5 ESL Vocabulary Teaching Methods That Build Serious

Linguistic Muscles
fluentu.com/blog/educator-english/esl-teaching-vocabulary/

stephenseifert

Go ahead, flex your vocabulary teaching muscles.

We’re going to exercise those in a whole new way.

Enhance all your vocabulary lessons by building the four major language skills—
speaking, listening, reading and writing—at the same time.

Teaching a diverse range of English vocabulary is indeed an essential part of any ESL
student’s growth. But it doesn’t have to be done in isolation.

Yup, kiss those long lists of vocabulary goodbye right now.

We’re going to show you how to give your students the tools to build their vocabulary
knowledge while also helping them build all their major language skills.

Learning new words with a heaping helping of context and immediately using them
in a practical way is how native English speakers develop their vocabulary in the
classrooms of their youth, and a very similar approach can be taken in your ESL classroom.

After all, why wouldn’t the same methodology work out for foreign language learners as well?

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Encouraging their overall linguistic growth and range of English experiences is what it’s all
about.

Let your ESL students blossom into confident English speakers using a volume of new words.

How Teaching ESL Vocabulary Can Build Other Skills

Expanding vocabulary leads to improving overall language skills. Even if you
resort to lists and rote memorization, vocabulary is a wonderful way to build all the major
language skills. That’s because building vocabulary in any way boosts ESL skills such as
communication, visualization, memory recall and practical use among others. Think about it:
More vocabulary means that students have more words at their disposal to use—plus they’ll
understand more of the words they hear.

Any lesson can become a vocabulary lesson. Let’s say you’re ready to get away from
lists of isolated vocabulary. Let’s say you really want to teach students to speak, understand,
read and write English while teaching vocabulary lessons. You’ll start using the practical
strategies in the list below (keep reading!) and, each time you introduce a new word in a
practical way with great, multidimensional activities, your students be able to improve their
pronunciation and knowledge of grammatically-proper word usage as well.

The more words your ESL students know, the more they can apply their
language in a practical way. Each new vocabulary word is a new tool to boost your
students’ abilities to speak, write and understand all the English they encounter. In fact, an
academic study published in Reading & Writing Quarterly: Overcoming Learning
Difficulties (2010) discusses the close relationship vocabulary has with comprehension. The
teaching methods below emphasize this close relationship.

Vocabulary activities all complement one another in one way or another. Each
vocabulary teaching method you’ll utilize in your classroom will have a focus. Maybe you’re
focusing on visual stimuli with one teaching method. Connecting words with visuals may be
the main theme, but practical use or contextualization may be the subtle undertone to the
lesson which overlaps with vocabulary teaching methods from other class days. Even brand
new vocabulary lessons will feel a little bit familiar, a little bit within the class comfort zone.
This is what makes teaching vocabulary so wonderful.

In addition to the methods and suggested activities below, you can use SpellingClassroom
to organize and enhance your vocabulary teaching. With games, activity modules and both
pre-made and customizable word lists, you can easily create an engaging vocab learning
experience for students at any English learning level. Learn more here.

Did you know that FluentU is also a great way to learn heaps of native vocabulary in a fun
and engaging way?

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FluentU takes real-world videos—like music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks
—and turns them into personalized language learning lessons.

Your students will be learning common and everyday English from some of their favorite
films, TV and other media sources. You can request a free trial and start exploring the
massive library.
Now let’s take a closer look at some fantastic vocabulary teaching methods.

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1. Present Words with Visual Stimuli

Visual learning has long been a staple of learning.

From the time we’re kids and throughout our entire academic careers, visual learning plays a
big role. Presenting new words using visual stimuli is also a great way to step away from
more humdrum methods (like those vocab lists) and spice up the classroom.

One way you can recruit visuals to join your battle is by using flashcards. Of course, this is a
classic teaching and learning method. However, there are plenty of ways to make it a new and
exciting activity.

For example, you won’t simply have your students write the new words and their meanings
on flashcards—boring! Rather, you’ll let them build a visual experience that will support
comprehension. We’ll show you how to take this even further in the teaching method
outlined below.

How to teach ESL vocabulary with visual stimuli:

First, compile a healthy stack of magazines. The material should be appropriate to your
students’ ages.

Grab stacks of flashcards, glue sticks and scissors. Hopefully you have some of this stuff
lying around already. Make a few flashcards yourself. Pick a new vocabulary word and
cut out pics from magazines that represent it. These homemade illustrated flashcards
will serve as examples for your students.

It’s class time. Present a few new words to your class, discussing the definition and
usage of each.

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 Show examples of your creative flashcards and let them loose in groups to develop their
own using the words you presented at the beginning of the activity. The groups will
support communication, a great ESL sub-skill.

Once your ESL students have developed their flashcard masterpieces, it’s time to
present. Each student will explain their new word, definition and the photos they chose
for that specific word. This creates a lasting visual memory, boosting comprehension
when opportunities for practical use come knocking.

2. Attach Context to Vocabulary

Attaching context to the vocabulary you present to your students will connect them with
those new words in a more meaningful way.

Many English teachers place the most emphasis on this vocabulary teaching method due to
its utter importance.

There are a few strategies based on teaching with context. For one, you can group words
together using context. You’ll want to show how vocabulary words work together in sentences
and paragraphs. You’ll want to present words to students with a complete story or a video
clip that utilizes all of it.

How to teach ESL vocabulary with context:

Find a subject first. The chosen subject will put everything else in place. For this sample
activity, we’ll use the weather as the subject. After all, the weather will sooner or later
be a talking point for your students outside of the classroom. Find a weather broadcast
from a news channel website or YouTube.

Pick five to seven new words you’ll focus on from the weather video. Transcribe how
they were used in the video and write down their definitions for your lesson plan
material.

Present the vocabulary in context to your class. Show them the video. Then present the
new words, their definitions and transcriptions. Have a little discussion and answer
questions as needed before moving on.

Show the weather broadcast video again, but this time have your students raise their
hands every time they hear the new target words. You can do this two or three times.

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 Once you have etched the new words into your students’ minds with context, it’s time
for contextual action. Break up your eager students into small groups of three or four,
then unleash them to develop their own weather scripts using their freshly presented
vocabulary. They can work together in their peer groups and simply modify the
transcriptions from the video, or they could even create totally new and compelling
scripts of their own.

Have the groups present their scripts in front of the class in order to build confidence
and have them learn that vocabulary once and for all.

3. Build Confidence with Word Clusters

Another exceptional and effective way to keep building vocabulary comprehension is to
deploy word clusters in the classroom.

They’re an old English teaching favorite that allows you to check in on your students’
comprehension levels quite easily. They could be a bit boring if you simply give your class a
worksheet of word clusters to decipher—but you don’t want to be the boring English teacher.

Word clusters basically map out relationships between words (see here). Students will need
to identify which words are closely related and draw it all out.

You may also want to consider using Visual Thesaurus for examples for this activity as well as
further activities and learning possibilities. Visual Thesaurus is exactly what it sounds like, a
thesaurus that uses word maps to display the relationships between words. Because of its
interactive, engaging nature, students may end up using it not just to find the “right” word,
but to add new words to their vocabulary without even realizing it!

How to teach ESL vocabulary with word clusters:

There’s nothing wrong with a little competition, so pair up your students for this
vocabulary building activity. Each pair will be competing for points and cluster champ
bragging rights.

Browse your previous vocabulary lesson plans in order to find the target words you’ll
use for this activity. You’ll want to have lots of descriptive words that are synonyms and
antonyms to one another, if possible. Let’s say you decide to utilize the five to seven
words you presented in context during the weather-related vocabulary building activity.
These words will be the centerpieces for your students’ word clusters.

In order to warm your class up a bit, recap the words you’ll be building clusters for.
This could be a simple classroom discussion after you present the words again, or you
can let the class watch the weather broadcast again and point out the new words.

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 Once the warm-up is complete, let the cluster creation begin. Each student pair will
have a blank sheet of paper or you can provide them with a blank template. You’ll say
and write the first cluster word, and they’ll write the word in the center of their blank
paper.

Start the timer. Your students must attempt to get as many words linked via lines to the
core word as possible before time runs out. Five minutes is generally a good amount of
time per word.

Once time is up, your pairs will present the words they have clustered. They get a point
for each word, and another point if the word is spelled correctly.

You’ll repeat and answer questions as they arise during the activity. Ensure that you’re
encouraging communication and collaboration between your students. The classroom
should be nowhere near quiet during this activity.

4. Keep New Words Practical

Keeping new words practical will let students know exactly how to use them when they need
them the most.

In fact, building ESL skills through practical use is essential to language growth. Plus, it adds
excitement to any activity. You can mold your students’ communication skills faster while
building quicker response times in a practical setting.

This could prove valuable to ESL students abroad or during English testing. Improvisational
activities in the classroom are effective for presenting and learning vocabulary in a practical
way.

How to teach ESL vocabulary with practical exercises:

First, you’ll need to identify five to seven new words to present to your class. Sticking
with the practical use theme, it’s a best practice to use vocabulary associated with the
time of year or an event currently happening, for example.

If a big sporting event is taking place or is about to take place soon, you can utilize it for
your practical vocabulary building activity. The Olympics is a fantastic example. You
can build plenty of vocabulary using the Olympics as your subject.

Choose five to seven words associated with the Olympics. This can be a specific event or
a concept like teamwork that’s involved in the happenings of the world-renowned
athletic event. Let’s say you want to focus on track and field. You could introduce words
related such as marathon, sprinting, high jump, time, teammate and competition,
among others.

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 After presenting the new Olympic track and field vocabulary, pair up your students.
You’ll give them roles. Student A will be a sprinter and student B will be a marathon
runner. You can give them opening lines or a scenario to get them started, but then let
them converse naturally after.

The use of the new vocabulary in such a practical manner will drive them to think fast
by answering questions or coming up with questions to ask. For example, Student A the
sprinter placed first in his run, and Student B the marathoner is congratulating his
teammate. This will allow your students to develop their vocabulary, confidence and
thought processes. And it’s fun to get some improv acting going in any classroom, for
you and your students.

5. Let Your Students’ Voices Be Heard

Your students want to build vocabulary and they want to be heard.

So, let them do both with an out-loud activity that will boost their confidence,
communication and comprehension. Having your students practice their new vocabulary out
loud will also help develop proper pronunciation of their new words. Hearing them use the
new words you presented will allow you to make on-the-spot pronunciation fixes while still
building momentum within an activity.

You can combine this vocabulary teaching method with the Total Physical Response (TPR)
method as well. You’ll be instructing students around the classroom, making the two-method
combination an exceptional way to build ESL skills, English response time and language use
confidence.

How to teach ESL vocabulary out loud:

First, present the new words to your students in a fun way to set the mood for the rest
of the lesson. For example, let’s say your subject is clothing. You can run around the
classroom and define the clothing that you or your students are wearing in a loud, goofy
way.

Once you have shown and presented the new words such as pants, shirt, shoes, etc., you
can expand those new words on the spot. Choose the first student and instruct them to
move toward another student. Then ask them to describe what that student is wearing.
The correct answers would be pants, shirt and so on.

Next, you’ll ask the student what type of pants they’re wearing (for example, they might
be jeans, slacks, sweatpants, corduroy). Then you’ll ask color and so on. They’ll answer
everything out loud and with a strong, confident voice, even if they’re wrong.

Correct pronunciation and any questionable answers on the spot, allowing your
students to make real-time corrections.

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 The student who was just described will be the next student to describe a classmate,
and so on. They’ll bop around the room with excitement, not even realizing how much
they’re learning and comprehending as they go.

Now you’ve got an excellent assortment of ESL vocabulary teaching methods that can boost a
variety of language skills.

So, don’t settle for just any old method. Focusing on vocabulary teaching methods that
incorporate confidence-boosting activities that touch on other ESL skills is always a best
practice.

Learning vocabulary is an ESL cornerstone and sets the tone for future growth.

And One More Thing...

If you're looking for creative ways to teach English, then you'll love using FluentU in your
classroom!

It's got a huge collection of authentic English videos that people in the English-speaking
world actually watch regularly. There are tons of great choices there when you're looking for
songs for in-class activities.

You'll find music videos, musical numbers from cinema and theater, kids' singalongs,
commercial jingles and much, much more.

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On FluentU, all the videos are sorted by skill level and are carefully annotated for
students.

Words come with example sentences and definitions. Students will be able to add them to
their own vocabulary lists, and even see how the words are used in other videos.

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For example, if a student taps on the word "searching," they'll see this:

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Plus, these great videos are all accompanied by interactive features and active learning
tools for students, like multimedia flashcards and fun games like "fill in the blank."

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It’s perfect for in-class activities, group projects and solo homework assignments. Not to
mention, it's guaranteed to get your students excited about learning English!

Sign up for a free trial and bring FluentU to your classroom today.

Stephen Seifert is a writer, editor, professor of English and adventurer. With nearly a
decade of teaching experience to students worldwide, he enjoys the many aspects of culture
and traditions different from his own. Stephen continues his search for writing inspiration,
boldly enjoying life to the fullest.

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 Watch Video At:

https://youtu.be/IEuh17Uik7k

If you liked this post, something tells me that you'll love FluentU, the best way to teach
English with real-world videos.

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