A slideshow about the basic aspects on teaching vocabulary.

1. TEACHING
VOCABULARY

2. WHAT IS VOCABULARY?
 Vocabulary is all the words we have or teach the students to create new
language.
 English vocabulary is complex, with three main aspects related to form,
meaning and use, as well as layers connected to the root of individual words.
 Teaching vocabulary involves lexical phrases and knowledge of English
vocabulary and how to learning it.
 So vocabulary can be defined as the words of a language, including single
items and phrases or chunks of several words which covey a particular
meaning, the way individual words do.

3. WHAT IS VOCABULARY?

4. WORDS A COMPLEX PHENOMENON
Here is a sentence that, at first glance, consists of twenty of words:
I like looking for bits and pieces like old second-hand record
players and doing them up to look like new.
 Not 20 different words. (“and” and “like” are repeated )
 look – looking (2 different words or diferent forms?)
 second-hand / record players (2 words but one oncept)
 look for – do up (2 words but one meaning)

5. WORDS A COMPLEX PHENOMENON
A word is a more complex phenomenon than at first it might appear.
 words have different functions, some carrying mainly
grammatical meaning, while others bear a greater informational
load
 the same word can have a variety of forms
 words can be added to, or combined, to form new words
 words can group together to form units that behave as if they
were single words

6. WORDS A COMPLEX PHENOMENON
 many words commonly co-occur with other words
 words may look and/or sound the same but have quite different
meanings
 one word may have a variety of overlapping meanings
 different words may share similar meanings, or may have opposite
meanings
 words can have the same or similar meanings but be used in
different situations or for different effects

7. WHAT DOES IT MEAN KNOWING A WORD?
Knowing a word means:
• having the ability to recognise it in its spoken and written forms.
• knowing its different meanings.
• knowing its part of speech [eg. a noun, a verb]
• being able to pronounce it properly
• being able to use it correctly within a sentence in an appropriate
grammatical form
• for technical words, recognizing it in context
• being able to recognize different types of English.

9. IDENTIFYING WORDS
 Vocabulary is not only “a body of single words”.
 According to the LEXICAL APPROACH developed by Michael Lewis,
which is a way of analyzing and teaching language based on the
idea that it is made up of lexical units rather than grammatical
structures.
 The units are words, chunks formed by collocations, and fixed
phrases.

10. IDENTIFYING WORDS
 Vocabulary consists of:
 Single words: book, pen…
 Compound words (words combined to form new words): record
player, time saver….
 Multi-word units or lexical chunks which are more or less fixed:
the way, upside down, out of the blue, bits and pieces.
 Collocations or word partnerships which are less fixed: break a
record, set a record, world record, formal education, formal

11. IDENTIFYING WORDS
Word classes
These are words which play
different roles in a text.
nouns, pronouns, verbs,
adjectives, adverb, prepositions,
conjunction and determiner
Word families
it comprises the base word plus
inflexions and its most common
derivates.
Play – re-play
play-er
play-ful

12. IDENTIFYING WORDS
Content words
Words which carry a high
information load
nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverb.
Function words
Words which contribute to the
grammatical structure of a
sentence.
Pronouns , prepositions,
conjunctions, determiners

13. IDENTIFYING WORDS
Synonyms
These are words that share the same
meaning:
old, ancient, elderly, aged, antique,
etc.
However, synonymous words are not
always used in the same way:
an old / ancient city
but not an *elderly car.
Antonyms
Antonyms are words opposite in
meaning to other words. For example:
Old - - - new and young
However,
the opposite of an old man is a young
man, but the opposite of an old city is a
new one not a *young city”

14. IDENTIFYING WORDS
Homonyms
These are words that share
the same form but have
unrelated meanings:
I like looking … / It looked
like..
Go to the fair. / It’s a fair price.
Polysemes
These are words that have multiple
but related meanings. Examples:
The house is at the foot of the
mountains.
One of his shoes felt too tight for
his foot.

15. IDENTIFYING WORDS
Homophones
Words that have the ´same
sound´ but different spelling.
tail - - - - tale
meet - - - - meat
Homographs
Words that have the ´same writing´
but different pronunciation.
live - - - live
read - - - read (past simple)

16. IDENTIFYING WORDS
Hyponyms and superordinate terms
A superordinate term acts as an ‘umbrella’ term that includes within it other
words with related meanings.
The words that are related in meaning with the superordinate terms are called
hyponyms.

17. IDENTIFYING WORDS
Lexical field
Words that have the same thematic relationship.
Christmas-themed- snow, icicles and fireplace

18. HOW IS VOCABULARY LEARNED?
 Knowing a word involves knowing its form and its meaning.
 The mind seems to words neither randomly nor in the form of a
list, but in a highly organized and interconnected fashion called the
mental lexicon.
 the brain is better disposed to begin search via the meaning based
lexicon than the form based one.

19. HOW IS VOCABULARY LEARNED?
 Acquire knowledge requires not only labelling but categorizing.
 The second language learner simply maps the word directly onto
the mother tongue equivalent.
 It may be the case that , for a good many second language
learners, most of the words in their L2 lexicon are simply
acquaintances.

20. HOW ARE WORDS REMEMBERED?
 Short term store (STS) : store only few seconds.
 Working memory: cognitive tasks such as reasoning, learning,
and understanding depend on working memory
 Long term memory: as a kind of filling system.
 Some strategies to develop memory are repetition, retrieval,
spacing, pacing, use, cognitive depth, personal organizing,
imaging, mnemonics, motivation, attention.

21. HOW ARE WORDS REMEMBERED?
Repetition
Repeated rehearsal of the
organized material while it is still
in working memory.
When reading, words stand a
good chance of being
remembered if they have been
met at least seven times over
spaced intervals.
Retrieval
Retrieving a word from memory
makes it more likely that the
learner will be able to recall it
again later. For example: using the
new word in written sentences, 'oil
the path' for future recall.

22. HOW ARE WORDS REMEMBERED?
Spacing
It is better to distribute memory
work across a period of time than
to mass it together in a single
block.
The aim is to test each item at the
longest interval at which it can
reliably be recalled.
Pacing
Learners have different learning
styles, and process data at
different rates, so ideally, they
should be given the opportunity
to pace their own rehearsal
activities.

23. HOW ARE WORDS REMEMBERED?
Use
Putting words to use, preferably
in some interesting way, is the
best way of ensuring they are
added to long-term memory.
It is the principle popularly known
as Use it or lose it.
Cognitive depth
The more decisions the learner makes
about a word, and the more cognitively
demanding these decisions, the better
the word is remembered. For example, a
relatively superficial judgement might
be simply to match it with a word that
rhymes with it: e.g., swerve. A deeper
level decision might be to decide on its
part of speech (noun, adjective, verb,

24. HOW ARE WORDS REMEMBERED?
Personal organizing
The judgements that learners make
about a word are most effective if they
are personalised.
For example students who read a
sentences aloud containing new words,
will have a beter recall tan just read
them silently. Or better if they use the
words to make their own sentences.
Imaging
Best of all were subjects who were given
the task of silently visualizing a mental
picture to go with a new word.
Other tests have shown that easily
visualized words are more memorable
than words that don't immediately
evoke a picture.

25. HOW ARE WORDS REMEMBERED?
Mnemonics
These are 'tricks' to help retrieve items
or rules that are stored in memory and
that are not yet automatically
retrievable.
The best kinds of mnemonics are often
visual.
The most well-attested memory
technique is the keyword technique.
Motivation
Simply wanting to learn new words is
no guarantee that words will be
remembered. The only difference a
strong motivation makes is that the
learner is likely to spend more time on
rehearsal and practice, which in the end
will pay off in terms of memory.

27. HOW ARE WORDS REMEMBERED?
Affective depth
Related to the preceding point, affective
information is stored along with cognitive
data, and may play an equally important
role on how words are stored and recalled.
It is important to make affective
judgements, such as Do I like the sound
and look of the word? Does the word
evoke any pleasant or unpleasant
associations?
Attention/arousal
You can't improve your vocabulary if
you don’t have some degree of
conscious attention. A very high degree
of attention (called arousal) seems to
correlate with improved recall.
Words that trigger a strong emotional
response, for example, are more easily
recalled than ones that don't.

28. THE IMPORTANCE OF TEACHING VOCABULARY
 to provide students with a tool that will allow them to become
independent readers.
 to pronounce and understand new words they encounter ass they read.
 to qualify them to communicate with their teacher in English.
 in reading, writing, and discussion lessons teachers are required to
introduce new vocabulary items.
 Therefore, they have to have the sufficient skills to present those new
words.