Teacher Discussion Forums

Dear friends,
I am a future English teacher in China. A few days ago, our teacher asked us to design a courseware for a lesson in middle school textbook. I chose one unit in Senior English for China Student’s Book 2A. When I designed how to present vocabulary, I felt it's really very hard to find an effective presentation method. As a result, I only adopted the traditional way to present those difficult abstract words. If any experienced senior high school English teachers or experts could share your great ideas with me, I would be very happy and grateful.
Best wishes!

For some words, you can set up a situation
example: EMBARRASSED
"I was speaking to a large group. I wanted to do a good job. But
suddenly I forgot my speech. When I looked at my notes, the papers fell all over the floor. I had to stop and pick them up. My face got red, and I felt terrible. I was very EMBARRASSED."

and then write the word on the board and have students repeat. Then ask questions to make sure they understand the meaning:
Do you get embarrassed before a test? (to make sure they don't think it means the same thing as "nervous")
When do you get embarrassed?

For other words, you can use a synonym they already know:
FURIOUS - very angry

If one student knows the meaning, I'd let him/her explain it quickly in Chinese. Of course, when I taught in China, I didn't know Chinese, so I couldn't use this method! But you can use it in a pinch, to save time.

It always puzzles me that teachers want to teach a list of vocabulary for a lesson. In all the situations I have taught there are students who already know the words and many students who don't know the words or many of the other words in the reading exercise.

It would be nice to think that we could learn 10 or 20 words a lesson and just keep adding on to our knowledge of the language but it doesn't work that way and those 20 words also have other meanings in other situations.

The most effective way that I learn new words is to read them in something that I can almost read already and then find them again in another reading on a similar topic and talk about them with my friends so I hear them in conversation and then hear them in another situation such as when watching TV or listening to the radio or in a song or reading a newspaper or magazine.

This is what I try to do for the students - give them an interesting reading that is based on their own experiences so it is grounded in real life and have them guess the meanings of the words they don't know, discuss it with friends including translations if they really work, then read something else on a similar topic with similar vocabulary and finally write something relevant using that vocabulary or make posters or give a report or interview someone in that field and so on so they are using the vocabulary in real situations.

Finally I make sure they get a chance to read the reports of all the other students and then think up some way to show they can use this vocabulary and the style of communicating to prove they know it to put in their portfolios - a tape, a written report and a personal evaluation.

When they first encounter new words they can write them in a personal dictionary and check four categories - I have never heard this word, I have heard this word but don't know the meaning, I know the meaning but haven't used this word, I know this word and have used it with this meaning. The goal then is to get a check in the final column for as many words as possible.

There are all sorts of strategies to learn these words from taping them so the student can listen to them over and over to having them on little cards with translations on the back, to giving dictations (students can have a partner dictate their own words to them and vice versa rather than having class dictations), making crosswords, cloze exercises, playing games with the words and so on.

The more the students do themselves the more likely they will learn their words and probably their partners words as well.

Having a word wall for particulary strange or funny sounding words is fun too. You can categorize the words into parts of speech this way too and see how words can transform from nouns to verbs or put synonyms and homonyms together, etc.

Cool topic, very intresting!

Dear friends:
I am also a future English teacher and identify with what you have come across. And I feel like sharing my humble opinion with you. From my humble opinion, when presenting new words, examples which are create by the teachers themselves rather than taken from dictionaries will help. Because if the students find the examples are all from the dictionaries they will probably tune out. Besides, it will be better if the teacher ask the students to offer the meaning, synonyms, and antonyms of the new words first and then, try to put them into real context to assist students to use them in appropriate way. In addition, talk about the possible misunderstanding or confusion that the students may have.
Hope the suggestions are helpful.