Reading time: 6.5 minutes
Vaughan Jones has more than 30 years of experience as an EFL Teacher, Trainer and Author. He’s lived and worked in France, Japan and Spain, and has worked to produce a number of coursebooks, including Focus, an English language learning series for upper-secondary students.
In this post he explores some tips and techniques for language teachers to help students improve their ability to remember vocabulary.Ìý
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All learning is remembering, said Plato… or was it Socrates? Anyway, I'm sure all of us agree that memory plays a central role in learning a foreign language and in particular, learning new words. The first two thousand are easy. As research tells us, approximately 80% of almost any text in English is made up of the 2,000 most frequent words.
Students meet these words repeatedly whatever they read or listen to, and whether they like it or not. And presumably they like it. Why? Because we know that repeated exposure is vital for long-term memorization, it effectively means that the first 2,000 words come 'for free'.
But what about the next thousand and the thousand after that? Researchers suggest that a student probably needs to know about 5,000 English words to pass the Cambridge First Certificate Exam and maybe upwards of 10,000 to be considered genuinely C2 level on the CEFR scale. For reference, an educated speaker of English as a first language will probably have a passive vocabulary of around 20,000 words.
What can we do to help our language students learn the thousands of less frequent words in the English language? It's not easy, that's for sure. There is no magic bullet. But here are some thoughts based on my own experience of many years in the classroom.
Sounds obvious, doesn't it? But time is always limited, so make sure that the words you are asking your learners to learn are the most useful, which probably means the most frequent for their particular stage in the learning process.
Usually your coursebook will do this for you. Vocabulary selection in the different levels of Focus is informed by the frequency criteria of the Global Scale of English. So in level 1 you might teach 'silly' (A1) but you wouldn't teach 'preposterous' (C1).Ìý
You never get a second chance to make a first impression. This is as true for words as it is for people. Encountering words for the first time in richly evocative, personalized, meaningful or unexpected contexts can help the memorization process. The more neurological stimulation, the better.
This should be an ongoing 'learner training' aspect of your language teaching. Firstly, encourage students to expose themselves to as much English as possible outside the classroom: music lyrics, tweets, blog posts, vlogs, video clips, extensive reading and listening (including podcasts and spoken word), and watching films and TV series with English subtitles. These are just a few obvious sources.
Secondly, train language students on how to discover meanings and recognize correct usage: guessing from context, using dictionaries effectively or learning basic meanings of high-frequency affixes.
Finally, teach your students different ways of recording vocabulary. Encourage them to create paper or digital flashcards, introduce them to mnemonic systems such as the keyword method or simply explore more creative ways of noting words down.
As you can't guarantee that words outside the top 2,000 will automatically reoccur at conveniently spaced intervals, it's your job to engineer systematic re-encounters with the new words you teach. A coursebook like Focus incorporates frequent recycling of target vocabulary, but it's never enough.
Also, what about all that vocabulary you taught when, for whatever reason, the lesson took a different direction and you went 'off-script' and started scribbling words on the board that weren't even in the coursebook?
My own very low-tech solution to capturing all those words is to institute a class scribe. Students take turns being the class scribe. They are given a blank sheet of paper at the beginning of the lesson and their role is simply to record any new language. This 'data', along with the target vocabulary in my coursebook, becomes my learning corpus. Having a class scribe:
So now I know which words I've taught, I can make sure that I recycle them at regular intervals. How do I do that? By equipping myself with a repertoire of tried-and-trusted 5 to 10-minute activities that can be used as lead-ins, warmers or fillers. Activities that require very little or no preparation and can be adapted to cover a wide variety of different lexical areas. Here are my favorite five.Ìý
Write down 12 to 15 words you want to revise on the board. Ask the students to choose five of the words and write them down. When they've done that, tell the students that you're going to read out dictionary definitions of the words in random order and that they should cross out their words if they think they hear the definition. When they've crossed out all five words, they shout Bingo.ÌýMake sure you keep a record of the word definitions you call out so that you can check the students' answers.
An old favorite. Think of the English vocabulary, pronunciation or grammar point you want to revise. Write five words on the board and ask students which one is the odd one out. The students then explain why. This usually relates to the meaning of the word, so in the following example, the odd one out is dog.Ìý
pinkÌý/ÌýÌýredÌýÌý/ÌýÌýdogÌýÌý/ÌýÌýblueÌýÌý/ÌýÌýyellow
However, you could have any criteria you like, say, the number of syllables. In that case, the odd one out would be yellow. In fact, the more unexpected the criteria, the better. The important thing is that they're looking at and thinking about the words you want them to revise.
Choose the language you want to review and devise a way of categorizing it into preferably two categories. Write the category headings on the board and ask the students to copy them. Then dictate the words (10-12 maximum) slowly and clearly, and ask the students to write them down in the correct category. For example, say you want to revise jobs, your categories might be jobs you do inside and jobs you do outside.
Then, dictate the words, eg a farmer, an archaeologist, a surgeon, an au pair, a vet, etc. The students write down the words in the correct category. When you've dictated the words, ask students to compare their lists.
Choose a lexical set you want to revise. Students work in pairs. They'll need a piece of paper, preferably graph paper with squares on.
Choose a topic, for exampleÌýschool subjects. Student A writes 'Across' words and Student D writes 'Down' words. It's a good idea to provide the first word across and make sure that it's a long one.
Student D then adds another school subject down the paper from top to bottom. This word must intersect with the school subject written across the page.
Student A then writes another school subject that intersects with the school subject Student D has written down. Students continue taking turns to write in their own words.
Students build up words like on a Scrabble board until they can't think of any more school subjects. (You could make it into a game by saying that the last person to write a school subject is a winner.) Note that students must leave one square between each word – this is why it's better and clearer to use squared paper.
This activity is good for revising any type of vocabulary. Ask the students to call out any seven letters from the alphabet. Write the letters scattered on the board. Then ask the students in pairs to think of a word beginning with each letter on the board. The most obvious criteria is to revise words from a specific lexical set that you have taught recently, egÌýjobs, clothes, food, animals, etc.
Alternatively, you could simply ask them for words they've noted down in lessons over the past two weeks. Another possibility would be to find the most interesting words they can from the Student Book unit that you've just finished. If the lexical set you want them to revise is particularly rich, you could ask the students to think of as many words for each letter as they can in, say, three minutes: make it into a contest to find the most words.
It's always worth spending time thinking about how you can help your students to learn words more efficiently and more effectively. Way back in the 1970s, the linguist David Wilkins summed up the importance of vocabulary learning thus: 'Without grammar, very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary, nothing can be conveyed.'Ìý
Learning English with music can enhance learning and create a more engaging and dynamic classroom environment. In a previous post, we discussed if music can help you learn a language; this post looks at how music can be incorporated into the classroom.
Using music in your classroom can help improve student motivation, focus, and retention of information. Here are some ways you can use music to enhance your classroom teaching:
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Have you considered studying abroad? Moving to Canada to study? With more than 100 world-class universities across the country, there’s good reason to. From coast to coast to coast, it offers many international students a safe and supportive learning environment and the opportunity to work after graduation.
Want to learn more? In this guide, we cover ten things you should know about studying in Canada:
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Teaching teenagers can be a rewarding yet challenging experience.
When planning classes, we need to consider the environment in which the students are growing up. Most of our teenage students do not know a life without the internet, instant messaging or Google.
Commonly referred to as Ìý(or Gen Z), they are the most tech-savvy generation to date; this should be reflected in how we teach them.
However, not all of us have access to computer labs, interactive whiteboards or class tablets. But there is something that many of our teens bring to class in their pockets and bags every day.
You’ve guessed it - a phone.
By bringing students’ phones into your classes, you can bridge the technology gap between the learners and the curriculum, keep them engaged for longer and make them feel more empowered at the same time.
Here are four low-tech activities that use phones in class.
Activity requirements: one phone per student (or group of students) and a pre-made quiz.
is an app designed to help you create quizzes online, which can be a fun, engaging way to challenge your learners in the classroom.
Quizzes are an ideal activity to use at the start of a class to recycle previous vocabulary or to pre-teach new language.
For example, you could choose 10 British English phrases or idioms. Write a series of four possible definitions for each word, phrase, or idiom (with only one correct answer).
In class, ask your students to take out their phones, find the app, and link to the quiz.
Tell the students that they must vote for the definition they think is correct. They can keep track of their scores directly on the app while competing with their friends.
Not only will it immediately engage your learners and help them interact with what’s being learned, but they’ll also have a lot of fun.
Activity requirements: a phone with the Google Translate app installed and a pen and paper per pair.
Did you know Google Translate has a feature where you can ? This is a perfect tool for text that you might find on a poster, in a book or uses an alphabet which you are unfamiliar with.
Bring in samples of different languages to class – the more complex, the better. If you don’t have anything suitable at home, find something online and print it out.
Get one student to take a photo of the text using the app and with their finger, select the section of the text they’d like to translate from the original language to English. (Note: if you download the Google Translate language file to your phone, it will translate everything automatically).
Then, have them dictate what it says to their partner, who has to write it down.
Finally, they work together to improve the English translation. After all, everyone knows Google’s English isn’t perfect (not yet, anyway).
Activity requirements: a mobile phone with a camera per student.
Do your students love taking photos? Tap into their love of photography and make activities more exciting by incorporating the photos on their phones into your classes.
Adapt speaking activities from common exams such as the B2 Cambridge First. Instead of using the pictures in the book, put the students in pairs and get them each to choose a more relevant photo from their phones. You may find they have more to say and will communicate naturally while still practicing the necessary language and skills required in the exam.
Another idea is to get students to take photos of things they encounter in English in the street. This could be on a sign outside a restaurant or in their favorite clothing shop. Use these photos to start the next class with a discussion about where they saw it, what it means and if the English is correct.
You could also nominate one student each week to bring a photo they took that weekend. Share it with the class and get everyone to write Instagram captions. You wouldn’t believe how many already do this in English, so why not help them?
If you are worried about the misuse of mobile devices in your class – don’t be! Here are our top three strategies to help avoid students getting distracted:
