Cambridge English Teacher Cambridge University Press and Cambridge English Language Assessment 2014

Vocabulary Teaching





Aims:
to help teachers develop their vocabulary teaching techniques

Materials required:
none

Appropriate for:
teachers with any level of experience

Learning vocabulary is one of the critical skills that foreign language learners need to develop while
learning other skills such as reading, writing, listening and speaking, and vocabulary is often taught
as a component of these skills. There are a number of ways of teaching vocabulary in foreign
language skills classrooms such as integrated learning whereby students infer meaning from
context while reading or listening, and isolated learning where the necessary, or target,
vocabulary is taught prior to commencing the skills lesson. Both approaches are seen as beneficial
as isolated learning promotes good vocabulary knowledge while integrated learning develops
contextual awareness. Which approach to use will depend on the primary aim of your lesson, while
what to teach will depend on your context. In this task, you will practise using some general
techniques.


Task 1

1. Isolated learning. You are going to teach a list of isolated target vocabulary before you start a
reading lesson.

a. First, Choose up to 6 target words for lower level classes, or 12 for higher levels.
b. Next, Prepare slides, hand-outs or a presentation using half of your target vocabulary list
only; each slide or hand-out should contain a target word with information about this word:
meaning, part of speech, example sentence and pronunciation.
c. Discuss this information with your class and drill pronunciation.

2. Give out the second half of your target vocabulary list.

a. Ensuring that the students have good monolingual dictionaries, instruct them to find the
same information about the words as in the previous exercise.
b. Arrange the students in to pairs or groups and ask them to compare their information before
checking this as a whole class.





Cambridge English Teacher Cambridge University Press and Cambridge English Language Assessment 2014







3. Finally, provide a comprehension checking activity.

a. To do this, prepare a table with a matching activity such as the one below. Allow your
students to work alone and complete the exercise before checking with the whole class.



Word Part of
speech
Meaning Example Pronunciation
STUDENT adjective Easy and
enjoyable to
read
They learn
English at
school
/ti!t"/
TEACH noun A person who
is learning at
a college,
university or
school
She teaches
French to
foreign students
/#r$t!n/
LEARN verb Expressed in
writing, or
involving
writing
It is an excellent
and highly
readable
account of
modern history
/#stju!.d!nt/
WRITTEN adjective To give
someone
knowledge
He was a
student at the
university in
Chicago
/l%!n/
READABLE verb To get
knowledge or
skill in a new
subject or
activity
Written exams
can be difficult
/#ri!d!bl!/

















Cambridge English Teacher Cambridge University Press and Cambridge English Language Assessment 2014







Task 2

1. Integrated learning. In another reading lesson, allow your students to complete a reading task
without focusing on vocabulary.

a. Then, give your class a list of 6-12 target words, which are taken from the text they have just
read.
b. Without using a dictionary, ask your students to find information about the words using the
context of the text only. They should try to guess meaning and part of speech.
c. Arrange the class into pairs or groups and ask them to compare ideas.
d. Ask the same pairs or groups to check their ideas in a good monolingual dictionary, and also
check pronunciation.
e. Check the answers as a whole class and drill pronunciation.

2. Finally, provide a comprehension checking activity.

a. To do this, prepare a table with the target words only, such as the one below. Ask the
students to put away their notebooks and dictionaries so that they are working from memory.
Arrange the class into pairs and instruct them to complete the table with their own ideas.


Word Part of
speech
Meaning Example Pronunciation
STUDENT
TEACH
LEARN
WRITTEN
READABLE




Further reading

Nation, I. S. P., Newton, J. (1997). Teaching vocabulary, North America: Cengage Learning.
Nation, P. (1994). New Ways in Teaching Vocabulary, New Ways in TESOL Series: Innovative
Classroom Techniques. TESOL, 1600 Cameron Street, Suite 300, Alexandria, VA 22314.