Essay: Old and /or New Methods and Methodology in Vocabulary Teaching

Introduction
‘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)
I have chosen the above quotation as introductory to my paper, because I consider that it the most appropriate way to reason the purpose and the content of my paper. I really believe that vocabulary learning is central to language acquisition, whether the language is first, second or foreign. I think that not being able to find the words you need to express yourself is the most frustrating experience in speaking another language. Of course that vocabulary is not enough: the system of language (its grammar or structure) is also important. Nevertheless, it is possible to have o good knowledge of how system of a language works and yet not be able to communicate in an acceptable way without possessing the right vocabulary.
I base the above considerations on my experience as an English teacher at classes which are at elementary and intermediate level of studying English and for whom vocabulary acquisition is essential in learning the other aspects of the language and
In this respect, in the first three chapters I have presented some of the most outstanding old and new methods and approaches developed so far, as concerning teaching and learning vocabulary; theoretical and methodological principles as regarding methods, techniques, objectives, goals, assessment, teaching resources; communicative and traditional approaches to vocabulary with their advantages and disadvantages.
In chapter IV I have presented some theoretical considerations on traditional and modern approaches to teaching and learning vocabulary through examples of possible classroom activities.
Chapter V consists of a case study whose aim was to see the impact which combining modern and traditional methods and approaches can have on students’ learning and their vocabulary acquisition.
In conclusion, I really hope that this paper can be a helpful guide for my further vocabulary teaching and, why not, for other English teachers.
Content
Introduction
CHAPTER I
Old and /or New Methods and Methodology in Vocabulary Teaching; A Theoretical Approach
I. Methods and Approaches in Vocabulary Teaching
I.1 Grammar Translation’ Method
I.2 ‘Audio-Lingual’ Method
I.3 ‘PPP’ Method which stands for Presentation, Practice and Production
1.4 ‘Communicative Language Teaching ‘Method
1.5 ‘Task Based Learning’ Method
1.6 ‘Audio Visual Approach’
1.7 Audio ‘ Lingual Approach
CHAPTER II
Basic Principles in Teaching Vocabulary
II.1 Reflective Teaching Practice Needed Before Teaching Vocabulary
II.1.2 Principles and Techniques in Vocabulary Teaching
II.2 Teaching Vocabulary: Goals and Methods
II.2.1 Objectives
II.2.2 Goals
II.2.3 Approaches to Teaching Vocabulary
II.2.4 Students’ Vocabulary Assessment
II.2.5 Helpful Resources in Teaching Vocabulary
II.3 Students’ Needs in Vocabulary Acquisition
CHAPTER III
The Modern Communicative Approach to Vocabulary vs. the Traditional Approach through Translation: Advantages and Disadvantages
III.1. Modern Communicative Approach to Vocabulary
III. 1.1. Objectives
III. 1.2. Characteristics
III.2 Traditional Approach to Vocabulary through Translation
III. 2.1. Background and Principles
CHAPTER IV
Types of Traditional and Modern Approaches to Vocabulary through Illustrative Activities, Based on Theoretical Considerations.
IV.1 Word-meaning exercises
IV.1.1 Inference exercises
IV.1.2 Synonym/antonym exercises
IV.1.3 Semantic field exercises
IV.1.4 Definition and dictionary exercises
IV.2 Vocabulary Games
IV.3 Learning English Vocabulary through Songs
IV.4 Learning English Vocabulary through Projects
CHAPTER V
PRACTICE: A CASE STUDY
A Comparison of the Effects of Two Vocabulary Teaching Approaches: The Modern Communicative Approach vs. the ‘Old-fashioned’ Method of Translation
V.I. The Aim of the Study
V.I.1 Setting Goals by Establishing a Common Ground of Learning Vocabulary as a Result of a Diagnostic Questionnaire
V.II. Classroom activities
V.III. Conclusions
Annexes
Bibliography
CHAPTER I
Old and /or New Methods and Methodology in Vocabulary Teaching;
A Theoretical Approach
I. Methods and Approaches in Vocabulary Teaching
I.1 ‘Grammar Translation’ Method
I.2 ‘Audio-Lingual’ Method
I.3 ‘PPP’ Method which stands for Presentation, Practice and Production
1.4 ‘Communicative Language Teaching ‘Method,
1.5 ‘Task Based Learning’ Method
1.6 ‘Audio Visual Approach’
1.7 Audio ‘ Lingual Approach
There is now general agreement among vocabulary specialists that lexical competence is at the very heart of communicative competence, the ability to communicate successfully and appropriately.
In past years vocabulary teaching was often neglected because it was considered that it could be left to take care of itself. This low status of vocabulary study and teaching was mostly due to language teaching approaches based on American linguistic theories from 1940s, 1950s, .There was a theory based on American structural linguistics which emphasized grammatical and phonological structure. Because the emphasis was on teaching grammatical and phonological structures, vocabulary needed to be relatively simple, with new words introduced only as they were needed to make the drills possible. The assumption was that once students learnt the structural frames, lexical items to fill the grammatical structures in the frames could be learnt later, as needed.
The perspective on vocabulary changed in the late 1980s and 1990s due on exponential develop in vocabulary studies and thus, vocabulary teaching was coming into its own.
‘Grammar Translation Method’ which ‘introduced the idea of presenting students with short grammar rules and words’. Thus, the stress was on teaching and remembering rules. Another method which appeared in 1940s was named
‘Audio-Lingual Method’ which, according to Jeremy Harmer, ‘capitalized on the suggestion that if we describe the grammatical patterns of English, we can have students repeat and learn them’. By repeating, adepts of such method believed, the student would learn the rules of the language, being thus able to produce examples of these utterances in speaking. Anyway, the main disadvantage of this method is the fact that students are not faced with real vocabulary situations, so what they learn is highly artificial.
Some of the modern methods are deeply rooted in the so-called PPP method. This stands for Presentation, Practice and Production. In this method ‘the teacher presents the context and situation for the language [‘] and both explains and demonstrates the meaning and form of the new language’. (according to Jeremy Harmer). The main advantage of this method is that students are asked to work with real life situations, and their degree of freedom in using the language is higher than in the methods presented above. Students are presented a situation which focus on a language pattern and have to practice it in a simultaneous context. This assures them that their conversation goes on well, as it is controlled practice.
Communicative Language Teaching Method from the 1970s insists on two essential principles, namely ‘language is not only patterns of grammar and vocabulary slotted in, but also involves functions such as inviting, agreeing and disagreeing, suggesting, etc.’ These language functions are a basis in the modern methodology used nowadays, as language shall be used differently in different situations’. Last, but not least Task Based Learning asks students to ‘perform real ‘ life tasks such as getting information about bus timetables, or making a presentation on a certain topic with certain vocabulary. Later after the task has been completed, they can look at the language they have used and work on any imperfections that have arisen, correcting grammatical mistakes or thinking about aspects of style. According to Jeremy Harmer ‘the language learning had never been so realistic, so close to real life’. Many courses implemented nowadays are based on the combination between using language effectively and involving students in situations (using the proper vocabulary) that are closed to reality.
Teaching English vocabulary has to be based on a combination of methods used in various parts of the lesson. Due to the increasing number of technical devices in people’s homes has increased substantially in order to ease their life and thus, they have started to be used intensively in class and nowadays, an English lesson looks quite different from what it used to be like. The techniques which teachers introduce in their teaching are of great importance. They stimulate and maintain interest through varied activities. These methods encourage and promote a foreign language environment, they can supplement the textbook and the teacher’s voice and they also facilitate the understanding of what is being taught and tested.
The ‘Audio Visual ‘Approach, was elaborated by the Yugoslav phonetician Petar Guberina and has as a starting point a theory according to which since most information is communicated auditively nowadays, a foreign language should also be learnt in this way, in its natural form, as speech and not writing. The idea of this method is that sounds are imitated and no phonetic transcription is necessary. The pattern of such method applied to a lesson would imply listening to some utterances in various situations, repeating the structures, drilling, and, lastly, practicing them in the same or a different context and the essential element in this theory is the quality of the utterances.. One of the advantages of this approach is that the modern technical aids are a great help in learning a foreign language in its authentic form even outside the boarders of the area where it is spoken. Another advantage is that, as the words are broadcasted auditively and visually, one of the problems modern teachers have would be eliminated, and thus, with the elimination of a script certain problems of native language interference are excluded. The main disadvantage of this method is the cost of the visual or audio material, which can be high, unless the school is equipped with a language lab, in which case the use of such method is highly simplified.
The Audio ‘ Lingual Approach was worked out as a system and used in the United States. It has the starting point in the belief that ‘since people learn to speak their native language long before they learn to read and write in it, in the teaching of a second language the natural sequence of language learning should be followed: listening ‘ speaking activities should precede reading ‘ writing activities’ (according to Semlyen Eva and Filimon The problem is that the acquisition of the most important structural patterns is made through repetition and drilling and, at times, this procedure can become extremely unattractive, even boring for some students.
As comparing the old and the modern techniques, according to some methodologists, it can be stated that there is a certain pattern of teaching English in a modern way. No matter what the skills to be taught are, the structure, at least at the basic level, is the same. Modern teaching implies communication which can help teachers understand that it results in students’ ability to speak the language. But, there are some activities which are considered to be common ground when talking about modern teaching. Also, there is no clear distinction between modern and traditional approaches. As A.P.R. Howatt affirms, ‘a traditional approach can accommodate new techniques.’ Thus, there is no reason why communicative performance cannot be promoted on the basis of a traditional language syllabus, provided that the linguistic material is suitably selected, presented and exercised through communicative exercises, explicit and systematic.
CHAPTER II
Basic Principles in Teaching Vocabulary
II.1 Reflective Teaching Practice on Vocabulary
II.1.1 When Is the Right Time to Teach Vocabulary?
II.1.2 Principles and Techniques in Vocabulary Teaching
II.2 Teaching Vocabulary: Goals and Methods
II.2.1) Objectives
II.2.2) Goals
II.2.3) Approaches to Teaching Vocabulary
II.2.4) Students’ Vocabulary Assessment
II.2.5) Helpful Resources in Teaching Vocabulary
II.3 Students’ Needs in Vocabulary Acquisition
Although vocabulary has not always been recognized as a priority in language teaching it has grown in the recent years and there has appeared a systematic and principled approach to vocabulary by both the teachers and the students. Questions like: ‘What does it mean to know a word?’ ‘Which words do students need to know? ‘How will they learn them?’ reflect the current focus on the needs of students in acquiring lexical competence and on the role of the teacher in guiding them towards this goal.
II.1 Reflective Teaching Practice on Vocabulary
In order to move from the older teaching model to the newer one as regarding vocabulary, English teachers need to think about what they do, and how and why they do it. Reflective practice allows them to consider these questions in a disciplined way.
‘Which teaching model am I using?’
‘How do I apply it in specific teaching situations?
‘How well is it working?’
‘How effective is it?’
‘How are the students responding?’
‘How can I do it better?’
All teachers start with an initial theory of vocabulary teaching and learning, based on personal experiences as a student and, in some cases, reading or training.
According to Coady, this is a useful starting point for teachers who are looking to gain insights into themselves, into their teaching and where they fit into the broader picture of vocabulary instruction. By answering the questions, teachers might be able to gain a fairly clear picture of their thoughts on the teaching vocabulary. After doing it, teachers will need to think if they are happy with the situation and then decide on what to teach and how to teach it, even when they are presented with set curricula.
The answers at all these questions should be clear after establishing the objectives, the goals and the proper approach in order to make them be achieved successfully.
The aim of good vocabulary work is to present and practice new language in ways that help the students retain the information in their long term memory, so that in the future it can be easily recalled and used.
II.1. The Right Time To Teach Vocabulary
When deciding when and what vocabulary to teach the main question ‘what is the aim of the lesson?’ should be kept in teachers’ mind. This will dictate when and if to teach vocabulary and what to teach, too.
Many teachers are tempted to explain non-essential vocabulary that is unnecessary to focus on the main aim of that particular stage of the lesson.
a) Teachers may teach vocabulary at the beginning of the lesson when there is no supporting text and they may teach a range of vocabulary in order to help the students with a task in which they use the vocabulary.
b) A pre-text can be given to students to ensure them understand the key lexis in order to complete the reading or the listening text.
c) Mid ‘ text ‘ is given as a support for students to complete the tasks and warn them they might not understand every word.
d) Post-text ‘ its aim is to make the students focus on the vocabulary input once the general and detailed meaning of the text has been understood, and further uses the language from the text in a controlled or freer practice activity.
e) After a production task
The teacher may notice that students needed certain vocabulary when they were doing a production task and teaches it when the task is ready. It might happen that the vocabulary practiced and presented is still being avoided by the students so a consolidation work is required.
Students may have problems with vocabulary at any point of the lesson. The teacher can respond in a variety of ways, from telling the students to look the word up as homework or, if the word is a key target language and the whole class is struggling with the same word, the teacher needs to stop the whole class to do meaning work and check understanding.
No matter when teachers teach vocabulary or whether it is pre-taught. There are various ways of integrating it in the flow of active speech. However, teachers should carefully consider before planning the lessons in the logical steps as to be taken in task-based activities.
1. Engagement activities are meant to arouse the student’s interest in the topic and its related vocabulary and through the text the vocabulary may be introduced as well.
A discussion or interaction may provide an opportunity for students to consider the topics in the light of their own experience and a word task get the students involved in doing a matching activity as a way of introducing the topic area and giving them the information they need for a discussion.
2. ‘Study’ activities are meant to explore the words which the topic has introduced in more detail. These activities can be done by:
a) Completing charts that focus on word formation or words which go together.
b) Fill-ins ‘ filling in the blanks in sentences or paragraphs using words the students have been learning ‘ select the correct word from a box, use the correct form (part of speech) in the blanks.
c) Searching for word meaning ‘ finding in the text words which have a certain meaning, using a dictionary to help them to be sure of the meaning of words.
d) Choosing between different words ‘ the students are asked to choose between two different meaning and two different words.
3. ‘Activate’ activities ‘ these activities are meant to give students the opportunity to use words which have been learnt by telling stories or other writing tasks such as descriptions, dialogues, adverts.
II.2. Principles and Techniques in Vocabulary Teaching
The quantity of vocabulary to be learnt depends on factors varying from class to class and student to student. The words learnt by students should become part of students’ active vocabulary. If there are too many new words, the students may become confused, discouraged and frustrated, but, in the opposite case, if the teacher feels that his students could cope with a larger vocabulary input, he may decide to supplement the students’ vocabulary from sources other than the text-book.
The quantity of the vocabulary to be thought also involves choosing the specific items focusing on their frequency, availability and learning difficulties.
In most cases the choice will be made by the teacher as according to the text-book or syllabus. Thus, the choice of vocabulary is direct related to the aims of the syllabus and the objectives of individual lessons. Sometimes, the students are the ones who choose the vocabulary to be taught in the situation where they have to communicate and gets the words they need, as they need them, using the teacher as an informant.
Questions like: ‘Teacher, how do I say’?’ or ‘What is the name for this’?’ are very common during the English lessons focused on vocabulary.
However, there has to be a certain amount of repetition until it is clear that the student has learnt the target word. The easiest way to check this is by seeing if the student can recognize the target word and identify its meaning. If the word needs to be part of the students’ productive vocabulary, they must be given the opportunity to use it, as often as it is necessary to be recalled, with the correct stress and pronunciation. Anyway, this thing can’t be done during only one lesson but also in later lessons.
In order to be successful in teaching vocabulary, the teacher needs to use a meaningful presentation. As well as the form of the word, the student must have a clear and specific understanding of what it denotes or refers to. This means that the word should be presented in such a way that its denotation or reference must be perfectly clear and unambiguous.
Thus, the students should learn words in the situation in which they are appropriate. Due to the fact that words very seldom occur in isolation, they must appear in their natural environment, among the words they normally collocate with. Yet, a lot of vocabulary teaching is done incidentally as it arises naturally out of the discussion of the meaning of the text (passage).
Vocabulary can be presented systematically, on the blackboard, but, it should not be a separate section of the lesson plan called ‘vocabulary work’.
In this respect, many textbooks do the teacher a disservice by having a list of words and phrases listed separately under ‘vocabulary’, which tempts the teacher to teach them separately and not as they arise naturally from the lesson. Thus, the teacher should decide if it is not possible to have these words/phrases explained by the students as they appear in the text, rather than as something separate from the total meaning of the passage. The total meaning of the test must always be a priority, as words or phrases can often be related to one another in a meaningful way, and the teacher should find opportunities to do that, when it fits in with the overall aim of the lesson. It is better for the teacher to devise his own vocabulary questions than to follow the textbook. This usually makes lessons livelier and more interesting because too many textbooks are concerned with testing vocabulary rather than teaching it. Many textbooks make extensive use of multiple-choice questions. These can be useful for testing vocabulary, but are not necessarily the best way of teaching it. A good vocabulary teaching requires flexible, oral approach in order to lead the students to a reasonable guess as to the meaning of the target word/phrase.
When the teachers ask the students to explain the meaning of a word or phrase, they should make sure that the students are able to do this with their own language resources.
Another common technique is for the teachers to ask: ‘Does anyone know the meaning of this word?’, a question which could save a lot of time. Anyway, teachers shouldn’t over-use this method and, in this respect, it is often a good strategy to find out which students know the meaning, then to help the others guess the meaning.
A useful technique is also to provide the students with the meaning and then to ask them to find the word or phrase: ‘There is a word in a text we have just read which means ‘unhappy’ ‘ can you find it? If the students are still in difficulty, the teacher can help them by indicating them in which paragraph/line of the text it appears.
It happens very often that vocabulary is taught in context, but is not stored and memorized in context. The students are very preoccupied with noting down new vocabulary item they encounter. This enthusiasm is very heartening for teachers but, unfortunately this is usually a chaotic jumble of isolated words and phrases written in different notebooks but useless from the point of view of retrieval and memorization.
Since the new vocabulary is forgotten among hundreds of words and phrases it is difficult to be recalled when needed. Very often, the students write down the new word or phrase with its mother tongue equivalent or, less frequently, an explanation in English.
Yet, noting new vocabulary is not something teachers would wish to discourage. This method can be made more efficient by using vocabulary cards which have the new word/phrase on the one side and the translation or explanation on the other. The advantages of cards for retrieval are that they can be arranged alphabetically by target word or translation or by the topic. The vocabulary cards can become a kind of ‘word-bank’ on which the students use according to their vocabulary needs, for example when writing a composition. The cards can also help memorization, since vocabulary learning then becomes a kind of contest which the students play as a game when trying to remember and guess what on the other side of the card is.
Another technique which can be very effective when learning the basic vocabulary is the attempting to make some meaning connections between the new word/phrase and its translation in the first language (L1) ( For example, the number ‘two’ in English can be connected in Romanian with the personal pronoun ‘tu’).
At the elementary level, students can be encouraged to make their own picture dictionaries, using drawings instead of translations. Also, an interesting group activity might be making posters related to a theme for the classroom wall: ‘Means of transport’ or ‘At home’.
The posters could contain magazine cut outs, personal photos, with target language equivalents.
If the students use traditional vocabulary notebooks then the presentation of vocabulary on the blackboards becomes very helpful to them.
However, learning vocabulary in context has long-term benefits as students want to store vocabulary and will have to memorize it and the teachers should help them in any way they can.
Of course, it is not possible for the student to guess the meaning of the new words or phrases on every occasion. It may be simply too difficult or it might take up too much of class time. Thus, one of the alternative techniques is the use of translation. Anyway, at one time almost all English language teaching was done in this way.
All expressions and phrases in the English language were immediately translated, and new words were usually written in vocabulary notebook the result of this approach was usually that vocabulary was very little used in the English language lessons and thus, most of the time was taken up with the Romanian language. In this way, the students had little opportunity to practise the English vocabulary in conversation or writing and also of thinking in the foreign language. Many teachers had a strong reaction against this approach and attempted to exclude the use of the mother tongue from their classes completely but, the use of the mother tongue, especially at elementary stage, can save a lot of time and also encourage and reassure the students in what might be a threatening situation. However, translation of vocabulary into the mother tongue should be kept under tight control. From the lower intermediate level outwards it is better to explain a word by using simple explanation in the English language, a method which can be useful when students do not remember a word and they can make use of explanation or finding synonyms. Students who have generally been taught by translation techniques often give up if they cannot find the exact word or phrase to express themselves instead of finding alternative phrasing to make themselves understood.
Some of the modern techniques in teaching vocabulary refer to exercises and activities that include learning words in word association lists, focusing on highlighted words in texts and playing vocabulary games. More recently, computer programs that include the sounds of the words as well as illustrative pictures provide opportunity for practice with a variety of contexts, both written and spoken. A successful method to learn a large number of words in a short period, especially at elementary levels, is teaching word lists through word association techniques. This is due to the fact that the meaning of a word depends in part on its relationship with similar words, and words in a word family are related to each other by having a common base. Semantic mapping is an activity that helps understanding the relation between the words in a text. A text is chosen based on the words to be learned and students are asked to draw diagrams of the relationships between particular words found in the text. Word association activities can also be constructed with lists of words that are to be learned. For example, students could be given word-match lists such as the following and asked to draw-words in the left column to those that seem most closely related in the right column.
E.g. ‘Cough blue
Grass pepper
Red tea
Salt kitten
Puppy sneeze
Coffee green’
The pairs to be matched should have a clear, associative link and teachers should be careful with giving pairs of words whose meanings are very similar.
Antonyms, synonyms and other closely related semantic groupings (food, clothing, and body parts) are problematic because of interference or cross associations. The best method is to integrate the new words with the old ones by teaching the most frequent or useful word first and only after to introduce its less frequent partner.
One way to present word families is by giving definitions for each word. Another way is by isolating the word families that occur in a particular text by highlighting them so the students can see the relationship.
By highlighting passages or words in the text the teacher provides the students a more natural context in which they can trace words through the discourse and see how the forms change according to discourse function. The texts selected may be authentic material or simple but natural texts constructed by the teacher.
An important aspect in teaching vocabulary is the way of processing it. The reason is that learning may involve short-term memory or long-term memory.
The aim of promoting a deep level of processing is to transfer information from short-term memory to long-term memory which has unlimited storage capacity. The more students use and think about a word, the more likely is that the word will become a part of the long-term memory.
II.2. Teaching Vocabulary: Goals and Methods
‘Vocabulary is not an end in itself. A rich vocabulary makes the skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing easier to perform. Learners’ growth in vocabulary must be accompanied by opportunities to become fluent with vocabulary. This fluency can be partly achieved through activities that lead to the establishment and enrichment of vocabulary knowledge, but the essential element in developing fluency lies in the opportunity for meaningful use of vocabulary in tasks with a low cognitive load’ (nation, 1994).
II.2.1. Objectives
In teaching vocabulary, teachers must have clear objectives such as:
– to be aware of different approaches to teaching the meaning of language teaching;
– to have reasons for using a certain approach when dealing with vocabulary;
– to use specific techniques for showing the meaning of new words;
– to be equipped with lesson planning competence in vocabulary teaching;
– to provide and use resources (material) for teaching vocabulary.
II.2.2 Goals
The goals needed in the achievement of the above mentioned objectives should be:
– to meet new vocabulary for the first time;
– to establish previously met vocabulary
– to enrich previously met vocabulary
– to develop vocabulary strategies
– to develop fluency with known vocabulary
In order to be successful in the process and selection of the criteria for teaching vocabulary, teachers must think what activities to do with students, either to introduce vocabulary or to consolidate and enrich the previously taught vocabulary.
II.2.3 Approaches to Teaching Vocabulary
Vocabulary is in fact the knowledge of words meaning and teachers can use many approaches in teaching it.
As Steven Stahl (2005) puts it: ‘Vocabulary knowledge is knowledge; the knowledge of a word not only implies a definition, but also implies how the word fits into the world. Vocabulary knowledge is not something that can ever be fully mastered; it is something that expands and deepens over the course of a lifetime.”
Instruction in vocabulary involves for more than looking up words in a dictionary and using the words in a sentence. Vocabulary is acquired incidentally through indirect exposure to words and intentionally through explicit instruction in specific words and word-learning strategies.’
Direct vocabulary learning is a conscious effort made by students to remember new words when teachers do exercises and activities in class that focus the students’ attention such as: guessing meaning from the context, matching exercises, spider games, vocabulary games, etc.
What do students need to know about vocabulary acquisitions? What does it mean to ‘know’ a word? How many words do students need to know?
Different researchers provide teachers with different numbers mainly due to whether the researcher is counting ‘words’ or ‘word families’ ‘ base forms and their derived and inflected forms; e.g. crowd, crowded, overcrowded etc. The question is what type of vocabulary is needed and how many words students need to know in order to perform well at any language ‘ proficiency level. Students need to acquire a large enough vocabulary to reach what is often referred to in literature as the ‘lexical threshold’ (Laufer, 1997).
In fact, the actual number of words needed to reach a ‘threshold’ varies from study to study. Anyway, almost all the researchers agree that learners need to acquire a fairly large set of basic vocabulary in order to read with any degree of success. Laufer and Sim (1985), Nation (1994) and Laufer (1997) base their number of frequency lists ‘ the higher the frequency the more likely it is to be encountered and by extension the more important for a person to know. Laufer (1997) sets the lexical threshold for reading comprehension at about three thousand word families (approximately five thousand words). He argues that this will cover about ninety-five percent of the words in all texts.
Nation (1994) has suggested that two thousand word families are enough. He says that, ‘these two thousand words/ word families are used so often that make up about eighty-seven percent of the running words in formal written texts and more than ninety-five percent of the words in informal spoken texts’. According to Laufer (1997) ‘By far, the greatest lexical obstacle to good reading is insufficient number of words in the learner’s lexicon. Lexis was found to be the best predictor of success in reading, better than syntax or general reading ability. Whatever the effect of reading strategies is, it is short-circuited if the vocabulary is below the threshold’. It is accepted across a range of literary sources that the words which teachers choose to teach should be based on the usefulness and frequency of words. This will depend on a range of factors which a teacher of English as a foreign language will have to take into account.
Teachers should adapt the number of vocabulary items taught during a lesson as they believe appropriate and should take account of factors such as the students’ objective of each lesson and the ability of the students. The most important things students need to know when learning vocabulary are: meaning of the word, word use, word formation and word grammar.
To ‘know’ a word in a foreign language means the ability to:
– recognize it in its spoken or written form;
– recall it at will
– relate it to an appropriate object or concept;
– use it in the appropriate grammatical form;
– pronounce it in a recognizable way;
– spell it correctly in writing;
– use it with the words it correctly goes with – the correct collocation;
– use it at the appropriate level of formality;
– be aware of its connotations and associations.
Some of the things that can go wrong in students’ vocabulary acquisition are:
a) Inability to retrieve vocabulary that has been taught
b) Use of vocabulary inappropriate to a given situation
c) Use of vocabulary at the wrong level of formality
d) Possessing the wrong kind of vocabulary in certain situations
e) Using vocabulary in an unidiomatic way
f) Using vocabulary in a meaningless way
g) Incorrect use of a dictionary
h) Use of incorrect grammatical form, spelling, pronunciation or stress.
Thus, in order to achieve a good vocabulary acquisition, students need to know the basic aspects of lexis:
1) Form and meaning
2) Structure and Content
3) Connotation
4) Relationships between words
5) Productive and Receptive vocabulary
6) Pronunciation and Spelling
7) Stress
8) Correct Form
9) Cognates and ‘False Friends’
10) Collocations
11) Idioms
12) Lexical Phrases
II. 2.4. Students’ Vocabulary Assessment
If the objectives and the goals must be very clear for teachers before teaching vocabulary, the same must be students’ assessment in order to check whether the teaching process went on well. A good teacher is always assessing his students’ progress (or lack of it). In this sense, almost every question that the teacher asks is a kind of informant test. Anyway, at times, the teacher feels the need to set a more formal type of test, usually to supply information or to motivate the students to study! If the purpose of the test is to supply information, then the information should be accurate.
Before giving a test the teacher has to take into consideration the following aspects:
– The instructions for each section have to be clear and all the items in a section have to fit the instructions
– The vocabulary in the instructions and the items have to be at the desired level of difficulty
– The examples of how to complete each section (where applicable) must be good
– In structured or open-ended sections the instructions should indicate the approximate length of the response that is to be made
– If the test is timed, the timing has to be realistic
– The students must be informed in the instructions as to whether the section is timed and how long they have
– The instructions must indicate the value of the particular section with respect to the overall test score
– The students must be informed on the purpose of the test
– The test must cover the objectives of the course
– A test must test the desired receptive and productive language skills
– The content of the test must cover the intended aspects of communicative competence (vocabulary, grammar, socio-linguistic competence)
– The test must be informed whether the register (formal, casual, intimate) or dialect (standard or non-standard) are considered correct in one or all sections of the test
– The items which are tested must have the same objective worded and spaced in a way that one item does not provide a giveaway for the others
– The items must be placed so that even the poorest students should experience at least a modicum success at the test.
– The item response formats should be the most appropriate ones for what the teacher wants to test (e.g. would matching be a more efficient means of testing vocabulary than completion or multiple-choice; or it would be better to use several formats?)
– The technical arrangement of the items on the printed page must be easy to follow.
– The spacing between and within items must be adequate
– If the test has been photocopied, it must be printed legible
– The methods for scoring the test or grading a procedure or section must be adequately determined
– The items or sections must be weighted appropriately in scoring the weightings.
Vocabulary tests should also be valid and reliable. A valid vocabulary test is one which tests what it is supposed to test. Yet, there are many tests which do not have this basic requirement.
For example, a test which is designed to find out whether students understand the meanings of certain words in a writing context can be problematic because it is possible that the students understand the meaning of a word without necessarily being able to produce another word or phrase which has the same meaning. This is therefore a test of both comprehension and production.
If the teacher is only interested in comprehension then he should adapt another testing strategy, for example by rewarding the instruction. (E.g. ‘Look at the following list of word meanings. Opposite each one, write down a word from the text which has that meaning’). This involves the student only in matching the meaning with a word taken from the text, a purely receptive skill.
A similar problem arises with the use of translation as a means of testing vocabulary. If the students are asked to translate a vocabulary item in a given context from English to the mother tongue they may know what the word means but cannot find the exact way of expressing it. Yet, translation can be a valid technique of testing but the teacher must be clear what it is exactly that he is testing.
Another example of tests which may not be valid often occurs with multiple-choice questions. Sometimes, the test-designer makes the multiple-choice question so difficult or tricky that what is being tested is not the understanding of the test, but the understanding of the questions. A reliable vocabulary test is one which will always give the same result under the same conditions.
In testing composition or speaking competence, for example, there is often a subjective element which has to be overcome, by using a detailed grading scheme. This is the reason why, the multiple-choice technique is as popular as a testing device. Multiple-choice questions are usually organized so that the student has a number of options, only one of which being correct. Multiple-choice tests can ask the students to supply the missing word of a collocation, to find a word for a definition, to unscramble some letters, to order some items, etc.
Another testing procedure that is sometimes used for testing vocabulary is a cloze test. These tests are claimed to be a general indicator of language proficiency, not only on vocabulary. In a cloze test, a text is taken and the words are deleted from it at regular intervals. The students can use the words that seem acceptable and not only the original words. The original word method is more reliable but the other method seems more valid to many teachers. Cloze tests may be modified in various ways. For example, the number of possible answers can be reduced and the test made easier, by supplying the first letter of each word. Other possibilities include: deleting only one class of word (nouns, verbs, and prepositions); deleting only certain chosen words; supplying a list of the missing words, so that they can be matched with the text; giving multiple-choice answers for each ‘gap’ or missing word. (These are in fact gap-filling tests rather than real cloze tests.)
The teacher has to decide what items of vocabulary to test (what skills to include) and select the topics and situations which are appropriate to students.
In testing the speaking skills, the tasks could be such as:
– questioning the students about themselves (family, friends, hobbies, school life, etc)
– Role-play activities (speaking on the telephone, asking for direction, buying something in a shop, etc)
– Using pictures that students have to compare and contrast
– ‘information gap’ activities
If the teacher wants to test the writing skills, he can choose tasks as the following:
– Writing compositions or stories
– Writing formal or informal letters
– Newspaper articles about a recent event
– Brochures about their school or town, etc.
The reading skills can be tested through:
– Multiple choice questions to test comprehension of a text
– Inserting certain sentences in the correct place in the text
– Choosing the best summary of a paragraph or a whole text
– Transferring written information to charts, maps, graphs
– Matching jumbled headings with paragraphs
– Matching written descriptions with pictures of the items.
In testing and listening skills, the tasks can be designed such as:
– Identifying the speaker’s mood: (if he is amused, encouraging, enthusiast, disappointed, etc.)
– Completing charts with facts and words from a listening text
– Identifying the speakers;
A conclusion at the vocabulary testing is that a more constructive view of language testing exists when testing is seen as an opportunity for interaction between teacher and students, and the students are judged on the basis of the knowledge they have. The tests are intended to help students improve their skills and the criteria for success on the test should be clear to students. They receive a grade for their performance on a set of tests representing different testing methods and the teachers should return the tests promptly and discuss the results.
II. 2.5) Helpful Resources in Teaching Vocabulary
Teachers are nowadays helped by having access to a great variety of resources and techniques in order to convey meaning of new words, such as:
a) Realia ‘ presenting words by bringing the things into the classroom
b) Pictorial representations ‘ board drawings, wall pictures and charts, flashcards, magazine pictures and any other non-technical visual representation.
These are all used to explain the meaning of vocabulary items.
c) Demonstrating the word through acting or miming
d) Using Opposites ‘ sense relations can be used to teach meaning
e) General/specific meaning ‘ general and specific words: E.g. body and explain it by enumerating various parts: eye, arm, etc.
f) Connecting words to a personal experience (E.g. likes/dislikes)
g) Explanation ‘ it must include explaining any facts of word which are relevant
h) Grouping words by collocations ‘ using and remembering words by joining them according to the words they are often found with
i) Metaphors
j) Idioms
k) Semantic Maps : This technique can be used as a strategy for students to discover the relationships between vocabulary words. Semantic mapping is an active form of learning as it based on previous knowledge and it is a graphic organizer around a word that represents a concept. (E.g. transport)
l) Translation is a quick and easy way to present the meaning of words but even where translation is possible; students might be discouraged to interact with the words.
m) Using Computer Technology ‘ The best part of computer technology lies in its certain capability that is not found in print materials, such as:
– game -like formats
– hyperlinks ‘ clickable words and icons placed in online text can offer students opportunities to encounter new words in multiple context by allowing them quick access to text and graphics.
-online dictionaries and reference materials
– animations ‘ animated demonstrations combined with audio narration or text captions and labels are a real help for word learning.
-access to content-area-related websites allow students quick access to photographs, maps and voice-over narration and text that may reinforce vocabulary known and also relate new words to existing concepts.
All the above mentioned resources and also the students’ textbooks used in the English class must be appropriate for the level of the students in order to make them understand the meaning and connotation of words. Previously, the textbook was the syllabus and teaching was completely textbook-dominated. Textbooks cannot match the syllabus exactly; each one has a little more of one thing and less of another; they all have slightly different topics and vocabulary.
The new tendencies or trend in language teaching are reflected in the new textbooks that are introduced, and, from time to time, this can be recognised by making changes in the syllabus. In this way, textbooks and syllabus can evolve separately, but in harmony. The availability of choosing the textbooks may affect the practice of teaching English in schools so, through their responsibility for choosing the textbooks, teachers become major decision-makers in the educational process.
Most English teachers practice the communicative approach, with new classroom procedures and with new ways of practising the skills. This means that the teacher makes decisions in the light of each class’s needs, which mean judging the pupils’ needs first and deciding what book will best suit the majority of theme. This approach is more student-centred. The teachers usually choose well designed and visually attractive textbooks, favouring students’ motivation in learning the content. The existence of auxiliary materials (teachers’ guides, activity books, cassettes, flashcards, video, computer, etc.) increases the range of activities available to teachers and students. In this way, the language class becomes much more varied, and closer to real-life language use. These new materials and teaching aids favour a better coverage of the skills. The activities and exercises from textbooks and other teaching materials are designed to teach, reinforce, consolidate and evaluate the students’ level of proficiency. The best way of developing student’s vocabulary in English is to encounter it in situations and contexts which are as authentic as possible but being careful at the quantity and the difficulty of the new material.
CHAPTER III
The Modern Communicative Approach to Vocabulary vs. the Traditional Approach through Translation: Advantages and Disadvantages
III.1. Modern Communicative Approach to Vocabulary
III. 1.1. Objectives
III. 1.2. Characteristics
III.2. Traditional Approach to Vocabulary through Translation
III.2.1. Background and Principles
III1.1.Objectives
The main objectives of using the communicative approach in teaching vocabulary and the other aspects of language are:
a) To make teachers understand concepts and themes related to sustainable development and how they relate to the school curriculum and competences set by The Common European Framework of Languages ;
b) To present the students some strategies that underline the knowledge, critical thinking, values and citizenship objectives of education for a sustainable future ;
c) To enable teachers and students to redirect curriculum and teaching so that the learning experiences of school students help them meet the demands of linguistic realties nowadays and make them think creatively ;
d) To facilitate the use of the Internet ;
e) To teach activities by providing multiple access points to information, to analyse and interpret information in a variety of forms (e.g. Text, tables, diagrams and linked www-sites)
f) To develop their own curriculum and teaching contexts and practices
g) To help teachers relate to EUROPASS competences
III.1.2. Characteristics of the Communicative Approach
Nowadays, the English teachers from non-English speaking countries have become more aware that the exclusive use of either the communicative approach or translation method does not meet the real requirements of real communication. Teachers have also learnt that no single teaching method deals with everything that concerns the form, the use and the content of the English language
Communicative vocabulary teaching is an approach to teaching that stresses on interaction as both the means and the ultimate goal of learning vocabulary.
The most important characteristics in Communicative Vocabulary Teaching are:
a) Learning to communicate through interaction in the English language
b) To adapt language to the students’ interests by using authentic text and tasks into the learning context
c) Giving students opportunities to focus on both vocabulary and learning
d) Primacy of oral interaction
e) Errors can sometimes occur in vocabulary learning
f) Use of everyday vocabulary
g) The learning task is content-based, theme-based, project-based or a combination of them.
h) The focus is not upon listening and speaking but upon using vocabulary to communicate and learn
i) Encouraging the students to use their personal experiences during the learning process
j) Getting the students make connections between learning through activities outside the classroom
k) Visual stimulation is often used
Students are encouraged to develop communicative competence, to use it in a social context and differ from the ‘audio-lingual method’, which uses repetition and practices bits of vocabulary or skills separately.
The modern communicative approach to vocabulary teaching is designed to promote the learning of English through interaction and context and the teachers use group and pair interactions.
The activities used in the communicative approach are: role-playing, interviews, games, language exchange, surveys, learning by teaching, comparing pictures, marketplace trading, problem solving, expressing likes and dislikes, etc.
Although the translation method is outdated, the students may still get benefit from it and sometimes is essential for beginners, but the use of translation method should be restricted.
Vocabulary work and pattern drills are also ways of getting the students familiar with the sentence structures. This information helps students acquire linguistic competence.
In vocabulary learning, both accuracy and fluency are important. In the translation method more emphasis is laid on accuracy than on fluency. Students are extremely interested in learning linguistic details and providing correct answers.
Still, fluency in vocabulary learning is more important for some students than accuracy. After they have learnt vocabulary and grammar structures, they need to be given practice to develop fluency. Then, as control decreases, students can use the language more freely.
Of course that error-making can naturally occur but they should sometimes be accepted.
Teachers assess the students’ performances at the end of each fluency practice so that they are aware of their weaknesses and become more conscious of their errors. In this way, accuracy and fluency are practiced almost simultaneously, being independents.
The relation between communicative competence and vocabulary competence is very important, too. There can be no communicative competence without vocabulary competence. Different types of classroom activities can be used to provide practice for students to develop communicative competence while practicing vocabulary competence. In this way, teachers must find the best procedures to manage interaction and get students involved in such activities.
In order to avoid being in centre of classroom interactions, teachers should arrange the students in such a way that they can have a face-to-face conversation. The teacher should facilitate the communicative process among the students and the tasks by giving guidance and advice when necessary, instead of being the central authority in the classroom. This does not mean that the teacher becomes a passive observer but the monitor of the students through external guidance. Teachers should identify the distinctive qualities of the students and help them develop themselves and the teacher’s function is related to the objective of their role as a communicative activator as a provider of resources and as a resource, as a guide and a manager of activities. The teachers should also be researchers and learners and make their contribution to bringing in the classroom the appropriate knowledge and abilities.
A current major priority in a successful learning of English is differentiated instruction. Students can achieve a higher level when they have an easy access to a wide variety of relevant learning resources that they can read, view and understand. The students should be given learning formats that refer to topics that are relevant to their lives and interests and instruments to help them organize and synthesize information efficiently for problem solving and critical thinking.
The educational technology nowadays makes it possible to use differentiated instruction with little of the effort needed in the past.
Some of the guidelines which could help teachers to make communicative vocabulary teaching and learn-centered approach should be done by:
a) Providing an appropriate input
Input is the language to which students are exposed: teachers’ talk, listening activities, reading passages, and the language heard and read outside of class. Input gives students the material they need to develop their ability to use the language on their own.
b) Using Language in Authentic Ways
In order to learn vocabulary, instead of merely learning about it, students need as much as possible to hear and read it as close as native speakers use it and teachers can do this in many ways.
c) Teachers’ talk
Teachers should always try to use vocabulary as naturally as possible when they are talking to students. Slowing down may seem to make the message more comprehensible but it may also distorts the subtle shifts in pronunciation that occur in a naturally paced speech. Thus, the teachers should speak at a normal rate using vocabulary and sentence structures which are familiar to students and to state the same idea in different ways to aid comprehension.
d) Materials
Teachers should give students authentic reading material from newspapers, magazines and other print sources. In order to make them accessible, teachers have to review them carefully to ensure that the reading level is appropriate, to introduce relevant vocabulary and grammatical structures in advance and also, to provide context by describing the content and typical formats for the type of material (e.g. arrival and departure times for travel schedules, brochures, menus, etc.) Advertisements, travel brochures packaging and street signs contain vocabulary in relatively short statements that students at lower levels can manage. The worldwide web is a rich resource for authentic materials. Reading authentic materials motivates students at all levels because it gives them the sense that they really are able to use the language.
e) Providing context
Context includes knowledge of:
– The topic or content
– The vocabulary and language structures in which the content is usually presented.
– The social and cultural expectations associated with the contest.
To help students have an authentic experience of understanding and using language, teachers should prepare them by raising their awareness of the contest in which it occurs. Teachers could also ask the students what they know about the topic, what they can predict from the title or the heading of a reading selection or the opening line of a listening selection and also review relevant social and cultural expectations.
f) Designing Activities with a Purpose
Ordinarily, communication has a purpose: to convey information. The activities in the English class simulate communication outside the classroom when these are structured with such a purpose. In these classroom activities, students use the language to fill an information gap by getting answers or expanding a partial understanding. For example students work in pairs or groups and each is given a chunk of a map, grid or list needed to complete a task. In pairs or groups they talk to each other until they all have the right information.
g) Using Task- Based Activities
The use of task based activities in the classroom is an excellent way to encourage students to use the vocabulary. The tasks may involve solving a word problem, creating a crossword puzzle, making a video, preparing an interview or a presentation or drawing up a plan.
Investigations task cards included for each topic are designated in such a way to meet the needs of students with differentiated learning styles. They can help students’ identify the type of tasks they most enjoy and the one most likely to help them get successful learning experiences. These investigations encourage individual students to work to their best ability through these extension activities. The modern tendency in teaching English as a foreign language is a task based one. The primary focus of classroom activity is the task and vocabulary is the instrument which the students use to complete it. Usually, the task is an activity in which students use vocabulary for a specific purpose. The activity is based on real life situations and students focus on meaning, being free to use any vocabulary they want in playing a game, solving a problem or sharing information or experiences, which can all be considered as relevant and authentic tasks. In the task-based learning, the priority is given to the meaning. There is a communication problem to solve and there is also some sort of relationship to similar real world activities. In this type of learning, the task completion is very important and the assessment is based on how well the task has been achieved and there are also some stages that teachers can use in task-based vocabulary teaching, such as:
a) Pre-task
In this stage, the teacher introduces the topic and gives the students clear instructions on what they will have to do and might help them remember some vocabulary that may be useful for the task. The pre-task stage can also often include playing a recording. The students can take notes and spend time preparing for the task.
b) Task
The students achieve a task in pairs or groups using the vocabulary resources that they have while the teacher monitors and guide the students.
c) Planning
Students prepare a short oral or written report to tell the class what happened during their task. They then practice what they are going to say in their pairs or groups. The teacher should be available for the students to ask for clarification using their own vocabulary for questions they may have.
d) Report
Students then report back to the class orally or read the written report.
e) Analysis
The teacher then points out relevant parts from the text of the recording for the students to analyse and compare. The students may be asked to notice interesting features within the text. The teacher can also highlight the vocabulary that the students used during the report phase for analysis.
f) Practice
In the end, the teacher makes a good selection of the vocabulary issues to practice based upon the needs of the students and what came out from the task and report phases. The students then practice activities to develop fluency and make a note of useful vocabulary.
Task-based learning can be very effective at intermediate levels and beyond. The methodology requires a change in the traditional teachers’ role. The teacher does not introduce and ‘present’ vocabulary or interfere during the task. He/she is an observer and becomes an informant only during the focus on vocabulary stage.
Modern technology can help teachers use a large variety of activities which are very enjoyable for students from many reasons. There are new opportunities for authentic tasks and materials, as well as access to a wealth of real-made materials offered by the Internet. Technology offers teachers published materials such as course books and resource books and students enjoy the integration of technology into teaching, because they have new ways for practising language and assessing performance. A few examples of modern technology tools which can help teachers improve their teaching and students improve their learning of English as a foreign language, in a communicative approach to vocabulary are: videos, DVD technology, Podcasts, Wikis, computers and the Internet, etc.
In teaching vocabulary, the following aspects are very important: the students must be interested and must make an effort to understand. Through the activities they use, teachers should help them and provide them with frequent repetition, to reinforcement and consolidation of the learning process and to fix the new vocabulary firmly in the minds of the students.
As it was previously mentioned, most teachers sustain the idea that the meanings of the words must be taught in context – not from lists of unrelated words. This is due to the fact that they realize that the meaning of many words can change according to their use in particular sentences or contexts. Teachers are primarily interested in presenting words to their students as means for relaying information and ideas, for communicating in the English language. Thus, they have to use techniques for selective and appropriate use of words and not by teaching lists of words. The use of these techniques is very common especially at primary, elementary stages of learning but it’s not a rule. Usually, young students learn differently from adolescents. Jeremy Harmer (The Practice of English Language Teaching, Longman, 2007, p.82) mentions some characteristics of such students. ‘They respond to the meaning even if they do not understand individual words. Their understanding comes not just from explanation, but also from what they see and hear and, crucially, have a chance to touch and interact with’. Young student’s attention is difficult to be focused on one aspect only. Their ideas swing very rapidly and they remember information coming from different direction and sources. For example, touching things will always be a means for students to remember words more easily. Also, active involvement and interaction will make them more interested in the lesson.
III.2. A Traditional Approach to Vocabulary through Translation
III.2.1. Background and principles
Although translation has always featured in Romanian textbooks for English, the notion underlying it has changed significantly in recent years. Modern textbooks look at translation as a language skill in its own right Considered by many teachers an old-fashioned method, by linguistic specialists a controversial topic with pros and cons, some teachers use it especially at the beginning and intermediate levels.
Some argue that translation may be legitimate only for items possessing a clear mother-tongue equivalent but translation may not always convey the exact sense of an item, but neither do English synonymous or definitions on many occasions.
If the teachers rely too much on the use of translation to convey meaning, students may lose some of the essential spirit atmosphere of foreign language learning.
In primary school English classes, the two ‘old-fashioned’ teaching and assessing techniques can become alive used with special techniques in a large number of different ways for a variety of purposes.
Translation has traditionally been used as a means of testing. Following the move towards more communicative approach and to modern techniques in teaching and learning English, and a reaction against ‘grammar-translation’ methodology, it inevitably declined in popularity or disappeared from the classroom.
Another reason against using translation in the language classroom is that this technique is essentially boring for students. Still, if it is topic related and well integrated with the other language skills, work on translation helps students became mentally prepared for the activity and sets them thinking along specific lines and the opportunities for translation practice in some textbooks or teaching materials are instrumental in developing the students’ vocabulary as well as cognitive skills.
However, many teachers believe that this technique still has much to offer to modern language classrooms. As with so much of what takes place in English lessons, it is not so much a question of what they do as how they do it.
Translation can be used to achieve many aims: practice of the skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening (either individually or in combination) or focussing on aspects of language (vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation). Translation can become a tool to help students focus on useful or frequent phrases and it can illustrate quickly the difference between two concepts. Most importantly, perhaps, it can provide lively, stimulating classroom tasks that students may find motivating and enjoyable.
Prior to this, the English textbooks used to deal with translation either at the level of de-contextualised sentences with well-marked lexical or grammatical focus, or, at the other extreme, there was demanding literally excerpts to be translated from and into English. The language of literature was considered the only language relevant for translation. In either case, translation was used as an instrument for assessing and grading language accuracy.
Since the students’ mother tongue influences their way of thinking and using the English language (seen in pronunciation, word order, tone, etc.), the classroom activities on translation can help students become aware of and understand better the ways in which their first language may support acquisition of English.
As translation involves comparison and contrast, classroom work on translation gives a clear idea of organization and potential of the two linguistic codes. Competence in the English language is the major objective of any textbook or material so, it is important for students to receive support and practice in communicating both into and from the English language. Translation is also an opportunity for raising cultural awareness. This makes it suitable for interactive purposes involving speculation and discussion, contrary to more traditional views that see it as a solitary activity invariably in writing, with the help of the dictionary.
Translation in textbooks is a specific form of communication by means of a text which is determined by the communicative situation in which it serves to convey a message. Also, the context in which communication translation takes place is very important and makes texts relevant to students’ own needs and interests.
The purpose of the text has to be very clear in mind when choosing mediation and translation methods and strategies. Translation implies an outgoing search for the most appropriate words or phrases to convey the intended meaning, a search that makes the process of using and teaching translation very exciting and productive.
In the English classes, the treatment of vocabulary is in keeping with some basic methodological principles: authenticity, variety, graded complexity and relevance of text and task, and integration with the other skills.
Authenticity and variety refer to the nature of the language selected for translation. The styles and registers, both speaking and writing, aim at sensitizing students to the richness and diversity of English and increasing their range of expression. They also refer to the types of tasks and the communicative context created in order to make translation appear natural. There are activities designed to raise students’ awareness of the inappropriateness of word-for-word translation given the differences constructions, etc between the two languages concerning word order, synonymy, personal, impersonal. Translation practice can be an integral part of the work on skills and on developing vocabulary and cultural awareness. It should appear as a natural step in a sequence of complex classroom tasks. Interactive class management strategies apply equally well to translation practice and make it more challenging and lifelike. Besides individual assignments there are tasks for which students have to work in pairs or groups. Some of the major difficulties in translation come from cultural differences and relate to features of language which need not only to be translated but also interpreted as an idiomatic use of language, irony, metaphor, proverbs and sayings. All of them belong to the area of implication, beyond the one-to-one relationship between the two languages: English and Romanian.
A good English-Romanian, Romanian-English or English-English dictionary, generally includes the standard spelling, pronunciation, stress, syllable division, derivation, meaning and usage, often with illustrative sentences. Teachers should inform students about the information they can get from a dictionary and the technique of using it. Thus, students must be advised to read the whole paragraphs first and only then sentences, without stopping at the first unknown word. They also must be told not to read just the first meaning from the dictionary, but all, in order to find one that fits the context in which the word is used. Sometimes, among the various ways to illustrate the meaning of a word, translation still is one of the most convenient and economical. After the teacher has explained the new word by using modern techniques and he/she is not sure that the students have understood it, by asking them to give a native language equivalent the teacher gets the answer. If they ask the students to translate the whole sentence, they have to make sure that they have understood not only the general meaning of but also the relationship of the component parts. The teacher may approach to translation whenever the use of other means of word interpretation is unsuccessful.
In case of ‘false cognates’, the teacher should warn the students about words that are similar in form to Romanian words, but have a different meaning, words that students are likely to use instead of the real word (e.g. ‘advertisement, magazine, library, eventually, actually,’ etc.).
Idiomatic expressions are sometimes hard to explain in Romanian. Translation is recommended in cases in which none of the other techniques give good results. Still, the use of Romanian language should not replace other means of word interpretation. During the English classes, the teachers should give students the chance of hearing English as much as possible by conducting the class in English and minimize the use of Romanian language but still, for some students is more comfortable to know the Romanian equivalent of a word while others prefer to guess its meaning. Thus, function words shouldn’t be translated in isolation. They help students develop skills in using the isolated content words within the framework of a meaningful sentence and in writing the students can be asked to construct paragraphs according to the relationships expressed by function words.
Considering the above mentioned facts, many of the modern textbooks have activities on translation, which means that this approach to teaching and learning vocabulary is not updated and old-fashioned at all. The most important thing is in fact how it is contextualised and approached.
CHAPTER IV
Types of Traditional and Modern Approaches to Vocabulary through Illustrative Activities, Based on Theoretical Considerations.
IV.1 Word-meaning exercises
IV.1.1 Inference exercises
IV.1.2 Synonym/antonym exercises
IV.1.3 Semantic field exercises
IV.1.4 Definition and dictionary exercises
IV.2 Vocabulary Games
IV.3 Learning English Vocabulary through Songs
IV.4 Learning English Vocabulary through Projects
The vocabulary development exercises can be used for various purposes: to expand the teacher’s range of techniques, to focus on some aspect of vocabulary learning and to test. Many of the so-called ‘vocabulary exercises’ found in textbooks are, in fact, tests. There is a close relationship between tests and exercises, since many exercises can be made into tests but, the purpose of a vocabulary exercise is in fact to develop the student’s command of foreign language vocabulary.
IV.1 Word-meaning exercises
These kinds of exercises can be subdivided into:
a) Inference exercises
b) Synonym/antonym exercises
c) Semantic field exercises
d) Definition and dictionary exercises
a) A useful type of inference exercise is to use short contexts to show students the different ways in which the word meaning of an unknown word can be inferred from its context. In the following example, the target word is’ furniture’
E.g.’ All the furniture had been damaged excepting a table and a chair.’
Here the student should be able to guess the meaning of furniture, from the examples of furniture which are mentioned. Another solution is simply to leave a blank, but this may deprive the student of useful clues such as a plural form or a past tense form (for verbs). A very useful follow-up for students is to explain how they have inferred the meaning of the word.
Some examples of different types of short-context inference exercises using the type of inference clue given are:
a1) Definition Exercise
‘The animals which live by killing other animals and eating them are called _______________ animals’. ( carnivores, predatory, etc.).
a2) Hyponym/Headword
E.g.’ In the market she could find almost all kind of _____________: apples, pears, bananas, lemons, ‘.etc. (Fruit ‘ This word is being used here as a hyponym ‘ it includes all the other words which are mentioned.
a3) Co-Hyponym/Example
E.g. ‘In the market she could find almost all kind of fruits: apples, __________, bananas, lemons,’. etc. (It is obviously a kind of fruit but the information is not enough to specify which kind). All the examples of fruit are co-hyponyms of the general term fruit and the unknown term must be a co-hyponym of fruit also.
a4) Characteristic or quality
E.g.’ The ______________ we visited is large. It has two floors, six bedrooms, a huge living-room and six bathrooms ‘.(It is a kind of house; perhaps a villa, etc.)
a5) Synonym
E.g.’ She has never seen such a great film. It was _____________ (Extraordinary, excellent, fascinating).’
Here the unknown word is a synonym for great.
a6) Antonym
E.g. ‘My friend is a very generous person, but her sister is extremely ___________________’. (mean ‘ the word but indicates contrast)
a7) General knowledge
E.g. ‘The hotel has every facility. At the top of it there is even a _______________ which can take you straight to the airport’. ( helicopter. The ability to guess this word depends on the students’ background knowledge).
A more advanced type of follow-up to this kind of exercise is when a number of unknown words are located in the passage. The students are asked not to define the words but to indicate which words or phrases are helpful in inferring the meaning. The unknown words may be real or invented.
b) Synonym and Antonym Exercises
A problem that usually appears in synonym and antonym exercises is whether there is ‘a true synonym’ or ‘true antonym’
If synonym means a word which has the same meaning as another in all possible contexts it is difficult to find a synonym in these circumstances.
An example of words which are synonyms in many contexts is big and large.
It can be said:’ a big house’ or a ‘large house.’ The word big sounds a bit colloquial like in: E.g. ‘You are such a big boy!’ The word large would sound inappropriate.
Also, in idiomatic phrases, the two words are not interchangeable, such as in the expression at large (in the sense of ‘on the whole’). Another distinction is in the forms derived from these words, such as the adverb largely, but there is no one-word equivalent to be derived from big.
In the example: ‘There are many vehicles parked in that garage’, the students could suggest cars as a synonym for vehicles where cars is acceptable only as a type of vehicle; all cars are vehicles, but not all vehicles are cars. Also, vehicle is far more formal word. Thus, words vehicle are generally thought to be synonyms, may be quite different in aspects of meaning or in the contexts in which they may be used.
The exercises which explore the differences between words with overlapping meanings are very useful for students.
b1) Area of reference exercises
The students are asked to match the words in Column A with the area of reference Column B in which they are most commonly used. The students are allowed to use dictionaries.
Word Area of reference
Partner war
Colleague friendship
Ally business, firm
Accomplice profession
Comrade crime
b2) Level of formality exercises
The words: pal, mate, associate, companion, buddy, friend, have similar meanings. The students are asked to group them according to their level of formality.
Formal Neutral Informal
b3) Collocation exercises
The students are asked to fill in the correct words that collocate with the words given: become, family, tropical, make, attract, illegal.
1. To_______________ extinct
2. _________________rainforest
3. _________________funds
4. _________________loss
5. _________________hunting
6. To ______________a contribution
b4) Scale exercises
The students have to arrange some words in ascending order.
1. immense, big, enormous, large, gigantic, spacious, colossal, extensive
2. little, tiny, microscopic, small, minute, diminutive
3. distinguished, famous, well known, illustrious, renowned
b5) Specific/general exercises
In the example exercise, the students are asked to find words to fill in the blanks
Specific General
‘Tulip flower plant
Frog amphibian animal
Jeans trouser clothing
Apple fruit food’
Novelist writer’
b6) Attitude exercise
This type of exercise consists of choosing a word that shows the people’s attitude to something or someone. The students are asked to put (+) if they think the word is usually approving, (-) if it is usually disapproving and (=) if it is a neutral word. The first three words are given as examples.
E.g. frugal (+), miserly (-), careful (=)
Famous ( ); notorious ( );
Extravagant ( ); generous ( );
Strict ( ); severe ( );
Inactive ( ); lazy ( ); tired ( )
b7) Antonym exercises
Antonym exercises should not lead students to think that words normally have one opposite, but to make them aware of the relationships which exist between words.
1. Antonyms in contexts
1.1 ‘She has lent Mary her book. It’s the first time that Mary _________books from someone.’
1.2 ‘ I love my grandma very much, and I think I am her favourite _________’
1.3 ‘When the teacher commands, the students should ————————–‘
2) Antonyms formed by using prefixes
In English there are many prefixes that can be used to give the meaning ‘not’ such as: in-, im-, ir-, il-, mis-, dis-, etc
In this type of exercises, the students are given some words and they have to use the right prefix to make the opposite of the word given.
Word Opposite
possible
legal
convenient
understanding
honest
moral
relevant
literate
regular
The students can be asked to mention other words formed in this way and encouraged to check them up in dictionaries if they are not sure of the meanings of some words.
c) Semantic Field Exercises
If words are in the same semantic fields it means that they are in the same related area of meaning. In this type of exercises, a number of related words are listened and their relationship discussed.
c)1) Listing relationships
The class may be asked to think about all the words they know connected with family relationships, such as: mother, father, parent, child, son, daughter, cousin, uncle, niece, nephew, in-law, etc. They have to make a ‘family tree’, and, in order to be more attractive and personal, the teacher could suggest the students to use their own family relationships.
E.g.
Ion married (m) Maria George m. Elena
Corina m. Sorin Petre m. Ana Iuliu
Cristi Anca Eva Rares Razvan
1) Corina is Ion’s ______________
2) Anca is Sorin’s ______________
3) Eva is Petre’s _______________
4) Rares is Cristi’s _____________
5) Iuliu is Rares’ ______________
c)2) Vocabulary Key Exercises
In this type of exercises the students have a picture to look at. The item in the picture has some parts which are numbered and listed below the picture. The students are asked to put the correct number opposite each item in the list.
For example, the students can get a picture representing a car with its parts
1. bonnet
2. headlight
3. steering wheel
4. mirror
5. number plate
6. windscreen
c)3 Arranging hierarchies in order
This kind of exercise involves arranging some words in order, such as: days of a week, months of the year, numbers, etc
e.g. Sunday __________ Tuesday ____________ ______________ Friday _____________
d) Definition and Dictionary Exercises
Dictionaries can be an extremely useful learning resource, especially as it makes the student more independent of the teacher, but the overdependence on it should be avoided. Students should be trained to use the dictionary properly and encouraged to use the monolingual ones which make students think in the foreign language.
A common exercise for beginners is rearranging words which are out of alphabetical order.
Another useful exercise is finding derived forms under another headword. Another basic use of dictionary is to find out pronunciation. A possible pair-work exercise is where students copy down the phonetic equivalent of some words from the dictionary, which they exchange with their neighbours and then try to reconstruct the normal written forms of the words. Another pronunciation exercise is to give students lists of words where the English sound system can be confusing: e.g. words ending in ‘ough, such as cough or tough.
E.g. the letters th in English usually have two pronunciations, that is either /��/ or /��/. The students are asked to put some words in two columns, according to whether they have the sound /��/ or /��/.
Bath then
Theft gather
This mathematics
Theory together
Dictionaries can also help students with spelling problems.
One possible exercise is to give the students a list of words ending in ”able/-ible, -ant/-ent,’ some wrongly spelled and some correctly spelled.
After doing about ten such words, students can then use their dictionaries to check their spelling.
Other tricky spelling areas are words involving doubled consonants (e.g. accommodation).
The most important use of the dictionary is to find out the meaning of words and to choose the meaning appropriate to a given context when several meanings are defined.
The teacher can take a passage and, after discussing its general sense, to give the students a list of words from it, the meanings of which have to be found from the dictionary. Students have to write out the correct appropriate definition and then compare it in group or pair work.
One of the best dictionaries contains encyclopaedic information which can be a very useful teaching aid. Thus some dictionaries have useful pictures displays of musical instruments, parts of the human body, kinds of animals, stages in the life of animals, which can be very useful for vocabulary and composition
IV. 2. Vocabulary Games
The topics of vocabulary games and vocabulary tests arouse very different emotions in the students. Yet, there is sometimes very little difference in content between games and test exercises because it is very easy to convert many exercises into tests or games The basic aim of vocabulary games and vocabulary exercises is usually very similar: to develop the students’ vocabulary, perhaps by extending their vocabulary or perhaps by giving them practice in using what they already know.
Vocabulary games have become more widely used recently because there is an increasing emphasis on the importance of motivation and on a positive affective atmosphere in the classroom and secondly, there is an increasing emphasis on the importance of ‘real’ communication.
One of the characteristics of the organization of games is a competitive element. It must be clear who has won and the scoring system should be easy to work and obviously fair. The competitive element is often balanced by a cooperative element, especially when the class is divided into teams. The members of each team cooperate for the success of their team.
Vocabulary is a teaching topic which leads itself very easily to the games approach, and there are a lot of vocabulary games ranging from elementary to advanced level. Usually, these vocabulary games relate to various areas such as repetition, collocation, rhyming, semantic field, etc.
The teaching purpose of these games is simply to bring to mind and revise vocabulary items which the students have already learnt. Many games are usually performed at the beginning or the end of a lesson but also, there are many activities and exercises that can be dealt with as games. When it comes to games, the teacher’s aim is to add an element of fun or relaxation at the beginning, during the lesson or at the end of it. In these activities the class is usually divided into teams or pairs but they can also be done individual
a) One of the lead-in exercises or games consists of showing the students a picture/pictures and asking them to give as many details as they can about that picture. Timing is a very important thing in games. Usually, the student or the team that first resolved the task is the winner. For example, a picture showing a landscape or a person should require a list of adjectives.
b) Another game consists of giving the students a few minutes to write as many words as possible containing a word (for example, self). A variation of this game is by giving the first letter (for example, m) and the students are asked to write as many words (or nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc.) starting with the given letter.
There is one point for each word. The leader of each team must come to the front of the class and read out what they have.
c) ‘I spy’
This is a very popular students’ game. One of the players makes a mental note of something in the classroom and the other players have to guess what it is. He/She gives them a clue by giving them the first letter of the word. If the word were chair, for example, he/she would say: ‘I spy with my eyes something beginning with C’
d) Jumbled letters
This game can be also used to help with spelling difficulties. Teams are given letters ‘cards, each card containing one letter of the word such as: A.D.V.E.R.T.I.S.E.M.E.N.T. The letter-cards are given out in random order, and the players have to rearrange them in the correct order. The first team to do this correctly wins. A variation of this game is by writing 10 letters on the blackboard (both vowels and consonants) and the students are asked to jumble the words as they wish in order to make as many words as possible (they are given a certain timing).
e) ‘What is it?’
In this game the teacher prepares some simplified drawings of everyday things. (E.g. chairs, pens, pencils, tables, etc.). He takes each object in turn and builds up the drawing of it on the blackboard, one line at a time. He pauses at the end of each line, and the players have to guess what he is drawing. The first player to guess correctly wins a point for his team
f) Target picture
When playing this game, the class is divided into teams and each team is divided into pairs. One player in each pair has a photograph or a drawing of a scene. The other player has to attempt to draw the picture from his colleague’s description, but without seeing it. He/she must rely on the description alone. The teacher awards points for the likeness and the team with most points wins.
g) Poem writing
The teacher gives the students (they work in pairs) four words which rhyme. (For example: teacher, furniture, picture, literature). The students are asked to write a four verse poem using the words given. The funniest poem wins the game.
h) Intruder (odd-word out)
This game can be played in teams, pairs or individually. The teacher puts groups of words in the same semantic field on the blackboard, but in each group there is one word which does not belong, for example:
armchair, wardrobe, bed, table, tea
brother, sister, cousin, mother, finger
The players must spot the odd words in each group and explain why they do not belong to that group. At a more advanced level, the teams could make up their own sets and challenge their opponents to spot the intruders.
i) Memory game
This is a team game. The students are shown a picture, a slide, a blackboard drawing containing a list of related items (e.g. a scene, items of food or clothing, etc.). The students are given a few minutes to study the picture, after which it is removed. The members of each team brainstorm their knowledge to see how many items they can remember. The items are written down as a check. The picture is shown again and the team with the highest score wins.
j) ‘Bingo’
The students are asked to make a chart in which to write (in numbers) 6 numbers from 1 to 12, for the elementary level students or 8 numbers from 1 to 20 for the intermediate level students. The teacher then says numbers at random and the student who has all the numbers said by the teacher has to say ‘BINGO’ and is declared winner. This game is very useful in consolidating numbers especially at elementary and intermediate levels.
k) The alphabet game
In this game the students are asked to draw a picture of an item that starts with the corresponding letter of the alphabet.(E.g: drawing an apple for letter A). After having done this, they have to write a sentence (a message for their desk mates using the symbols instead of letters.) Then, they show the message to their desk mates who have to decode it. A variation of this game which is really enjoyable especially with more advanced students .They can be asked to write short e-mails to friends using symbols instead of letters.
l) ‘Where Is It?’
A small object, such as a pen, is selected and a student is asked to leave the room while it is hidden. The student then returns and tries to discover its location by asking the class yes/no questions, using the following prepositions of place: ‘in front of, behind, close to, far from, on (my) right/left, in, on, under, between.’The student moves around asking questions such as: ‘Is it in front of me? Is it on my right?’ etc., until he/she discovers the object that has been hidden.
m) Word endings
The teacher writes on the board about twenty word endings which the students must use to form words, one for each ending. The student or team that completes the most words within the given time is the winner. The students are forbidden to use proper nouns.
E.g.
-able (readable)
-al (usual, practical)
-ance (attendance)
-ation (nation)
-ed (washed)
-ence (independence)
-ent (student)
-er (teacher)
-est (largest)
-ial (partial)
-ier (noisier)
-ible (visible)
n) Tongue twisters
This game is a very funny one and the students love it. It improves speaking and pronunciation and it also develops fluency and coherence in speaking. Here are a few tongue twisters which make the students move their lips and teeth around:
‘She sells seashells on the sea shore’
‘Floppy fluffy puppies, floppy fluffy puppies’
‘I like New York, unique New York, I like unique New York’
‘A school coal scuttles a scuttle of school coal’
‘There’s a chips shop in space which sells space ship-shaped chips’, etc
o) Silly answers
The students are told to take out a piece of paper and tear it in half. On one side of paper they write a question, and on the other, the answer. After all the questions have been at random collected and placed in one pile and the answers in another, the teacher calls two students to the front. One student selects and reads a question and the other selects and reads an answer. As it can be imagined, some of the combinations are very comical.
p) Anecdotes and Jokes
e.g. ‘-Can you see that elephant hidden in the cherry-tree?
-No.
– See how well it is hidden?’
These exercises have important advantages because they stimulate social interaction and thereby less inhibitions; they permit all students to participate simultaneously, thus increasing the student’s speaking time and they provide practice of lexical and grammatical structures without the boredom generated by mechanical drills.
q) Riddles
This game can be played in pairs or teams. Each pair or team gets a riddle that they have to decode in a few minutes. The pair or team which first finds the answer is the winner.
E.g. 1) Why is 2+5=5 like your left foot? (Answer: It’s not right)
2) What’s the most colourful state of U.S.A? (Answer: Color-ado)
3) What has two hands and a face, but no arms and legs? (Answer: a clock)
4) Why did the man throw a bucket of water out of the window? (Answer: He wanted to see the waterfall!)
r) Proverbs
This game can be very successful in acquiring general knowledge, since proverbs generated people’s wisdom, by asking the students to give the Romanian equivalents where possible.
E.g. ‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away’.
‘A Friend in need is a friend indeed.’
‘Do not put until tomorrow what you can do today.’
s) Funny notices and advertisements
This game offers the students the possibility to have great fun by spotting the word/s or the topic which generated misunderstandings and confusion which led to a funny ambiguity.
s) .1. Funny notices
‘On the menu of a Swiss restaurant
Our wines leave you nothing to hope for.’
1. ‘Outside a Hong Kong tailor shop:
Ladies may have a fit upstairs.’
2. ‘In a Bangkok dry cleaners:
‘Drop your trousers here for best results.’
3. ‘In a Rome laundry:
‘Ladies, leave your clothes here, and spend the afternoon having a good time.’
4. ‘Advertisement for donkey rides in Thailand:
‘ Would you like to ride on your own ass?’ ‘
5. ‘In a Japanese hotel:
‘ You are invited to take advantage of the chambermaid.’
6. ‘In the lobby of a Moscow hotel, across from the Russian orthodox monastery:
‘ You are welcome to visit the cemetery were famous Russian and Soviet composers, artists and writers are buried daily, except Thursday’.
s) .2. Funny Advertisements
a) ‘ Dinner Special-Turkey $2.35; Chicken or Beef $2.25; Children $2.00’
b) ‘ Four – poster bed 101 years old. Perfect for antique lover.’
c) ‘ Now is your chance to have your ear pierced and get an extra pair to take home, too.’
d) ‘We do not tear your clothing with machinery. We do it carefully by hand.’
e) ‘ Have several very old dresses from grandmother in beautiful condition’.
f) ‘ Dog for sale: eats anything and is fond on children.’
h) ‘ Wanted. Man to take care of cow that does not smoke or drink.’
j) ‘Illiterate? Write today for free help.’
IV.3 Learning English Vocabulary through Songs
Each teacher has his own method of teaching a song but there are a few things that there should be taken into consideration before doing it.Usually, the listening activities involve three stages:
-pre-listening activities which are a kind of mind maps about the title or main idea of the song, predictions made on a picture, key words or word splash
-listening
-post listening activities can be writing the next verse of the song, a response letter to the singer, drawing pictures about the song, reconstructing the story of the song, writing a composition/an essay about how the song makes students feel or speak about the theme and the message of the song.
Before choosing a song for the English class, the teacher has to take into consideration a few things such as:
– The song should be highlighting a specific vocabulary set, pronunciation or grammar that the class is working on.
– The song should fit a thematic unit that the teacher is doing with the class.
– The singer should be easy to understand and the song catchy.
– The song and the artist should be popular with students.
– The song should be age and level appropriate and there are many activities which can be done while listening to a song such as:
a) Cloze:
The students are given a worksheet with some words omitted. While students listen to the song, they fill in the blanks. Cloze activities are great to teach specific vocabulary sets by strategically leaving out words. Cloze can be also done as a general listening activity by simply deleting every sixth (or tenth) word.
b) Listening Discrimination
The teacher writes each word of a song on an individual piece of paper. Each student gets 3-4 pieces of paper and listens specifically for these words. When they hear their word, they run up and write it to the board in order to make one large, all-class poster of the lyrics. This activity is also a great team builder: because the end result is a whole class effort, students often work together to get the lyrics in order
c) Pick words out of Pile
This is the Listening Discrimination activity in reverse. The teacher puts each word of a song on individual pieces of paper. The students stand in a circle around the lyrics. When they hear a word, they pick it out of the pile. This can also be done as a competition in small groups.
d) Mistake Lyrics
The students listen to a song while reading a hand-out with the lyrics on it. The only problem is that there are many mistakes! As the listen, the students correct the lyrics. To make it easier, the students can cross out the mistakes on first listening and fix them on subsequent listening.
e) Put sentences/chunks in order
The students are asked, in groups, to put the sentences or chunks in order while listening to a song.
f) Note taking
This is a great listening strategy that can be taught to students. While they are listening to a song, they have to write down all the words they know. As a class activity, after listening to the song, the students say aloud all the words they understand and make a large class word splash on the board. Then, they listen again and add more words. Following this, the students can discuss the meaning of the song.
g) Pop up
This activity works great with a song that has many repetitive words. The students sit in a circle, each holding a different word of the song. When a student hears his word, he stands up with the paper and then sits back down.
h) Run to front of Line
This is a variation of the Pop Up activity, but, this time, the students stand in a line and when they hear their word, they run to the front of the line.
i) Listing words
The students are given a chart which they have to fill with words that fit the categories given in the chart. For example, a very popular and classical song is Stevie Wonder’s ‘I just called to say I love you’. At this activity, the students can be asked to list the days and special events, months of the year, seasons of the year, etc.
j) Guessing the meaning
In this activity, the students are given some phrases from the song and they have to give synonyms and explain the meaning of the phrases.
An example of a song which has a task blank filling is John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’.
The students are told that in the song they are going to hear 10 names of 10 means of transport and they have to write these words on their task sheet and they are allowed to write the Romanian equivalent for the words identified if they do not know how to spell then in English. Then the students are asked to listen to the John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’, then read the text on their task sheets and fill in the missing words.
E.g. Task sheet:
Imagine there’s no heaven,
It’s __1__ if you try
No hell __2__ us
Above us only __3__
Imagine all the people
__4__ for today…
Imagine there’s no countries,
It isn’t hard to __5__
Nothing to kill or die for
And no __6__ too
Imagine all the people
Living __7__ in peace…
You may say I’m a __8__
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll __9__ us
And the __10__ will be as one
Key:
1)Easy; 2. Below; 3. Sky; 4. Living; 5. Do; 6. Religion; 7. Life; 8. Dreamer; 9. Join; 10. World
Also, pictures can be used as clues to help recall the words in various verses of some songs and an interesting class project would be for students to draw pictures depicting the scenes from the verses and chorus of a song. If the students are asked to make a project on the song ‘Imagine’, the theme could be ‘Peace in the World’ or ‘A Perfect World’. The project can be followed by a composition or an essay having one of these titles.
IV.4 Learning English Vocabulary through Projects
Project work is becoming an increasingly popular feature within the English classes. Common projects are class magazines, group wall displays about student’s free time activities, hobbies, favourite music, films, books, daily activities, food, clothing, shopping, their town/city, cities of the future, etc.
A project involves students in deciding together what they want to do to complete a project whilst the teacher plays a more supporting role. With their emphasis on process, as well as product, it can be seen as providing an ideal environment for the development of fluency within the learning process. Project work encourages positive competition between students and aims not only at teaching and getting students to practice English, but also at stimulating creativity and shaping character .Projects can give the teachers an opportunity for self-evaluation as well as a chance of learning things from and about the students, a chance of getting closer to knowing ,understanding and educating them better .Project work encourages ‘learning by doing’ and it also encourage team work as they promote co-operation and imply the participation of all the students in the preparation of an extended piece of work on a given topic .Students work in groups or individually, but share parts and responsibilities of the same project. All the decisions about content and presentation are in the students’ hands. They are given the opportunity to decide on the language they are going to use, the layout and format of the end ‘product. That is why, the process in project work is almost as important as the product. When evaluating, teachers need to give credit for each student’s effort and contribution to group work, as well as for the quality of the final product .For students, project work is an enjoyable activity where pleasure and fun are combined with serious work and they approach it as a window towards imagination, creativity and autonomy. Students can integrate linguistic and non-linguistic skills and it is a way towards communicative competence. They have the chance to demonstrate ,build on and develop their general knowledge and to develop their self- evaluation abilities ,to discover and learn team spirit and team work .Project work also helps students to shape personality traits ,such as politeness, tolerance, fair-play, co-operation, self-confidence and sharing ,and to develop the aesthetic or artistic sense through designing the layout of the page, drawing, painting ,sticking cut-outs, etc .In vocabulary teaching ,this work is a bridge between vocabulary study and vocabulary use, for informal as opposed to formal language. For the teachers, this work is a challenge in classroom management and they have to participate and help at any time in the lesson. They must be mediators, resource providers, controllers, prompters, advisors, analysts, models for students, co-ordinators, supervisors and they also become learners.
Before proposing a project, the teacher has to explain the idea to the students and they have to think of what they want to include in the project, what form it will take, who will be responsible for what, an idea of the time it will take to produce each part of the project, the materials and resources they will need. This is the setting up stage.
The students are then given some time to discuss their ideas and the teacher must explain them which are the evaluation procedures. The production stage implies brainstorming and creativity, the output of the project lesson.
The students should be provided with materials they need or they could be encouraged to use the Internet to look for information or photos.
The projects need to be seen, read and admired so the teachers should schedule the last project session as a presentation. As with any piece of work, a project needs to be acknowledged and evaluated. It is not enough to say ‘that’s great’ after all the work the student put in. Thus, a project evaluation report which comments on aspects of the project such as content, design, vocabulary, oral presentation, is necessary. This is the last stage-the presentation stage. This is a very motivating and exciting part of the activity for the students because they can enjoy the end- product of their work and express their pride by displaying it and presenting it to everybody. It is also a moment of reward: either the other groups’ admiration or the teacher’s encouragement and appreciation. The teacher’s feedback is a must and it refers not only to the quality of the students’ work but also to their attitude during the group work. It is a real help to establish a new type of relationship between the students and the teacher, a break from routine, the chance to do something different. The main drawback of project work is that most students use their mother tongue even if they are encouraged not to do this during their work.
From both the students and teachers’ point of view, project work may be considered a joint effort in learning and consolidating vocabulary. Still, there are many projects on personal issues which are given as a homework assignment and the students are given a week to do it.
As a conclusion, projects are a work that students, at any level, enjoy doing .Thus, teachers should suggest a theme, at least one a month, giving the students the freedom to express their ideas, using their own vocabulary.
CHAPTER V
PRACTICE: A CASE STUDY
A Comparison of the Effects of Two Vocabulary Teaching Approaches:
The Modern Communicative Approach vs. the ‘Old-fashioned’ Method of Translation
V.I. The Aim of the Study
V.I.1 Setting Goals by Establishing a Common Ground of Learning Vocabulary as a Result of a Diagnostic Questionnaire
V.II. Classroom activities
V.III. Conclusions
V.I.The aim of this Study
As regarding the set curricula and the goals of vocabulary acquisition at the elementary and intermediate level of studying English as a foreign language, I consider that vocabulary plays an essential role in the English language learning. The seventeen years of my teaching experience as an English teacher at these classes, have taught me that, possessing the essential vocabulary, designed for these levels of studying, give students confidence and prepare them for the further aspects of the language, such as grammar structures.
In this respect, this study looks at some research in the area of vocabulary acquisition including communicative activities and traditional, old for some teachers, method of translation. In this respect, I conducted my study starting from the supposition that the two approaches to vocabulary teaching do not exclude each other and that they could be complementary since the modern tendency in the area of vocabulary, as concerning its teaching and learning, should be done almost exclusively through modern communicative approaches. Considering the above supposition, before conducting my study, I asked my twenty 7th grade students involved in it to answer to the questions from the questionnaire that has been designed and thought as being suitable for their intermediate level of the English language learning. Its purpose comes from my belief that, the best teaching starts with a diagnostic work to focus the information on what the students really need for a successful vocabulary learning. Considering the great variety of the ways to convey meaning and to deal with some of the key issues as regarding vocabulary acquisition, I wanted to find out my students’ opinion about the importance of learning vocabulary, the skills they wanted to improve, the techniques and the vocabulary activities they liked or would like doing during the English classes and also what was their approach to translation and to learning vocabulary through translation activities. The aim of my questionnaire was to establish a common ground for the further vocabulary activities relying on the results. The questions they had to answer are presented as follows:
1) Which part of the English language do you consider more important/useful in communication?
a) vocabulary; b) grammar
2) Which of the English language skill do you like the vocabulary activities in the class to involve?
a) speaking; b) reading; c) listening; d) writing
3) What vocabulary activities do you like doing in the English classes?
a) games; b) role plays; c) reading materials ; d) writing tasks
4) Do you like using modern technology (laptops, CD players) in the English classes?
a) yes b) no
5) Do you prefer your teacher to:
a) explain the unknown words in English?;
b) give the Romanian equivalent?
6) Do you think that activities on translation in vocabulary learning could be enjoyable or useful for you?
a) yes b)no
7) Would you like to try to learn vocabulary by doing translation activities in a modern way?
a) yes; b) no.
The results of the questionnaire are as follows:
Question 1) a) 80% b) 20%
2) a) 50% b) 30% c)20% d) —
3) a) 60% b) 10% c)20% d) 10%
4) a) 95% b) 5%
5) a) 65 % b) 35%
6) a) 35% b )65%
7) a) 45% b) 55%
The answers of the students were quite predictable, at least at some of the questions and I based my predictions on my previous teaching experience when my students enjoyed leaning vocabulary as compared to grammar, and they learnt vocabulary better through speaking and listening activities and by using modern technology in the English classes. Many students prefer translation of the unknown words because it is an easy way to get the meaning of words and maybe, that is why they were quite reserved as concerning learning vocabulary through translation activities.
V.I.1 Setting Goals by Establishing a Common Ground of Learning Vocabulary as a Result of a Diagnostic Questionnaire
As a result of the feedback which I received from my students’ answers I wanted to base my study on an examination of the learning and pedagogical implications of combining modern activities with traditional methods in teaching and learning vocabulary through some practical classroom applications. They are in fact task-based activities which I have tried to integrate in the flow of active speech and in the logical steps of a lesson. In this respect I have chosen some ‘engagement’ activities which are meant to engage the students’ interest in the topic and its related vocabulary; ‘study’ activities, meant to explore the words which the topic has introduced in more detail and ‘activate’ activities which are meant to give students an opportunity to use the vocabulary which has been studied, activities which have been presented in a theoretical approach in Chapter II of my paper.
V. II. Practical Classroom Activities
1). Reinforcing vocabulary on likes and dislikes through speaking skill and project work
Due to the fact that it was the beginning of the school year and most of the activities that I am going to present below involve working in pairs, before pairing up the students I asked them to complete some handouts on likes and dislikes. The aim of the handouts was to develop the students’ speaking skill by reinforcing vocabulary on likes and dislikes, and also to find out the similarities and differences between students, to make them know each other better and also to find out what has been changed in their personal life as concerning free time activities and attitude to some things since the previous school year through question-answer practice. In this respect, the students A (from the first row of desks) got the Worksheet A and the other row got the Worksheet B. The students had to ask their partners about their likes and dislikes, daily activities and unusual things about them and write them on the handouts. The students asked each other questions like: ‘What is your favourite———-?’, ‘What is your least favourite—————?”What do you usually do on Sunday at ———?’, Which two unusual things about you can you think of ———-?’The students had no difficulties in completing their charts and speaking to each other. I asked my students to read aloud their answers by presenting their peers in four sentences, as follows: ‘He/She likes”’, He/She doesn’t like”’, ‘On Sunday at’..he/she’..,at”he/she’etc’, ‘Two unusual things about him/her are” and then exchange their sheets as each student got his/her personal information. I monitored them during their speaking and the feedback gave me the opportunity to find out new thing about my students and conducted me to the right way of pairing them up on their similarities and preferences. The two worksheets I handed my students are given below:
Worksheet A
Ask your partner about these things, and note down the answers:
a) Likes and Dislikes
Favourite Least favourite
Groups/ singers Food
colour Subject at school
pet animal Film
sport
b) Daily activities
What is your partner usually doing at these times on a Sunday?
8 a.m.
3 p.m.
6 p.m.
9 p.m.
c) Unusual things:
Find out two unusual things about your partner.
1””””..
2””’
Worksheet B
Ask your partner about these things, and note down the answers:
a) Likes and Dislikes
Favourite Least favourite
song Film
food Sport
subject at school Colour
Website Daily activities
b) What is your partner usually doing at these times on a Sunday?
10 a.m.
1 p.m.
4 p.m.
7 p.m.
c) Unusual things:
Find out two unusual things about your partner.
1””””..
2””””..
1.1). Follow-up activity involving translation
The purpose of this activity was to consolidate the vocabulary on the topic of likes and dislikes and to introduce them the teenage characters they were going to meet throughout the topics of their textbooks and who eventually became friends after many ups and downs. I asked my students if someone’s likes, dislikes, activities and knowing unusual things about him/her were a criterion in choosing a friend, and most of them told me that, besides these, there should also be taken in consideration aspects of personality.
Thus, the students, individually, were asked to brainstorm ideas on this topic in 3 minutes by using related words to denote quality or behaviour, related to ‘Friendship’ and ‘Friend’. The task was approached with enthusiasm when they were explained that during the activity they had to use a word or phrase in their own language. Some of their ideas are presented below:
E.g. a)
Neasteptata Communication
Real————————
Falsa
Long People
b)
Adevarat Good
Sociabil Funny
Intelligent Interesting
Then, in pairs, the students asked each other about the words they had in their mind maps and they had to translate to each other the words given in Romanian into English and compare their answers. I elicited the translations from the class and I noticed that some of the problems, as concerning translation, arouse in giving another part of speech for the word given in Romanian and I explained them that it is very important, especially in a context, not to change the part of speech. In this respect, I decided that for the next English class to do some word-building activities and to reinforce words deriving with prefixes and suffixes.
1.2). ‘Activate’ activity on likes and dislikes through project work as home assignment
In order to activate the vocabulary on likes and dislikes and on other personal information about them, I proposed the students, as homework, to make a project entitled ‘Snapshot of Me’ in which to include information from the Worksheets they completed in the class and illustrate them with drawings or photos. For my students, project work is in the top of the favourite class or home activities because they have the autonomy to express themselves, show their creativity and become really involved. I assigned for this task a week time, when they were going to be presented and assessed, by considering the use of the target vocabulary, register, visual aspect and the oral presentation .I also asked my students to consider me an advisor and ask for my help whenever they needed it. They did this work with excitement and no difficulty and their final products showed it. (see Appendix 1)
2). Introducing new vocabulary on humour through reading and speaking skill
In one of the units from their textbooks the students had a lesson on the topic of Humour in a context consisting of an article illustrated with pictures of famous comedians.
First, the students looked at the pictures and at the subheading and predicted that the article was about comedies and comedians. Then they were asked to read the first part of the article silently and identify the words related to humour. In this way they were introduced and explained words or word phrases related to this topic: sense of humour, joke, stand-up comedy, comedian, cartoon, slapstick, satire, situation comedy (sit-com)
After introducing all these terms, the students were asked to discuss in pairs which types of comedy they preferred. They asked each other this question: ‘What type of comedy do you prefer and who is your favourite comedian?’ I elicited the students’ answers which revealed that they prefer slapstick comedy and they gave examples of their favourites, watched on TV or Internet .Many of them mentioned the name of Mr. Bean and instantly burst into laugh having in mind the image of a the clumsy, selfish, but also innocent character .After this speaking communicative activity the students were asked to read silently an interview in which Rowan Atkinson speaks about his character, Mr. Bean. In order to develop the students’ reading skill, I asked a volunteer pair of students to come to the front and act out the interview. The students acted very well their roles and, as props, they used two markers to replace the microphones, thing which added a sense of real life situation. Eventually, the audience consisted of the other students in the class, applauded their fluent British pronunciation and seriousness of acting.
3). Consolidating vocabulary on humour through watching authentic material
Due to the pleasant effect this lesson had upon students, I decided that for the next English class to come up with a video material on this topic, on Mr. Bean’s slapstick comedy. The aim of this activity was to give my students the chance to watch authentic video material, to improve their vocabulary through listening skill and also to consolidate the previously taught vocabulary by identifying the features of slapstick comedy. Thus, I selected a chunk from the Mr. Bean series which consisted of a video clip with Mr. Bean at the dentist.
Before watching the clip the students were asked to express their opinions about going to the dentist. In pairs the students had to ask each other the following questions in order to be introduced to the theme of the video clip.
1) How often do you go to the dentist?
2) Do you like going?
3) Did you have a filling? How did you feel about it?
As a feedback, I asked two pairs of students to answer their questions and then I did the feedback with the whole class. As predictable, the students were not very happy about the subject and almost all of them do not go very often because they are afraid of the dentist but still, they had fillings without being pleased with the situation.
Then, I asked the students to watch the video clip taken from the Internet, presenting Mr. Bean at the dentist and focus on the aspects of humour and the details related to it in order to be able do the follow-up activities from the handouts had prepared for them. The students were watching the clip and were talking to each other, having a lot of fun while watching and sensing the features of humour from the clip. After the watching, as a feedback, I wanted to know what the students considered humorous in the clip and they mentioned Mr. Bean’s gestures, facial expression, his clumsiness, his naivety and childish behaviour, his voice tonality and his clothes. Some of the students had difficulties in understanding the language because of the pure British accent and the noisy atmosphere generated by their laughter and in this respect I decided for other English classes to provide them with more authentic listening material.
4) Follow up activities on humour on the watching material
As follow-up activities based on the clip, each pair of students got a handout consisting of five activities.
In Part 1 the students had to underline the correct answer from the sentences 1-3 presented below. The students were talking to each other in order to choose the right answer.
Part 1
Underline the correct answer
1) Mr. Bean’s alarm clock went off at 8.00 / 8.15 / 8.30
2) He put the clock in the cupboard / a glass of water / a bag
3) He continued reading a book / sleeping / watching TV
As a feedback I asked a pair of students to give their answers and checked them with the whole class.
In Part 2, the students had to put the things Mr. Bean did before getting out of the house in the correct order.
Mr. Bean’
A) got up
B) walked into the wall
C) shaved
D) Did some exercise
E) opened the wardrobe and took out his clothes
F) made his bed
G) woke up and opened the curtains
H) saw a sign with a picture of some teeth and the time
I asked a pair of students to give their answers and then I did the feedback with the whole class.
The activity in Part 3 is focused on the sequence in which, in his car, Mr. Bean started to get dressed but, as expected, in a very unusual and funny way. The students had to remember from what they watched which items of clothing he put on and in what order ,and also to mention what he did after getting dressed and then to complete the chart given in their handouts.
Part 3
Mr. Bean gets dressed. The students have to focus on the part in which, in his car, Mr. Bean starts getting dressed. The students had to remember which items of clothing he put on and in what order and after five minutes I asked a pair of students to read what they had completed in the chart and check their answers with the whole class.
3 a) Which of the following clothes did he put on and in what order?
T-Shirt Shirt Socks Shorts Trousers Hat Tie Jacket Shoes
3 b) What did he do after he got dressed?
Part 4 of the students’ handouts consisted of an activity focused on the part in which Mr. Bean was in the dentist’s surgery. After trying to visualize the scene, the students had to put the excerpts in the right order and decide whose character belonged the words or actions.. The students were given five minutes to do the task I got the feedback by asking a pair to read their answers.
Part 4
In the dentist’s surgery
Who said each sentence or did the activities?
Put the following in the correct order Choose from:
A) BEAN! B- Mr. Bean
B) Mr. Peggit’ ready for you now D- The dentist
C) How are we today? W- a woman
D) If you’d like to take a seat R- the receptionist
E) Right! Get in the car!
F) Good morning. Do sit down
G) woke up and opened the curtains
H) saw a sign with a picture of some teeth and the time
The last activity, Part 5 of the handout consisted of an exercise in which the students had to mark the six sentences with True or False and make the False ones True. After five minutes of work a pair of students was asked to conduct the feedback.
Part 5
True or false:
1. He went up and down in the dentist’s chair
2. He cleaned his jacket
3. He drank a glass of tea
4. Mr. Bean gave the dentist an injection
5. He needed one filling
6. The dentist gave him four fillings
Make the false sentences true.
e.g. ‘He doesn’t drink a glass of tea, he”
Some of the pairs had arguments on finding a common ground in choosing the right answer due to the fact that they were too focused on some humorous scenes and missed important details from the others. I advised them for the further watching to pay attention to details and leave the unimportant comments to the end.
5) Follow-up activity involving translation
In order to combine the communicative activities presented above with an activity on translation [2] I asked my students to translate Mr. Bean’s name. As expected, they made fun of it and they were explained that humorous names are an important aspect in comedies. Then the students were told they were going to have a dictation of famous names that they might have heard of. They were explained that they would hear those names in English but they would have to write down the Romanian translation for the names.
‘The Doors’,’ Seven Up’, ‘Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ ,The Black Sea’, ”The Rocky Mountains’ ,’Spice Girls’
In order to approach this activity communicatively, the students were asked to speak about what these names mean to them and express opinions in pairs.
E.g. ‘ What do you know about Spice Girls? What are their real names?’
‘ Where is the Black Sea and where does its name come from?’
The students enjoyed this activity and had no problems in solving it, maybe because they had been accustomed with the given names and had already known many details about them.
[2]: Lindsay Clandfield, Philip Kerr, Ceri Jones, Roy Norris, Jim scrivener.-‘Straightforward Guide to Dictation and Translation’-MACMILLAN p.12
6) Reinforcement of the previous knowledge on jobs and occupations and introducing new one on the topic, or related to it through reading and speaking skills
6.1).
In one of the units of their textbooks entitled ‘I’m here to work [3] the vocabulary was focused on jobs, part-time jobs and occupations. The aim of this lesson was to consolidate the previously taught vocabulary and to introduce new one on this topic, or related to it by improving the students’ reading and speaking skills. I checked the previous knowledge by asking them to list the jobs and occupations they could remember on this topic. After the three minutes they were given for this task I asked one student to read aloud his list in order to be checked and added by the other students .In this way the list was quite long and they mentioned words such as: singer, actor, teacher, doctor, football player, dentist, builder, writer, student, mechanic, driver, engineer, computer programmer, disk jockey, etc I introduced the new vocabulary items denoting jobs and occupations through activities on reading and acting a dialogue, followed by a comprehension task on the reading material which was checked with the whole class. Then, in pairs, the students had to ask each other about the jobs and occupation they find attractive and to motivate their choice. I conducted the feedback by eliciting the students’ answers and the top three most attractive jobs and occupations were: singer, football player and computer programmer. I decided to expand the topic to the chores explaining the students that this word denotes tasks that people have to do at home, without any remuneration, as compared to jobs, where you get paid. In order to improve the students speaking skill on this topic, they were asked, in pairs, to discuss about the chores written on some handouts which they had received, by asking each other: ‘Do you have to”?’ and put a tick near the ones they have to do.
1) I wash the dishes
2) I empty the bin
3) I feed my pets
4) I tidy my bedroom
5) I make my bed
6) I vacuum my house
7) I wash my clothes
8) I help with the shopping
9) I clean the bathroom
10) I also —————
The students did this activity in pairs and, after the whole class feedback I asked for a volunteer to write on the blackboard the most common ones, which were 2),3),4) and 8) express their opinions about them. As I predicted, the students were not very happy with the chores they had at home, finding them boring and endless and an ordeal for most of the boys.
8). Improving the listening skill by using authentic material on chores
The next activities are a follow-up on the topic on chores. Having acknowledged from a previous task that many students had problems in understanding the authentic British accent and having noticed their attitude to home chores, in order to support and encourage them I came up with a follow-up activity to make them realise that students do these chores in the whole world. To be more persuading, and to improve their listening skill by listening authentic material I selected a track called Films[4] from the Internet, consisting of a radio interview, in which ‘CLICK’ Radio interviewed its listeners on the chores they had to do at home. I chose this listening activity starting from the supposition that the more you practice listening, the better listener you become. Whether my students have the opportunity to meet or listen to native English people, during the English classes I intended to provide them with hearing the English language spoken in films, on TV, on the radio, or on the Internet. All the listening material I brought to the class was script speech, which means it could be also read.
In this way, through this listening material, I wanted to get my students familiarised with different accents, speech patterns, and also to improve their ability to longer discourse, to hear discussions on different levels of formality on a certain topic, chores.
8.1). Listening for the gist of the radio track on chores
The previous communicative activity on chores which the students had to do in pairs was in fact a pre-listening activity to the proper listening one, which had as the starting point a debate on the worldwide known fairy-tale ‘Cinderella’. Then, my students were told that they were going to listen to a radio interview without being told what it was about. The track of the radio programme consists of a dialogue between the two radio reporters, Nicole and Ben, and their radio listeners who got online. They are Zack, Amir and Aisha who are being interviewed about the chores they have to do at home and express opinions about them.
The aim of the first listening was to get the gist of it and also to get the students accustomed with the people involved and their accents. Thus, I asked the students to listen very attentive and try to get the gist of the listening material.
The students had no difficulties in catching the gist of the material and when I asked them ‘What was the text about?’, they all said loudly: chores
8.2.) While- listening activity on chores
The purpose of the second listening was to check the students’ vocabulary on chores. In this respect, the students were given handouts consisting of the script of the listening material and they were told that they had to underline the chores they recognize while listening again. The script is given below, with the underlined chores which the students had to recognize.
*BBC Radio 4 Today-CLICK April/ May 2015 TRACK 2:FILM
TRACK 2: FILM
Nicole: There’s a new film this year: Cinderella.
Ben: It’s about a girl who has got a horrible stepmother and two evil stepsisters. They make her do chores all day. She can’t go to parties, or have fun!
Nicole: Do you do any chores, Ben?
Ben: Yes, I do all my chores on Sunday. Do you have a lot of chores, too?
Nicole: I do. I want my house to be clean, so I do chores every day.
Ben: Do our listeners do a lot of chores?
Nicole: I don’t know, let’s ask them!
Ben: Yes, call us! What chores do you do?
Phone Jingle: 0858713
Ben: We’ve got our first call!
Zack: Wow, I’m on CLICK Radio! Hello Ben, hello Nicole, I’m Zack!
Ben: Hey Zack. Where are you from?
Zack: I’m from Manchester.
Nicole: Hi Zack, tell us what chores you do at home.
Zack: Well, there are lots of chores to do in my house. But I’ve got three sisters, and we share the work.
Nicole: So what do you do?
Zack: I’ve got two jobs: I hoover on Saturdays and, I empty the bin every week.
Nicole: Ew, the bin, gross! Thanks Zack! Our next call is Amir from Birmingham. Can you hear us, Amir?
Amir: Hi CLICK Radio. I can hear you!
Nicole: Great. Amir, tell us about your chores!
Amir: Well, Nicole, I have five chores! In the kitchen, I empty the dishwasher. Then, in my bedroom, I hoover the floor and make my bed.
Nicole: That is a lot of chores.
Amir: But there’s more, Nicole! I’ve got two rabbits. I feed them every day, and clean their hutch once a week.
Nicole: Wow, you are busy. How old are you, Amir?
Amir: I’m twelve! Sorry, but I need to go. I need to do my homework!
Nicole: Bye Amir!
Ben: Oh no, Amir has got a lot of chores!
Nicole: Yes, he helps a lot around the house.
Ben: We’ve got another call!
Nicole: Hello, you’re on CLICK Radio! What’s your name?
Aisha: Hiya! My name’s Aisha,
Nicole: And where are you from?
Aisha: I’m from London.
Nicole: Thanks for your call! What chores do you do at home, Aisha?
Aisha: Well, that’s difficult, Nicole’
Nicole: Oh dear, do you do a lot of chores, too?
Aisha: Um, well, I don’t do any chores.
Nicole: None?
Aisha: No, my Mum and Dad do all the chores in the house, and I don’t do any!
Nicole: Why don’t you do any chores, Aisha?
Aisha:Well, I’m ten years old. Next year, when I’m eleven, I can help around the house.
Nicole: Ah, I see! Thanks Aisha!
Aisha: Bye!
Ben: Thanks to Zack, Amir and Aisha!
Ben and Nicole: Bye!
After the second listening, I asked the students to check, in pairs, the chores they had underlined and, as feedback, I asked a student to give his answers and check them with the whole class. Most of the students identified the chores from the text correctly, but many of them added doing homework as one of the chores. I explained them that a chore is usually a household task but they argued that most homework is a routine and a boring task as the other chores.
8.3.) Post-listening activities on chores
a) For a further checking of the comprehension of the material, the students, in pairs, had to fill in the three sentences with the number of chores the three radio listeners have got:
1. Zack has got ———–chores.
2. Amir has got————-chores.
3. Aisha has got————-chores.
A pair of students was asked to elicit their answers which I checked with the whole class and there were no difficulties in doing this task.
b) In the next activity on the same listening material the students, paired up, had to decide who does the chores: Amir or Zack, and put a tick next to the person who does it:
Amir Zack
1 .Empty the bin ——————————-
2. Feed the rabbit ——————————-
3. Empty the dishwasher ——————————–
4. Make the bed ——————————–
The feedback at this activity was done by asking a pair of students to give their answers in order to be checked with the whole class and all their answers were the right ones, which showed me that the students did not have difficulties in the comprehension of the listening and reading material.
8.4.) Improving the reading skill through role-play on the listening script on chores
The aim of this activity was to improve the students’ reading skill by using the same script of the listening task above, and in order to make the lesson more communicative and attractive, I had written twenty flash-cards containing the names of the people involved in the listening resource: Nicole, Ben, Zack, Amir and Aisha . I put the flash-cards in a small plastic box, I mixed them up and then I went to each student’s desk and ask him/her to pick a flash-card. This method of grouping students is very effective because, in this way there can be avoided arguments about who is with who, which lead, from my previous experience to leaving some ‘unwanted’ students out of the groups and instead of doing an enjoyable activity it turned into a burden for these students who were eventually ‘accepted’ and they were reminded this during the activity work. As expected, the group work wasn’t at its best level of creativity and performance.
After the students got into groups of five, I asked them to read the material very attentive and think about reading it aloud, as a role-play. The students were allowed the freedom to exchange their character if they were willing to but only within the group they were in. I told them that they had ten minutes to read, prepare and practice their dialogues and ask for my help if they had misunderstandings. Even if the group work usually involves a lot of noise, I encouraged my students to communicate to each other in English as much as possible and also to behave themselves. When the time ran out I conducted the feedback by asking each group to come to the front and act their dialogue suggesting them to use gestures and to imitate the accent and intonation of the characters they had heard during the listening. The students enjoyed this activity and showed much creativity in the props and using gestures. Eventually I announced the winner Of course that the groups which lost were not very happy but I explained them that the most important criterion in choosing the winner was the reading fluency and the accent accuracy points I also explained each group which were their strong and their weak points and I gave them suggestions on what there should be improved in their further performances.
9). Translation activity on reading the news through speaking skill
In order to remain in the same field of mass-media which the students encountered in the previous English class and enjoyed it, at the end of the class, I asked the students to bring to class a Romanian newspaper or a magazine they usually buy, but without reading it beforehand. The aim of this activity was to combine the modern communicative approach with the traditional one, translation and to improve the students’ free speaking. Thus, for the next English class I decided to challenge my students by choosing a translation activity called Reading the News, [2] an activity that I usually do at the intermediate and above levels. The students brought newspapers and magazines in Romanian language and I told them to flick through their print materials until they find a story they think was interesting. They were asked to read the article to themselves first and find at least ten key words in the article which they had to translate into English. Whenever I do translation activities at school I ask my students to bring dictionaries from the school library and allow them to make use of them in case of ambiguous words or when the other techniques of getting the meaning are not successful. Then, in pairs, each student was asked to take turns explaining the ‘gist’ of the news story to their partner, but in English, task they approached as being very challenging.
At the end, they were asked to swap their stories and repeat the exercise, each with the other’s news story and I did the feedback with the whole class by asking what they found out from each other. Some difficulties appeared when the students tried to give too many details which they found difficult to translate. I then reminded them that the task was focused on the gist of the story, not on details.
10). Consolidating vocabulary on celebrities through listening to authentic material
One of the most attractive topic for students is the one concerning the celebrities of the world. No matter they are music, sport, art, movies or even politics stars, the students, as many other people, like finding out many details about them and talking and expressing their opinions about them. In their textbooks [1] students had a text entitled ‘A Superstar with Attitude ‘, an interview with Will Smith in fact,( whose name was familiar to all students due to his both artistic abilities as a movie star and a singer), in which the main vocabulary was focused on success, movies and free time activities. The aim of the next activity was to consolidate the vocabulary on celebrities and to improve the students’ listening and speaking skill.
10.1). Listening for the gist of a radio track on celebrities
The listening material was on the same RADIO CLICK*, but this track was on celebrities, on stars. In this radio programme the two reporters, Nicole and Ben speak about ways of spending the summer holidays and they are in an online dialogue with Pablo, who is a photographer hunting for celebrities, a paparazzo, hiding in different places to take some extraordinary photos of them. First, the students were asked to listen to the dialogue, to focus on the ‘gist ‘of it. After the listening, I asked a student what was the topic of the text and he gave me the right answer: celebrities and the other students agreed, which meant that they had no difficulties with the listening material.
*2 p. 18
The script material is as follows: TRACK 5: STARS
Nicole: Hello everyone, and welcome to CLICK Radio. The summer holidays are nearly here.
Ben: What do you do in the summer holidays, Nicole?
Nicole: Well, Ben, I like to go to the beach. I swim in the sea every day.
Ben: But the sea is cold in England!
Nicole: Oh, I know. I go to Spain for my summer holidays.
Ben: Oh!
Nicole: In CLICK you can read about what celebrities do for their summer holidays.
Ben: Today we’re talking to a photographer. His name is Pablo!
Nicole: What does he take photos of?
Ben: Celebrities! He’s a paparazzo!
Nicole: Here are three days in Pablo’s life.
Pablo: It’s Monday. I’m at an airport in London. I’m waiting at the arrivals gate. There are lots of people. Aha! There she is!
Pablo and Paparazzi: Victoria, Victoria!
Pablo: It’s Tuesday. I’m at a beach in Hawaii. I’m sitting in a tree and I’m looking for a singer. Aha, there she is!
Pablo: She’s tall and beautiful! It’s Taylor, Taylor Swift!
Pablo: It’s Wednesday. I’m in London. I’m hiding in a telephone box. I’m looking for someone from the royal family, Aha, there she is!
Pablo: She’s got beautiful hair and beautiful clothes and she’s carrying a baby. It’s Kate! Kate!
10.2). Listening comprehension tasks of the radio track on celebrities
The aim of the second listening was focusing on details and I asked my students, in pairs, to do the two tasks they had on the handouts I gave them, after the second listening, The students were allowed five minutes after the second listening to discuss the tasks and complete them. In the first task the students had to circle the correct answer in the following sentences to answer to the question: Where does Pablo sees these stars?
1) Victoria Beckham is: a) at an airport
b) at a hotel
c) at a football match
2 ) Taylor Swift is: a) in New York
b) at the beach
c) at a restaurant
3) Kate Middleton is: a) in London
b) in Edinburgh
* BBC Radio 4 Today CLICK April/May 2015 TRACK 5: STARS
The next task of the handout asked the students to answer the question: Where
does Pablo hide? and to choose two places from: a) in a telephone box
b) in a post box
c) in a tree
d) in a car
In order to get the feedback, I asked a pair of students to ask another pair the questions from the handouts and I checked the answers with the whole class. The feedback showed me that the students understood the listening material and found it accessible.
In the last task they had on the handouts they had to pretend that they were paparazzi and give true answers about themselves by answering the following questions and then, in pairs to practice them.
a. Which famous person do you want to take a photo of?
b. Where are they?
c. Where do you hide?
I did the feedback with two volunteer pairs and asked for other opinions from the other students. They mentioned the names of famous actors, singers, sport celebrities and Romanian politicians who are on holiday in Romania. And the hiding places they mentioned were similar to those they heard during the listening.
11). Interview with a’ famous person’ through translation approach
The aim of this activity was develop the students’ speaking skill by question-answer practice and make them approach translation in a pleasant way. It is a complementary activity to the one presented above, knowing that many students like very much activities in which they pretend to be famous people.
The Press Conference Interpreter* 2 is an activity in which, at the beginning of the class, I asked two volunteer students to come to the front and to be my ‘interviewee and interpreter’ and chose an interesting role for the interviewee: a famous person.
I told them that they were going to role play a press conference in which they were going to interview a famous person and to be more authentic I provided them with the microphones they made in the Technology class.
I introduced the interviewee as a famous star. The other students had to pretend to be all journalists that do not speak any English, and so they had to ask questions via the interpreter who translated into English the question for the famous person, who answered in English. The interviewee pretended to be the famous singer Madona who is favourite singer and, in this respect she knew many details about and could answer promptly at the interviewer’s questions. Some of the questions the ‘Romanian journalists’ asked and the interviewer translated are:
What is your real name?
Where were you born?
How old are you?
Are you married?
How many children have you got?
What do you like doing in your free time?
Is it true that you are a vegetarian?
Are you happy being a star?
The interpreter then translated the response back into Romanian for the audience. I told my students to ask questions and run this activity like a real press conference. As things began to slow down, I announced that the ‘famous person’ had to leave for an important event and finished the activity. The students acted their roles very seriously and I liked the’ journalists’ impatience and the rumour generated by it. Also liked the common sense questions they asked and the accuracy of translation. At the end I told the students my appreciations and I congratulated them all.
This activity can work the other way around, with the ‘famous person’ speaking in Romanian and the journalists asking questions in English, which the interpreter must translate.
Usually, boys choose to be sport stars (e.g. football players or trainers, and girls choose to be singers or actresses.)
As a home assignment, I asked the students to write a ten lines article about the famous person, on the information from the interview and about the atmosphere from the conference room. Many of the students had even started to talk about it and to make plans about giving it an interesting title and use illustrations. Their enthusiasm showed that the assignment they had been given was a pleasant one and the end product would reflect this thing.
This activity can work the other way around, with the ‘famous person’ speaking in Romanian and the journalists asking questions in English, which the interpreter must translate.
Usually, boys choose to be sport stars (e.g: football players or trainers, and girls choose to be singers or actresses.)
*2 p. 19
http://efllecturer.blogspot.ro/2012/02/what-are-worst-branding-gaffes.html
http://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/grammar/passive.htm
12). Introducing a new vocabulary item, gaffe, through a speaking communicative activity
In the context of a vocabulary focused on complaining, requesting, apologising and describing behaviour, the students have been introduced the word gaffe as a noun denoting an accidental act or remark causing embarrassment to its maker, and its synonyms: faux pas – blunder ‘ mistake. The aim of the following activity was to improve the students speaking skill through question-answer practice.
This activity was run as a frontal free discussion on the topic of gaffes. The questions which the students had to think of and answer were:
a) Have you ever made any gaffes? If yes, describe one.
b) Do you ever make any gaffes when you are speaking in English?
c) Do you know of any translations from Romanian into English which may cause a gaffe?
d) Do you know of any translations from English into Romanian which may cause a gaffe?
e) Why should we be very careful when we translate into another language?
The students were actively involved in the conversation and the gaffes which they mentioned referred to their embarrassing remarks on people’s physical appearance, clothing, abilities and gestures. As regarding the gaffes they make when speaking English they referred to word order which caused funny effects and they also remembered that during some English classes some students used Romanian words by adding an English suffix to make it sound English and they made great fun of it. The gaffes they usually make when translating from English into Romanian are concerned with the so called ‘false friends’. Thus, words like magazine, library, eventually, advertisement, etc are very popular in this respect. At the last question the students were quite evasive and I helped them by mentioning that aspects such as word order and the language patterns have to be well grounded, as well as the exact meaning of the words to be used with their accurate pronunciation.
13). Consolidating vocabulary on gaffes through reading and discussing on authentic advertisements
The aim of the following activity which I have chosen on the topic of gaffes and which involves the translation of some authentic advertisements which I have found in an English language magazine which I usually read,( designed for English teachers) was to make the students notice what effects a wrong word order can have on the overall meaning of a message. Another aim was to create a relaxing and enjoyable atmosphere to the class. In this respect, I had made handouts consisting of some authentic advertisements and the students, paired up, had to read and discuss them and find the gaffes that the people who advertised them had made, and translate them. I encouraged my students to use the English-English dictionaries and ask for my help if they needed. The advertisements written on the handouts are:
a) ‘Dinner Special-Turkey $2.35; Chicken or Beef $2.25; Children $2.00′
b)’ Four- poster bed 101 years old. Perfect for antique lover’.
c) ‘Now is your chance to have your ear pierced and get an extra pair to take home, too.’
d) ‘We do not tear your clothing with machinery. We do it carefully by hand.’
e)’ Have several very old dresses from grandmother in beautiful condition.’
f)’ Tired of cleaning yourself? Let me do it.’
g)’ Dog for sale: eats anything and is fond on children.’
h)’ Wanted. Man to take care of cow that does not smoke or drink’.
i)’ Illiterate? Write today for free help’.
As a feedback I checked the translation with the whole class, even if the atmosphere of amusement and fun created whilst working in pairs proved that the task was not too difficult for students. Still, many students made use of their dictionaries because of the words they had not encountered before but I encouraged them to do that. In fact, working with dictionaries is an aim that I have whenever I do activities involving translation and the students had been trained long before to use them appropriately.
*ROMANCE, MAY ’98, ISSUE No 9, PUBLICATION FUNDED BY BRITISH COUNCIL ROMANIA, Funny advertisements, p.32
14). Role-play activity through communicative and translation approach
The aim of this activity was to give the students more confidence in approaching translation in a communicative way by improving their speaking skill.
Usually, for some speaking activities at the intermediate level of studying English students find it difficult to think of what to say, even in their own language. This activity involving translation allowed them to get their head around the topic and do it first in their ‘comfort zone’, the Romanian language before doing it in English.
The students, in pairs, were going to act out a telephone conversation with an office supplies company.
Student A had to phone the office supplies company and place an order for some stationary and student B worked for the office supplies company and he had to answer the phone and make notes of what the customer wanted, how many of each item and when the customer wanted it.
The students were asked to look at the task and do it first in Romanian. When they had finished, they were told to repeat the role-play, but this time in English.
When they finished the English version, I did some whole class feedback and asked the students what sections of the speaking activity they weren’t able to do in English on the second time around to go over the expressions or words they needed but they had no difficulties. Some of the students used their mobile phones in order to make the conversation as in the real life, thing which I appreciated.
15).Learning a song through communicative and translation approach
15.1) Introducing the song ‘I Will Survive’
The aim of this activity was to improve the students’ listening and translation skills, to reinforce words synonymy and also to create an enjoyable atmosphere while learning. First, I asked the students what kind of music they like listening to. They mentioned rock music, hip-hop, house, rap, pop and heavy metal. Still, there were some students who mentioned classic songs which their parents like listening to. I then asked whether they would like learning a top classic song which I was almost sure they heard of and they showed interest about it.Thus, I introduced the song by telling the students that the song they were going to learn is an English song (see Appendix ) entitled ‘I Will Survive’ and it was one of the great disco dancing songs of the 1970s, recorded by Gloria Gaynor, a black singer with a powerful voice, and it has become a disco classic.
15.2). 1 Pre-listening task involving translation
For the first task, I gave the students some copies of the lyrics sheet I have made and I told them that they were going to read the first part of the lyrics of the above mentioned song which had some Romanian words in the lyrics. They were told that their task was to work through the page in order to find and translate them into English and then, in pairs, to check their answers.
At first I was afraid, I was petrified
Keep thinking I could never (1) trai without you by my side
But then I’ve spent (2) multe nopti
Thinking how you did me wrong
And I grew (3) puternic
And I learned how to get along
And now you’re back!
From outer space!
I just walked in to find you here with that sad look upon your (4) fata
I should have changed that stupid lock
I should have made you leave your (5) cheie
If I’d have known for just one second,
you’d be back to bother me.
During their task the students showed no difficulties in order to ask for my help or look up for words in their dictionaries, maybe due to the fact that all the words they had to translate were, or should have been familiar to them and the feedback with the whole class proved me that.
15.2).2Pre-listening task on reading and filling the lyrics of the song with the suitable missing words and give synonyms for some words or word phrases
The aim of this task was to improve the students’ reading skill and check its comprehension by asking them to fill in the gaps of the lyrics with the appropriate word or word phrase given on the other side of their handouts: ‘face, key, free, cry, myself, hurt, strong, I’ll stay alive, many nights, you’d, somebody new, someone, live and to give and by giving contextual synonyms for: very frightened, treated someone badly, unhappy, to break into pieces and to repair. Before starting the task in pairs, I asked the students to look at the words and tell me if they had difficulties in their understanding. The only one some mentioned was you’d and I explained that it is the contracted form for you would. I gave the students fifteen minutes to do their task and after that I asked a pair to elicit their answers to be checked with the whole class. The students had no difficulties and they considered the previous task a great help and they mentioned the fact that the lyrics of the song are title related and easy to understand.
15.3) Listening to the song
The students were told that they were going to listen to the song and they were encouraged to sing, too. To my pleasant surprise most of the students were singing and after the listening they confessed me that they had listened to it many times before on the most popular radio stations. They enjoyed the song and even asked for a second listening.
15.4) Post-listening task
In order to finish this activity in an enjoyable mood, the students were asked to write three disco classics they like in order to find out the most popular song in the class. The song which was mentioned by almost all students was Stevie Wonder’s song, ‘I just called to say I love you’ and many students also mentioned the song which they had just learnt in the English class. I ended the class by telling the students to keep in mind the title and the message of the song whenever they are in trouble and I provided them with a second listening.
Conclusions
As I have mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, the aim of this study was meant to see the effects which the combination of the two approaches to learning vocabulary, the modern communicative one and the traditional one through translation, have on students’ learning and on their vocabulary acquisition.
In this respect, I have chosen to present some activities which I considered to be illustrative for the methods and techniques in teaching and learning vocabulary which have been introduced in a theoretical and methodological approach in the first four chapters of my paper and which had the greatest impact on students’ vocabulary learning.
The feedback of the classroom activities presented in this study is a positive one. In this respect, I have noticed a substantial improving of students’ speaking and listening skills which have enhanced them with more confidence in communicating in English. I have also noticed that activities such as role-play, interviews, project work, songs, dialogues and using authentic materials, are more effective than reading or writing about them, due to the fact that the students are actively involved and they have the chance to be creative.
This study, though limited in scope, showed me that the students’ attitude to translation has changed. The feedback which I received after doing activities involving translation showed me that the students approach it as a challenging and useful method of learning vocabulary and not a boring one as they thought it would be. These conclusions are also based on the results of the same questionnaire which has been applied to students before starting this study but this time as feedback at the activities in which they were directly involved during the study.
In conclusion, since a good knowledge of vocabulary has a great effect on the students’ improvement of other aspects of the language such as reading comprehension, listening comprehension, speaking and writing, especially at the intermediate level of studying English as a foreign language, the attention should be paid to choosing and implementing the appropriate vocabulary teaching and learning techniques in English classes and the traditional methods can be approached in a different, modern way.