word lists

In order for learners to achieve the target 2000 words as quickly as possible, they will need a rich and nourishing vocabulary. Some words will be taught by the teacher and other words will be learnt incidentally in extensive reading and listening activities. Many learners prefer a list of target words to learn. How can these word lists be used to maximize learning?

word lists…

Traditionally, words targeted for study were supplied to learners in the form of lists. Often the words came from a text that was used to present some grammar point, but with no evident rationale behind the choice of the items, their ordering or membership of a particular field.

Does apparent randomness mean that students should be discouraged from using lists, that teachers should not gives learners vocabulary lists? Certainly, in my experience as a teacher lists are very popular with students. Why could this be?

• lists are economical - large numbers of words can be learnt in a short period of time.
• having mother tongue translations next to the word mean that there are no meaning problems and it allows learners to test themselves.
• the fact that the words are not necessarily related may in fact be an advantage. If words are related in meaning or come from the same lexical field, it is thought that they are more easily confused than if the relationship between the words is more distant.

Better perhaps than lists are word cards which will help to reduce the serial effect: when remembering on item on a list triggers the remembering of another word on the list.

Here are some ideas for using word lists in the classroom.

Teacher reads the word list in random order. Learners show that they can match the sound by ticking the ones they can hear.

• Teacher reads the word list in random order. Learners show that they can match the sound by ticking the ones they can hear.
• Learners cover the L1 translations and teacher gives translations and the learners tick the English equivalents.
• Ask learners to write down some of the words from the list - teacher stipulates how many. Teacher (or a learner) reads out the words from the master list. This of course is a form of Bingo!
• From a random list, teacher asks learners to make connections between words and and explain them to their classmates, the more the connections the better and no matter how far fetched! For example: copy and shave may produce I learnt to shave by copying my father.
• Learners write a story using the words on the list. They can use all of them or only a stipulated number. They can take it in turns to use the next word on the list in a sentence so as to continue the story.
• Ask learners to make up their own lists of words that come up in the lesson, or to do this at home the day before they are going to look at that particular material. In both cases, learners will need to bring the lists to class the next lesson. At the beginning of the lesson, pair students up to test each other on the lists.
• Learners can make lists of works that have come up in previous units of the course book. They could test each other, or prepare gapped sentences to be completed by other groups.

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