Waverly, Kansas TESOL Online & Teaching English Jobs

Teaching Vocabulary Vocabulary is very important to the students, especially at the early stages when students are motivated to learn the basic words they need to get by in the language. As a rule, a learner's receptive (words the student knows but doesn't use) vocabulary is much larger than his or her productive (words the student knows and uses) vocabulary; the students can usually understand many more words than they can actively use. How easy or difficult a vocabulary item is will largely depend on a number of factors: n Similaritytostudents'ownlanguage n SimilaritytoEnglishwordsalreadyknown n Spellingandpronunciation n Appropriacy Selecting Vocabulary Whilst there is a general consensus about which grammatical structures should be taught at which levels the same is not true of vocabulary. One of the biggest problems ofvocabularyteachingis how to select which words to teach. Although the teacher is generally guided by the course and teacher's book, the following criteria can be used: n Appropriacytothestudents n Appropriacytothetask n Frequency and coverage – how often are the students likely to use/come across the language and can it be applied to different situations (The Cobuild English Dictionary gives some very helpful frequency information.) n Teachability–forexample,beginnerstudentsneedveryclearand visual language Techniques for teaching vocabulary Whilst there is a general consensus about which grammatical structures should be taught at which levels the same is not true of vocabulary. Oneofthebiggestproblemsofvocabularyteachingis how to select which words to teach. Although the teacher is generally guided by the course and teacher's book, the following criteria can be used: n Appropriacytothestudents n Appropriacytothetask n Frequency and coverage – how often are the students likely to use/come across the language and can it be applied to different situations (The Cobuild English Dictionary gives some very helpful frequency information.) n Teachability–forexample,beginnerstudentsneedveryclearand visual language n Meaning–whatitmeans n Use–how/whenitisappropriatetouse n Wordgrammar–whereitbelongs n Interaction–howitinteractsandaffectsotherwords n Spelling–howitiswritten n Pronunciation–howitisspoken The following methods can all be used to help engage the students and to elicit/explain meaning n Realia n Mimeandaction n Pictures n Contrast n Discussion n Discovery Study Activate Typical ESA vocabulary lesson Study activities can include: n Gap-fillexercises n Wordsearches n Crosswords n Matchingexercises n Examplesentences n Pronunciationexercisessuchasdrilling n Studyfromtextsanddialogues The activate stage of a vocabulary lesson may include such activities as: n Openclass,smallgrouporpairdiscussion n Role-play n Simulation n Storybuilding n Material production task (poster, advertisement, etc.) n Debate Introducing grammatical structures Which new language structures we introduce are largely determined by the level of the class and the course syllabus we are using. However, in all cases, the students will need to know what the language means, how it is used, what the grammatical form is and how it is said/written. n Meaning–whatthelanguagemeans n Use–how/whenitisused n FormsandPatterns–formationandpatternsofthelanguage n Spoken and written form–any differences in forms. For example in written form 'I am going to.....' often becomes 'I'm gonna.....' in spoken form. Techniques for presenting and practising language structures Techniques for presenting and practising language structures Engage Study Activate n Discussion n Scenariobuilding n Prompting n Questionandanswer n Usingpictures,drawings,realobjects,mime,etc. n Intonationandpronunciationpatterns n Looking at the language in context through texts and dialogues n Choralandindividualrepetition(drilling) n Gapfills n Informationgaps n Sentence word order activities (unscramble jumbled sentences, etc.) n Sentencebuilding n Communicationgames n Role-play n Storybuilding n discussion/debate Teaching language functions Typical ESA function lesson A typical function (inviting in this case) ESA boomerang type lesson could be: Engage: Students talk in open class about their favourite leisure activities, why they like them, how often they dothemetc. Teacherusespromptstogetstudents opinions on certain other activities. Activate: Students walk around class inviting peers to join them in their favourite activities until they have found at least two students who would like to do so. Study: Teacher and students listen to invitation dialogue on tape. Compare to the language they used and analyze ways of inviting formally/informally and accepting/rejecting such invitations appropriately. Some pronunciation and other study exercises used to reinforce. Activate: Usingnewlanguagestudentsrole-playinpairs. One wants a date with the other and invites. The other isn't keen on the date so makes excuses. The winner is the student who doesn't run out of invitations or rejections!