Ways of teaching Vocabulary Using Text
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
1 like•1,910 views
This document describes an effective way to teach vocabulary using reading material and stories. It advocates avoiding dictionaries in the classroom and minimizing teacher explanations so students must work to understand meanings themselves. When teaching vocabulary from a story, the teacher should ask questions to help students explore word meanings and relationships between ideas. Relating words to students' own lives personalizes learning. By choosing engaging stories and facilitating discussion, the teacher can help students learn vocabulary through questioning, guessing, and applying their understanding in new contexts in a memorable way.
More Related Content
What's hot
What's hot (20)
Viewers also liked
Viewers also liked (16)
Similar to Ways of teaching Vocabulary Using Text
Similar to Ways of teaching Vocabulary Using Text (16)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Ways of teaching Vocabulary Using Text
- 1. Ways of Teaching Vocabulary Using Reading Material With Andrew Weiler http://strategiesinlanguagelearning.com http://languagelearningunlocked.com
- 2. Learning Vocabulary There are many ways to teach and learn vocabulary However, we need to make sure that the way we do it is going to help our learners get to their destination
- 3. What is our aim? Teachers in fact have to do more than just teach vocabulary - Help students learn vocabulary - Help them become better learners - Inspire them to want to become better
- 4. What holds learners back? One of the biggest factors is doing something the wrong way Results of that are: progress is slow can end up believing that you are not capable can giving up - because progress is so slow and you believe you have no ability
- 5. Vocabulary with no Dictionary Dictionaries have a place, but not in the classroom. Why? By using them it discourages students from: - asking questions in L2 - thinking about the overall meaning - discussing the meaning in L2 - examining the grammar for clues - examining the context for clues - guessing
- 6. Minimal Teacher Explanation Most teachers have a habit of explaining what students don’t understand. Why is it better to avoid this if possible? Students can become teacher dependent Students are not given the chance or encouraged to work it our for themselves Much better to empower students with strategies so they can work it out for themselves Helps us as teachers to think more about what we can do to empower students
- 7. At the lower levels What are some keys to helping learners with vocabulary at the lower levels? - make sure that the vocabulary is mainly at the level of their perception - remember aim B from slide 2, namely that we are there to help them become better learners not just to learn one piece of vocabulary
- 8. At the higher levels Coming to the more practical side to today’s tutorial. Key: We want learners to learn more than just one word at a time – - to ask questions in L2 - to think about the overall meaning - to discuss the meaning in L2 - to examine the grammar for clues - to examine the context for clues - to guess the meaning of the word - to apply what they learn, immediately * develop effective language learning strategies
- 9. Story excerpted from Cynthia Kersey's, Unstoppable. www.unstoppable.net Some people bring out the best in you in a way that you might never have fully realized on your own. My mom, Ruby Lloyd Wilson, was one of those people," says Kemmons Wilson, founder of the Holiday Inn hotel chain.
- 10. 1a Origins and the Use Realized – Similar to in meaning…. Function of “ize” Bring this into their life with questions like What have you realized / what do you know? How did you realize it? Founder – where does this word come from? Who founded ……..? When? How? Who was the founder of …….?
- 11. 2 Most people called her Doll. My father died when I was nine months old, making her a single mother and a widow at the age of eighteen. While I was growing up, there were times when we had so little money that we had to live on a few pounds of dried butter beans for a week at a time. While food was scarce, my mother's love and devotion were abundant. Each night, she sat me on her lap and spoke the words that would change my life, 'Kemmons, you are destined for greatness and you can do anything in life if you're willing to work hard enough to get it.’
- 12. 2a Questions Scarce – Was there a lot of food around? So…. Look at previous sentence. What are things in your life that are scarce – Widow – (what are you called if your husband dies?) Why do you become a widow? When do you become a widow? What is a man called if he loses his wife?
- 13. 3 At fourteen, I was hit by a car and the doctors said I would never walk again. My mother took a leave of absence from her job at a meat-packing plant and moved into my hospital room to care for me. Every day, she spoke to me in her gentle, loving voice, reassuring me that no matter what those doctors said, I could walk again if I wanted to badly enough. She drove that message so deep into my heart that I finally believed her. A year later, I returned to school - walking on my own.
- 14. 3a Similar meanings (Meat packing) Plant Okay…any ideas of other examples of each What is another word for this word? So what is the difference? She drove that message so deep into my heart that I I finally believed her. Why did he end up believing her? How did she drive the message so deep? What else can you drive deep…what is the result?
- 15. 4 When the Great Depression hit, my mom lost her job like millions of others. I was seventeen, and against Doll's wishes, I left school to support the both of us. At that moment, it became my mission in life to succeed for my mother's sake, and I vowed never to be poor again.
- 16. 4a Alternate Uses, Personalise Hit What can be hit? Why use hit here? Vowed Another word? Why did she vow? What is the difference between 2 words? When else do we vow?
- 17. 5 Over the years, I experienced varying levels of business success. But the real turning point occurred on a vacation I took with my wife and five kids in 1951. I was frustrated at the second-rate accommodations available for families and was furious that they charged an extra $2 for each child. That was too expensive for the average American family, and I was determined to offer them an alternative.
- 18. 5a Levels and subtleties Frustrated – what’s a little frustration called Furious – There are levels AND shades of meaning that can be explored by making words personal with clear examples – providing extended practice
- 19. 6 I told my wife that I was going to open a motel for families with a brand name people could trust that never charged extra for children. I figured about 400 nationwide motels would be the right number so that each one would be within a day's drive of about 150 miles. There were plenty of doubters who predicted failure because there wasn't anything remotely similar to this concept at that time.
- 20. 6a Cause and effect There were plenty of doubters who predicted failure because there wasn't anything remotely similar to this concept at that time What caused what? Why did they they predict failure? Who did they doubt? Why did they doubt him? Cause Process Effect
- 21. 7 "Not surprisingly, Doll was one of my strongest supporters and among the first to pitch in. She worked behind the desk and even designed the room decor for the first hundred hotels. As in any business, we experienced enormous challenges. For years, we paid our employees Christmas bonuses with promissory notes because cash was so short. But with my mother's words deeply embedded in my soul, I never doubted we would prevail. Fifteen years later, we had the largest hotel system in the world, with one of the most recognizable names in the business.
- 22. 7a Exploring Pitch in What did she do? Another word for that? When else would you pitch in? Embedded What was embedded? How was it embedded? Is this a temporary result? What word do you recognize within that word?
- 23. 8 You may not have started out life in the best of circumstances. But if you can find a mission in life worth working for and believe in yourself, nothing can stop you from achieving success.
- 24. 9 Kemmons Wilson founded the first Holiday Inn in 1951 and built it into the largest hotel chain in the world. When he retired in 1979, the company had 1,759 inns in more than fifty countries with annual revenues of $1 billion.
- 25. Summing up The end of the story is a great place to orally go over the story, maybe in paragraphs or maybe in events – giving them a chance to reuse the vocabulary Recycling words, rephrasing meaning, connecting together the ideas in different ways are all natural outcomes in an ESL classroom. Questions like, “What did YOU learn?”, “What was the most important idea for you take this story into a more personal area, providing them opportunities to further explore and use the new vocabulary.
- 26. What did we achieve? By choosing an inspiring story, students are engaged Even if they can’t relate to all of it, everyone should be able to relate to some of it By not going to a dictionary, they have had to ask questions, talk, think, guess, ponder about ideas, grammar, word forms, etc By relating words to their own lives they make the learning personal – Hence, learning vocabulary becomes an interesting, engaging, memory filled event, one not to be forgotten easily.
- 27. Homework! This of course would not be a real lesson unless I gave homework!! So I would like to choose 5 other words from this story that you believe your students would have trouble with. I would like you to write down how you would teach them. Please put your answers in the comment thread under this lesson for ONE of them. This way every one can benefit from what you learned. I will comment where needed, if I believe some input is needed. What I am doing here is not dissimilar to what I do with my students
- 28. Thank you for being here and participating! Good luck with your teaching! Andrew Weiler – www.strategiesinlanguagelearning.com http://languagelearningunlocked.com andrew@strategiesinlanguagelearning.com
Editor's Notes
- Styles of writing.
- What other words could you use for known…..? ; Know and realise is similar but not the same….look at “real” Use of found…….function of er ( teach, teacher; learn, learner)