RA’ANANA EFL TEACHERS VOCABULARY WORKSHOP Fran Levin 2018-9

What Do You Think? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NiFGAwfv5k *How much vocabulary is needed to read and understand English? *How much vocabulary is needed to understand and speak English? *What is a Lemma? *How many items does the English Curriculum cover by the end of 6th Grade? 9th Grade? 12th Grade? *Do you think you’re getting there with your classes? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NiFGAwfv5k

Resources: The English Curriculum Curriculum Pages 38-43 Band 1 Lexis A Practical Guide To Teaching Vocabulary Topic Search on Inspectorate Site. Any of Professor Penny Ur’s books.

THE STAGES OF LEARNING NEW LANGUAGE ITEMS From dependence to independence Learners don not move from ‘not knowing’ to ‘knowing’… … but from ‘not knowing at all’ to ‘noticing’ to ‘knowing if you remind and support them’ and finally to ‘knowing on their own’. These are points on a continuum, not ‘jumps’. [Vygotzky’s ‘Zone of proximal development’] b) From passive recognition to active production Passive mastery (recognizing something when they see it, but unable to produce it on their own) before they achieve active mastery. At least four stages in the gradual acquisition of new language items: 1The learner perceives and ‘notices’ the new item, with help. 2The learner can recognize it only if helped, can’t produce it. 3The learner can recognize it on his/her own, but can produce only if helped. 4The learner can both recognize and produce it on his / her own.

THE NEED FOR REPETITION a) Adults / adolescents need between 10 and 16 encounters with a new word before they remember it. So how many do younger learners need? b) ‘Distributed’ practice is better than ‘massed’. Implications of a) and b) for practice? We need to do an immense amount of deliberate re-cycling of new language (letters, sounds, words, ‘chunks’, grammatical structures). This recycling, or repetition, needs to be scattered (‘distributed’), not all in one go. Lead constant ‘cumulative’ review exercises.  

Production Recognition Noticing dictation matching simple display pictures and explanation mime-guessing true/false Repetition chants responding to picture classifying songs dictating picture multiple choice using in a story (particularly folk tales) guessing games bingo answering questions

Repeating and reviewing things can become boring Repeating and reviewing things can become boring. The trick is to keep them interested (attentive and motivated). INTEREST-CREATING FEATURES Variety Purposeful meaning-making (communication) Success-orientation Visual focus (use of board, pictures …) Game-like strategies Personalization Entertainment (songs, jokes, drama, humour) Open-endedness (brainstorming, lots of right (responses

BANG!! My cat is an angry cat

REVIEW FOR WEAK LEARNERS

What Are They Doing?

WORD GRIDS E D C B A 1 2 3 4 sleep eat drink sit jump read stand sing dance rest 2 make run ride walk write 3 study work play buy drive 4

MORE….. 5 Minute Activities What’s On the Bus? Categories

Dice Game Choose 6 categories and assign 1 category to each number on the dice. Give each group a die. Students take turns rolling the dice and give words under each corresponding category.

What’s on the List? * Divide the class into two teams and give each team a mini-whiteboard or a paper. *Let the team leaders pick a topic written on strips of paper. Give them 2-4 minutes (depending on their level) to shortlist 12 items related to the topic they’ve got. When the time is over, tell whoever goes first the topic of the other team. They have 30 seconds to guess what’s on the list and will get a point for each item they guess correctly. Play as many rounds as you want with different topics. The team with the highest points wins the game!

MEMORY GAME VARIATION Variation: Rather than using word + definition/picture cards, students can match the first and second half of common phrases, expressions, idioms or other multi-word lexical items; e.g. "have" on one card, "a good time" on the other card.

Blockbusters Written by Paul Adams for Teach-This.com ©20I3 Age/Level: Elementary and above Time: 25 minutes Players: 2 teams Preparation: A list of clues for words beginning with each letter of the alphabet Aim: To guess the word from a clue given by the teacher Procedure *Draw a 5 x 5 hexagon grid on the board. *Write different letters in the 25 hexagonal spaces. *Split the class into two teams and allocate each team with a different colour, e.g. red and blue. The two teams then decide which direct they want to play (top to bottom or left to right). *Start with the central letter, e.g. if the letter was B, the clue might be: A person who bakes bread. *The two teams race to answer the clue.If the red team gets it right first, then the B hexagon is coloured red. The red team then chooses the next letter. *You then give a clue for the next letter, which both teams race to answer. *The aim of the game is for one team to connect the hexagons from the top to the bottom of the board and the other team to connect the hexagons from left to right. The first team to make the connection is the winner. *Remind the students that this is a fairly strategic game and they need to choose their moves carefully.

Blockbusters Grid

https://www. youtube. com/watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtKqaQZ2gaQ&index=19&list=RDHZ8AAgSVEaE