How to teach Vocabulary:

It is possible to communicate successfully without grammar?

“apple?” with appropriate face expression and intonation to mean: “Can I have an apple please?” or “Do you want an apple?”

So we can see that vocabulary is very important for successful communication.

It may seem simple, but teaching vocabulary is complex. What must we think about when teaching a new word?

• How many meanings has it got, and which are we going to teach?
• Pronunciation and stress.
• Spelling.
• Register: formal or informal.
• Collocations. What other words go with it. i.e. “to listen to”

How to present vocabulary

There are many different ways to teach vocabulary. Best to think about how your students like learning, and do it their way: visually, aurally, kinaesthetically or hands on. It’s best to use more than one way when teaching a new word, as this will create a memory hook. Most important, when you teach a new word, don’t expect students to know it and always remember it. You should provide opportunities to recycle the word on a regular basis. It is this repeating that will put it into the “third” memory part of their brain. Here are some ways of presenting new vocabulary:

• Mime it
• Board work
• Bring in realia
• Draw a picture
• Organic graph
• Show a flash card
• Define it in English, avoiding language that is more complicated than the word you are trying to explain Avoid complex grammar and keep your sentences short. . i.e. grade your language.
• Explain the word in the students' language (or ask them to look it up in their dictionary)
• Use a synonym (a similar word)
• Use an antonym (an opposite word)
• Contextualise the word in a sentence, e.g. "You borrow books from a library.”

You could teach the phonetic first, that way students start off with appropriate pronunciation straight away, rather than getting blocked because of the visual word.

Task:
Think about the best way to teach the following:

Checking:

Presenting a vocabulary item through any of the above ways does not necessarily mean that students have grasped the concept/meaning. Take the word "watch", for example. Simply pointing to the object on your wrist might give students the idea that any time-keeping device is called a watch, without differentiating between clock, alarm clock, etc.

For example, to effectively present the word 'hitch-hike':
Mime the action.
Ask: "What am I doing?
Say: "I'm hitch-hiking."
Check understanding by asking concept check questions.

TEACHER: "Do you know the driver?" STUDENT(S): NO
TEACHER: "Does it cost anything?" STUDENT(S): NO
TEACHER: "Why do people hitch-hike?" STUDENT(S): TO SAVE MONEY
TEACHER: "Is it safe?" etc.

Task
Think of some concept questions for the words you taught above.

Additional vocabulary activities:

1. Brainstorming around a key word: The key word is written in the middle of the board and new vocabulary is written around it; this can be used as a ‘warmer’.
2. After finishing reading comprehension activities, students are given a reading passage and told to underline all the remaining words that they know. Then in pairs and small groups, they check the results.
3. Match unfamiliar words from one column with definitions from another column. The new / unfamiliar words are numbered in column one, and the definitions are mixed up and lettered in column two.
4. Maintain a card system and rotate the cards so that unfamiliar words are constantly reviewed. Each card can include collocations, antonyms, different grammatical forms and meanings. Sentences on the card can illustrate when meanings differ according to the context.

Other activities for practicing new vocabulary:

• Memory games.
• Crosswords.
• Affixation: Using prefixes and suffixes to make new words.
• Gap fill exercises: Selecting appropriate words to insert in sentences.
• Matching the beginnings and the ends of words together like dominoes.
• Matching pictures to words.
• Mind Maps.
• Making words into shapes.
• Hangman.
• Snap for compound words
• Brainstorming
• Flashcards