Enhancing Effectiveness of Vocabulary Learning and Teaching at Secondary Level

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Enhancing Effectiveness of Vocabulary Learning
and Teaching at Secondary Level

• October November 2012
• English Language Education Section
• Curriculum Development Institute
• Education Bureau

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Objectives of todays programme

• To enhance teachers' understanding of effective
  vocabulary learning and teaching
• To develop and explore strategies for effective
  learning and teaching of vocabulary to promote
  the development of vocabulary building skills
• To introduce to teachers how to make effective
  use of the resource package Enhancing English
  Vocabulary Learning and Teaching at Secondary
  Level to develop appropriate learning and
  teaching materials to improve the quality of
  vocabulary learning and teaching in the secondary
  English Language classroom.

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Evaluation on the lesson
Should students be taught mainly meaning and
pronunciation of the vocabulary?
The teaching focuses mainly on meaning (direct
Chinese translation) and the pronunciation of the
target vocabulary.
Reading aloud and being told the Chinese meaning
of the vocabulary may not help students to retain
the vocabulary learnt and retrieve for use it
later.
How can we help students to retain and retrieve
the vocabulary learnt for use?
How can we help students to strengthen their
vocabulary power?
Does covering all vocabulary from the
textbook/vocabulary book mean that we are helping
students to strengthen their vocabulary power?
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Understanding of effective vocabulary learning
and teaching
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Why do we teach students vocabulary? Why do
students learn vocabulary?

• Communicative purposes (tackling texts
  expressing ideas)

Inside Classroom (lesson activities)
Outside Classroom (daily life exposure)
Under teachers control
Under students control
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How to enhance and strengthen students
vocabulary power?

• Introducing vocabulary in context.
• Students learn and apply target vocabulary items
  purposefully and meaningfully.

Purpose of communication
The need to learn what they do not know
The motivation to learn
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Dimensions of vocabulary knowledge
Spelling
Pronunciation
Meaning
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Meaning of words

• Literal meanings (Denotative meanings)
• Implicit meanings (Connotative meanings)
• E.g.
• blue
• heart

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Lexical field, Hyponymy

• Semantical relations
• E.g.
• Food vegetables, meat, fruits, drinks, dessert
• Vegetables lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower,
  tomato
• Meat pork, beef, lamb
• Fruits banana, orange, apple, durian, grape

Hyponyms (lexical members, sub-categories)
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Word formation

• Affixation (e.g. cybercrime)
• Blending (e.g. infotainment, email)
• Clipping (e.g. ad, blog)
• Giving a new meaning to an existing word (e.g.
  mouse, traffic)
• Conversion (e.g. google, text)

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Word combination

• The patterns the words appear
• E.g. multi-word units (formulaic expressions,
  idioms) a piece of cake, give me a hand, get
  cold feet
• The ways words are used
• E.g. word collocations play badminton, go
  fishing, make my lunch, take up a post

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The Mental Lexicon
With proper use of vocabulary building skills,
students can organise the words they learnt and
build associative networks in their minds
effectively.
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Key priorities in vocabulary teaching

• Promote cognitive elaboration of the
  form-meaning relationship through instructional
  intervention
• Guide pupils in the development of vocabulary
  building skills
• Provide multiple exposures to target words using
  vocabulary-focused activities and create
  opportunities for vocabulary use

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Strategies for effective learning and teaching of
vocabulary
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Some effective strategies

• Create associations by
• Making use of lexical relations
• Attending to word collocation (multi-word units)
• Teach word formation (e.g. affixation, blending,
  clipping )
• Use graphic organizers
• Create multiple exposure to words taught / learnt

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Creating Associations
Two Strands
Topic Strand (associative networks)
Collocation Strand (associative networks)
focus on size (breadth)
focus on word combinations (depth)
paradigmatic approach
syntagmatic approach
help students expand the size of the vocabulary
bank
help students understand the usage of the
vocabulary
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Paradigmatic approach

• Develops associative networks
• Associations are based on semantic categories
• Deliberate organisation of words into hierarchies
• Associates with receptive vocabulary

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Paradigmatic approach (cont.)
flat
bedroom
bathroom
kitchen
stove
sink
cupboard
tap
strainer
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Syntagmatic approach

• Develops associative networks
• Associations are based on collocations (word
  combinations)
• Focuses on
• multi-word units (e.g. See you later., Have a
  good trip!, keep abreast of )
• collocations (e.g. go shopping, have a
  shower, play football )
• Associates with productive vocabulary

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Some examples and links of graphic organisers for
recording vocabulary
Word Detective
Vocabulary Word Cluster
Adjective Organiser
Synonyms Antonyms

• http//www.educationoasis.com/curriculum/GO/vocab_
  dev.htm
• http//wvde.state.wv.us/strategybank/VocabularyGra
  phicOrganizers.html
• http//freeology.com/graphicorgs/vocabulary-organi
  zer/

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Can we re-plan the teaching of food items?
Teach the food items in a context (E.g.
introduce the target food items using a
restaurant review)

Teach the food items in discrete items

• Introduce synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, word
  formation, word collocation
• Introduce lexical relations to help studetnts
  categorise the words
• Design a purposeful and meaningful task to allow
  students to apply / use the words learnt

Focus on meaning / pronunciation
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Multiple exposures to new words

• Teachers are always puzzled Why do students fail
  to recognise words that have already been
  taught?
• Far more vocabulary is learned if the same text
  is read 6 to 20 times (Horst Meara 1999)
• REMEMBER Provide sufficient encounters with the
  target vocabulary

Create ways of RECYCLING previously taught
vocabulary
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• Hands-on activities to develop students
  vocabulary building skills

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Hands-on activities to develop students
vocabulary building skills
Activity 1 Meeting friends for fun- Word pair
race Activity 2 A trip to nature Compound
Uno Activity 3 A leaflet about Ocean Park
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Situation for Activity 1

• Four exchange students from the US have recently
  joined an overseas exchange programme in your
  school. You and your classmates are selected as
  the Student Ambassador who are responsible for
  planning various fun activities for them.

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Activity 1 Meeting friends for fun- Word pair
race

• In three minutes, brainstorm different fun
  activities that you and your classmates could do
  with them in the coming weekend based on the
  following verbs and nouns/ noun phrases.
• Write down your answers in the table provided.

NOUNS NOUNS NOUNS NOUNS
lunch a party surfing shopping
sightseeing a drink badminton golf
tennis the cooking swimming gymnastics
VERBS VERBS VERBS
do have make
play go
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Activity 1 Meeting friends for fun- Word pair
race
do have
do have
do have
do have

go make
go make
go make
go make

play
play
play
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In what ways can Activity 1 help students to
develop vocabulary building skills?

• The use of word collocation to help students
  retain the target vocabulary

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Situation for Activity 2

• You have joined an English Uno Competition
  organised by English Club of your school and will
  compete with other classmates. Listen carefully
  to the procedures on how it will be conducted.

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Procedures of conducting Activity 2

1. Form groups of four and each gets a deck of word
   cards from the facilitator.
2. Each competitor takes four word cards after
   shuffling. The remaining cards can be put on the
   desk.
3. Take one card from the deck, turn it over and it
   becomes the starting card.
4. Decide who is going to start first. The starter
   should try to find if any of the word cards
   matches the starting card. He/ she can put it on
   the left/ right hand side of the starting card to
   form a compound noun. The turn will then go to
   the one on his/ her left who can continue by
   hitting any card to start another matching.

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Procedures of conducting Activity 2

• 5. However, if the starter does not have an
  appropriate word card that matches, he/ she has
  to take one word card from the deck.
• 6. If this happens, it is the next competitors
  turn to match a word card with the previous card
  on the desk.
• As long as a competitor cannot match the word
  card with another one, he/ she needs to take a
  word card from the deck.
• During the process of playing, all competitors
  should agree with the matching of the cards.
• Each competitor can only hit one card in each
  round.
• 10. The first competitor who gets rid of all the
  word cards is the winner of the competition.

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In what ways can Activity 2 help students to
develop vocabulary building skills?

• The use of word formation to help students form
  compound nouns and guess meanings of unfamiliar
  words

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Situation for Activity 3

• You work as a summer intern in Hong Kong Tourism
  Board and one of your duties is to improve a
  short description about Ocean Park. Now, read the
  following draft.

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Activity 3 A leaflet about Ocean Park
Step 1 Underline the repeated ideas/vocabulary
of the draft below.
Lets have fun in Ocean Park! Ocean Park is a must-see for both people in Hong Kong and tourists. Ocean Park is located in the southern part of Hong Kong Island and easily accessible. Ocean Park is an interesting place with lots of interesting things to see and do. For example, there are lots of sea animals such as dolphins, sea lions and seals. These sea animals can do lots of interesting tricks. In addition, there are exciting rides that will surely give you an exciting experience.
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Activity 3 A leaflet about Ocean Park

• Repeated ideas/ vocabulary include
• Subject (Ocean Park)
• Adjectives describing Ocean Park (interesting
  exciting)
• Quantifier (lots of)
• Noun (Sea animals)

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Activity 3 A leaflet about Ocean Park

• Step 2 lexical substitution

Lets have fun in Ocean Park! Ocean Park is a must-see for both people in Hong Kong and tourists. Ocean Park is located in the southern part of Hong Kong Island and easily accessible. Ocean Park is an interesting place with lots of interesting things to see and do. For example, there are lots of sea animals such as dolphins, sea lions and seals. These sea animals can do lots of interesting tricks. In addition, there are exciting rides that will surely give you an exciting experience.
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Activity 3 A leaflet about Ocean Park

• How to avoid repetition of vocabulary?
• Lexical substitution
• e.g. Use of pronouns synonyms
• Discuss, in groups, how the content of the
  draft could be improved with the application of
  lexical substitution.

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Activity 3 A leaflet about Ocean Park

• Step 3 lexical expansion

Lets have fun in Ocean Park! Ocean Park is a must-see for both people in Hong Kong and tourists. It is located in the southern part of Hong Kong Island and easily accessible. The amusement park is an amazing place with lots of interesting things to see and do. For example, there are various sea animals such as dolphins, sea lions and seals. These marine animals can do various funny tricks. In addition, there are exciting rides that will surely give you a thrilling experience.
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Activity 3 A leaflet about Ocean Park

• How to further enrich the draft?
• Lexical expansion
• Use of ODSACROM- the use of adjectives
  according to the following categories before a
  noun
• Opinion, Dimension, Shape, Age, Colour, Religion,
  Origin, Material (ODSACROM)
• Noun

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Activity 3 A leaflet about Ocean Park

• e.g. Application of ODSACROM when describing a
  church
• Opinion- A graceful cathedral
• Dimension (i.e. size, length, width)- a big
  compound, a 45-metre tall tower, a thin layer
• Shape- a cross-shaped church
• Age- a modern/ classic building
• Colour- a white house
• Religion- a Catholic church
• Origin- a Chinese temple
• Material- wooden windows

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In what ways can Activity 3 help students to
develop vocabulary building skills?

• - The application of lexical substitution and
  lexical expansion to enrich the content in
  writing
• - The use of ODSACROM to expand and enrich the
  vocabulary when writing

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Vocabulary learning and teaching summary

• Step 1 Background of vocabulary learning and
  teaching
• Communicative purposes
• Teaching in context
• Inside classroom (daily lessons)
• Outside classroom (daily life exposure)

• Step 2 Introducing various vocabulary teaching
  strategies vocabulary learning activities
• Instructional intervention
• Retaining of vocabulary

• Step 3 Retrieval and application of new
  vocabulary learnt by students in the future
• Teachers role- creating opportunities for
  retrieval of target vocabulary when designing
  tasks/ conducting class activities

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• Wordlists for the English Language Curriculum

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Wordlists for the English Language curriculum

• A compilation of words with reference to the
  vocabulary content of the English coursebooks on
  the CDC Recommended Textbook List
• Provides teachers with a general indication as to
  what and how many words students should learn
• Four stages KS1, KS2, KS3, SS
• Two categories alphabetical and thematic
• Teachers are encouraged to design meaningful
  tasks and activities to help students to develop
  their vocabulary knowledge and skills Mechanical
  memorisation not encouraged

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Wordlists in alphabetical order
Select the required key stage of words and click
Show Wordlist.
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Wordlists in alphabetical order
Click the letters to select words.
Words with different meanings are shown on the
right column.
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Wordlists by category
Select the required category/ categories, key
stage(s) and click Show wordlist.
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Wordlists by category
Words are shown by category.