Language Activity (Vocabulary)

Afra’a Khalid

ID No: 06120142

The introduction

Learning vocabulary is a very important part of learning a language. The more words you know, the more you will be able to understand what you hear and read; and the better you will be able to say what you want when speaking or writing.

In addition, vocabulary is the most important and time-consuming part of learning a language.

*This activity made for students of 13 years.

*Learning vocabulary is a basic tool to improve your English .There are at least 500,000 words in English.  The native English speaker uses an average of 5,000 words in his/her everyday speech. And only 50 words make up 45% of everything written in English.

*There are many words you don’t need at all and there are other words that you simply need to understand when you read or hear them. Also, there are words which you need to

be able to use yourself .

Which words to learn

Every day you hear or read many new words. You need to decide which ones to concentrate on. Here are some suggestions:

1 -learn the words that are important to the subjects you are studying

2 -learn the words that you read or hear again and again

3 -learn the words that you know you will often want to use yourself

4 -do not learn words that are rare or not useful (your teacher can help you with this)

How to learn wordsOnce you have chosen which words to learn, next you have to decide how you are going to learn them. Here are a few ideas:

1 -write the words in a notebook (with their translations or definitions)

Such as

Queue: a line of people who are waiting for something.

Custom: a thing which all the people in a country or a region usually do.

2 -write the words and definitions on small cards

3 -say the words many times

4 -put the words into different groups

*Africa, Europe, Asia, America →→ continents

*happy, sad, angry, scared, excited →→ They are all emotions

5 -make associations

Such as (school). This word means ‘a place where students study’. This word generates another related words like ‘class’, ‘classroom’, ‘students’, ‘teachers’,

‘whiteboard’, ‘principal’, ‘grades’ etc .

6 -ask someone to test you

7 -use the words in your own speaking or writing

In all of the above ways, you are doing something with the words. It’s not enough to just read the words with their definitions and try to remember them. But you will memorize words better if you do something with them.

Try and learn the word in a combination with other words. Learning that to apologize means to say sorry, but it's much better to learn a whole expression containing the word, e.g. He apologized for being late. (verb). Please, take my apologies (noun) .

Not only this is easier to remember, but you are also learning some very important information on how the word is used.

What Learning a new English word means

It is not enough just to know the meaning of a word . You also need to know:

what words it is usually associated with (words that commonly go together),

whether it has any grammatical characteristics (irregular verbs or uncountable nouns), and

how it is pronounced.

Learning vocabulary by reading

Read, Read, Read! Most vocabulary words are learned from context. The more words you're exposed to, the better vocabulary you will have. While you read, pay close attention to words you don't know. First, try to figure out their meanings from context. Then look the words up in a dictionary. Read and listen to challenging material so

that you'll be exposed to many new words.

Lets guess the meaning of these words

Two brothers lived in an old eastern city: Ali, a rich but selfish and miser man, and

Ahmed, a poor and honest man .

-selfish: he cares only about himself , and not about others.

-miser: he seem to hate spending money, and to spend as little as possible.

-honest: he always tell the truth.

Learning vocabulary by pictures

Play games! that test your knowledge. It will help you learn new words and also let you know how much progress you're making. Play Scrabble, Boggle, and do crossword puzzles. These and other word games are available for the computer, so you are not dependent on a partner to play.

Some ActivitiesWrite the correct letters order

1 -p, l, e, p, a

2 -o, r, s, e

3 -u, p, c

4 -v, w, c, e, r, s, r, e, r, d, i

5 -a, o, s, f

6 -k, i, r, s, t

Match every word with the correct picture

)family – breakfast – zebra – map – eyebrow - oven(

Cross out the odd word

1 -pilot, engineer, doctor, spoon

2 -carrot, boy, cucumber, lettuce

3 -notebook, pencil, toy, pencil sharpener

4 -Britain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain

5 -face, nose, hand, glasses

6 -mobile, laptop, TV, phone, T-shirt

Purposes of learning vocabulary

Learning vocabulary is very beneficial for students .

1 -It will help them to speak and write correctly .

2 -They will be able to choose the appropriate word and use it more effectively .

3 -They will be able to understand deeper and made their communication easier than before. 4- They will have open minds to have new vocabulary, ideas

and thoughts to share with others .

5 -A strong vocabulary will help students express their thoughts more clearly.

This activity is beneficial because

1 -It gives students some new vocabulary.

2 -It helps them with useful techniques for vocabulary learning.

3 -It helps them with the easiest way to memorize and remember different words.

4 -Learning vocabulary aids students to learn other skills (reading, speaking …..etc)

The Conclusion

Finally, I think learning vocabulary is an essential part of learning any language. It provides students with new words and expressions to use. Also, they will have some new techniques and strategies to learn. Learning vocabulary will facilitates learning other language and communication skills.

I hope you enjoy my presentation .