Exploiting sources of vocabulary

There are many sources of vocabulary in the classroom. This article looks at three: the course book, specialized vocabulary books, the teacher and other learners.

Course book vocabulary

Course book vocabulary can be classified into three sets:

1. segregated vocabulary activities
2. integrated into text based activities
3. incidentally as instructions, explanations, and so on…

1. Segregated vocabulary activities
Usually present items that share a degree of hyponymy, that is as lexical sets. It is believed that words are stored together in the mental lexicon as a web of interconnected meanings.

That does not justify the assumption that words are easier to learn as lexical sets. Indeed there is evidence to the contrary. If words can easily be substituted for each other in a text, then there is a greater possibility that they can be confused. Consider:

“Paul went to Paris by plane, then he rented a car to drive to Calais. On the return journey he took the train to Le Mans, …

and the words:

to jump - bridge - rope - boat - to hang - to wear - harness - ankle - to help - river

In the first example, the hyponyms: plane, car and train can easily be confused because they can be substituted for each other and the text will still have meaning. In the second example, these words have been selected from a text about bungee jumping and cannot be substituted for each other.

Word formation is a common kind of exercise that is found in segregated vocabulary activities. Rather than selecting words by their thematic relationship, words are selected because of a focus on their formal properties. In this case, by affixation.

Learning strategies is another way that course books organise segregated vocabulary activities. One example of this is guessing words from context.

2. Integrated into text based activities often take the form of pre-teaching items whether for understanding or for later production. The value of preteaching vocabulary is debatable. It is not always easy to make an accurate prediction of items that are going to be difficult for learners (especially in large classes) and teaching isolated items is time consuming work.

A better approach might be to get into the text as soon as possible and explain words as the need arises - or elicit an explanation from students that DO know the word. This learner to learner approach ensures that in a mixed ability class (that is, most classes) more learners are either practising or getting input.

3. Metalanguage and process language. Course books provide learners with a lot of incidental meta-language (language about language). Grammatical terms such as verb, noun and so on are examples of this. Understanding language used for instructions provides opportunities for practice.

Ask students to read silently the instructions to a task. After some processing time, ask one of the learners to explain the task. Here is
an example of an instruction from “Look Ahead 2″:

“Look at the magazine article. What do you think the writer’s main points are? Now read the article. Were you right? Do you agree with her?”

Could be explained by a learner as:

“We are going to look at a magazine article quickly. We need to guess what the writer’s main points are and then read the article to check if we are right. We will then see if we disagree or not with the writer.”

This provides learners with plenty of recycling and practice of certain structure and vocabulary as well as valuable skills work.

Vocabulary Books

Are often thematically organised and usually a focus on word formation or compounding is interwoven into this thematic organisation.
However, many of these book focus on testing vocabulary as opposed to teaching. Nonetheless, there are many ways of adapting these materials to turn them into learning materials as opposed to testing materials.

In Test your Vocabulary (Peter Watcyn Jones, Penguin) this testing approach is taken. However, some simple tasks could be used to ensure that learners process the meanings of the words at a greater cognitive depth. In the chapter entitled “Things at home” the learners are asked to match the pictures in the book with the following words:

knife - vacuum cleaner - spoon - measuring jug - toaster - electric kettle - pair of scissors - fork - electric - gravy jug - mixer

The tasks that could be used to ensure greater cognitive processing than the exercise in the book might include:

Group the items into (three) categories of your own devising. With a neighbour compare and explain your categories.
Use your dictionary to add different words to these categories. Teach your neighbour the words you have added.
Who would give these items as birthday presents? Write a list of the items and names. Explain your list to your neighbour.
Rank the items in terms of usefulness. Compare rankings.
Imagine you and your classmate are sharing a flat. Decide which items you will buy and in which order.
Write definitions (or descriptions) of three of the items. Can your neighbour guess which item you have described?
Write the first paragraph of a story. exchange with you partner. Continue your partner’s story. Can you include more items?
Tell the story behind any of the items that you yourself own. Where did you get it? How long have you had it? How often do you use it?
Write a day in the life of…
Write the story of the making of one of the objects. Give the story to your neighbour. Are they able to guess the object?

Here, I have concentrated on cognitive depth, but some writers in the EFL have concerned themselves with affective depth. Affective depth is the emotional associations that words can have. Strong emotional depth can aid memory. Two of the most prolific writers and activity producers are Mario Rinvolucri, and John Morgan. Other writers include Graham Impey, Adrain Underhill and Vic Richardson.

The teacher

The teacher is often an undervalued source of vocabulary. Learners can pick up a lot of incidental language - especially if the teacher
actively draws their attention to it. Examples might include:

let’s see now then… - Whose turn is it? - Is that clear? - What we are going to do now is… - Have you finished yet?

as well as interpersonal language:

It’s brass monkeys outside! - Nice day isn’t it? - What’s up? - Oooops! - Never mind.

Teacher can tell the class an anecdote, which is recorded at the same time. Having told the story, the teacher asks the learners to write
down any words that they remember. The teacher then plays the recording while the learners add more words to their lists. This
repetition gives the learners a chance to ask for clarification and gives the teacher a chance to introduce, in context, words that are
often difficult to teach on their own - multi word verbs, for example. Here is a possible text for multi word verbs:

“I had to fly back to Manchester the other week. As we were taking off, there was a loud bang in one of the engines. We had hit a bird. We had to turn around and head back to the airport. We landed and it turned out that the bird had damaged the engine, so we had to get off and hang around for three hours while another plane was sent for to pick us up. By this time I had missed my connecting flight and so I had to hang around in Prague for a whole twelve hours. It took two days to get home to Liverpool.”

The above activity would lend itself well to dictogloss techniques.

Organise the learners into groups of three or four and set a time limit for the groups to come up with as many words as possible related to the topic. When they have finished, appoint a secretary (or several learners) to write the words up on the board. Make it competitive by allocating one point for each word that none of the other groups have. Allow the learns to challenge each any word that they consider to be off topic.

For very large lexical fields, such as clothing or food items, choose letters of the alphabet for each round of the game. In their grouped
learners have to come up with items that start only with that letter. Play several rounds, allocating points to groups that come up with the
most words in each round.
Set different topics (or different aspects of topics) to different groups. For example, if the general theme is football - set one group the task of brainstorming football field vocabulary, another group could brainstorm verbs related to playing the game, another to people involved in football, the equipment necessary and so on. Re-group the students so they can teach one another the words that they
have brainstormed.
Provide the class with pictures to prompt their brainstorming activities. A collection of different magazines pictures (of, for example, people, interiors, landscapes or meals) distributed amongst groups can act as a productive focus for eliciting vocabulary. After learners have come up with sufficient words, a representative of each group can stick their picture to the board, and write their group’s words underneath. Encourage members of other groups to ask the secretary of the group the meanings of any unfamiliar words.
Giving presentations - learners can research a topic of their choice and give a presentation. Similar to ’show and tell’. “I had to fly back to Manchester the other week. As we were taking off, there was a loud bang in one of the engines. We had hit a bird. We had to turn around and head back to the airport. We landed and it turned out that the bird had damaged the engine, so we had to get off and hang around for three hours while another plane was sent for to pick us up. By this time I had missed my connecting flight and so I had to hang around in Prague for a whole twelve hours. It took two days to get home to Liverpool.

Other Students

Given that the lexicon of no two students is identical, it is evident that the combined lexicon of all the students in the classroom can be quite impressive.

Unfortunately, learners are not often given control of the topic, but apart from other benefits, the vocabulary spin-off would seem
justification for allowing learners to take control more often and generate their own topics.

Any of the above activities can be done with or without dictionaries - monolingual or bilingual.

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