the difference between arrogant and self-confident?
   
2. 
   What other sort of word relationships could this activity work with?
   

Classroom activity 3.
The teacher gives a list of words to the learners all related to money – invest, earn, owe, save, waste and so on. The teacher also supplies a list of definitions and the learners try to match the words to the definitions.

1. 
   If the teacher were teaching concrete nouns to a lower level class, what could replace definitions?
   
2. 
   What are the advantages of teaching words together that are thematically linked?
   

Ways of practising vocabulary
Classroom activity 1.
The teacher divides the class into pairs. The students have similar pictures of a road/traffic scene. However, there are several differences and the learners have to describe (not to show) their picture to each other in order to find them.
The activity will practice the vocabulary included in the picture. What grammar patterns might the vocabulary combine with?


Classroom activity 2.
The teacher gives the learners sentences with a word or words, missing. The learners have to choose the best word for each gap. For example,
In my country this person is a hero because he was a great ____________ (freedom-fighter/terrorist)
How could this activity be adapted to make it more difficult?

Classroom activity 3.
When the teacher teaches new words, she writes them on a slip of paper and put them in a bag in the classroom. When she has a few minutes at the end of a lesson, she goes to the bag and re-elicits some of the words from the learners. Sometimes she divides the class into groups and gives each group several words from the bag and gives the groups time to make up a story incorporating the given words. After having the srories, there is feedback and correction.
What are some of the advantages of this technique?