Ways of Teaching Vocabulary Using Reading Material

With

Andrew Weiler

http://strategiesinlanguagelearning.com

http://languagelearningunlocked.com

Learning Vocabulary

There are many ways to teach and learn

vocabulary

However, we need to make

sure that the way we do it is

going to help our learners

get to their destination

What is our aim?

Teachers in fact have to do more than just

teach vocabulary

- Help students learn vocabulary

- Help them become better learners

- Inspire them to want to become

better

What holds learners back?

One of the biggest factors is doing

something the wrong way

Results of that are:

progress is slow

can end up believing that you

are not capable

can giving up - because

progress is so slow and you believe

you have no ability

Vocabulary with no Dictionary

Dictionaries have a place, but not in the

classroom. Why? By using them it

discourages students from:

- asking questions in L2

- thinking about the overall meaning

- discussing the meaning in L2

- examining the grammar for clues

- examining the context for clues

- guessing

Minimal Teacher Explanation

Most teachers have a habit of explaining what students don’t understand. Why is it better to avoid this if possible?

Students can become teacher dependent

Students are not given the chance or encouraged to work it our for themselves

Much better to empower students with strategies so they can work it out for themselves

Helps us as teachers to think more about what we can do to empower students

At the lower levels

What are some keys to helping learners with

vocabulary at the lower levels?

- make sure that the

vocabulary is mainly at the

level of their perception

- remember aim B from slide 2,

namely that we are there to

help them become better

learners not just to learn one

piece of vocabulary

At the higher levels Coming to the more practical side to

today’s tutorial. Key: We want learners to learn more than just one word at a time –

- to ask questions in L2

- to think about the overall meaning

- to discuss the meaning in L2

- to examine the grammar for clues

- to examine the context for clues

- to guess the meaning of the word

- to apply what they learn, immediately

* develop effective language learning strategies

Story excerpted from Cynthia Kersey's, Unstoppable. www.unstoppable.net

Some people bring out the best in you in a

way that you might never have fully realized

on your own. My mom, Ruby Lloyd Wilson,

was one of those people," says Kemmons

Wilson, founder of the Holiday Inn hotel

chain.

1a Origins and the Use

Realized –

Similar to in meaning….

Function of “ize”

Bring this into their life with questions like

What have you realized / what do you know?

How did you realize it?

Founder – where does this word come from?

Who founded ……..? When? How?

Who was the founder of …….?

2 Most people called her Doll. My father died when I

was nine months old, making her a single mother and

a widow at the age of eighteen. While I was growing

up, there were times when we had so little money

that we had to live on a few pounds of dried butter

beans for a week at a time. While food was scarce,

my mother's love and devotion were abundant.

Each night, she sat me on her lap and spoke the

words that would change my life, 'Kemmons, you are

destined for greatness and you can do anything in

life if you're willing to work hard enough to get it.’

2a Questions

Scarce –

Look at previous sentence.

Was there a lot of food around? So….

What are things in your life that are scarce –

Widow – (what are you called if your husband dies?)

Why do you become a widow?

When do you become a widow?

What is a man called if he loses his wife?

3

At fourteen, I was hit by a car and the doctors said I would

never walk again. My mother took a leave of absence

from her job at a meat-packing plant and moved into my

hospital room to care for me. Every day, she spoke to me in

her gentle, loving voice, reassuring me that no matter what

those doctors said, I could walk again if I wanted to badly

enough. She drove that message so deep into my heart

that I finally believed her. A year later, I returned to school -

- walking on my own.

3a Similar meanings

(Meat packing) Plant

What is another word for this word?

Okay…any ideas of other examples of each

So what is the difference?

She drove that message so deep into my heart that I

I finally believed her.

Why did he end up believing her?

How did she drive the message so deep?

What else can you drive deep…what is the result?

4 When the Great Depression hit, my mom lost her job like

millions of others. I was seventeen, and against Doll's

wishes, I left school to support the both of us. At that

moment, it became my mission in life to succeed for my

mother's sake, and I vowed never to be poor again.

4a Alternate Uses, Personalise

Hit

What can be hit?

Why use hit here?

Vowed

Another word?

Why did she vow?

What is the difference between 2 words?

When else do we vow?

5

Over the years, I experienced varying levels of business

success. But the real turning point occurred on a vacation I

took with my wife and five kids in 1951. I was frustrated at

the second-rate accommodations available for families

and was furious that they charged an extra $2 for each

child. That was too expensive for the average American

family, and I was determined to offer them an alternative.

5a Levels and subtleties

Frustrated – what’s a little frustration called

Furious –

There are levels AND shades of meaning that can

be explored by making words personal with clear

examples – providing extended practice

6

I told my wife that I was going to open a motel for

families with a brand name people could trust that

never charged extra for children. I figured about 400

nationwide motels would be the right number so that

each one would be within a day's drive of about 150

miles. There were plenty of doubters who predicted

failure because there wasn't anything remotely similar

to this concept at that time.

6a Cause and effect There were plenty of doubters who

predicted failure because there wasn't

anything remotely similar to this concept at

that time

What caused what?

Why did they they predict failure?

Who did they doubt?

Why did they doubt him?

Cause Process Effect

7

"Not surprisingly, Doll was one of my strongest supporters

and among the first to pitch in. She worked behind the

desk and even designed the room decor for the first

hundred hotels. As in any business, we experienced

enormous challenges. For years, we paid our employees

Christmas bonuses with promissory notes because cash

was so short. But with my mother's words deeply

embedded in my soul, I never doubted we would

prevail. Fifteen years later, we had the largest hotel

system in the world, with one of the most recognizable

names in the business.

7a Exploring

Pitch in

What did she do?

Another word for that?

When else would you pitch in?

Embedded

What was embedded?

How was it embedded?

Is this a temporary result?

What word do you recognize within that word?

8 You may not have started out life in the best of

circumstances. But if you can find a mission in life worth

working for and believe in yourself, nothing can stop you

from achieving success.

9 Kemmons Wilson founded the first Holiday Inn in 1951 and

built it into the largest hotel chain in the world. When he

retired in 1979, the company had 1,759 inns in more than

fifty countries with annual revenues of $1 billion.

Summing up

The end of the story is a great place to orally go over the story, maybe in paragraphs or maybe in events – giving them a chance to reuse the vocabulary

Recycling words, rephrasing meaning, connecting together the ideas in different ways are all natural outcomes in an ESL classroom.

Questions like, “What did YOU learn?”, “What was the most important idea for you take this story into a more personal area, providing them opportunities to further explore and use the new vocabulary.

What did we achieve?

By choosing an inspiring story, students are engaged

Even if they can’t relate to all of it, everyone should be able to relate to some of it

By not going to a dictionary, they have had to ask questions, talk, think, guess, ponder about ideas, grammar, word forms, etc

By relating words to their own lives they make the learning personal –

Hence, learning vocabulary becomes an interesting, engaging, memory filled event, one not to be forgotten easily.

Homework! This of course would not be a real lesson unless I gave

homework!!

So I would like to choose 5 other words from this story that you believe your students would have trouble with.

I would like you to write down how you would teach them.

Please put your answers in the comment thread under this lesson for ONE of them. This way every one can benefit from what you learned. I will comment where needed, if I believe some input is needed.

What I am doing here is not dissimilar to what I do with my students

Thank you for being here and participating!

Good luck with your teaching!

Andrew Weiler –

www.strategiesinlanguagelearning.comhttp://languagelearningunlocked.com

andrew@strategiesinlanguagelearning.com