IH World Resources Bank Seminar Packs

Problems learning and using vocabulary

Jeff Mohamed

International House World Organisation

SEMINAR 1
OUTLINE

Approx Timing 5 minutes 5 minutes 8 minutes 10 minutes 10 minutes 10-15 minutes 5 minutes

Activity Brainstorm: Is vocabulary important?

Sheet(s) No. A1 Why A2 A3 A4 A5 A6 A7

Feedback on brainstorm Demonstration Presentation and practice of two invented words Feedback on demonstration The problems met when trying to use newly acquired vocabulary Groupwork exercise Examples of the complexity of vocabulary Feedback on groupwork Consolidation Handout on categ....orisation of vocabulary problems Optional Mingling activity An example of a recall activity

5 minutes

A8

A1 (Tutor's Use)

BRAINSTORM

1. Ask the participants to discuss in pairs/3s, the questions: Is Vocabulary Important? If so, why? Does a lot of teaching/learning time need to be spent on vocabulary? If so, why? 2. Give participants 3-4 minutes to discuss.

A2 (Tutor's Use)

FEEDBACK ON BRAINSTORM

1. 2.

Elicit major points from participants. Some points: We can't say much without grammar. We cant say anything without words. Students realise this and feel vocabulary is therefore vital. Students tend to assess their progress in terms of new words. English is a very large language in terms of number of words and of lexical items (A lexical item is a word or a meaning. "Make" is one word but several lexical items. "Up" is one word but several lexical items. "Make up" is two words but several lexical items.) It is said that an educated native English speaker 'knows' 50,000 - 250,000 lexical items! "Lexical item" is a much more useful description than "word" because it reflects use more fully. Many people use only a few hundred words, but these words may represent thousands of lexical items. (So word frequency counts and wordlists are often misleading.) There are also a lot of words in English because it comprises two major rootlanguages (Latin/French and Anglo-Saxon). Some people may raise questions of active vs. passive knowledge. This is worth considering briefly here, of course.

3.

Lead into next activity by summarising roughly as follows: Vocabulary is vital, for obvious reasons and because students think it is. There are a lot of lexical items in English, so a lot of teaching/learning time will be needed on vocabulary. Vocabulary also deserves careful treatment and a lot of time spent on it because it is complex.....

PRESENTATION/PRACTICE OF "TO GLAMP"/"SWETHERED")

1. Introduce the items via a short situation eg..... "I was flying back from X last year, when suddenly the engines cut out. The plane went into a dive. How did I feel? Yes, I was terrified. Why? Yes, because I thought it was going to glamp". CHECK CONCEPT/HIGHLIGHT FORM/DRILL MARKER SENTENCE. "It went down and down and down. Then, suddenly the engines restarted, and the plane levelled out. How did I feel? Yes, I was swethered". CHECK CONCEPT/HIGHLIGHT FORM/DRILL MARKER SENTENCE. 2. Write up "to glamp" and "swethered" on whiteboard. 3. Tell participants to write two sentences using each word. The sentences do not have to define the words in any way. 4. While they are doing this, go round noting down sentences to which the words have been used incorrectly (according to the "Parameters of Use", sheet A3/A4). NB Steps 3 and 4 could be carried out orally, with sentences being elicited directly onto whiteboard.

A 3/A 4 GLAMP

(Tutor's Use)

PARAMETERS OF USE OF "TO GLAMP'/'SWETHERED"

Transitive verb =past simple/participle = GLEMPT =to crash or collide (but only of flying objects, not of cars etc.) eg..... The plane glempt last week. =takes preposition "with" (not "into") eg..... The plane glempt with the mountain. =neutral style. Countable noun A GLAMP A crash or a collision (of flying objects) eg..... There was an airglamp yesterday. =takes preposition "with" (not "between") eg..... There was a glamp with a 747 and a 727. =neutral style
SMETHERED

Adjective

=ed form only (no ingform) relieved after escaping death or serious injury (not after escaping less serious danger) eg..... I was swethered when the Juggernaut missed me. =an extremely/absolute adjective so it must be used alone or with eg..... "really"/"totally"/ "completely" (not with eg..... " very "/"extremely "). =neutral style A

Countable noun =A SWIETH = a relief (after escaping death or serious injury) eg..... What a swieth! I thought I was dying. eg..... It was such a swieth to get out! =It is always used as an exclamation, so sentence must end with an exclamation mark.

A 4 (Tutor's Use)

FEEDBACK ON DEMONSTRATION

1. 2. 3.

Write on whiteboard some of the incorrect sentences produced by the participants. Elicit/tell participants what is wrong with each sentence. Discuss why the errors occurred i.e. they understood approximate meaning they understood basic form they made assumptions about the range of meaning/form of past tense/prepositions etc. based on how similar English words operate.

4.

Point out/elicit that students operate in roughly the same way i.e. they assume 'aspects' of a word if they haven't been shown them. (eg..... If not told the past tense of a verb they logically assume it is reg....ular.) However, except at higher levels, they do not have enough similar words in English to base assumptions on. Therefore, they have to draw parallels with their L.1. (eg..... "to crash" in Spanish takes "with", so they assume the same preposition is used in English.)

5.

That implications of this are presumably: Don't assume students have learnt more 'aspects' of a word than you have taught them. Teach as many 'aspects' as you think are useful/important. (This may involve simple things like pointing out that a verb is reg....ular for example.) Use an initial creativity stage after presenting vocabulary, to bring out and let you clarify problems, (This stage might involve nothing more than asking students each to give you a sentence using the word.)

A5 (Tutor's Use)

GROUPWORK EXERCISE

1. Give out copies of the attached sheet "Examples of Vocabulary Problems" (A5)

2. Divide the 'class' into two groups, one to do odd number questions, one to do even numbers.

3. Get the teacher in each group to work in twos and threes.

A5 (For Distribution) EXAMPLES OF VOCABULARY PROBLEMS 1. 2. 3. What problems might eg..... French/Spanish students have with?: "sympathetic" "library" "pretend" Why? What is the opposite of the adjective "light"? What problems are posed by this list? fat plump overweight well-built willowy slim skinny 4. What form, apart from the infinitive, do students need to know of these verbs? light take make sing 5. 6. "Merry Birthday" "rancid bread". Why are these incorrect? Why/How do students produce such phrases? "She took the subway to Marble Arch." "She took the subway to Fifth Avenue." What's the problem here? 7. To reject photograph a reject photographer

What are the problems here? 8. What does a student need to know (apart from meaning) in order to be able to use these words correctly in sentences? to rely to convince 9. Where might you find a sentence like this? "Detach the trunk lead from the leg.... of the chip." 10. Why might students have problems with spelling or pronunciation of the underlined words below? a) b) knife thought wife bought life ought hoof roof drought

c)

manager

baker

grocer

doctor

A6 (Tutor's Use) FEEDBACK ON GROUPWORK Elicit the answer for each problem in turn ANSWERS TO VOCABULARY PROBLEMS 1. These words exist in various Latin languages but with different meanings. They are 'false friends'. Usually the equivalent meanings are: 'sympathetic' = nice 'library' = bookshop 'pretend' = claim Students will also have problems with stress/pronunciation because of L1 interference. 2. "Light" is a polyseme (i.e. it has various meanings). The opposite of one meaning is "dark"; the opposite of another is "heavy". With many words, students need to be taught the relevant antonym (= opposite) at the same time. These words form a ' cline ' (i.e. a set of words representing deg....rees of something - in this case, bodyweight).The problems are: o They are subjective. One person's "fat is another person's "well-built". o They vary in connotation. So, "slim" is a more complimentary way of saying "thin", and "fat" is more perjorative than "plump". o They vary in style. So, "willowy" is a poetic word for "thin , and "skinny" is a colloquial equivalent. They need the past, because they are all irreg....ular verbs. They are examples of incorrect collocation. That is, there is no logical reason why certain words do not go with certain other words, but they don't! Students tend to remember an approximate meaning of words (eg..... "Merry" = "Happy") and then to use these words whenever the meaning is appropriate (eg..... "Merry Christmas" and "Happy Christmas" = "Merry Birthday"). "Subway" is a pedestrian underpass in the first sentence (U.K.). It is the underground in the second (U.S.A.). The stress (and therefore the phonemes) change in some words when the word changes its part of speech, or in different parts of a word- family. They need to know what (preposition, object, construction etc.) follows them. It is an (adapted) extract from a computer manual. So it is an example of "reg....ister" (= job-specific language). This is a good example in that it shows normal words being used in a very specialised manner. They might assume that:

3.

4. 5

6. 7. 8. 9.

10.

a) the plural 'roof is 'rooves'. (It isn't) b) the vowel sound in 'drought' is the same as in the other words. c) 'doctor' ends in '........ er' (as a lot of job names do). A7 (Tutor's Use) CONSOLIDATION 1. Give out the bubble-diagram sheet on "Vocabulary : Practical Linguistic Considerations". (A 7) 2. Point out that each bubble represents one 'aspect' of an item (eg..... Meaning) and includes a list of considerations which may or may not all apply to any particular word. 3. 4. Point out that explanations of terms etc. used are on the back of the bubble-diagram sheet. Mention that we often tend, as teachers, to concentrate on the 'Meaning' aspect at the expense of eg..... the Appropriacy' aspect. This can cause problems for students, particularly at higher levels. Mention that the next seminar will look at the practical problems involved in teaching vocabulary effectively.

5.

MEANING Range 'meaning in idioms'

the coverage of a word. (eg..... "fruit" may include "tomato" in one language but not in another.) A word may mean one thing by itself and some thing quite different when put with certain other words. (eg..... phrasal verbs eg..... a pig of a problem) eg.... You cannot use "Merry" with "Birthday". implication (eg..... Complimentary or pejorative implication.) appropriacy determined by who is communicating, to whom, in which medium (writing or speech) etc. jargon used by people in a line of work talking about that work. major dialect forms which can almost be considered as separate languages (eg..... American English or British English). I have put 'group specific', because slang is usually a sort of dialect.used by one group (age or socio-economic group, for example).

collocation' 'connotation' APPROPRIACY 'style' 'reg....ister' 'varieties' 'slang'

FORM Abbreviation We tend to forget to teach these and to let students invent their own. These may or may not be understood/accepted by native speakers. Standard versions do exist.

LEXICAL RELATIONSHIPS 'converses' words which can be defined only by reference (expressed or implied) to other related words. (eg..... husband/wife, parent/son/daughter.) 'homonym' a word with the same sound (and perhaps spelling) as another but with a different meaning (wood/would) 'homophone ' a word pronounced like another but different in spelling and meaning (so/sew. ) 'homograph a word of same spelling as another but of different meaning. 'lexical set' a logical grouping of related words 'clines' eg..... tiny small middle-sized big enormous. 'ways of doing things' : eg..... walk/swagger/stroll/saunter 'words about a notion': eg.....airport/runway/check-in/hostess. GRAMMAR Nothing difficult here, but note that some features involve 'internal' grammar (i.e. the word changes according to its part of speech/plural tense etc.) while others involve the words grammatical operation in a contest (eg..... certain constructions must follow it, it affects word order).

A 8 (Tutor's Use) (OPTIONAL) MINGLING ACTIVITY This is a mingling/matching activity but slightly more challenging than most, since it involves some creativity. It involves matching sentences containing opposite adjectives. a) Before the session, cut up the word sheet (A 8) into individual words.

b) Give one word to each participant. Give them 30 seconds to think of a sentence (any sentence) including their word. c) Get them all to repeat their sentences at the same time,two or three times.

d) Make them walk round repeating their sentence and listening for the person with the opposite word. e) f) As each person finds their partner, they sit down together. Pick some pairs at random to repeat their sentences.

N.B.

With EFL students you might choose to ask students to listen out for and correct mistakes; or to guess which words were on the cards. With EFL students you might also ask students who finish first to try to put their words/sentences into a short dialogue.

FOR CUTTING UP AND DISTRIBUTING

HAPPY TINY YOUNG SHORT BEAUTIFUL ANGELIC KIND EASY CAREFUL SIMPLE INTERESTING

MISERABLE ENORMOUS OLD LONG UGLY WICKED CRUEL DIFFICULT CARELESS COMPLEX BORING