Revising vocabulary #1

A few years ago, I wrote a couple of posts about the sorts of things that teachers can do in classrooms to encourage the use of vocabulary apps and to deepen the learning of the learning items. You can find these here and here. In this and a future post, I want to take this a little further. These activities will be useful and appropriate for any teachers wanting to recycle target vocabulary in the classroom.

The initial deliberate learning of vocabulary usually focuses on the study of word meanings (e.g. target items along with translations), but for these items to be absorbed into the learner’s active vocabulary store, learners will need opportunities to use them in meaningful ways. Classrooms can provide rich opportunities for this. However, before setting up activities that offer learners the chance to do this, teachers will need in some way to draw attention to the items that will be practised. The simplest way of doing this is simply to ask students to review, for a few minutes, the relevant word set in their vocabulary apps or the relevant section of the word list. Here are some more interesting alternatives.

The post after this will suggest a range of activities that promote communicative, meaningful use of the target items (after they have been ‘activated’ using one or more of the activities below).

1             Memory check

Ask the students to spend a few minutes reviewing the relevant word set in their vocabulary apps or the relevant section of the word list (up to about 20 items). Alternatively, project / write the target items on the board. After a minute or two, tell the students to stop looking at the target items. Clean the board, if necessary.

Tell students to work individually and write down all the items they can remember. Allow a minute or two. Then, put the students into pairs: tell them to (1) combine their lists, (2) check their spelling, (3) check that they can translate (or define) the items they have, and (4) add to the lists. After a few minutes, tell the pairs to compare their lists with the work of another pair. Finally, allow students to see the list of target items so they can see which words they forgot.

2             Simple dictation

Tell the class that they are going to do a simple dictation, and ask them to write the numbers 1 to X (depending on how many words you wish to recycle: about 15 is recommended) on a piece of paper or in their notebooks. Dictate the words. Tell the students to work with a partner and check (1) their spelling, and (2) that they can remember the meanings of these words. Allow the students to check their answers in the vocabulary app / a dictionary / their word list / their coursebook.

3             Missing vowels dictation

As above (‘Simple dictation’), but tell the students that they must only write the consonants of the dictated words. When comparing their answers with a partner, they must reinsert the missing vowels.

4             Collocation dictation

As above (‘Simple dictation’), but instead of single words, dictate simple collocations (e.g. verb – complement combinations, adjective – noun pairings, adverb – adjective pairings). Students write down the collocations. When comparing their answers with a partner, they have an additional task: dictate the collocations again and identify one word that the students must underline. In pairs, students must think of one or two different words that can collocate with the underlined word.

5             Simple translation dictation

As above (‘Simple dictation’), but tell the students that must only write down the translation into their own language of the word (or phrase) that you have given them. Afterwards, when they are working with a partner, they must write down the English word. (This activity works well with multilingual groups – students do not need to speak the same language as their partner.)

6             Word count dictation

As above (‘Simple translation dictation’): when the students are doing the dictation, tell them that they must first silently count the number of letters in the English word and write down this number. They must also write down the translation into their own language. Afterwards, when they are working with a partner, they must write down the English word. As an addition / alternative, you can ask them to write down the first letter of the English word. (This activity works well with multilingual groups – students do not need to speak the same language as their partner.)

I first came across this activity in Morgan, J. & M. Rinvolucri (2004) Vocabulary 2nd edition. (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

7             Dictations with tables

Before dictating the target items, draw a simple table on the board of three or more columns. At the top of each column, write the different stress patterns of the words you will dictate. Explain to the students that they must write the words you dictate into the appropriate column.

As an alternative to stress patterns, you could use different categories for the columns. Examples include: numbers of syllables, vowel sounds that feature in the target items, parts of speech, semantic fields, items that students are confident about / less confident about, etc.

8             Bilingual sentence dictation

Prepare a set of short sentences (eight maximum), each of which contains one of the words that you want to recycle. These sentences could be from a vocabulary exercise that the students have previously studied in their coursebooks or example sentences from vocab apps.

Tell the class that they are going to do a dictation. Tell them that you will read some sentences in English, but they must only write down translations into their own language of these sentences. Dictate the sentences, allowing ample time for students to write their translations. Put the students into pairs or small groups. Ask them to translate these sentences back into English. (This activity works well with multilingual groups – students do not need to speak the same language as their partner.) Conduct feedback with the whole class, or allow the students to check their answers with their apps / the coursebook.

From definitions (or translations) to words

An alternative to providing learners with the learning items and asking them to check the meanings is to get them to work towards the items from the meanings. There are a very wide variety of ways of doing this and a selection of these follows below.

9             Eliciting race

Prepare a list of words that you want to recycle. These lists will need to be printed on a handout. You will need at least two copies of this handout, but for some variations of the game you will need more copies.

Divide the class into two teams. Get one student from each team to come to the front of the class and hand them the list of words. Explain that their task is to elicit from their team each of the words on the list. They must not say the word that they are trying to elicit. The first team to produce the target word wins a point, and everyone moves on to the next word.

The race can also be played with students working in pairs. One student has the list and elicits from their partner.

10          Eliciting race against the clock

As above (‘Eliciting race’), but the race is played ‘against the clock’. The teams have different lists of words (or the same lists but in a different order). Set a time limit. How many words can be elicited in, say, three minutes?

11          Mime eliciting race

As above (‘Eliciting race’), but you can ask the students who are doing the eliciting to do this silently, using mime and gesture only. A further alternative is to get students to do the eliciting by drawing pictures (as in the game of Pictionary).

12          The fly-swatting game

Write the items to be reviewed all over the board. Divide the class into two teams. Taking turns, one member of each group comes to the board. Each of the students at the board is given a fly-swatter (if this is not possible, they can use the palms of their hands). Choose one of the items and define it in some way. The students must find the word and swat it. The first person to do so wins a point for their team. You will probably want to introduce a rule where students are only allowed one swat: this means that if they swat the wrong word, the other player can take as much time as they like (and consult with their tem members) before swatting a word.

13          Word grab

Prepare the target items on one or more sets of pieces of paper / card (one item per piece of paper). With a smallish class of about 8 students, one set is enough. With larger classes, prepare one set per group (of between 4 – 8 students). Students sit in a circle with the pieces of paper spread out on a table or on the floor in the middle. The teacher calls out the definitions and the students try to be the first person to grab the appropriate piece of paper.

As an alternative to this teacher-controlled version of the game, students can work in groups of three or four (more sets of pieces of paper will be needed). One student explains a word and the others compete to grab the right word. The student with the most words at the end is the ‘winner’. In order to cover a large number of items for recycling, each table can have a different set of words. Once a group of students has exhausted the words on their table, they can exchange tables with another group.

14          Word hold-up

The procedures above can be very loud and chaotic! For a calmer class, ensure that everyone (or every group) has a supply of blank pieces of paper. Do the eliciting yourself. The first student or team to hold up the correct answer on a piece of paper wins the point.

15          Original contexts

Find the words in the contexts in which they were originally presented (e.g. in the coursebook); write the sentences with gaps on the board (or prepare this for projection). First, students work with a partner to complete the gaps. Before checking that their answers are correct, insert the first letter of each missing word so students can check their own answers. If you wish, you may also add a second letter. Once the missing words have been checked, ask the students to try to find as many different alternatives (i.e. other words that will fit syntactically and semantically) as they can for the missing words they have just inserted.

Quick follow-up activities

16          Word grouping

Once the learning items for revision have been ‘activated’ using one of the activities above, you may wish to do a quick follow-up activity before moving on to more communicative practice. A simple task type is to ask students (in pairs, so that there is some discussion and sharing of ideas) to group the learning items in one or more ways. Here are a few suggestions for ways that students can be asked to group the words: (1) words they remembered easily / words they had forgotten; (2) words they like / dislike; (3) words they think will be useful to them / will not be useful to them; (4) words that remind them of a particular time or experience (or person) in their life; (5) words they would pack in their holiday bags / words they would put in the deep-freeze and forget about for the time being (thanks to Jeremy Harmer for this last idea).