There are resources which can be used by a learner who is motivated to acquire vocabulary; learners can acquire vocabulary by using first of all vocabulary books and dictionaries which can offer vocabulary input. Learners may also want to be presented with vocabulary so that they can learn more and faster; they sometimes feel that it is difficult for them to find vocabulary for themselves.
When students are presented with vocabulary, they are taught vocabulary items which are previously selected in lesson stages previously planned; learners need to come into contact with ways in which vocabulary should be presented within the classroom.
It is worth mentioning that students need to acquire the meaning as well as the form of a new lexical item (word). There should not be a great gap between presenting the form of a word and the meaning of a word because students will not make the logical connection between form and meaning.
Let us suppose a teacher wanted to teach a set of words which are related to one another; for example, that teacher wishes to present items of clothing: T-shirt, pyjamas, pants, skirt, trousers, socks. The first question the teacher should ask themselves is: “How many words should I present?”. The answer to this question depends on certain factors.
The first factor which should be taken into consideration is the level of the students; they may be beginners, intermediate learners or advanced learners. It is important for the teacher to estimate the students’ possible familiarity with the presented words. Learners may have come into contact with the words even if these words do not belong to students’ active vocabulary, but to their passive one.
Another important factor lies in the difficulty raised by the lexical items to be presented; the words may be difficult to pronounce or they may convey abstract meanings in the detriment of concrete meanings; hence their degree of “teachability” (the easiness with which these words can be explained or even demonstrated.
A very important factor lies in the purpose for which words are learnt; they may be learnt for production (speaking and writing) or they may be learnt for recognition (for listening and reading); learning lexical items for production requires more time and the number of such items should be smaller than the words learnt for recognition.
It is important for learners that the presented words should not go beyond the students’ capacity to remember those words; the presentation of words in a lesson should not take too much time; students need to have enough time to use the words in contexts when creating their own vocabulary output. There is a principle existing in coursebooks according to which the vocabulary presentation needs to include around a dozen items at the most.
Most teachers want to present as many vocabulary items as possible; hence, a Bulgarian proponent of teaching methods whose name is Georgi Lozanov created a method called “suggestopedia” which goes hand in hand with the method called “accelerated learning”.
The above methods appeared as a reaction to the fact that traditional methods underestimated students’ capacity to retain too much new vocabulary. The techniques used by teachers within these methods are relaxation and suggestion techniques meant to predispose students to great amount of vocabulary input which means hundreds of words during a session.
The teacher doesn’t need to choose only the number of words to teach, but they also have to make a choice about the sequence of word presentation; in this case, teachers have only two options: the former option is “meaning first, form afterwards” and the latter option is “form first and meaning afterwards”.
In the case of the former option, the teacher can show learners a picture of a “shirt” (the meaning) and afterwards the teacher can say “It’s a shirt” (the form). In the case of the latter option (“form first”), the teacher can say “shirt” several times, ask the learners repeat the word and afterwards show them the picture. Both options are efficient.
The advantages of a “meaning first” option are that the option generates the need for a form, opens mental expectations and makes presentations efficient and memorable. “Form first” presentations are efficient if the vocabulary items (words) are being presented in contexts; from the contexts, students are able to identify the meaning.
Teachers also need to choose the “means of presentation”. The means of presentation refers first of all to the fact that the teacher can present the meaning in different ways. Teachers can present the meaning through translation, through real things, through pictures, through action or gestures, through definitions and through communicative situations.
The means of vocabulary presentation also imply the teacher’s choice regarding the form of the word; this means that the word can be presented in the spoken form or in the written form; teachers should ask themselves the following questions: “Should I present the spoken form first or the written form first?”; “Should students learn the spoken form completely and afterwards the written form?”
The answers to the above questions depend on the decisions made by the teacher according to the teaching techniques. Teachers need to adopt the right techniques meant to involve learners; one of the techniques is called elicitation. For example, the teacher can present the meaning of a lexical item (word) and ask students to provide the form of that word; or the teacher may provide the words and ask for the students’ definitions, synonyms and examples.
Another technique which attracts students lies in students’ personalizing the new words. Personalization implies that students use new words which are real for them personally. For example, the teacher can give students a frame they have to complete when presenting the word “happy”: “The last time I felt happy was …….”.
Students can also teach each other vocabulary; this is called peer teaching; the activity which supports peer teaching is called information gap; the information will be distributed between learners working in small groups or pairs; the learners have a task to complete and they can complete it only by exchanging information and filling the information gap.
An example of the above activity may be the following: in a class, each student is given a card on which a word is written; learners have to exchange the words on these cards and help one another so that they can construct a story and work out the meaning of the words they consider difficult.
It is worth concluding that vocabulary is presented so that pupils can adapt to real-life situations in which grammar is also triggered. It is not enough for learners to know the meaning of words; it is also necessary for them to combine these words so as to make themselves understood and understand the communication partners in different social contexts. Thus, vocabulary teaching cannot be isolated from grammar teaching or from teaching the four skills.
Bibliography
Jones, L. 2007. The Student-Centered Classroom. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Rodgers, T. 2001. Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University.