Methodology of Teaching English as a Foreign Language

Year 4

Seminar 3
Teaching vocabulary
Various vocabulary strategies and techniques (3)
PLAN

1. Contents of teaching vocabulary with technology

The connection between technology and Vocabulary

(1) Technology provides access to many different ways for students to study
vocabulary
(2) In turn, Teachers can find many resources to help teach vocabulary on the internet

How technologies help us?

(1) Surely, Regularly providing new vocabulary in the learning activity

(2) Teaching vocabulary in fun way
(3) Helping the students to memorizing the vocabulary
(4) Asking the students to interpret the meaning of a new vocabulary
(5) Or even Playing games that includes lots of vocabulary

I would say that there is so much more to learning new vocabulary words than just
memorizing definitions. What is more, Using vocabulary in context is the single most
effective way to identify if one truly understands the meaning of the word.
Vocabulary tools:
1. Quizlet

There will definetely be times when you want to focus exclusively on a specific word set. If
you don’t have much opportunity for live communication with your students, Quizlet can be
a big help. Thus, You may use this technology for teaching vocabulary, you have to make a
list of vocabulary then give them the link and asks your students to practice through this tool.
It’s a good idea to be strategic at this point and think about how you are going to organise
everything.

2.Kahoot

As it is with all the games and interactive platforms, Kahoot can be used to revise vocabulary,
create polls, conduct a fun test to check the students’ knowledge instead of a standardized
test, boost students’ competitiveness (all ages love it), spice up the session with something
new and energizing. Also, the visuals of the game are very bright and set a positive
atmosphere, not to mention the music that if not all but most of the students love 🙂
 - Comic Strips

I’m sure that students would eagerly learn their vocabulary terms by making a comic strip, or
if we as teachers prepare such one for them. Nowadays, There are lots of colourful apps
(The Book Creator) that make the entire process very easy to do with the comic layouts.
Thus, it definetaly should be intergrated into the working process.

- Vocabulary Posters

It also works the same since all these easy-to-use web tools are accessible on the internet. So,
(AGAIN WHEN IT COMES TO TECHNOLOGY) you can create a nice digital poster that
they could in turn upload it by themselves for their own reference and better visual
understanding, afterward, share in the Google Classroom or print and hang in your room
– kind of anything you want!

2. Different techniques of teaching vocabulary

Surely, practising and using the vocabulary is part of the learning process but students usually
need time to process a vocabulary item too. I would say that The first stage is to find ways of
recording the various aspects of the word.
There are many ways of recording vocabulary and your students need to find a way that suits
them. However, it is a good idea to show students what you think they could record about a
word and how they might go about it. The simplest way is probably to use a kind of chart
which could include the following:

 Vocab item
 Its Grammar form
 Pronunciation
 Meaning (Definition / Picture)
Although it is quite useful, frankly speaking, the 2nd method works better for me. I mean,
- Making connections
in order to activate vocabulary, students need to be able to retrieve it and remember the
meaning and how it’s used in a sentence. To do this we often make connections; these
connections help us recall the word, its meaning and how it’s used. I usally do it with a help
of:
1. Key words and pictures.This is a technique that some people have claimed helps to fix the
word and its meaning in the memory. The technique is based on making a mental image that
connects the new word in the L2 with a word in the students L1 that has some association
(often sound) with the L2 word.
2. another good technique for making connections is Groups, scales and spidergrams –
which is based on Putting words into groups of related vocabulary items. Groups might
consist of hyponyms, such as father, mother, sister, son, cousin, aunt, grandfather; grammar
sets, such as adjectives and adverbs; or root words and derivatives, such as comfort,
discomfort, comfortable, uncomfortable. Another way of grouping words is in the form of a
scale. This is a common way for things like adverbs of frequency to be presented in many
books, for example, always, usually, often, sometimes, hardly ever, never. It’s also useful for
sets of adjectives that can be presented on a scale from one extreme to the other, i.e. boiling,
hot, warm, cool, cold, freezing. Finally, using a spidergram can be extremely useful as it
enables you to add more words later on.

- At the last method I wanted to speak about is using synonyms and antonyms
It can also be very useful to record synonyms together so that when you are writing or
speaking you are able to use a variety of language and not just the same word again and
again. There is a tendency for some words to be overused in English. A good example of this
is the word nice, which is used to describe so many things that it has become almost bland
and non-committal.
In addition - Collocations and grammar words
An important aspect of learning how to use vocabulary items is knowing what other words
they collocate with. Tasks in which we learn to match words to form collocations are always
useful. For example, students can find out that we can have a packet of biscuits or a tin of
biscuits but we wouldn’t have a tube or a can of biscuits.
Also an example of this type of collocation would be with words such as make and do. We
can make the bed, make breakfast, make a mistake, but we do stuff, do the housework and do
language exercises! Therefore, I think that helping our students learn collocations is a
fundamental step in enabling them to use the language effectively.

3. Internet in teaching vocabulary

4. Smartphones in teaching vocabulary
5. Various platforms for teaching vocabulary
6. Other audio and visual technological aids in teaching English vocabulary
Audiovisual education or multimedia-based education (MBE) is instruction where
particular attention is paid to the audio and visual presentation of the material with the goal of
improving comprehension.
FACT: audio visual aids are objects or images which stimulate and reinforce learning sensor.
THUS, Visual aids are powerful tools for learning English and they contribute in great
order to motivate students.
TO BE EXACT, Visuals learners prefer to learn a new language when it is contextualized
in pictures graphs, diagrams, and charts. EVEN Students can receive extra help if the
teacher uses expressive gestures in class. THUS, students enjoy acting when learning a
language, as that allows them to use their imagination to create scenes in their minds. It
also allows them to practice speaking in a new language, which will hopefully make them
more comfortable with pronunciations.

How Flash Cards helps when trying to learn vocabulary

Students can learn and repeat pieces of information by reading the questions and trying to
recall the answer. You can then check if your answer was correct by SIMPLY flipping the
card.
They can be used visually in any lesson and at every level of teaching. In fact, flashcards are
essential for beginner and elementary levels, as at these stages the learners are engaged
and are just (AND AT THE SAME TIME) beginning to develop their vocabulary

How audio aids can help in learning process.

Audio visual aids are an excellent didactic tool to promote not just grammar comprehension
but also to develop others skills in the target language. Therefore, it is recommendable to
use visual resources to get better results in the classroom. These visual resources somehow
encourage students to participate and pay more attention when they are learning new
vocabulary.
At the same time, they allow the class to be more attentive and improve the quality of the
interactions between one another. Consequently, students assume to new leaning
environments and understand grammatical structure effortlessly.

7. Teaching vocabulary online: problems and solutions

8. How to teach vocabulary with ‘Kindle’ and audiobooks

Thornbury, S. About Language

Rogova, G. Methods of Teaching English
Harmer, J. How to Teach English
Harmer, J. The Practice of English Language Teaching
Scrivener, J. Learning Teaching

Thornbury, S. How to Teach Vocabulary

http://www.litu.tu.ac.th/journal/FLLTCP/Proceeding/377.pdf
https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/innovative-techniques-of-teaching-vocabulary-in-the-second-
language-classroom-1/viewer

You can also use other reliable sources to prepare for the seminar.