It‘s on the tip of my tongue!

 - I can never remember vocabulary  - I don’t have the time to revise  - I forget the words when I need them in a conversation with a customer anyway! How can we turn this behavior and attitude around?

Ebbinghaus, H Memory: A contribution to Experimental Psychology. New York. University of Michigan Library.

 Students need to work on English outside of class  The timing of review is important  The time to be invested is not too much!

Different ways of keeping your English active:  Take a more active part in dealing with English speaking colleagues  Have English correspondence via or telephone  Join an English evening- most cities have these anglophile evenings regularly  Read English books ( graded readers)  Watch films in English  Read or watch news in English

 After seeing the effect of the 10 minutes on the remembering curve- more learners will be willing to invest those 10 minutes- and maybe even more.  The following worksheet might help. It is already structured as a classroom activity.

Sion, C Talking Business in Class: Speaking activities for professional students. Surrey. Delta Publishing.

 What do you offer your students when learning vocabulary? Do you use games? Do you encourage using a dictionary?  Let‘s try a little exercise:

 Listen to the word pairs and repeat them mentally as you hear them. Then write the second of the pair when I read them back to you. Wallwork, A Discussions A-Z Advanced: A resource book of speaking activities. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.

 Listen to the words and invent a sentence connecting each pair. Then write the second of the pair when I read them back to you. Wallwork, A Discussions A-Z Advanced: A resource book of speaking activities. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.

 Listen to the words and create some visual association between them. Then write the second of the pair when I read them back to you. Wallwork, A Discussions A-Z Advanced: A resource book of speaking activities. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.

123 chair–cloudradio-handsnake-bath glass-ballshoe-riverclock-boat pen-cigarettehouse-papernose-garage box-starknife-flowerking-car church-eggsalt-carrotfish-computer girl-bookfilm-candleoctopus-plane milk-trainsofa-bicyclecow-bridge Wallwork, A Discussions A-Z Advanced: A resource book of speaking activities. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.

 What would your students say to their own memory results from the little vocabulary game we just played?

 People remember differently (ask a man and a woman to give you directions- both get you there BUT there is a big difference). The most common learning is visual, auditory and kinesthetic.  Different teaching approaches utilize the different types of learning.

 How do you do revision with your learners?  Do you find grammar rhymes to help them remember?  Do you use mnemonic techniques?  Do you use visual devices?

 Everyone responds well to activities which seem to be games – they are seen as challenges not burdens. Therefore we would like to suggest some methods which we find effective.  The following worksheets are some examples of revision aids we personally found effective

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Andi White, unpublished