TEACHING VOCABULARY

1. Reasons for teaching the vocabulary’

a. To arouse the learners interest

b. To disambiguate grammar mistakes
c. To motivate conversation

2. Survey- learners’expectations

3. Memorising words

o Association with a mental image /picture

o Association with a situation/topic/story
o Association with a feeling
o Association with a sound
o Memorable word

PASSIVE vs ACTIVE VOCABULARY

Large vs small
Receptive vs Productive

4. Selecting vocabulary
Frequency: e.g.
cake (pound cake, birthday- cake, wedding- cake, fruit -cake)

Range/coverage : e.g.
cover
Provide a translation for cover in the following sentences
- I put the cover on the pot.
- The covers on these arm-chairs are dusty.
- She works under cover.
- I ve read that book from cover to cover.
- The girl on the cover.
- Mail this important invoice in a cover.

Familiarity e.g.
Objects in the bathroom, piecec of furniture in the rooms
Usefulness : e.g.
We should consider the students”needs –a group of adult
bankers, a group of economists, a group of medical doctors etc.

5. Linguistic considerations

 Style -level of formality

e.g.
Children-neutral
Offsprings- formal
Kids-informal
Nippers- colloquial
Sprogs- slang

 Register- job-related words

e.g.
penniless-neutral
broke-colloquial
insolvent-legal term

 Dialects
 Regional dialects
e.g.
pavement-sidewalk (/US)
small- wee (Scots0
good-buzzer (Australian)

 Social dialects
e.g.
God blimey! (working class)
Crikey ! ( middle class)

 Mixture of level of formality and dialects

e.g.
toilet (neutral)
WC (written)
Lavatory (formal)
Loo (middle class)
Bog (working class)
Head (ship)
Can ( US informal)
Bathroom ( US neutral )
Rest room (Canada)

6. MEANS OF INTRODUCING THE NEW WORDS

 Polysemy
 Synonymy
 Degrees of synonymy
 Antonymy
 Homophony
 Collocations
 Grammatical category
 Long/short forms
 Compounds/conversion
 Affixation
 Semantic field
AGAIN, Lead- in activities are of paramount importance.