Ways to Teach Vocabulary Effectively
Vocabulary, as one of the three main elements (The other two are pronunciation and grammar) of a language, is essential in language acquisition. Teaching vocabulary is always being a great concern for any English language course. Quite a lot of teachers are really focused on how to make a vocabulary lesson more interesting and memorable for students. New vocabulary has to be introduced in such a way as to capture the students’ attention and place the words in a practical way.
This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Haiqiong L. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT.
How to teach vocabulary interesting and memorable
Vocabulary learning can be often seen as a laborious process of memorizing lists of unrelated terms. However, there are many much more successful and interesting ways to learn and teach vocabulary. Using Teaching tools is a good way to increase entertaining in this process. Such as (Flashcards, short videos, letterbox or posters, etc.) It not only can make the lesson more interesting and also provides visual contents for students. The method can be easier to input visual memories to the student’s head. And also review is very important for memorizing vocabulary. Some vocabulary game can make the memory process very solid for the future. For example, choose one student to act the words without speaking it and makes the others to guess, that is one fun way to interact with the class.
Also Read: Key Responsibilities of a Teacher in a TEFL Classroom
How to enlarge students’ vocabulary
For students, vocabulary lays the foundation for further study. There are several methods of enlarging vocabulary. For example, prefixes, root words, and suffixes. Prefixes can make a word negative or change the word formation, like adding ‘en’ ‘un’ ’dis ’and ‘a’ in front of the new word. These infections are vital for students’understanding of words and will increase their vocabulary substantially simply by inflecting words they already know. And suffixes Work in this same vocabulary enhancing way, by adding endings such as ‘ing’ ‘ment ’‘less’ and ‘ly’ etc. Teaching prefixes and suffixes can be a good way to illustrate and enlarge the new word. And learning synonyms and antonyms is also a useful way to enhance vocabulary learning. Synonyms can consolidate the memory of new words, so can antonyms. There are many ways to enlarge vocabulary, these methods above are just a few examples.
Also Read: Why Exposure is Important when Learning a Second Language
Practice makes perfect
We all say practice makes perfect. After learning new vocabulary practice in an actual way is very important. Usually, we ask the students to fill in some words blanks to check the writing, some choose definition questions to make sure that students understand the meaning, and some vocabulary puzzle practices are also good to work on vocabulary knowledge. Plus using new vocabulary to create an imaginative story can also practice sentence making and memorize it. The most advanced way is to write an essay or sentences to check students utilization of spellings and grammar uses. These usually require the one as an intermediate level student or up.
Also Read: How can I earn teaching English abroad?
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Above all, there are several methods for teaching vocabulary. As a teacher for ESL students, we do not only need skills to teach vocabulary, and also requires patient, understanding and precise to designed a lesson.
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