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Here are the slides from my talk 'Bags of Fun with Vocabulary' at TESOL Spain 2013.
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Bags of Fun with Vocabulary
Catherine MorleyBritish Council, Alcalá de Henares
Session aims
- WHY use vocabulary bags
- WHAT exactly is a vocabulary bag.
- WHAT information do learners need to know about a new word / collocation
- WHEN, HOW and WHERE should I use vocabulary bags
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WHY
How many time do students have to ‘meet’ a new word before they are able to use it themselves when speaking?
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WHY
- Minimum 7 encounters needed (Woolard, 2000). Other experts say up to 16 meetings required (Koprowski, 2006)
- Vocab bags help to keep track of vocabulary for recycling
- Useful resource to fill a few spare minutes at the beginning / end of class
- Learners can choose what vocabulary they want to put in the vocab bag
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WHAT
- Content more important than presentation.
- Set it up in a way which minimises extra work created for you, the teacher!
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WHAT
What other information about a word might it be useful to include on vocabulary cards?
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WHAT
Some information you might include on vocabulary cards
- Part of speech
- Collocations
- Stress
- Example sentence
- Register
- Phonemic script
- Other forms of the same word (verb, noun, adjective etc.)
BUT there’s no need to be a perfectionist!
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WHAT
Who writes the words on papers for the vocabulary bag? The teacher or the students? Or both at different times?
Where do the words come from?
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- In each class, give a different student the responsibility for recording new vocabulary from that day’s lesson
- OR at the end of the class, ask students to decide what vocabulary from the lesson they would like to include in the vocabulary bag
- Students in pairs can work to write example sentences on the cards (and teacher checks them)
- You could also do this at the beginning of the next lesson
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WHEN
‘Principle of expanding rehearsal’
- Review new words shortly after they are presented, then at increasingly longer intervals
- To stimulate long-term memory, ideally words would be reviewed
-5-10 minutes after class-24 hours later-one week later-one month later-six months later.
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ankiteacher.wikispaces.com
ankisrs.net
Practical implementation:
• Review new vocabulary at the end of each class
• Set homework that involves using the new vocabulary, for ‘real’ communication when possible
• Regular (every lesson? every two lessons?) use of the vocabulary bag
• Include speaking / writing tasks that require use of vocabulary from earlier units, not just the current unit
• On longer courses, have a vocabulary bag ‘clear out’ after a few months, when students decide which words from the vocabulary bag they need to keep practising, and which they want to get rid of.
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Talk about a friend you’ve known for a long time. You could mention:
- how long you’ve known this person, and how you met
- what this person looks like
- what kind of clothes this person usually wears (look at page 148 to help you)
- what this person is like (personality) and why you get on so well
- how often you see this person and what you like doing together
Try to speak for at least two minutes, and use at least 3 of the adjectives / phrases on page 146 of the Student’s Book.
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Record using mobile phone
Or use MailVu:
http://mailvu.com/
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save up (p.v.)
a swamp (n.)
blackmail (v.)
an attempt (n.)
sensible (adj.)
blurred (adj.)
a genre (n.)
a billboard (n.)
biased (adj.)
boil (v.)
compulsory (adj.)
multi-task (v.)
starving (adj.)
07/03/13www.britishcouncil.org
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