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TEACHING VOCABULARY

1. Reasons for teaching the vocabulary’

a. To arouse the learners interest


b. To disambiguate grammar mistakes
c. To motivate conversation

2. Survey- learners’expectations

3. Memorising words

Association with a mental image /picture


Association with a situation/topic/story
Association with a feeling
Association with a sound
Memorable word

PASSIVE vs ACTIVE VOCABULARY


4. Selecting vocabulary
Frequency: e.g.
cake (pound cake, birthday- cake, wedding- cake, fruit -cake)

Range/coverage : e.g.
cover
Provide a translation for cover in the following sentences
- I put the cover on the pot.
- The covers on these arm-chairs are dusty.
- She works under cover.
- I ve read that book from cover to cover.
- The girl on the cover.
- Mailt this important invoice in a cover.

Familiarity e.g.
Objects in th bathroom, piecec of furniture in the rooms
Usefulness : e.g.
. We should consider the students”needs –a group of adult
bankers, a group of economists, a group of medical doctors etc.

5. Linguistic considerations

 Style -level of formality


e.g.
Children-neutral
Offsprings- formal
Kids-informal
Nippers- colloquial
Sprogs- slang

 Register- job-related words


e.g.
penniless-neutral
broke-colloquial
insolvent-legal term

 Dialects
Regional dialects
e.g.
pavement-sidewalk (/US)
small- wee (Scots0
good-buzzer (Australian)

Social dialects
e.g.
God blimey! (working class)
Crikey ! ( middle class)
Mixture of level of formality and dialects
e.g.
toilet (neutral)
WC (written)
Lavatory (formal)
Loo (middle class)
Bog (working class)
Head (ship)
Can ( US informal)
Bathroom ( US neutral )
Rest room (Canada)
6. MEANS OF INTRODUCING THE NEW WORDS

 Polysemy
 Synonymy
 Degrees of synonymy
 Antonymy
 Homophony
 Collocations
 Grammatical category
 Long/short forms
 Compounds/conversion
 Affixation
 Semantic field
AGAIN, Lead- in activities are of paramount importance.

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