Week 2 - Vocabulary Flashcards
(18 cards)
What’s the key to learning vocabulary?
Repetition of useful words with variety and attention.
How do you select useful vocabulary?
- Use frequency lists and dictionary markings.
- include what comes up or seems useful, keeping frequency in mind
- Frequency order
- The theme you’re covering (i.e. words that occur within the theme)
- frequency varies between genres
- your sense of frequency is imperfect (and logarithmic)
words you learned early feel more frequent
if you think a word is x times as frequent, it’s probably
more like 10 x times more frequent.
How do you group vocabulary?
- If you learn the frequent words first, they’ll help with learning later words (this is called bootstrapping
- As long as you’re within frequency range (+1,000 words) deal w/ what comes up
- Textbooks don’t recycle vocab, so you should
How do you not group vocabulary?
Do not initially group words with similar or opposite meanings
Do not initially group words with similar spelling or pronunciation
- Good: toilet, understand, stop, English, clothes
- Bad: surprise, astonish, amaze, astound
- Bad: pronoun, pronounce, proverb, prone, prospect
How do you convey meaning?
- Aim for clear, succinct explanations
- Use translation
- Use brief, clear definitions focusing on the core meaning
e.g., The head of something is its top or most important part: the head of a school, the head of your household, your head (on your body)
e.g., if something is comprehensive, it includes all necessary things together. (Don’t confuse with comprehensible)
e.g., Freight is goods carried on a truck, train, etc. - Use what you can
objects, pictures, gesture, etc
What’s deliberate practice?
Deliberate practice is
- The key to learning almost anything
- Form + meaning + connection
- It only works for skills that other people have already figured out how to do
o Ex. There are good English-X bilingual dictionaries for many languages
What is the main drawback to deliberate practice?
- It requires you to constantly push beyond what’s comfortable and familiar
- Requires near-maximal effort, which is generally not enjoyable
What does deliberate practice involve/require?
- It involves well-defined, specific goals. Once a goal is met, a new goal is set.
- It requires regular, accurate feedback.
- It requires your full attention. You must notice problems and correct them.
- It requires effective mental representations.
- It usually involves building on or modifying previously acquired skills.
What are the main techniques for individual study?
- Self testing with spaced repetition (drill)
- The keyword technique
- Guessing from context
- Classroom activities
- Extensive reading
What are the features of good classroom activities?
Good Classroom Activities Should encourage:
- Attention and noticing
- Recycling
- Retrieval
- Generation
- Make use of the fact that students are together
What are some useful classroom activities?
Cloze review/summary (in pairs) Retelling/summary Dictation Delayed copying (in pairs) Peer teaching with flashcard exchange Matching (in pairs) Vocabulary discussion Progressive deletion (in pairs) Shadowing (works better at home) Read-aloud stories with vocabulary explanations (teacher-led)
What is extensive reading, and why should you do it?
- Usually means reading a lot of self-selected, easy, interesting texts and doing few or no exercises afterwards
- By reading extensively, learners encounter vocab (and grammar) repeatedly and in varying context
- Successful individual reading experiences promote learner autonomy which leads to ‘learning success and enhanced motivation’
Benefits of extensive reading
Studies show that by reading a lot of interesting texts, foreign language learners learn new vocabulary and learn more about old vocabulary
- improve their attitude toward reading and language learning
- improve their writing ability
- learn to read more fluently
Drawbacks to extensive reading
- The main drawback is that teachers often feel they have no role.
- Administrators may similarly wonder what a teacher is doing.
- The teacher can conference with individual learners.
- It may be difficult to develop or access a library of readers.
The keyword Technique
Keyword Technique
- Pick a word to learn (ex. Indonesian word for ditch)
o Look it up (ditch = parit)
o Think of an English word with a similar sound (parrot) – this is the keyword
o Imagine the English word and chosen word (parrot and parit)
o Create a vivid image (ex. A parrot in a ditch)
Self-Testing with Spaced Repetition (Drill)
- Most efficient way to learn a form-meaning pairing
Easy to say; less easy to actually accomplish
Word cards, Memrise, Anki, Brainstorm - At the simplest, use a word and its L1 translation
Even better is to use a simple sentence that exemplifies the word well, along with its translation
Guessing from context - For teachers
Teachers should:
o Provide learners w/ material in which they know >98% of the vocab
o Provide practice material replacing target words w/ non-words
Ex. provide practice woftary replacing target words with non-words
o Ask learners to justify their guesses
Guessing from context - For students
- Learners should:
o Guess what syntactic category the word belongs to
o Read beyond the word and come back
o Analyze the context
If it’s a verb, find any sub that comps
If it’s a noun, what modifies it?
If it’s an adj, what is it modifying/the predicate of?
If it’s an adv, what is it modifying?
o Guess the word’s meaning
o Check
Do the categories match?
Reread the sentence replacing the word with your guess
Do any prefixes/suffixes match your guess?
o Use cell phones to look up words quickly
