TCPD 4 --- TM

Student: Virginia Pagnutti Date: 28/09/09

TEACHING VOCABULARY

What I find more useful to enhace vocabulary in primary

school children are games like Memo Test, and activities that
associate the written word with what it represents through some
kind of visual aid. In my opinion, these types of activities
consolidate the following types of knowledge:

• Receptive knowledge: aural / decoding.

• Memory.
• Conceptual knowledge.
• Phonological knowledge.
• Orthographic knowledge.

Furthermore, Cameron says that “vocabulary

devevelopment is not just learning more words but is also
importantly about expanding and deepening word knowledge.”
This concept refers to a recycling mechanism through which
students meet the words at different moments and in different
contexts during the learning process. In that way, meeting words
again and again help students develop other types of knowledge
(grammatical, collocational, pragmatic, connotational and
metalinguistic). Then, it can be said that word knowledge is a
matter of degree rather than all or nothing.

With regard to vocabulary teaching and learning in primary

school, it is also important to bare in mind that children change in
how they can learn words. Cameron says that “Whereas the very
young learners will learn words as collections, older children are
much more able to make connections between the words they
learn and to use the paradigmatic organisation of words and
concepts as a help in vocabulary learning.”