Teaching Vocabulary - Mayra Totena

1. Teaching vocabulary
to children
SCHOOL OF EDUCATION SCIENCES
BA PROGRAM IN SPANISH, ENGLISH AND FRENCH
MAYRA ALEJANDRA TOTENA PARRA - GROUP 20

2. CONTENTS
1. Introductory activity (preliminary questions)
2. Why to teach vocabulary.
3. What vocabulary is.
4. Factors to consider when teaching
vocabulary.
5. How to teach vocabulary.
6. Techniques to teach vocabulary.
7. Summary. 2

3. 3
How do you usually learn vocabulary?
Do you make lists of words?
Do you use images to learn new words?
How do you practice new vocabulary?
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4. Why to teach vocabulary?
Learning formal and informal vocabulary:
● Improve students’ cognitive skills as
analyzing which of two words would be a
better choice in a sentence.
● Improve learner’s overall language.
● Help students’ to develop an
understanding of how words work within a
context.
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consider

5. What is teaching vocabulary?
Learning vocabulary is not about
memorizing lists of words.
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3
repeat
Teaching vocabulary is teach a word or group of useful and
meaningful words which are of interest to students into a context.
The students’ also need to acquire vocabulary learning strategies in
order to discover by their own the meaning of new words they hear
and see in real situations.

6. Factors to consider when teaching
vocabulary.
AGE
According to students’ ages there are topics
that they find interesting, so it is important
to teach useful words for them to express.
CONTEXT
Learning new vocabulary should be
integrated into teaching the four skills:
listening, speaking, reading and writing.
Activities must have a specific context or
situation.
MOTIVATION
Learning vocabulary should be
interesting to students.
Teacher must stimulate student
motivation and also help learners to
remain interested in the lesson.
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LANGUAGE LEVEL
Have they studied english before?
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7. How to teach
vocabulary?
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👧

8. How to teach vocabulary?
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Emphasize both direct and indirect teaching.
DIRECT INSTRUCTION: Teaching words and their
meaning.
INDIRECT INSTRUCTION: Teaching strategies to help
students to figure out the meaning of words on their own.

9. How to teach vocabulary?
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Teach vocabulary words before a
new activity.
The lesson is focusing on the pre-teaching of
vocabulary items that learners will need in a reading or
listening activity.
This pre-teaching must be creative in order to stimulate
students interesting.

10. How to teach vocabulary?
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Context clue is a strategy to guess
the meaning of a word from the
context.
There are times, especially when
reading, when context clues do
not help students to figure out the
meaning,
Teach how to use context clues appropriately.

11. How to teach vocabulary?
11
Present multiple exposures to new vocabulary items
A new word should appear many times in different
situations for students to remember it.
MULTI-SENSORY VOCABULARY INPUT
● Games
● Sing songs
● Drawing activities

12. How to teach vocabulary?
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Give opportunities for deep
processing of vocabulary
items.
Personalizing vocabulary
lessons help students to relate
the words to their own lives,
using words in contexts which
are meaningful to them.

13. How to teach vocabulary?
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Teach students to use dictionaries.
Teachers can teach students to use a
picture dictionary for children where
words are grouped into different
categories.
Teachers must teach the students that
there are different meanings according
to the most common use and context.

14. Techniques to
teach
vocabulary.
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👦

15. Personalization
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Ask children questions that will help them to relate new
words to their own lives.

16. Word for the day
Students can also bring a
new word related to the
subject.
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Select a specific word you will
focus on each day.

17. Categories
Words of different categories
that students have to classify.
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List and images of words related
to a subject.

18. Mystery words
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Children give creative answers to find the missing word.
Teacher could write, read or say the sentences.

19. Concentration
Games
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Play concentration games with new
vocabulary words.
Teacher could use pictures or
word cards and also sentences for
matching information.

20. Summary
● Vocabulary development can take place as part of a four
skills program.
● Provide strategies to learn new vocabulary is as important
as teach vocabulary directly in class.
● Vocabulary must be contextualized and must be related to
a subject or activity.
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🔑

21. References
LINSE C. (2005.). Teaching vocabulary to young learners. In Practical English Language Teaching:
Young Learners. Mc-Graw Hill Companies, Inc.
DICTIONARY.COM. (2019). What Are Context Clues? - Everything After Z by Dictionary.com.
Retrieved 10 October 2019, from https://www.dictionary.com/e/context-clues
PLANET, L. (2019). School Word List Worksheet for 4th - 6th Grade. Retrieved 10 October 2019,
from http://lessonplanet.com/teachers/school-word-list
Maven.com, E. (2019). Intermediate Sentence Completion Exercise 11. Retrieved 10 October 2019,
from
https://www.englishmaven.org/HP6/Intermediate%20Sentence%20Completion%20Exercise%2
011.htm
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22. 22
Thanks!