TECHNIQUES OF TEACHING SPEAKING

SKILLS: DEVELOPING VOCABULARY

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 The

amount of vocabulary that children need to acquire each year is staggering in scope, estimated to be about 3,000 words a year.

Vocabulary

acquisition is a key component to successfully developing communication and literacy skills.

limited active vocabulary makes it difficult for students to express higher level complex thoughts, opinions or concepts.

 Krashen

professes that vocabulary is best learned through reading and that other vocabulary teaching approaches are not effective.

Guessing

from context is not always possible, due to the learners limited ability, and also due to varied text construction.

STAGES OF WORD KNOWLEDGE

Task

One Learning to read known words.

Task

Two Learning new meanings for known words.

Three Learning new words that represent known concepts. Four Learning new words that represent new concepts.

Task Task Task

Five Clarifying and enriching the meanings of known words.

Six Moving words for receptive to expressive vocabulary.

Task

7 PRINCIPLES OF DEVELOPING VOCABULARY

Building

experiential background by providing a variety of rich experiences. Relate vocabulary words to students backgroundthe words they already know. Building relationships - help students explore relationships between words. Developing depths of meaning- help students to see the many shades of meaning of words.

 Provide

students with several/multiple exposures to words. Creating an interest in words Teaching students how to learn new words independently.

A COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH TO TEACHING AND DEVELOPING VOCABULARY

Use

instructional read-aloud events. Provide direct instruction in the meanings of clusters of words and individual words. Systematically teach students the meaning of prefixes, suffixes, and root words. Link spelling instruction to reading and vocabulary instruction.

 Teach

the effective, efficient, realistic use of dictionaries, thesauruses, and other reference works. Teach, model, and encourage the application of a word-learning strategy. Encourage wide reading. Create a keen awareness of and a deep interest in language and words.

TEACHING TECHNIQUES

Planned/ Unplanned

There is a need for both planned and unplanned instruction. Planned instruction involves deciding what lexical knowledge you will teach. Also, teachers need to plan for enriching the input which will serve as a constant supply of synonyms for the students. Extensive planned instruction needs to be developed, but teachers also need to be open to unplanned lexical instruction which naturally arises from student need and interest.

Systematic/ haphazard

Examples of systematic instruction are weekly word lists, routine ways of increasing the depth of knowledge of new lexical items, and systematic activities to move students from the receptive to the productive stage.

Written / Oral input.

There is a need for both forms of input during instruction. This dual input increases the likelihood of reaching different learning styles, but also addresses important sociolinguistic aspects such as differences in register.

Focus on meaning/ Focus on formal features of words.

Plan to teach multiple meanings of words and how various words fit together.

THANK YOU
Words, so innocent and powerless as they are, standing in a dictionary; how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to choose and combine them. Nathaniel Hawthorne