effective teaching Vocabulary

1. EFFECTIVE VOCABULARY
TEACHING
THE RATIONALE
 With limited lexical repertoire,
communication* is at STAKE. So focus on
communication necessarily implies increased
emphasis on lexis.
(Lewis 1993 :33)
*interpersonal / interpretive / presentational

2. The rationale
Vocabulary is an integral part in all
our teaching activities. Thus, it is
useful / needed in the 4 skills and in
achieving the 5 Cs ( communication,
culture, connections, comparison,
communities).

3. The rationale
Learning a language is sometimes
associated with how much vocabulry
one knows. Words are the very
foundation of learning.
So part of doing justice to our SS is
to incorporate effective vocabulary
strategies into our teaching.

4. THE MAIN OBJECTIVES
 Expose you to the latest trends in terms of
effective vocabulary teaching both theoretically
and practically,
 Learn from each other and exchange
experience and expertise,
 Reflect on your present practices in the hope of
embracing more effective vocabulary teaching
techniques,
 Prove that any practice of teaching vocabulary
that is NOT enlightend by theory or which lacks
theoretical foundations, is likely to be
unsuccessful.

5. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
There is a high correlation between the
size of vocabulary and one’s:
 reading comprehension,
 being a good communicator and a leader,
 conception of the outside world(The limits
of my language mean the limits of my
world),
 horizon of thinking,
 learning experience : enjoyable or
infernal .

6. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
There is also a connection between the
ways we learn things and how we
remember them: if a word is learned
effectively, it is stored / retained firmly
and it is easily retrieved.
 IMPLICATIONS
a- use natural meaningful contexts,
b- teach vocabulary not as single words
but as a self-contained system.
c- vary your strategies to appeal to
different learning styles.

7. What does it mean to know a
word?
 It is a LONG and COMPLEX process which involves the
knowledge of:
 morphology,phonology,
 semantics(definitional knowledge/contextual knowledge )
 Polysemy,
 Syntactic collocations,
 Register,
 Different functions in different contexts,
 Ability to recognize / to use words ( word consciousness )
 Grammar of the word,
 The aquivalent of the word in L1,etc..

8. The THREE stages of presenting
vocabulary
1. PRESENTATION STAGE
At this stage we make use of different WAYS to elicit or present new
vocabulary:
 Illustration (pictures, photographs, real objects(realia),
drawings,multimedia dictionaries );
 Demonstration(i.e. concise definition, examples, acting, miming
(pantomime ) etc.. ;
 Creation of new contexts / situations;
 Guessing meaning from context, word morphlogy etc..;
 Using synonymy, antonymy, homonymy,hyponymy, collocation,
semantic mapping ( scaffolding vocabulary bank) etc..;
 Translation;
 dictionary .
Also worth of note at this presentaional stage is the need for
encouraging note-taking, regular revisions as well as monolingual
dictionary use so as to attain learning AUTONOMY.

9. Criteria of effective presentation
techniques
 not be too long,
Include enough and relevant examples,
Include clear / interesting visuals,
Include clear explanations,
Link to previously learned material,
Be involving, meaningful,
interesting,dramatic, exciting
And link to Lr’s present knowledge.

10. 2- Practice
The rationale is to commit the newly presented word to the
memory by opting for a set of consolidating strategies as
outlined by Oxford(1990)
 SOCIAL STRATEGIES: they help enhance vocabulary learning
through interaction with the other.
 MEMORY STRATEGIES: the new word is linked to previous
knowledge by using semantic mapping which creates schemes
in the mind. The more organized material is, the easier it is to
learn and retrieve. ( Atkinson et al.1993). Also this helps to
overcome the limitations of short term memory.
 COGNITIVE STRATEGIES: these strategies use manipulation or
transformation of the new word, by employing such techniques
as repetition, word lists, note-taking,revision.
 METACOGNITIVE STRATEGIES: these involve CONSCIOUS
planning and evaluating the learnt vocabulary. Here the
learner’s characteristics enter into play.

11. Evaluation stage
Here we want to check retention.This can be done
via activities like :
 Gap-filling,
 Affixation adding,
 Choosing the correct word,
 Sentence completion,
 Matching,
 Crossing the odd one out,
 Rewriting definition,
 Providing example sentences,
 Providing non-examples,
 Creating a scenario to feature the new word,
 Creating silly questions.

12. Recycling newly learnt words
Unless newly learnt words are recycled, they will
soon be forgotten(cyclic/spiral learning). So
repeated exposure is requisite for vocabulary
building and durability.This end can be achieved
through activities like warm up, discussions,
written exercises, communicative tasks etc..
GUESSING
Though it is assumed to be an effective learning
strategy, it is NOT enough because the Lr first
needs to be equipped with an adequte lexical
knowledge before venturing to make use of the
weapon.

13. The role of reading
• Read, read, read and watch(my own quote)
• « provided the contexts are sufficiently rich in
contextual clues, reading can have a favorable
long-term effect on adult vocabulary acquisition.
» Rott ( 1999)
• It is possible for a student to know all the
words in a passage and still not make any
sense of it if he has no prior knowledge of
the topic.

14. What to pre teach ? Some criteria
Words that will be frequently encountered
in other texts and content areas,
Words that are important to
understanding the main ideas,
Words that are not a part of your student’
prior knowledge,
Words unlikely to be learned
independently through the use of context
and/or structural analysis.

15. Agree or disagree?
1. You need to know about 85% of the words of a text in
order to understand it reasonably well.
2. It helps you remember if you learn items in lexical
sets (e.g. colors, animals).
3. The most efficient way to learn new words is through
extensive reading.
4. It helps students remember a word if they first found
it out through ‘inferencing’ from context.
5. Providing translations helps learners to remember
words.
6. We need to review a new about four or five item times
in order for our learners to remember it.

16. You need to know about 85% of the
words of a text in order to understand
it satisfactorily.
 Wrong.
 85% not only does not ensure
understanding the main ideas: it also does
not provide sufficient evidence to help
guess the unknown words (Laufer, 1997a).
 In order to understand a text successfully,
you need to know between 95-98% of the
words (Schmitt, 2008).

17. Extract from Obama’s speech
That is the work we began last year.
Since the day I took office, we
renewed our focus on the
__________ who __________ our
nation. We have made substantial
__________ in our homeland
__________ and disrupted
_________ that threatened to take
American ____________.

18. Extract from Obama’s speech
That is the work we began last year.
Since the day I took office, we
renewed our focus on the _________
who threaten our nation. We have
made substantial __________ in our
homeland security and disrupted
plots that threatened to take
American lives.

19. Extract from Obama’s speech
That is the work we began last year.
Since the day I took office, we
renewed our focus on the terrorists
who threaten our nation. We have
made substantial investments in our
homeland security and disrupted
plots that threatened to take
American lives.

20. The most efficient way to learn new
words is through extensive reading.
 Wrong.
(Zahar et al., 2001; Schmitt, 2008).
We learn new items very slowly through
extensive reading (about one for each
1000 words read).
The value of extensive reading is mainly in
recycling common items and in increasing
reading fluency.

21. It helps you remember if you
learn items in lexical sets (e.g.
colors, animals)
 Wrong.
• It is better to teach words in ‘horizontal’
combinations than in ‘vertical’ lists (e.g.
teach blue with sky and not blue with red,
yellow etc.)

22. Research on learning semantic
sets
Question:
Does it help learners to master a
new set of lexical items if they are
all connected to a central topic
(e.g. clothes, animals)?

23. Learners were presented with two sets of items
from an artificial language, and told their
‘meanings’; one set all related to the same domain,
the other did not.
shirt = moshee
jacket = umau
sweater = blaikel
rain = achen
car = nalo
frog = kawvas

24. RESULT
The learners consistently learned the
unrelated items better.
The research was replicated five
years later with the same results.

25. It helps students remember a word if
they first found it out through
‘inferencing’ from context.
 Wrong, from the point of view of
vocabulary learning.
1. Inferencing is a useful reading skill; but it
does not help the learning of the
‘inferenced’ word.
2. Inferencing is not reliable (Laufer, 1997;
Nassaji, 2003)
3. Inferencing does not aid retention
(Mondria,2003)

26. Research on inferencing
One group was asked to learn words
through inferencing from a ‘pregnant’
context and verifying with a glossary, and
was then given time to memorize. The
other group was simply provided with L1
translations and given time to memorize.
When tested, the two groups achieved the
same scores.
 So it just isn’t efficient to make students
go the ‘long way round’: doesn’t improve
learning.

27. Providing translations helps
learners learn and remember items
Right.
1.Laufer and Girsai (2008): words
practised using translation
techniques L1 were consistently
better retained than those practised
through L2-based exercises.

28. We need to review a new item
about four or five times in order for
our learners to remember it.
 Not enough.
The evidence is that learners usually need at
least TEN (maybe more) meaningful encounters
in order to acquire a new item (Webb, 2007).
CAUTION:
 How far do the coursebooks take care of this vital
learning technique ?

29. WORKSOPS
TASK 1
 Emily’s lesson/ students feedback
 Emily prepared her vocabulary lesson thoroughly. She
taught 12 new words associated with
the topic of ecology and prepared good questions to elicit
words and check their meaning.
During the lesson, she felt things dragged a little bit. After
the lesson, one of the students
told her in the nicest possible way that it seemed to take a
long time to learn the new words.
QESTION :
How could Emily have made the vocabulary lesson
more interesting for her students and improved the
pace?

30. Task 1 Feedback
It seems that Emily elicited each word individually. Twelve
is quite a large
number of words with which to do this and it probably
meant she had a very
long teacher-fronted stage in her lesson. Because all the
words were on the
same topic it might have been better to use a student-
centred worksheet for
the vocabulary. For example, students could have matched
words to definitions
or labelled a diagram or something similar. This means that
learners would be
more actively engaged in learning the words and would
determine their own
learning rate rather than being fully dependent on the
teacher.

31. IMPLICATIONS
There are 3 KEY ways of teaching
vocabulary to students: 1) by means of
teacher-fronted elicitation or explanation;
2) by means of a student-centred
vocabulary task; 3) by getting students to
work out the meaning of new words
they find in a text using the context to
help them.

32. TASK 2
WHAT IS THE BEST WAY ?
Letters a to h describe different teaching or
learning situations that involve vocabulary.
Decide which of the following approaches is
the most suitable, and circle the correct
letter.
Approaches
 T = teacher fronted explanation or elicitation
 S = student-centred task
 C = use the context to work out the meaning

33. Teaching/learning situations Approach
a. 2 new words before a speaking
activity.
T S C
b. 4 words in a reading text that are
not important for an understanding
of the text.
T S C
c. 8 words from a listening text that
are important to an understanding
of the text.
T S C
d. A set of about 10 words based
around a topic or theme (e.g. crime
words).
T S C

34. IMPLICATION
 Your approach to teaching vocabulary will
vary depending on the type of lesson
you are teaching. Course books often use
student-centred tasks before reading
or listening texts. Using the context to
work out meaning is often done after
reading or listening tasks.

35. Task 3
Teacher-fronted vocabulary teaching
 A teacher fronted approach is often used
when the main lesson aim is to
clarify a lexical set of vocabulary. Letters a
to f are steps in the
procedure for eliciting a word. Numbers i to
vi give a rationale for each step.
Put the steps in their correct order in the
table below, then find the rationale that
matches each step.

36. Steps for eliciting a word
a. Check that students understand
the meaning of the word by
asking a concept question.
b. Write up the word on the white
board and provide grammar
information.
c. Drill the word.
d. Provide the word, if students do
not know it
e. Elicit the word
f. Convey the meaning using a
picture or an oral definition.

37. Rationale for each step
i. Students need to learn the spelling and
part of speech of the word.
ii. It is easier for students to start with the
concept rather than the word itself.
iii. If the students clearly do not know the
word, then the teacher has to give it.
iv. This allows students to contribute the
word if they know it.
v. It is a good idea to ensure students are
sure about the meaning of the word
before you ask them to say it.
vi. Because English spelling is often strange,
it is better for students to learn the sound
of the new word before they see how it is
written.

38. Steps Rationale

39. IMPLICATION
There is often more than one way to
convey the meaning of any given
word.
It’s the teacher’s job to choose the
most effective method for each word.

40. Task 4
Getting the meaning across
There are different ways that the
teacher can convey the meaning of a
word in order to try and elicit it. In the
left-hand column below there are 8
words. Letters a to h describe
different methods of getting the
meaning of words across. Choose the
BEST method for each word.

41. Words Methods
1. hop (v)
2. viability (n)
3. exhausted (adj)
4. kiwifruit (n)
5. bitter (adj)
6. imitate (v)
7. skyscraper (n)
8. rarely (adv)

42. Methods for getting meaning
across
a. Showing students a physical object of some
kind – sometimes called ‘realia’.
b. Doing a mime or action.
c. Explaining the meaning by giving an oral
definition of the word.
d. Asking students to think about the opposite
meaning of a word they already know.
e. Using a cline or diagram.
f. Using a picture of something.
g. Telling a short, personal story to give an
example of the meaning.
h. Getting students to read a short written text
that acts as a context for the word.

43. A FOLLOW UP
Thinking about your teaching …
 Try different approaches to teaching vocabulary
in the classroom and note how your students
respond to the different approaches. Try to
evaluate each approach in terms of the clarity for
students and their motivation to learn.
Taking it to the classroom …
 Choose one of the approaches described in the
tasks above that you are less familiar with. Try
using this approach with your students and
evaluate its effectiveness.

44. CONCLUDING REMARKS
helping students develop strong
vocabularies is essential to their
success, both in school and beyond.
Students may forget many of the specific
facts they learn in school, but the words
they learn will serve them as useful
tools for a lifetime. Effective vocabulary
instruction is an attainable goal.

45. A TESTIMONY
“I've come to the frightening conclusioin
that I am the decisive element in the
classroom. It's my daily mood that
makes the weather. As a teacher, I
possess a tremendous power to make a
child's life miserable or joyous. I can be
a tool of torture or an instrument of
inspiration. I can humiliate or humor,
hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my
response that decides whether a crisis
will be escalated or de-escalated and a
child humanized or de-humanized.”

46. WORKSHOP
TASK ONE
In groups, you are invited to addres
the following question:
Q: while teaching a given vocabulary
item, what needs to be taught?

47. SUGGESTIONS
 Splelling
 Pronuncition
 Word formation
 Colocation
 Aspects of meaning: denotation,
connotation, appropriateness
 Semantic field…
What can you add ?

48. WORKSHOP
TASK 2
In groups you are invited to think
of three words in the textbook you
use and think of how the meaning of
these items would best be presented
to learners.

49. SUGGESTIONS
 Concise definition
 Detailed description
 Examples ( hyponoms )
 Illustrations ( pictures, realia..)
 Demonstration
 Context ( story, sentence in which the item occurs )
 Synonyms
 Antonyms
 Colocation
 Translation
 Dramatization / Demonstration(NORY)
 Series / systems / scales ( seasons, ordinals,
measurement)
 Use visual stimulus
 Drawing on analogies ( rain, snow, sleet)
What can you add?

50. WORKSHOPS
TASK 3
A-Drawing up on your own professional
experience in vocabulary teaching, choose
one or two words from the textbook and
work out an effective practice activity
B-Discuss the factors that make it
effective

51. SUGGESTIONS
Word games
Showing a short film / dialogue
without sound
Role play
What can you add ?

52. WORKSHOP:the context
TASK 4
You certainly encourage your students
to use the context as a key to
determine the word meaning though
it sometimes lacks enough clues,and
so it turns out to be unhelpfu.
I invite you to study the following
examples and pinpoit the insights
you get from them.

53. WORKSOPS: CONTEXT
EXAMPLE 1
 Up to this point we have been
referring to the process in which light
energy is used to make food
simply as the food-making process.
But this important process has its
own special name: photosynthesis.

54. WORKSHOPS: CONTEXT
EXAMPLE 2
 Prince Henry started a school for sea
captains. These captains were taught
the science of navigation.That is,
they were taught how to figure out a
ship’s location and the direction and
distance that it travels.

55. WORKSOPS : CONTEXT
EXAMPLE 3
 Cartier found the mouth of a large
river, which he named the St.
Lawrence River. He sailed up
this river until he came to a rapid.
Ships cannot pass across a rapid.
Disappointed, Cartier had to turn
back.

56. WORKSHOPS : CONTEXT
EXAMPLE 4
 Sandra had won the dance contest,
and the audience’s cheers brought
her to the stage for an encore.
“Every step she takes is so perfect
and graceful,” Ginny said grudgingly
as she watched Sandra dance.

57. CONCLUDING REMARKS
helping students develop strong
vocabularies is essential to their
success, both in school and beyond.
Students may forget many of the specific
facts they learn in school, but the words
they learn will serve them as useful
tools for a lifetime. Effective vocabulary
instruction is an attainable goal.

58. A TESTIMONY
“I've come to the frightening conclusioin
that I am the decisive element in the
classroom. It's my daily mood that
makes the weather. As a teacher, I
possess a tremendous power to make a
child's life miserable or joyous. I can be
a tool of torture or an instrument of
inspiration. I can humiliate or humor,
hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my
response that decides whether a crisis
will be escalated or de-escalated and a
child humanized or de-humanized.”