Tag Archives: Vocabulary

Assessment, Writing

HOW TO USE THE EVALUATION CRITERIA FOR WRITTEN TASKS

Leave a comment

Most official criteria first apply a holistic view: overall impression, fluency and how pleasant the text is to read AND secondly detailed components: content/message, language and accuracy of language

Marking and evaluating any pieces of writing is always a challenging and time-consuming task for the teachers. Marking is supposed to be fair and reliable but one has to admit that there is always a little room for subjectivity.

What a marvellous group of future teachers of English! They are all university students, teacher trainees as we call them, who have been practising teaching English for a full year at Turku Teacher Training School. Now they are about to finish their training, ready to start their career as fully qualified teachers of English with a Master’s Degree in their pockets. Permission for the use of the photo pending.

In teacher training in Finland we first aim at a situation where every teacher trainee’s evaluation of an essay, for example, is within 5 points of the experts’ opinion (the scale being 0 – 100). Having marked hundreds of essays the teachers’ marking is usually within a couple of points.

For this reason in order to guarantee the maximum amount of objectivity we have to have criteria that is easy to use once we have been trained how to use it. The criteria has to be explained and analysed to the students too. It is the only way to show them what is expected from them when they write essays or work on any other written assignments.

In order to save paper give your criteria to the students once a year and ask them to glue it in their essay notebooks. During the year the students will mark their progress on the criteria sheet, each essay with its own symbol. The students are allowed to glance at the criteria even during exams.

Criteria never tell you directly what to do to get to the next level. Criteria only tell what is required at that level. CLT researchers have provided us with lots of strategies how the students can improve their language skills.

Learning strategies will help the students on the question ‘HOW to get to the next level in writing or any other language skill area. I have lots of comments on these strategies separately and under most of the topics, too.

Many students quickly become very good at evaluating their own and other students’ products. They realize that the detailed criteria open the door to the improvement of their essays.

Then they start to ask questions of the following kind:

  • How can I get more points for my argumentative essays?
  • Is there a commonly accepted structure for good essays?
  • How can I impress the reader with my vocabulary?
  • Which grammatical structures appeal to the reader?
  • What is meant by complex and simple sentences?
  • How much do mistakes affect the points given?
  • Are all mistakes equally serious?
  • What if I have a lot of spelling mistakes?
  • Do we have to follow the conventions of text types? Newspaper articles, reviews, interviews, blogs etc.?

Some of these questions are answered in my other articles, others in this very same article. If the student gets criteria-based feedback on his/her writing task, they will know which areas they are good at and which areas require much more work.

For instance, if the teacher gives the following points for the essay: overall impression 7,5, content/message 8/10, vocabulary and structures 6/10 and accurary/mistakes 7,5/10, the student will start wondering ‘How can I get 9/10 for content?’, ‘What’s wrong with my structures and vocabulary?; I think it is better than that?, ‘What are my most serious mistakes?

The remedy for the defects of a text can be found by applying the criteria to the text and using writing strategies.

Let’s now check how to proceed with using the ‘unofficial sample’ criteria below. It can be used in age groups 12 – 18 provided it is modified to the proficiency level of the students. Each column is enlarged below with some additional comments.

How to use this sample criteria if you are marking an essay

Do not be alarmed! Whatever criteria you are using the same principles in arriving at an ‘objective’ grade apply. HOWEVER. the main point is not to give a grade but give a more detailed account to the students where they stand in each column.

Choice 1 My recommended way of proceeding:

  • Start with the green ‘First Impressions’ column = Ease to read /Flow of ideas/ Fluency and decide which grade applies to the text you are reading.
  • Then move to the right to each yellow ‘Detailed criteria’ columns separately and decide on your grade.
  • The underlying idea is that ‘Content/message’, ‘Language’ and ‘Accurary’ columns are of equal value; i.e. have equal effect on the final grade
  • Finally come back to the ‘green’ column and see if the ‘yellow’ column grades match the green column one.
  • The average grade of ‘Content/message’, ‘Language’ and ‘Accurary’ columns should be close to your ‘First Impression’ grade in the green column. And this average grade is the final grade in most cases!
  • NOW, having done this procedure you can ‘objectively’ give the final mark and justify the grades against your marking sheet, both for the students and their parents.
  • For example, Overall impression 8+ out of 10, Content 7, Language 9-, Accuracy 8,5.

Choice 2 Some teachers prefer to move horizontally from the green column to the right. Their assumption is that the student’s level remains approximately the same in all columns, maybe going up or down one step but no more. If you know the student’s proficiency level, this is a faster way to give the grade since you do not have to read all criteria texts.

  • Let’s look at an example on proceeding horizontally: If you give, say, 6 points for ‘Flow of ideas’, move to the right on the same line to the other columns and see if the other standards match at level 6 or not. If they do not Move up or down in each column until you are pleased.
  • If you think the grade is between even grades 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 use grades 9, 7, 5 and 3.
  • Even half points, pluses or minuses are ok, if you feel like it.
  • Now the student can decide which skill area he/she wants to develop next and how to do it. This document is also easy for parents to understand if you meet them at some discussions.  

Additional comments on the columns 

1 How easy and pleasant is it to read the text? 2 Is it close to natural text written by a native at that age? 3 Are the ideas clearly presented?

At its best the text sounds natural and could be written by a native speaker.

The text is easy and pleasant to read and it is logical.

  • The yellow boxes clarify the meaning of some of the terms used.

  • Simple ideas are known to everybody, often opinions not supported by evidence. Complex ideas are convincing and backed up with proof, reasons or examples, seen from many perspectives.
  • Essays are just one type of written tasks and these days many other text types have to be practised and their conventions followed.

This language column has two components:

Vocabulary which at its best has to impress the reader and be stylistically appropriate.

The variety of the grammatical and sentence structures reveals a lot of the level of writing skills.

Still, one also has to take the audience and the text type into account when writing a text.

Yes, indeed. All mistakes are not equally serious. Basic errors learnt early in the study of the target language are more serious.

1 How serious are the vocabulary or grammatical mistakes?

2 Do these mistakes or spelling mistakes cause misunderstandings?

Reading

SOLVING READING DIFFICULTIES

Leave a comment

When there are problems with reading comprehension the key to solve the promlems is to identify the causes for the difficulties: lack of vocabulary, grammatical knowledge or skill in translation, or dyslexia, for example. The next step is to find the remedies.

The foundation for reading comprehension is laid in the elementary school or in the basic lessons. I have discussed these ideas under the last horizontal main heading ‘The structure of a text-book based lesson’ THE STRUCTURE OF A TEXTBOOK-BASED LESSON and expand the ideas at the end of this article.

  • the most important piece of homework: students study or translate the next chapter in the textbook in advance at home
  • if the students come to the lesson and understand, say, 80 % of the text, a lot of time is saved and a proper foundation for the lesson is laid
  • however we must remember that understanding a text is a much more profound process than word by word translation
  • we can teach reading only indirectly by giving tips on the process of reading but we have no idea what is really going on in the heads of the students when they are reading a text
  • becoming a good reader is a long process in the mother tongue and even longer in a foreign language; time, patience and guidance are needed
  • we can help students if we can identify what causes the problems in understanding: lack of vocabulary, unknown grammar, translation skills or reading strategies are inadequate

Those suffering from dyslexia are not lazy or stupid. They can’t help it but they can be helped by experts. On average every class has 2 – 3 students who need help either in reading or writing or both.

  • if the reason for reading difficulties is some form of dyslexia, a specialist’s help is neeeded, up to 10 % of students suffer from it and the issue was acknowledged by school authorities only 20 years ago and many teachers pay little attention to it
  • the symptoms of dyslexia can be manyfold: slow or erratic reading, weak short-term memory, mixing or ignoring letters, problems in concentration, often the same problems in writing
  • identifying dyslexia is vital since often these students carry a stigma of being lazy or stupid even if they are trying their best and it unnecessarily breaks their self-confidence

What I mean by reading here is reading comprehension as opposed to reading aloud in class, which was discussed under heading ‘Pronunciation’. Reading is sometimes taken for granted with a false assumption that everyone understands a sentence or a text in the same way if they master the basics of reading. This is wrong since the process of understanding a text is an individual process and there are many things that can prevent proper understanding.

A short individual discussion with a student about a text the students do not understand will reveal to an experienced teacher where the problem probably lies. Most likely it is one of the reasons below.

Common reasons for reading difficulties

  1. First of all the student’s vocabulary has to be wide enough to understand a text. If the student stumbles too often with unknown words, understanding the text turns out to be impossible. In the vocabulary section we already pointed out that there are many things the students must master in order to ‘know’ a word. In reading ‘the recognition of the written form’ is vital and so is knowing the ‘meaning’ of the word. Sometimes the context reveals the meaning but this ‘guessing game’, which is perfectly acceptable, is a skill of its own and has to be taught to students as well.
  2. Secondly, I also noted that in some simple situations it may be enough to know the words to understand the sentences or ideas. However, in most cases the students have to have some idea about the grammar of the new language; i.e. he/she has to know how to combine words, how they are arranged in a sentence. Knowledge of grammar helps us to guess the meanings of words. If the student is not able to translate a particular sentence or explain the meaning in his/her own words, the source of not understanding the sentence can usually be easily found by the teacher. But the trick is to let the student get stuck and pinpoint the difficult point him-/herself – and then you can find the remedy together.
  3. Thirdly, when I discussed the model for a text-based lesson, I strongly recommended that the students always study/translate the text for the next lesson in advance at home. I also discussed the reasons for it: saving time in the lessons and preventing frustration in class due to not understanding the text. The benefits of this kind of flipped learning are undeniable: The students come to school and understand most of the content of the new text. True learning can start!
  4. Fourthly, we teachers have to teach our students what to do at home when they study / translate the text at home. I discussed the ideas already in the model lesson. Everything becomes so much easier if the students have prepared themselves for the lesson. I think this preparation is by far the most important piece of homework, much more important than exercises (which are often mechanical).
  5. Fifth, every time I get a new class in junior high (aged 12) I check that they know how to translate a text since far too many students have no clue how it is done; how to use bilingual wordlists or a dictionary, for example. These student float somewhere in mid-air understanding only fragments of what they need to grasp.
  6. Sixth,as for translation at home I give my students three options: a) the text is fully translated in the mother tongue in their notebook, b) new words are translated with pencil in between the lines in the textbook, c) the translation is done immediately if I snap my finger in class, no need to write down anything.
  7. Seventh, there are many other things as for reading that we can teach our students. Linguists call them reading strategies but in simple terms they are just tips how to become a better reader. I will discuss these reading tips / strategies in another article.

Slide the photos using the arrows. Which groups do you think your students want to be in? Those who enjoy your lessons or those who come there with little hope to learn anything.

The benefits of studying or translating chapters in advance at home

I perfectly understand if some of you wonder why I talk so much in favour of translating the texts into the mother tongue. ‘Translation’ is not a curse word for me and should not be for anyone else. I give up all translation the minute I know there is no need for it in my class. Let me clarify my points in the matter.

  • First of all, I want the students to learn to do translations at home and minimize the time spent on translating the text in class. Besides this is a way for the parents to get involved in their kid learning a new language. At school time is more wisely used in practising using the language than translating the text.
  • Secondly, I see no point in going through a text if it is not understood. It will only lead to restlessness in the class. If I am learning, say, Polish and understand next to nothing of the text, I cannot participate at all and I will find something else to do in class. Talk to my friends, fiddle with my phone or anything just to make the time go by. Too many students face this situation but feel ashamed to admit it or pretend not to care. itself
  • Thirdly, I cannot stand the idea of students sitting in lessons for many years learning just a few words when the learning process could be drastically improved by helping them to do the translation for every lesson. It might take a few lessons or a couple of weeks but in the end the students would thank you for doing it.
  • If some of your students have this problem, have a special lesson for them. If very many students suffer from this problem, ask your star students to teach the others how to do the translation in groups. I’ve bribed them with candy and doughnuts.
  • If lack of translation skill was the problem and my advice helped any of you, I’d like to hear about it. Stop teaching your language for a while and lay the foundation again. You will get the time back manyfold in better results and raise in students’ motivation.
  • N.B. The translation method itself, translating texts from English into the mother tongue and vice versa, is an appalling method and that is why I never learnt English properly at school in the 1970s.

Learning to translate a text is the foundation for understanding a foreign language and it is a massive boost to motivation and self-confidence. However, the final aim is to think in English and skip mental translations altogether.

Yleinen

Getting students to design vocab tasks, Points 11 – 22

Leave a comment

Throughout my career I have been taken by surprise how creative my students are and how much effort they have sometimes put on the tasks they have created.

In the previous article I argued that we teachers need to give space for the creativity of our students. Letting the students design exercises for others is an excellent opportunity for the students’ creativity to bloom provided we give them some ideas how to do it. That is why I am continuing with the vocab learning strategy list with some more ideas and justifications for using the ideas. Points 11 – 22.

It takes some time at first to introduce this possibility of producing vocab tasks but in the long run it is rewarding and the work done is so intensive that the students will remember it for the rest of their lives.

Maximized focus on something leads to learning. I remember every orienteering route, hill and ditch in competitions by looking at the map since I had to be so focused not to get lost. I can even remember why I got lost. Poor me!

Take your time to teach any of these techniques to your students. It gives them great variation for the lessons and home practice too.

Practical vocab task hints for the students and the teacher

  1. Points………Photos, pictures
  2. 1 – 10 ……….Mother tongue hints
  3. were ………..Word lists and mindmaps
  4. dealt ………. Association technique
  5. with ……….. Recording word lists
  6. in ……………..Covering up word lists
  7. the …………..Self-made tests
  8. previous …Use the word in sentence
  9. article ……..Make a story
  10. ………………….Two-sided cards in a game
  11. Learn words in groups (linked with a topic, nouns, adjectives etc.). Write them down in a grid or an excel file. Fruit: banana, orange, apple, pear … Traffic: vehicle, pedestrian, cycle path, lane, speeding … Combined with the use of dictionary this is a great exercise.
  12. Use word formation technique. One word leads to a family of words. My favourite example is Latin word ‘volvare’ meaning ‘to go around’: car trade mark ‘Volvo’ means I go around‘, a revolver: the cartridge chamber goes around, a revolution: society goes around in a way, adj., revolutionary: turning around or overthrowing old ideas; revolutionize, revolutionist, counter-revolution, post-revolutionary etc. Word formation technique is an extremely powerful tool in expanding knowledge of words.
  13. Find synonyms or opposites for the word. This can be done at any levels and practised in pairs. It actually means finding near synonyms or opposites. Pleased – content, contended, satisfied, happy, glad …)
  14. Make a gap exercise of the lyrics of a song. In grammar school at the age of 12 I started to write down the lyrics of songs and learnt thousands of words and phrases, and nearly all grammar subconsciously.
  15. Consult a dictionary (online or hard copy). Allow the students to use online dictionaries in the lessons. That’s something we all do in normal life. Teach how dictionaries work!
  16. By doing various exercises (crossword puzzles, gap filling, hidden grid or a maze etc.) Finnish students love crossword puzzles and so do I. Just make sure the hints are not too difficult. I will have another article on crossword puzzle options. Gap fillings and hiding words in a maze appeals to weaker students in particular.
  17. Guess the meaning of new words on the basis of the context. Rationalized guessing is to be encouraged in language learning. My ‘horrible’ example puzzles the minds of my students for a while: ‘The Queen was beheaded in the Tower.’ The students need to know something about the history of London, the Tower and laws in the Middle Ages. Secondly the need to notice that the word ‘head’ is hidden in the unknown word. So, what happens to ‘head’ in the Tower? Sorry, they were cut off, the Queen was executed with an axe.
  18. Make use of free computer vocab exercises. Seach the internet for free programmes and encourage your students to make use of them in their free time too.
  19. Give a definition of a word and your pair has to guess which it is (e.g. it is an adjective which means the same as ‘adequate’ – ‘enough’ or ‘sufficient’). The students need a few phrases to do this well. Pantomime or acting out without words is also great fun.
  20. Your say a word and your pair has to give a definition for it or explain it in another way (a vaccination – well, it is a shot given with a needle so that you do not get a disease) This technique is also needed if you do not know the word and try to explain it.
  21. Make use of the free vocab learning computer programmes in the internet. What you need to do is to google the internet (vocabulary learning programme) and find programmes that work at your school or in students’ homes. Many of them are free and commercial ones are also available.
  22. When reading extra English materials such as magazines or books, take out your notebook and write down new words and phrases that you find interesting and useful. Surprisingly many students find this way of learning very effective. It is even more motivating if you let the students compare their lists, phrases and sentences at school and explain others how they utilize them. After all my advice to my students when they write essays is to use 10 fancy words (rare words that suit the text fine) and a few phrases to show they master some authentic language and vary their sentence structure to avoid monotonous flow of sentences.

Yleinen

Getting students to design vocab tasks, Points 1 – 10

Leave a comment

Activate your students to design vocab tasks at home or at school. You will be amazed how enthusiastic and creative the students get in doing so.

We teachers need to give space for the creativity of our students. letting the students design exercises for others is an excellent opportunity for that. Let me move on to give practical tips what you can do in class to get the students more involved in learning new words.

Of course we need to check the tasks before they are published not to embarrass the designer. Of course there will be a lot of variation in the quality of the tasks and of course there will be mistakes in the tasks.

Nevertheless, the benefits are undeniable. All we teachers need to do is to check the tasks, maybe suggest some improvements and above all find a way how the answers can be checked: the task designer provides the correct answers or the pair or group does not even need one.

The whole point in this is that the students will learn at least the words they are working on. Besides, they become more curious and motivated to solve problems designed by others than doing workbook exercise.

“Good for you but I do not have time for any of this”, I hear you thinking. That is exactly what I thought before I started teaching my students how to design vocab tasks. It takes some time at first but in the long run it is rewarding.

Besides, who says I can’t skip chapters in our textbook and exercises in the workbook. No-one. I know best what my students need and appreciate doing.

Practical vocab task hints for the students and the teacher

  1. Link the new word with a picture or photo. At the beginning of the year decide on the vocab themes of the year (fruit, housing, traffic etc.) Give each pair a topic for which they find 10 – 15 pictures in the internet, get them on one page and write the words at the bottom of the page. Then they send the file to you to be used later with a certain chapter.
  2. Link the new word to your mother tongue. Using mother tongue in exercises is perfectly ok if the class cannot cope tasks in English only . Still, teachers should maximize the use of English in lessons.
  3. Write the unknown words of the chapter on a paper and make up a mindmap or a story. The mindmap may consist of key words of the chapter or anything else as long as it makes the student think hard. The story may be oral only and done in group by each one taking turns sentence by sentence. The leader of the group helps the slower ones patiently. There will be a lot of laughter, believe me!
  4. Associate the new word with another (funny) word, story or setting. Explain to your pair how the association works for you. My sample associations/images: ‘Rainbow trout’ a fish has rainbow colours on its back when it surfaces from water. ‘Roundabout’ it is round and may be found in the middle of nowhere in Britain. The reasons for the associations are very interesting to listen to and visualize. You will be surprised!
  5. Record a word list on your phone ( word in mother tongue – 1 sec pause – word in English. Listen to the list many times. My wife’s favourite way to learn and remember words. She used to listen to the recording while cycling to evening classes. Excellent for auditive learners.
  6. Make word lists on paper (mother tongue – English), cover up the other side and say the words aloud or write them down before checking. Many textbooks have these lists ready-made. I myself used this method and mumbled the words at the same time.
  7. Make or have a look at a word list (mother tongue – English). Then make an exam for yourself or others. The students are very surprised when you suggest this kind of exam. They think it is too easy which is not the case. They seldom get full points but they learn many words when writing the exam. My grading: one letter wrong >> half a point, two letters wrong >> zero points.
  8. Say or write a sentence where you use the new word. Words learnt in isolation is not ideal and that is why I use this technique before we even listen to the chapters.
  9. Tell a story where you use the new words. (Humour is the best medicine!) This is one of my students’ favourites since they always come up with fascinating stories in a couple of minutes. Every now and then we record the stories, I get them on Whatsapp and then later on we listen to them. For example, 30 students, 1 min / group, 8 groups >> 10 – 12 min
  10. Make two-sided word cards and use them in a self-made game. This one requires an article of its own. I often combine it with cultural knowledge on the English -speaking words.
Colour photos are excellent sources for vocabulary learning and story telling because they stir imagination in a positive manner. This photo is from Central Park, New York City. I finally visited the city in 2016 having talked about it for 40 years. I actually thought I would not like the city but I was wrong. I’m looking forward to another visit.

N.B. Look at Points 11 – 22 in my next article.

Vocabulary, Yleinen

KNOWING A WORD

Leave a comment

Linguists argue that on average students have to do something with a new word 20 times before they ‘know’ the word.

‘Knowing a word’ is actually a complicated matter and it is not as simple as one might think. This article deals with the following questions.

  • What does passive and active vocabulary mean?
  • What does knowing a word really mean?
  • What is the Finnish way to introduce new words?
  • What can you do if you do not remember the right word?

Words are more important than grammar. Why? Because true communication is possible without grammar, but not without words.

A: ” I yesterday eat park hotdog.” B: Hyde Park, was it? Tasty?

Words are the building blocks of communication and we can communicate by using words only, with no knowledge of grammar. If someone says to you : “I yesterday eat park hotdog.” we can understand it with just a little thought even if the grammar is all wrong. “Yesterday I ate a hotdog in the park.”

Passive and active vocabulary

Our vocabulary can be divided in two:

  • Passive vocabulary – means that you recognize the word from English into your mother tongue – and it is much bigger than active vocabulary.                                              
  • Active vocabulary – means that you can use the word both in writing and orally (you remember the word from mother tongue to English, too).

So, as a teacher do not hesitate to spend a lot of time in practising and repeating the use of new words in various kinds of exercises.

No-one knows how many words there are in English but it is estimated to be close to a million now. The best students at the age of 15 know about 6000 words and at A-level about 15 000 words. An ordinary person gets by daily with 3000 words.

Of course, sometimes we ‘learn’ new words instantly because we use a nearly similar word in our mother tongue or we make a funny association link to the word.

Speaking English on the Spanish stairs in Rome!

Knowing a word

You know a word …

  • if you know its meaning; i.e. know the meaning of the word in your mother tongue, you can link the new word with a picture or the sentence helps you to guess the meaning
  • if you know how it is pronounced; i.e. you can recognize the word in isolation or within a sentence and can pronounce it yourself
  • if you know how the word is written; i.e. you know the spelling of the word in isolation and recognize it in a text
  • if you know how it is used in speech and writing; i.e. you know its grammatical function and where to place it in the sentence
  • if you know words that mean nearly the same; i.e. if you know its synonyms (and opposites)
  • if you can recognize its secondary meanings, connotations; i.e. in poetry, for example, ‘sea’ can imply ‘freedom’ or ‘danger’ or ‘desire to go away’

The Finnish way to introduce new words

In the Finnish system the students study the new chapter in advance at home translating the text into their mother tongue if needed with the help of ‘English – mother tongue’ word lists of the chapter (or with the help of a dictionary).

This system means that the students have already done something with the new words maybe 5 times even before they come to the lesson. They have also seen how the words are used in a sentence context. This idea of flipped learning (studying the content in advance at home) has been a standard in the Finnish style of teaching languages for decades.

This system combined with new methods, styles, strategies, assessment and modern technology has made it possible for our students to learn and master several foreign languages instead of studying reluctantly only one.

I strongly recommend that when teaching a new chapter, teachers first make the students repeat the new words in isolation after them because it will remind the students of the content of the chapter and they will learn how the words are pronounced. Then the new words are used in an oral pre-task.

N.B. I discussed my vocab learning philosophy in the previous article.

A: This is the place in New York where businessmen buy and sell … you know companies, banks, … the centre of the business world. B: Ah, you mean Stock Exchange. I was expecting a more elegant building with a massive entrance. (Compensation strategies are most useful!)

What if you do not know or remember a word?

There are sometimes situations where you do not come up with a word. What can you do? Use one of the Compensation strategies below and hope for the best.

  • Use pantomime, acting out a word
  • Use hands and body or show a picture or point at the target
  • Explain and describe the word
  • Give a home-made definition
  • Draw a picture of the word / idea
  • Use a synonym or opposite                             
  • Use a word from another language

We are all different and learn words in a different way. Visual learners prefer photos and videos, auditive learners need to hear the words spoken and kinesthetic learners like to get active with their hands. That is why all of us need to experiment and find our own style or strategy of learning new words.

  • What strategies and learning styles are best in learning new words?
  • What kind of exercises and activities are best in learning words?
  • How can we activate students to make vocabulary exercises themselves?

I will present 22 strategies in the next vocab article and you can try to identify them in an exercise. In the next two posts after that I will clarify the strategies in Points 1 – 10 and Points 11 – 22 in more detail, what to do in class.

All in all, in addition to the traditional workbook exercises I have three main arguments in teaching new words:

  1. There should be a lot of oral activities, not only written ones, and the new words should be used in discussions.
  2. We should teach various techniques or strategies to our students how to learn new words. As a result, they can start using the ones that appeal to them.
  3. The students should be taught how to make exercises of their own; while making them they will learn the words subconsciously.
Grammar

TEACHING YOUNG BEGINNERS GRAMMAR, the lexical approach

Leave a comment

At its best lexical approach means teaching grammar as chunks, set phrases which serve as models which help memorization. Combining chunks with real-life situations leads to real communication.

Teaching grammar to young beginners using the inductive method is not very common because the ability of youngsters to understand conceptual explanations and rules is often limited to the very best pupils in the class.

Therefore, in mixed-ability classes teachers tend to use the lexical approach in teaching grammar with occasional use of the deductive method. In both cases there is a lot of emphasis on chunks that serve as structure models.

My transparencies/slides below are from the 1990s. My apologies for what they look like but never mind. What you see on them is still valid even today.

Luckily the number of ‘demanding’ grammatical structures is not very big in the early years of teaching a new foreign language and most structures taught can be learnt as ’chunks’ ; i.e. word combinations, words, set phrases or set structures. In these cases there is usually minimum reference to any rules and the learning of structures is similar to that of mother tongue: a lot of oral repetition and practice as well as using examples as models.

Even if some early CLT enthusiasts were not eager to teach grammar at least here in Finland we never gave it up. Nevevertheless, communicative language teaching brought along a significant change in teaching grammar: CLT principles emphasized the idea that grammar was not to be taught in isolation but combined with real-life situations where natives actually use the structures.

Applying lexical approach in situations

I remember how I struggled with my low-achievers in the early 1980s. In those days we still divided our age groups into three streams according to their proficiency level.

How was I supposed to make my students use grammatical structures in situations that resemble real-life situations following CLT principles?

Gradually I developed a strategy that seemed to work, my own version of situational grammar. Sorry about the shape of this slide from the 1980s. I had to cut of the dirty bits from it. Result of my treasure hunt and how I got going.

Why am I having this approach now? Because it gives you some perspective to my line of thinking and besides everything below is still valid today!

At a restaurant – chunks ‘I’d like to …’ , ‘I’ll have …’

Sometimes I had to use even Finnish translations on the transparency to make sure the weakest ones understood what they were saying. But still, they went on talking! The menu is probably from book series SIIE. Say It In English (WSOY).
Looking at a ‘real’ menu made the students realize the importance of ‘food vocabulary’. You had better not order something you do not like and still have to pay for it.

  1. First I made a long list of real-life situations such as ‘at a restaurant’, ‘at a supermarket’, ‘at a police station’, ‘in an interview’ ‘explaing about future plans or past event’, ‘comparing things’ etc.
  2. Secondly, I thought which structures were typical of these situations and gradually I ended up in having a list of situations with grammatical structures. ‘shopping – comparative and superlative forms of adjectives’, ‘at the police station or in an insurance company – was/were + -ing form – describing what was happening at the moment’
  3. Thirdly, I realized that dramatizing the real-life situations was the only way to get close to reality at school. So, I told my students about the new ideas and why I’d like to try them out with them. In practice we chose role-play as our main method for dramatization. But …
  4. Fourthly, I was pretty sure that I could not throw my low-achievers to these situations without suitable pre-tasks and proper preparation. Role-play was going to be the final stage of the practice.
  5. Fifthly, I had to plan carefully the stages to be taken before the role-play. Sometimes it was a piece of cake since the students already knew the ‘chunks’ on the basis of the previous chapter in the textbook and could apply it right away.

At a dinner table – practising ‘could’, ‘would’. ‘ ‘d’ and ‘should‘

  • The chapter related to the 1st conditional was studied in class.
  • The exercise below was done in pairs at least twice. As you can see it is barely semi-communicative since most of the ideas are given ready-made.
  • But there was an element for communicative creativity since the students were allowed to replace the words in the box with words of their choice if they wanted to.
  • Finally we practised a similar situation at a ‘restaurant’ with real menus and a waiter/waitress taking orders with a white towel round the arm. Some of the key phrases were reflected on the screen with an overhead projector to help the weakest ones.
This kind of role-play is highly motivating since everyone understands that they will face a similar situation if they travel abroad. This exercise is also an example of ‘hidden differentiation’ where the weaker ones can hang on with the help of the advanced students. The continuation of the exercise below shows how the teaching of grammar and situations can be combined with extensive learning of vocabulary. A lesson like this will never be forgotten
  • With the advanced groups we went a bit further. Each 4-person group in class collected a vocabulary list: ‘cookware’, ‘kitchen utensils’, ‘kitchen verbs’ , ‘names of dishes’, ‘fruit, berries and vegetables’, ‘kitchen gadgets’ ‘spices and ingredients’ and made an exercise for the others to practise those words.
  • We went to the school cookery class to actually open the drawers and closets and cabins to check if we really memorized the ‘kitchen’ words.
  • Next each group made some food with ingredients they had brought from home (45 min) and we had a ‘RESTAURANT’ where we could dramatize the the highlight of the previous lessons, some students as clients and the others as waiters switching roles half way through.

Applying lexical approach in grammatical pre-tasks

It is rather common among CLT language teachers to start teaching a grammar point with a pre-task where the students use the new structure in an oral activity and have not got a clue about the rule they are applying. Usually the activity involves the use of a lexical chunk directly linked to the new grammar point. If the situations are ‘realistic’, the pair work or role plays, for example, can be very effective.

Games like ‘The Hot Ball’ or ‘Find someone who …’ are ideal as a pretask for a new grammatical point since the students get to use the structure up to 30 times correctly before the rule is formulated.

Pre-task: The hot ball game – the perfect tense

The teacher writes the sentence below on the board or screen

‘I have been to England/ Sweden/ Italy/ Germany/ Spain ...’

  • The chunk to be learnt, the perfect tense structure, is ‘I have been to …’
  • The students who are in a circle are supposed to say the same sentence by replacing the underlined country with any other country.
  • The teacher throws a small ball to the next student, whose attention is on the ‘hot ball’ so that it does not ‘burn’ their hands. So there is no time to worry about the sentence.
  • The student says his/her sentence and throws the ball to someone else.
  • Note that what the students say do not have to be true and … means they can use their creativity to make the answer more commi´unicative.

The chunk ‘I have been to’ serves as an introduction to the perfect tense and can be replaced later on by ‘I / We have had a dog/ two cats / a red car/ a summer cottage …

Similarly you could introduce many other structures ‘I’d like to …’ without any talk about the 1st conditional, superlative forms etc.

Pre-task: ‘Find somone who …’ – the perfect tense

Instructions for the students:

Find someone who can answer ‘Yes’ to your question. Write the name in the second box. You can use the same name only once. You have max 5 minutes for the task.

1 Have you seen any movies this week?
2 Has your dad or mum done sports today?
3 Have your classmates spoken to you this morning?
4 Has your math teacher ever been late?
5 Has your friend ever bought you a present?
6 Have your granparents ever picked you up from school?Anne
7 Have you talked to the head of the school today?
8 Has anyone given you money this week?
9 Have you been abroad this year?Raimo
10 Have you told your parents a joke this month?

So this is the ‘Pre-task’:

  • The students get this paper and walk about in the room asking these questions.
  • It may be hard to get ‘Yes’ answers to some questions and that is why many questions have to be repeated many times.
  • The key idea is that the students will have used the new structure correctly a lot before it is actually taught.
  • And there is no chance to make mistakes.
  • At the end the ‘results’ are explained in groups:’Raimo has been abroad this year.’

Pre-task: ‘Be able to’

This pre-task from the my early CLT years shows how a mechanical exercise can be changed to demand something more than reading aloud. In this case the student has to make links like ‘camera -photos’ ‘skates – ice-hockey’.

Besides students should be encouraged to make similar sentences creatively by replacing the words in the boxes with their own words. I should have added three dots … after the red boxes to indicate any words the students can come up with. Effortless differentiation!

Grammar, Writing

ADVISING THE STUDENTS ON WRITING GOOD-QUALITY TEXTS

Leave a comment

What is meant by authentic ring, fluency and coherence? Elaboration and complex ideas and sentences? Fancy words? Impressive grammar and phrases? Serious mistakes and spelling errors? And 9 point mistakes?

The purpose of this article is to open up the meanings of the ‘unofficial criteria’ presented in the previous article. I think most of the ideas can be applied no matter which writing criteria you are using.

In other words, what kind of advice do you give to your students when they insist on getting useful advice to improve their writing?

The advice given must be based on the criteria used. If students get criteria-based feedback on their writing tasks, they will know which areas they are good at and which areas require much more work. But if we want our students to move to the next level this is not enough.

For instance, if the teacher gives the following points for the essay: overall impression 7,5, content/message 8/10, vocabulary and structures 6/10 and accurary/mistakes 7,5/10, the student will start wondering

  • ‘How could I get 9/10 for content?’
  • ‘What’s wrong with my opinions? I only got 7/10.’
  • ‘What’s wrong with my structures and vocabulary? I think it is better than 6,5’
  • ‘I have plenty of mistakes but you still gave me 8/10. Why?’

This article hopefully helps you to answer the students’ questions and justify your evaluations of the texts. I am using scale 1- 10 but whatever scale you use it does not affect the principles of evaluation and the advice given.

In the previous article we studied how to write an argumentative essay, and more precisely applied the ideas in the column ‘Content/Message’ and ‘Logical, convincing structure’. When I started my career I did not have good answers to the questions so don’t worry. Having marked a few hundred essays over the years you will be much wiser.

Let’s have a look at each column of the criteria and be more specific on what is required from the students. N.B: I would advise you to take a photo of the criteria and expand it on your phone screen or copy the criteria photo and print it to see it better.

The 1st column – holistic impression on flow of ideas and fluency – ease to read

  • it is vital that a text is easy and pleasant to read
  • the language is fluent and has an authentic ring means the text could have been written by a good native writer
  • the ideas run smoothly and the structures and phrases are the ones a native speaker would use
  • the text should not feel as if it was translated from another language
  • if the text is coherent and logical, the ideas hang well together and follow each other in a way that makes sense
  • a typical feature of a coherent text is the use of connectors like ‘in addition’, ‘as a result’, ‘therefore’, ‘firstly’, ‘in brief’, ‘all in all’, ‘however’, ‘nevertheless’, which indicate how the idea is supposed to be understood
  • there are many ways to built a text logically, the most common ones being ‘problem – solution’, ’cause and effect’ and ‘cronological order of ideas’

The 2nd column – Message and content

  • first of all, the writer has to understand what he/she is supposed to write about and respond fully to the topic and the task
  • the conventions of the format have to be followed; a review of a film has to resemble a real one, etc.
  • a poor essay (max 6 out of 10 points) has only basic and simple ideas that are known by everybody and do not impress the reader
  • in a text of average quality ( 7 – 8 points out of 10) the ideas are unclear ‘facts’ or opinions that are not justified (proven in any way)
  • in an excellent piece of writing (9-10 points) we can enjoy lively narration or impressive arguments that are expanded/elaborated with convincing proof, reasons or examples ( = complex ideas)

The 3rd column – Vocabulary and grammatical structures

  • a poor essay (max 6 out of 10 points) consists of main clauses with rather simple grammatical structures and satisfactory everyday vocabulary
  • a text of average quality ( 7-8 points out of 10) consists of both main and subordinate clauses denoting time (‘when’, ‘while’) or causes (‘because’, ‘since’)
  • alternatively the clause may be relative clauses or indirect questions; mostly only the active voice used with some demanding structures or authentic idioms; good vocabulary
  • an excellent piece of writing (9-10 points) has a wide range of demanding structures in the active and passive voice, maybe shortened sentences and authentic phrases and idioms; very impressive vocabulary in placces.

N.B. In Finland senior high students write essays of 150 – 250 words and I advise them to have at least 10 fancy words and a couple of phrases and idioms plus varied sentence structures included in the essay. These words have to be underlined when they hand the essay in. This way the students learn to pay attention to their vocab and idioms. Of course, the style has to be consistent in the essay.

Points 3 -6 Vocabulary: to like, good, to get, rich; Grammar: I saw the accident. Did somebody die? I was afraid.

Points 7 – 8 Vocab: to fancy, excellent/wonderful, to receive, wealthy; Grammar: When I saw the accident, I started wondering if anyone had died in it.

Points 9 – 10: Vocab: to appeal, superb/exceptional/awesome, to obtain/to gain, affluent/well-to-do; Grammar: Having seen the fatal accident the first thing that crossed my mind were the consequences: were there any alarming casualties? An ambulance had been called …

I know – sometimes all this may seem artificial but this is the name of the game. The students are supposed to impress the reader with their ideas and language.

Use elaboration to make the students realize what they are supposed to do: For example: Change / elaborate the sentences below so that your points would be raised. ‘We went to the beach by bus. Dad took our car and went to work early. The weather was fine and many people came to the beach.’

4th column – The number and type of mistakes – accuracy

All mistakes are not equally bad – some are more serious than others! In the 1970s the grade could be minus 4 !?

Which mistakes are considered serious?

  • basically any mistake that confuses the readers and makes them stop reading and wonder is a serious one
  • which mistakes are serious? the basic structures taught in the comprehensive school, the use of basic tenses and the most common prepositions and cases of articles, congruence, there is/are, comparative forms
  • the number of mistakes is not crucial but they way they hinder communication
  • spelling mistakes are serious if they cause misunderstandings or common words are misspelt (foreigners are often better in spelling than native speakers)
  • wrong choice of words, especially if it causes misunderstandings, reduces the points given

What are 9, 6, 4 and 2 point mistakes?

When I went to school in the 1970s, we only translated texts and the teacher used coding 9, 6, 4 and 2-point mistakes. The full points were 100 and every time we made a mistake the points were reduced. As a result many of my classmates got results like minus 40 points. Meaning -4 out of 10. They knew quite a lot of English but were sent to the Antarctic with their skill. – Luckily those days are over!

Still. sometimes I write in the margins of the students’ essays if their mistake is minus 9, 6, 4 and 2 points just to make them pay more attention to the text when they are checking it = reading it silently in their heads. Some mistakes matter more than others!

I myself have a good idea what 9 and 2 point mistakes are like but 6 and 4 are more a matter of taste. My teacher never revealed the secret to us!

Yleinen

Identify 22 strategies to learn new words

Leave a comment

Many students struggle in learning new words. Let’s give them a hand!

They do not easily come up with the strategies themselves but you have to tell them what the options/strategies are. That opens the ideal road for each student to utilize their own favourite strategies.

We all learn words in a different way. If our students experiment and find their own style / strategy / way of learning words, we have helped them much more than making them do a lot of exercises that actually do not work for them. This is what worries me in ready-made exercises.

The other articles under Vocabulary heading are

3 ways to enhance vocabulary learning

  1. The easy way out in making your students learn new words is to use the ready-made workbook exercises. Unfortunately, they are not always very motivating or do not match with the students learning style.
  2. In the 3rd model lesson article I suggest an oral pre-task in pairs as the solution at the beginning of handling a new chapter. This is my number 1 favourite. A lot of oral practice.
  3. The third option is to reveal the strategies below to the students and let them write exercises of their own, which is the point in this article.
  • Let the students get to know what strategies there are (use my version below or make a list of your own). This is a MUST even if you decide to nothing else about strategies. You can introduce them gradually or have a crash course lesson with all of them.
  • Use my exercise below (or one of your own) and let your students try to recognize which type of strategy it is in question in each case. This way the students will get an idea how to make word exercises.
  • Organize a lesson where your students make exercises to revise recently studied vocabulary. It is up to you if they write one type of tasks or make use of any of the strategy types.

22 strategies to learn new words

Here is the same list of vocabulary learning strategies that I introduced in the previous article. You can study them first but the main idea is to introduce at least some of them to your students. We all have our favourites and that is exactly what we are trying to do with our students, too: The minute they identify what the best ways to learn new words for them are, you have done a great job.

Nevertheless, before you do anything else you might ask your students to discuss in groups the ways they learn and practise words best. You will be surprised with their creativity when they present their own strategies.

I hope to be able to add some videos on these strategies later on.

  1. Link the new word with a picture or photo.
  2. Link the new word to your mother tongue.
  3. Write the unknown words of the chapter on a paper and make up a mindmap or a story.
  4. Associate the new word with another (funny) word, story or setting. Explain to your pair how the association works for you.
  5. Record a word list on your phone ( word in mother tongue – 1 sec pause– English word). Listen to it many times. (The favourite of my wife!)
  6. Make word lists (mother tongue – English), cover up the other side and say the words aloud or write them down before checking. (My favourite + I make orally sentences of my own))
  7. Make or have a look at a word list (mother tongue – English). Then make an exam for yourself or others.
  8. Say or write a sentence where you use the new word.
  9. Tell a story in your group where you use the new words. (Humour is the best medicine!)
  10. Make two-sided word cards and use them in a game.
  11. Learn words in groups (linked with a topic, nouns, adjectives etc.). Write them down in a grid or an excel file.
  12. Use word formation technique. One word leads to a family of words.
  13. Find synonyms or opposites for the word.
  14. Make a gap exercise of the lyrics of a song.
  15. Consult a dictionary (online or hard copy).
  16. By doing various exercises (crossword puzzles, gap filling, hidden grid odd one out, etc.)
  17. Guess the meaning of new words on the basis of the context.
  18. Make use of free computer vocab exercises provided by publishers +
  19. Give a definition of a word and your pair has to guess which it is (e.g. it is an adjective which means the same as ‘adequate’ – well ‘enough’ or ‘sufficient’)
  20. Your say a word and your pair has to give a definition for it or explain it in another way (a vaccination – well, it is a shot given with a needle so that you do not get a disease)
  21. Make use of the free vocab learning computer programmes in the internet.
  22. When reading extra English materials such as magazines or books, take out your notebook and write down new words and phrases that you find interesting and useful.

Look at the examples below and decide which of the 2 2 types it is.

Sample A Work in pairs and point at the following ‘objects’: a bridge, a church, a river, a boat, a river bank, a pedestrian, a tall office block. Make up an oral story where you use these words and any other words. Each students making a short story of his/her own OR each student continuing the story by one sentemce, for example.

PANKKIASPHALT
BANAANISCHOOL
ASFALTTIBANK
KOULUBANANA
Sample B Which of the 18 choices is this one?

Sample C nation, international, nationality, national, native

Sample D weak – strong, interesting – boring, lazy – industrious

Sample E brick, concrete, seam, fireplace, chimney, flame

Sample F duty free, customs, metal detector, security check, passport control, gate

Sample G marvellous, superb, wonderful, terrific, excellent OR terrible >< awsome, terrific ><awful, day >< night, nearby >< remote

Sample H guarantee: I can guarantee you that the toaster is new.

Sample I gloves, extension cord, bulb, broom, hoover: Last Saturday when I began cleaning my garage, I put my gloves on and first used the broom to get rid of the sand. It turned out to be too dusty a job and therefore I fetched my vacuum cleaner. I have no electricity socket in my garage so I had to pick up an extension cord for the hoover. Next the bulb was gone and I had to open the garage door to see something. …

Sample J

DEYSHUTTLE
CMNUISQMBL
ULORTEPOIC
SCETUNNELI
TESPOLVCDH
OAKTARMACE
MLOSKSWXZV
SNZBIENOLK
AIKORVAEYG
PLATFORMTL
Find the 10 words linked with ‘travelling’. The words can be horizontal, vertical, diagonal and even backwards. (N.B. This is a demanding task. If all the words were horizontal or vertical, the task would be easy.)

Sample K: strawberries, blood, cherries, most roses, tomatoes // grass, leaves, moss, cucumber // banana, sun, lemon, butter, cheese OR strawberries, blood, cherries, most roses, snow, tomatoes // grass, leaves, desert, moss, cucumber // banana, sun, lemon, butter, cheese, polar bear

Sample L: Look at the photos below. Which ‘vehicles’ can you find in the photos? Make a(n oral) story using the photos.

Sample M:

Sample M Which strategy is this one? Why is it particularly good for group work?

Sample N below

LAMB
SHAVE
ADRESS
ABOVE
ENTER
DOOR
The hints can be given as pictures, definitions, in mother tongue, in a gap sentence etc.

Teach your students to make this kind of exercises and they will learn the words while doing so.

Sample O O Sole Mio, It’s Now or Never sung by Raimo

“When I first _______ you with your smile so __________ my h_________ was captured my s__________ surrended, I’d s_________ a life time waiting ______ the right time, now that you’re here the _________ is here _____ last …

https://raimoenglish.blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/its-now-or-never.mp3

Sample P Hemingway, “Farewell to arms” garrison, casulty, rifle, ward, wounded, ambush, bullet

Did you notice how I made you go up and down the strategy list when you were making up your mind? This way the strategies will stick better in your mind and you have learnt many of them at least on the level of recognition. I did not actually teach you the strategies but made your learning possible, in CLT style.

  • The next article deals with what is meant by knowing a word and some other basic ideas on vocab learning
  • In the following two articles I will demonstrate what you need to take into account when you make you students write vocabulary tasks themselves. Practical tips!
  • Knowing a word, What does it really mean? Passive and active vocabulary.
  • Getting students to design vocab tasks, Points 1-10, more detailed advice how to do it in practice
  • Getting students to design vocab tasks, Points 11-22, practical advice

The point in this article is to identify and memorize as many of the 22 strategies of learning vocabulary as possible.