Job Discussion Forums

[themanymoonsofjupiter]

Whenever we are going to watch a movie clip or read a short story in preparation for discussion in Oral English, I pick out words & phrases from the clip/passage that I think are both 1) new to the students and 2) useful to them for the future. I have no problem with introducing this vocabulary or reviewing it after practice with it. I am trying to find new ways to have the students use the vocabulary. I know that the Idea Cookbook has lots of, well, ideas, but most of them are games (which are usually better suited to review than practice). Here's what I've done in the past:

Give a word or two to each group and they have to use it in a dialogue.

Give a word or two but they DON'T use it--instead, they act it out and the rest of the class guesses which word/phrase they had.


And that's, really, all I've got. I'm not looking for a necessarily 'fun' way to practice this vocabulary, and I know that, in Oral English, it makes sense to have the students use the words orally. But I can't help but think there must be a lot more ideas out there that I just can't pull forth.

[creztor]

It would depend on the vocab but is there anyway you could build a "task" around the vocab with hopes of them using it in order to complete the task? Something that comes to mind is that you could record someone giving their opinion on a topic and either play the audio in class or transcribe it as text and pass out copies to students (something short, nothing over the top). The new and old vocab you want the students to use could be used within this text. Perhaps the text was an opinion on something like school children wearing uniforms and the class had to prepare ideas for/against and then decide which one they are in favor of and then give supporting reasons. I've waffled on way too much here but the basic idea is you give them a topic and set it up/demo it using vocabulary you want them to practice using and then ask them to tackle the problem. You hope to high hell that they see the vocab they studied in the text (either see it written on paper or hear it in the audio) and that jogs their memory into using it to solve the problem. You could also introduce a topic, brainstorm vocab relating to the topic and then let the students solve the problem, again hoping that they use the vocab you brainstormed and want them to practice using again. I've written half a short story here, but hopefully you get the drift. If not, please shoot me.

[nickpellatt]

My suggestion would be to choose the vocabulary you pre-teach the students for a specific reason. Not just because the words may be new.

Example. If you had a set of questions about the movie clip, you might need to pre-teach the lexical items that allow them to answer said questions. Then they are using the words, by using them in their answers. This works equally well with texts. Another example is to use the movie/text and ask students to identify all words belonging to a certain part of speech. (This works better with texts as they can 'see' the parts of speech in the clause). Anyway .... perhaps the text or movie introduces new adjectives of appearance, including slang or colloquial terms.

The only lexical items they need to know/learn are these. With new words you can elicit meanings, and if they dont know them ... they can at least use context to decide if the words are negative or positive in meaning. Tasks to follow which use these words are then straightforward. 'Now describe your best friend/room-mate/first boyfriend, using any vocabulary plus these new words.'

You could do similar with adverbs of manner or degree, nouns relating to a lexical set (new types of food or ingrediants for example, followed by shopping/restaurant/recipe activity).

I think you need to approach the video or text task with a clear learning outcome in mind.

'At the end of the lesson, the students will have learnt new adjectives describing appearance and used them to describe a familiy member'.

'At the end of the lesson, the students will have reviewed and learnt new nouns relating to food and ingrediants, and used them to plan 'a last supper'.

'At the end of the lesson, the students will have identified and learnt 5 new adverbs of manner and used them to describe xxxxxxx'

Just giving students lists of new words, and asking them to make a sentence with them is a bit pants really IMO, and doesnt really do anything for them ( I have seen lots of people do this though). The students repeat the words in class, write them in their little books, and then forget them and never use them again. The teachers quest for new words can sometimes end up with students getting lists of words that no-one, including native speakers, ever uses.

I should just add you can add grammar structures to this type of activity too. You dont have to ask students to identify vocabulary. They could also use the text or video to identify examples of a certain tense. I have a lesson with a fictional diary about my life in China, and students read it making notes of all my good habits/bad habits whilst in China. There is then a controlled practise task where they change each of my diary entries about habits into present perfect progressive. Final task is they discuss their own habits using present perfect prog, and debate who has the best/worst habits.

Long winded post ... hope it makes sense and helps!

[themanymoonsofjupiter]

well, thanks, guys. i think what creztor is referring to would only work in a vocabulary set (e.g. "modes of transportation")...

i would agree, nick, that just random words that appear in a video may not be the best words to focus on. and i have done things like what you said (though i did get some ideas from there, too). but let's say there is a 20-minute video clip that has, say, 10 new vocab terms that are both 1)useful for the future and 2)essential to know to understand the video. if i'm going to show the video and hope they get something out of it for further discussion (let's say i'm doing a topic on health and it's a 20 minute fast food documentary or whatever), i want them to completely understand it. so, what do i do with the vocabulary?

if i were a native speaker, i suppose i could just translate the phrases, they understand, and we move on to be able to discuss. but when we discuss, they will likely need to use those words again anyway, and i would like for them to be able to use them properly. therefore, i am going to spend a bit more time on making sure they know them. if i'm going to spend all that time, then i might as well make it worth everyone's while...and then i'm back in the trap of teaching this vocab that doesn't really go together except in this video.

[nickpellatt]