How to put words © Integrating new knowledge into old Dec Production tasks Games ion-making tasks Integrating —Tinditinnally, the presentation of new language items would swiftly he new followed by the practice of these items. This practice would typically take the form of some of kind of oral repetition, such as a drill. This notion of mechanical practice underlies the popular belief chat ‘practice ms perfect’. However, as we saw in Chapter 2, simply repearing newly learned words is no guarantee that they will move from the short-term memory store into permanent memory. New knowledge ~ i.e. new wors ~ needs to be integrated into existing knowledge - i.e. the learners’ existing network of word associations, or what we called the mental lexicon. As we also saw in the discussion on memory, there is a greater likelihood of the word being integrated into this network if many ‘deep’ decisions have been made about it In other words, to ensure long-term retention and recall, words need co be put 10 work’. They need to be placed in working memory, and subjected to different operations. Such operations might include: being taken apart and put back together again, being compared, combined, matched, sorted, visualised and re-shutfled, as well as being repeatedly filed away and recalled (since the more often a word is recalled, the easier recall becomes). In this chapter we will look at a range of activity types designed to do just that. They might best be thought of as integration activities, rather than ‘practice forcement activities, since both these latter terms have knowledge into old activities’ or ‘r associations with # more mechanical, less cognitive, approach to language teaching, Decision. There are many different kinds of tasks that teachers can set learners in making tasks order to help move words into long-term memory. Some of these tasks will require more brain work than others. That is to say, they will be more cognitively demanding. Tasks in which learners make decisions about words can be divided into the following types, roughly arranged in an order from least cognitively demanding to most demanding + identitying + selecting + matching 93 |... snll rrrHow to Teach Vocabulary + sorting + ranking and sequencing ‘The more of these task types that ean be performed on a set of words the better. In other words, an identification task could be followed by a matching task, which in turn could be followed by a ranking task. Identifying words simply means finding them where they may otherwise be ‘hidden’, such as in texts. e Listening out for particular words in a spoken or recorded text is also a form of identification activity. Below is a selection of identification asks based on this te B Here, for example, are some identification tasks relating to the text Fear of Flying (on page 42). Give the learners the text and ask them to: + Count the number of times plane(s) and frain(s) occur in the text. + Find four words connected with flying in the text. + Find five phrasal verbs in the teat. + Find cight comparative adjectives in the text + Underline all che words ending in -ing in the text Ask them to read the text, then turn it over, and then ask: + ‘Did the following words occur in the text” busy crowded fast dangerous uncomfortable dirty convenient inconvenient noisy + ‘Now check the text to see if you were right.” OK, that’s Mr Brown. He's wearing a jacket and trousers, no tle, and he's talking to the woman with the long dark hair ~ she's wearing a black dress. Now Mrs Brown is over there. She's wearing a skirt and a, Diouse, and she's talking to a tall man with fair hair. And their son, Richard ... yes, there he is, he’s over in the corner. He's wearing Jeans and a T-shirt ~ he's the one with very short hair. (from Doff A and Jones C, Language in Use (Beginner Workbook), CUP) + List all the clothes items that you hear. + Raise your hand when you hear a clothes item. + Put these items in the order that you hear them: blouse tie skirt jeans jacket T-shirt dress trousers + Tick the items that you hear: blouse shoes tie shorts skirt socks jeans jacket hat Tshirt dress trousers suit shirt + Listen for clothes words and write them in the correct column: Mr Brown Mrs Brown Richard6 * How 10 put words to work Identification is also the process learners apply in tusks in which they have to unscramble anagrams (such as ufis, suaje, efi ~ for sust, jeans, tie), ot when they have to search for words in a ‘word soup’, such as the following (also from Language in Use): 1 What are these elaches in English? The answers are all in the wordsquare, sSuHtRTOS 1 PACK ETAL ATC 3 NJ O(T TROUSERS 1 oAMWAT(H — x T PUN S/i) oDRE Ss 5S J]R| s kK IR T U PIT) susSUITJE Selecting tasks ate cognitively more complex than identification tasks, since they involve both recognising words and making choices amongst thern This may rake the form of choosing the ‘odd one out’, as in this task (again, based on the lexical set of clothes): 95Hows to Teach Vocaoulary 96 “% Choose the odd one out in each group: 1 wousers socks jeans Tshirt 2 blouse skirt te aress 3 Tshirt suit shors trainers ete. Note that with this kind of activicy, there is no ‘right’ answer necessarily Whar is important is that learners are able to justify their choice, whatever their answer. Ir is the cognitive work that counts ~ not getting the right answer. Here is another open-ended selection task, with a personalised element: 2. Think of three people you to describe yourself. Use a admire very much, They can be dictionary if necessary. politicians, musicians, sports cachl imeang dow od personalities etc. or people you ceofdent ft hay re know personally. Choose the tneligort hind ny nehous person you admire most and ! think of three adjectives to < Gescribe this person. polite quict calm cude sad sensitive nice sesious Udy Then choose the second and oughtfl third person you admire and think of three more adjectives Think of other words you can for each person to explain why. use, honest, friendly Discuss your choice of words with your partner. Tihink I'm usually optimistic. And I'm always polite! rom Grcenall §, Reward Does he/she agree with you? Pre-kuter mediate, Mactuillan r————v—e Heinemann Another useful selecting task that can be applied to any vocabulary lesson is: Choose five (or ten or twenty) words from this lesson to learn. Think of how you will demonstrate ~ in the next class ~ that you have learned them ‘The same kind of task can be applied to any text that the learners have read or listened to. And, as a way of recycling vocabulary items from previous lessons, learners can select words from their notebooks to ‘test’ their classmates at the beginning of each lesson.6 © How tu put words to work A matching task involves first recognising words and then pairing them with ~ for example ~ a visual representation, a translation, a synonym, an antonym, a definition, or a collocate. As an example of this last type, here is a verb-noun matching task: WORD PAIR RACE In five minutes, write as many correct pairs of verb + noun phrases.as pos: pook rash fait 40 ear win VERBS cary wake 8 look Hike He yonet shoae puton into? a weight “Sy a sightseeing. ‘oliday afi aseatbelt. NOUNS aphoto "rch a fortune an exam match ir father from Oxenden C and yeu Latham-Koenig C, English Pile Intermediate, OUP Pelmanism is a memory game which involves nothing but matching. Word pairs (or picture-word matches) are printed on individual cards which are placed face down in a random distribution. Players take turns to pick up a card and then search for its partner. If they correctly locate the partner Ginitially by guesswork, but, as the game progresses, by remembering where individual cards ase located), they keep the pair, and have another turn. If 7How to Teach Vocabulary not, they lay the cards face down where they found them, and the next player has a turn, The player with the most pairs at the end of the game is the winner. Typical pairs might be: + antonyms (dail ~ short, thick ~ thin, dark ~ light, etc.) + British and American equivalents (bil! check, pharmacy ~ drugstore, lif — elevator, ete.), oF + collocations (wide + awake, stark + nuked, fast + asleep, etc.) Sorting activities require learners to sort words into different categories. The categories can either be given, or guessed, Here is an example of the former (from Thornbury S, Highlight Pre-Intermediate, Heinemann): Word field: characteristics. 2 Put these adjectives into two groups - positive and negative. | emotional friendly good-humoured outgoing | confident ambitious rude self-centred offensive kind selfish nice Here is an activity in which learners (at a fairly advanced level) decide the categories themselves: Pur these words into four groups of three words each. Then, think of a title for each group. goal net piece club racket. shoot board green court hole pitch referee check serve tee move Now, can you add extra words to each group? Finally, ranking and sequencing activities require learners to put the words into some kind of order. This may involve arranging the words on a cline: for example, adverbs of frequency (a/ways, sometimes, never, occasionally, aften, etc), Or learners may be asked to rank items according to preference: Imagine you have just moved into a completely empty flat. You can afford to buy one piece of furniture a week, Put the following items in the order in which you would buy them: fridge bed desk dining table sofa wardrobe chair dishwasher bookcase cooker washing machine chest of drawers Now, compare your list with another student and explain your order. If you were sharing the flat rogether, would you agree? If not, make a new list that you both agree about. Here is an example of a ranking activity (from Morgan J and Rinvolucri M, Vocabulary, OUP) that can be adapted to different levels by changing the selected words: 98