Teaching

Vocabulary
Amirbayova Kamilla
311B
What is vocabulary?
Vocabulary can be defined as the words in the language. It may also
include items that are more than a single word: mother-in-law, post
office. There are also longer multi-words expressions, such as ‘’ How are
you?’’, and they express a single concept.

The word vocabulary is also taken to express grammatical items:

pronouns such as he, someone or determiners: that , any , the.
Grammatical items are contrasted with lexical items ( nouns, verbs,
adjectives ). They don’t have meaning on their own and are used to show
the relationships with other words withing meaningful utterances.
 Aspects of vocabulary knowledge

Pronunciation Grammar
Meaning
and spelling

Collocation Connotation Appropriateness

 Word formation
Words can be broken down into
morphemes. Exactly how these
components are put together is useful
piece of information. If students know
the meaning of prefixes and suffixes, it
will help them understand the meaning of
words.
However, they should be warned that in
many words the prefix or the suffix has
got lost its meaning and won’t help them
understand the meaning of a word .
Vocabulary items can also be built by
combining two words to make one item:
( bookcase, swimming pool, follow-up)
How best to teach vocabulary?
Understanding words
01 Understanding 80% of the
words of the text

Word families
02 Learning words based on a
common root
Achieve a huge
vocabulary
03 Learn 20-30 word families
in a week
Selection and sources of new vocabulary
Important criterion
Before teaching vocabulary, we need to take into
consideration usefulness of the words we want to teach
our students. There are a lot of dictionaries that contain
words which are frequently used in writing and
speaking. ( f.i Oxford 3000).
We also need to teach items which are important for
students’ present situation or culture, items that are easy
to learn or that are interesting themselves.
It’s important to provide students with activities whose
aim is simply vocabulary expanding,
 Include both written
and spoken form.
01 Items need to be written on
a board and said as they
are being written
Ensure understanding
Presenting new of meanings

vocabulary 02 Using various ways to

present new words.

Optimize impact
03 Using mnemonic devices,
especially technique called
‘’keywords’’
Thanks for
attention!