the wh questions of developing vocabulary in the circus of a low teach classroom oct 22 2016

Professor Stephen J Hall

Centre for English Language Studies

https://www.facebook.com/cels.sunwayu

The W.H questions of

developing vocabulary in the

circus of a low tech classroom.

Centre for English

Language Studies

Outline

• Vocab in the classroom circus

• Choosing WHICH words, phrases and sentences to learn

• WHAT sparks memory traces

• WHY? Matching purposes and word learning

• WHEN and HOW ? Building definition skills


I hope you were listening to all that!


Write a question you have about learning

new words in another language.

We will come back to this later


As a teacher

• Text driven vs Learning driven

• Lesson plan vs Seizing learning opportunities

• Telling vs Modelling

• One way vs Interactive facilitator

• We will return to these while modelling Approach and Methods through what we do

Centre for English Language Studiesth

• Tasks immediately relevant to classroom use

• No task more than 15 minutes

• Highlighting links to specific target needs

• Signposting the process instead of product Establish ‘small culture’ norms of all listening to the speaker

Content choices – what does the

‘ringmaster’ of the circus present

8/6/2007 CfBT and CDC National Meeting August 28 2007

Centre for English

Language Studies

I hope you were listening to all that!


Centre for English

Language Studies

Raise awareness : Which and Why?

• Choose the right words

• Learn what it means to know a word

• Experience using a word

• Link the word to forms

• Use the word with fluency

• Understand your learning style


What vocab to learn?

• High frequency words (2000 word families)

• Short words

• Content words are the building blocks

• See 1000 General Service List

• Task 1 : Word of the day presentation


http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/about/staff/paul-nation

How we choose to learn

• Absorbing /Interacting

• Looking

• Listening

• Moving

• Reading

• Speaking

• Writing


Reading

What sparks memory traces? 1

• Phonological hooks ….he was fired soon after he was hired

• Words that alliterate, chime and rhyme

• Adapted from The Language Gym

• https://gianfrancoconti.wordpress.com/ –great online resource



• Categorizing by meaning and word class;

• Headings can be in L1

• Creating connections and cognitive investment


Interactive Task

• you are trying to memorize the words

• ‘stingy’, ‘argumentative’, ‘noisy’, ‘talkative’, ‘lying’, ‘poor’, ‘lazy’, ‘active’, ‘toned’, ‘smart’, ‘hard-working’, ‘petty’, ‘cheerful’, ‘amusing’, ‘bright’, ‘well-built’, ‘slim’, ‘stunning’, ‘overweight’, ‘bad-tempered’, ‘treacherous’, ‘unstable’, ’dodgy’(slang), ‘choleric’, ‘fit’, ‘affluent’, ‘muscular’, ‘depressed’, ‘elated’, ‘underprivileged’,

‘sneaky’(slang); frustrated’, ‘vindictive’


Categorising

• In the first round you may simply divide them into 2 categories: Positive and Negative; in the second round into Physical Appearance, Personality, Emotional states; in the third round you may want to narrow it down further, as follows:

• (a) Physical fitness: toned, fit, well-built, muscular

• (b) Uplifting emotions: elated, cheerful, elated,

• (c) Money: poor, affluent, rich, underprivileged, stingy

• (d) Dishonesty: sneaky , dodgy, treacherous, lying

• (e) Negative emotions: vindictive, frustrated, bad-tempered, choleric



• Ordering ,arranging by size, weight,length, etc

• Eg

• Pebble - stone- rock- cliff- mountain- mountain range

• Task- peoples’ looks …ugly to…..



• Emotional associations

• Neural connections between words which are closely associated in other than just form are strong

• Eg word chain challenge/ meaning fluency links


Language focus

• 25% should be on form (Nation, Coxhead)

• Both the written form and spoken form are important

• Word stress impacts on understanding

• Task two

• Learning / word Stress/ along with new vocabulary Murphy, J. New Ways of Teaching Vocabulary. Coxhead, A (Ed.) TESOL Association. P21-24


Centre for English

Language Studies

Four Strands of Learning a new Language

1

Learning from meaning-focused input (listening

and reading)

2

Learning from meaning-focused output (speaking

and writing)

3

Language-focused learning (studying

pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar etc)

4

Fluency development (getting good at using what

you already know).

All four strands are important and they need roughly

equal amounts of time. (Paul Nation)

Content Words: which words

matter• Start simple and concrete

• Use the 2000 word list

• Set an obtainable target – 7 words a day?

• An interactive task

• Task 3 – use visuals to stimulate structured responses


Understand learning for knowing or

using target words• We always know more than we can produce in a

new language

• Find our own strategies- write and cover, use in a sentence, mapping

• Productive use needs 7 exposures before the word is inside

• Defining helps and to a task

•


Centre for English

Language Studies

Centre for English

Language Studies

DefiningFeature

Drum 1 Javanese

Drum 2Latin -bongos

It has

It is made of

It

We would hear this

High frequency words

• They happen often as they do a lot

• Occur in different contexts

• Useful for understanding and use


An example of creating the big

“UUHH” :Antediluvian• Form challenges

• Word part challenges

• No context

• No visuals

• No word chunking or collocation

• No register clues- where do we hear or read this

• Low frequency


Principles from research : The How

for useful words?• Repeating in spaced significant ways

• Seeing and hearing aids memory

• Deciding if it is learning for receptive or productive use

• Knowing the where, when and how of usage

• Using pictures can help memory


Understand learning for knowing or

using target words• We always know more than we can produce in a

new language

• Find our own strategies- write and cover, use in a sentence, mapping

• Productive use needs 7 exposures before the word is inside

• Defining helps and to a task

•


Word detectives

• Find a useful word to report to the class

• Give its core meaning

• Say and spell it

• Use it in two sentences

• Any prefixes or suffixes

• What other words does it go with ? (collocates)


Building definition skills

• Use simple language

• Use different ways- defining, examples, pictures

• Use translation if it helps


Students learning from each other

• Seeing the words helps (Elley, 1989)

• Talking with other students helps

• Pushing focused fun fluency works


Be mindful of memory decay

• Word activation in context needs repetition

• Most forgetting occurs within first 24 hours of learning

• Better a few minutes each day

• Google search target words- more frequent comes first


Play with language

• Listen to music

• Read below your level for fun as you can learn much

• Set a small workable target

• Use aps and web sites

• Enjoy as words are power


Useful free vocabulary aps – a how

• Memrise

• Duolingo

• http://www.cambridgemobileapps.com/

• Anki

• Busu

• More info at https://www.facebook.com/cels.sunwayu


http://www.cambridgemobileapps.com/

Being a reflective teacher/ learner

• Choose one

• Today I learnt…

• Today I felt…

• After today I will…

• The question I had answered was…


Thanks to inspring vocabulary teachers extraordinarie

• Paul Nation

• Averil Coxshead

• Gianofranco Conti

• And colleagues at CELS Sunway University


Teachers learn from each other

as learners (do)

• Facebook

• Teacher Voices: Professional Development


A question you have about learning new

words in another language.

Later is now no longer later


Thank you for listening

Professor Stephen J Hall


https://www.facebook.com/cels.sunwayu

Centre for English

Language Studies

the wh questions of developing vocabulary in the circus of a low teach classroom oct 22 2016

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