|
LEARNER
TRAINING and VOCABULARY LEARNING
(Michelle Czajkowski)
6 September,
2004
The notes below are based on the
exercises that were presented in the talk. These can be found in the
attachment and I recommend you open them, print them out, get a good cup of
tea and then read them through together with the following notes.
1. As
teachers we can make students aware that word knowledge is a process, not a
case of "I've looked up the word, now I know it!"
It's difficult to get 100%
knowledge of a word; even native speakers don't have that for many words in
English.
You may recognize a word, be able to guess the part of speech, know what
context it used in, or maybe you've seen it many times but have no idea of
the meaning, maybe you know one meaning, but you are aware it has others you
don't really know yet.
There are many stages in
learning a word. (See Exercise 1+2 on CONSCIOUSNESS RAISING, which can also
be adapted to different levels and used in class).
It's useful to help students
become comfortable with not knowing 100%.
2.
Awareness of text type. (See exercise 3.)
This exercise is to make
students aware of the usage of idiom, metaphors and quotes in different types
of text. There are no right or wrong answers the idea is to promote
discussion about it and maybe induce the learners to collect samples of these
different text types to confirm their ideas.
This type of exercise also offers useful opportunities for meaningful
communication.
As stated before, discussing
language and negotiating the meaning of words are all excellent opportunities
for meaningful communication.
3.
Objectives, Problems and Ideas for Vocabulary Learning. (See exercise 4.)
OBJECTIVES
With respect to objectives we
shouldn't aim to be telling our students how to learn vocabulary, but rather
raise awareness of the different possibilities. Learning a list of 30 words
is indeed one technique and maybe valid for some people, but there are other
ways.
One way of raising awareness is to record a task done by students, write out
the transcript and have them highlight a particular lexical area (such as
collocations).
Movie reviews are a good source
of slang and you can have students re-write the review in a different genre
or register.
On-line tools....
To raise awareness of
collocation you can send students (and teachers!) to http://pioneer.chula.ac.th/~awirote/colloc/
If you've got the patience,
there is a downloadable programme that highlights collocations for students
to see how the word is really used in context.
A similar and maybe faster tool
for students is to enter the key word in www.google.com and see what
collocations come up.
For a voice programme that
speaks out words on your cursor (and much more!!) check out www.gurunet.com
For etymological fans check out
the Merriam- Webster online dictionary and thesaurus at http://www.m-w.com/
For further ideas on Learner
Training for children try www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/methodology/learner_training.shtml
Off line tools....
For learners of English one of
the best dictionaries around is the Collins CoBuild series. A particularly
good one is the English Dictionary for Advanced Learners.
Take a look and you'll see why!
PROBLEMS
Students overuse of
dictionaries, especially the electronic kind, which while being fast are
often not too accurate. But the biggest problem may lay in the user not the
machine.
The famous French teacher Madame
Dupont taught myself and countless other students that when we look up a word
from English to French, before using that word, look it up again from French
to English and see how often you have chosen the wrong word or wrong meaning
of a word. (See Exercise 4. for more on Polysemy).
Another awareness device is to
get students to translate a phrase from English to Chinese in class. They can
discuss their answers in pairs. Then, collect and mix up the papers and then
redistribute. Students translate the phrase back to English and discuss the
results.
IDEAS
As a challenge, having looked at
the ideas in exercise 4, can you see any ways of applying these ideas to
learning vocabulary through listening rather than via the written word?
|
