1. Bags of Fun with
Vocabulary
Catherine Morley
British Council, Alcalá de Henares
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2. Session aims
- WHY use vocabulary bags
- WHAT exactly is a vocabulary bag.
- WHAT information do learners need to know
about a new word / collocation
- WHEN, HOW and WHERE should I use
vocabulary bags
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5. WHY
How many time do students have to ‘meet’ a new
word before they are able to use it themselves
when speaking?
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6. WHY
- Minimum 7 encounters needed (Woolard, 2000).
Other experts say up to 16 meetings required
(Koprowski, 2006)
- Vocab bags help to keep track of vocabulary for
recycling
- Useful resource to fill a few spare minutes at the
beginning / end of class
- Learners can choose what vocabulary they want
to put in the vocab bag
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7. WHAT
- Content more important than presentation.
- Set it up in a way which minimises extra work
created for you, the teacher!
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8. WHAT
What other information about a word might it be
useful to include on vocabulary cards?
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9. WHAT
Some information you might include on vocabulary
cards
- Part of speech
- Collocations
- Stress
- Example sentence
- Register
- Phonemic script
- Other forms of the same word (verb, noun, adjective etc.)
BUT there’s no need to be a perfectionist!
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10. WHAT
Who writes the words on papers for the
vocabulary bag? The teacher or the students? Or
both at different times?
Where do the words come from?
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11. - In each class, give a different student the
responsibility for recording new vocabulary from
that day’s lesson
- OR at the end of the class, ask students to decide
what vocabulary from the lesson they would like
to include in the vocabulary bag
- Students in pairs can work to write example
sentences on the cards (and teacher checks
them)
- You could also do this at the beginning of the next
lesson
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12. WHEN
‘Principle of expanding rehearsal’
- Review new words shortly after they are presented, then
at increasingly longer intervals
- To stimulate long-term memory, ideally words would be
reviewed
-5-10 minutes after class
-24 hours later
-one week later
-one month later
-six months later.
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16. Practical implementation:
• Review new vocabulary at the end of each class
• Set homework that involves using the new vocabulary, for
‘real’ communication when possible
• Regular (every lesson? every two lessons?) use of the
vocabulary bag
• Include speaking / writing tasks that require use of
vocabulary from earlier units, not just the current unit
• On longer courses, have a vocabulary bag ‘clear out’ after
a few months, when students decide which words from
the vocabulary bag they need to keep practising, and
which they want to get rid of.
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17. Talk about a friend you’ve known for a long time. You
could mention:
- how long you’ve known this person, and how you met
- what this person looks like
- what kind of clothes this person usually wears (look at page
148 to help you)
- what this person is like (personality) and why you get on so
well
- how often you see this person and what you like doing
together
Try to speak for at least two minutes, and use at least 3 of
the adjectives / phrases on page 146 of the Student’s
Book.
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18. Record using mobile phone
Or use MailVu:
http://mailvu.com/
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19. save up (p.v.) compulsory (adj.)
a swamp (n.) multi-task (v.)
blackmail (v.) starving (adj.)
an attempt (n.)
sensible (adj.)
blurred (adj.)
a genre (n.)
a billboard (n.)
biased (adj.)
boil (v.)
www.britishcouncil.org 07/03/13
