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.

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