Teaching Vocabulary by Jeanne McCarten

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Name: - Yesha Bhatt M.

Course: - M.A. English

Semester: - 3

Batch: - 2015-2017

Enrolment no: - PG15101003

Submitted to: - Smt. S.B.Gardi Dept. of English MKBU

Email id: - yeshab68@gmail.com

Paper no: - 12 – English Language Teaching

Topic: - Teaching Vocabulary by Jeanne McCarten (U - 5)

      As a teacher of English Language or second language, it is necessary to expand the vocabulary of learners. Vocabulary includes variety of words from different fields. For example, if the learner is from the field of medical, the vocabulary of this student is different from the student of commerce and literature.

There are two parts of vocabulary teaching,

1) Lesson from the corpus

2) Lesson from the classroom

These two methods include different activities and tasks for students.

1)    Lessons from the Corpus:

         While learning from corpus of the language, the tutor and learner should have enough information regarding the basic structure of language and its use.  Many researchers have worked upon the use of words in language and its context, so the basic question is,

®    How many words are there and how many we need to teach?

      

          The answer needs large amount of research and the languages of students who belong to the different study backgrounds. As per university of Cambridge, Cambridge Dictionary of American English contains more than 40,000 words and University Graduate should know about 20,000 word families but students and learners of English language, there should be 2,000 to 5,000 words in vocabulary.

Activities 

         There are many activities available which can expand the knowledge of words in students, a teacher could do this activities as a part of teaching.

   

    1.    One word with different context:

     In this activity a teacher have to give words, and instruct learners to give different meaning of that word in different sentence. 

For example,

-         I am running.

-         I am running a company.

-         Sachin has made 100 runs

    Here the word is ‘run’ but there are three different contexts in which the word can be explained. This kind of activity makes students aware with the use of word and its appropriate meaning.

    2.    One word related with various words:

  

    This is very important activity, in which teacher have to give one word to student and student have to give 10 words related it. by this activity students come to know about the different familiar words related with that one word.

For example,

 Novel – author, book, literature, novella, plot, themes, narration, writer, publication, library etc.

    3.    Different paragraphs:

    This activity is quite difficult but interesting, in this activity teacher have to give one paragraph with difficult words and ask students to find the meaning of words and explain the paragraph, for paragraphs teachers can take newspaper cuttings, part of political speech and interview of any literary writer.

    

       ®   What kind of corpus do we need to use?

     There are six ways to focus and choose the corpus. The corpus is related with the study area of students. Here are six ways to know about corpus.

     1.   Frequency:

       Frequency is connected with the vocabulary of students, this frequency list gives an idea of expressions that which are rare and which are frequent. It helps teacher that what to teach and in which order, a teacher have to give one phrase and ask students to give answers related the phrase

For example,

-           A pair of – shoes, jeans, tickets, chair, earrings

-         You want to go- America, Tajmahel, Waterpark, Temple

By this task teacher could get an idea about the corpus of student’s language corpus.

    2.   Difference in speaking and writing:

   While learning words, students used to find difficulties in pronunciation and spellings. There are many words which has different spelling and different pronunciation, 

For example,

-         Honest, honour, humour, write etc.

   Another difference in writing and reading is the use of appropriate words, because when students are giving answer orally, they uses different language and when they write in answer sheets the pattern is quite different. For better understanding of words and its appropriate use students should be aware with how frequent a word is in different corpora. 

For example,

-         Vocabulary of Newspaper, academic texts and conversation.

“Probably” - conversation- newspapers - academic texts

     “However” - academic texts - newspapers – conversation

    The word ‘probably’ is used most in conversation and less in academic texts and “however” is mostly used in academic texts and less in conversation.

    3.   Contexts of use:

     This term is very important as far as the situation is concern. Vocabulary should be appropriate along with the situation and place. It gives Information about speakers and situations in which conversations take place so learner can use words according to that. 

For example, formal and informal words in conversation,

-         Hey what’s up/ hello, how do you do?

-         Tata- bye bye/ good bye, have a nice day

This kind of difference in formal and informal vocabulary is very important for learners to know.

    4.    Collocation:

    This term makes learner aware with the connection of one word with another word. There are some words which are different in meaning but mostly used together to create one word with totally different meaning.

For example,

-         Soft + corner = soft corner

-         Heavy + rain = heavy rain

-         Home + work = homework

-         Creativity + art = creative art

This kind of collocation is very important for students for effective use of their vocabulary.

   5.   Grammatical Patterns:

There are two terms in these patterns,

  

    1)    The Grammar of vocabulary:

    When the students use a word from vocabulary, the use of grammar should be according to the conversation, for example,

“Mind” = request – permission – instruction

-         Do you mind?

-         Would you mind?

-         Mind it.

    2)    The vocabulary of Grammar:

    When there are words from grammar and students want to use it in vocabulary, they have to select it in relation with context. For example,

-         The past continuous structure “was . . . ing”

-          Top ten words are - going, thinking, talking, doing, saying, trying, telling, wondering, looking, and working

These words can be used in the vocabulary as most frequent words.

    6.   Strategic use of Vocabulary:

     When students have lesser words and want to use it effectively, they can use it strategically. There can be two distinctions vocabulary in conversation and vocabulary of conversation with effective phrase and words. There are six ways of finding vocabulary of conversation.

    1)    Discourse markers – There are words like “well” and “anyway” which guides listeners to get the meaning of conversation.

    2)    Responses –  There are some words which expresses the response of learner to the speakers for example: Exactly, Absolutely, That’s too bad

    3)    Monitoring expressions – the words which works as monitor in conversation, and drags the listener in the conversation, for example: let me tell you, let me explain, the main point is..

    4)    Vague expressions -  these expressions are related with hanging sentence and the remaining part of conversation/sentence is in the side of listeners, for example: or whatever, like anything

 

    5)    Hedging expressions – when there is any difficult question or tricky question and student is not able to answer, this expression helps the learner, it is a kind of a diplomatic answer in which student do not reject any point of view and also do not accept it. it is kind of an avoiding the answer.

    6)    Expressions of stance – this term is related with personal perspective of speaker, while answering and questioning speaker or listener presents their views towards the topic. For example: my point of view is, Personally, I think...

2)  Lesson for the classroom:

     ®  How can we help learners to learn vocabulary?

1       Focus on vocabulary – vocabulary and grammar both are important tools in language learning, the learner shoud be aware with difficult words as well as its grammatical use of it. 

2       Offer variety – the learning should not be boring and monotones and for that teacher should offer variety by using different teaching tools like  Audio-visuals, stories, conversations, web pages, questionnaires, news reports and more effective teaching strategies to make learning more interesting.

3       Repeat and recycle - practice leads towards perfection and students should generally observe the use of different words and in different context and they should practicing writing of newly learned words.

4        Provide opportunities to organize vocabulary – students can practice and observe their vocabulary in different groups like, 

 - Real-world groups – Parts of body, food type, General words

 - Language-based groups - linguistic criteria, parts of speech,

                                                          prefix or suffix

 - Personalized groups - personal habits or personal history,

                                                            likes – dislikes

     5.    Make vocabulary learning personal – when student is in personalized group and practices the vocabulary meaningfully or to express itself, it is good sign to learn vocabulary variously.

      6.     Don’t overdo it - A teacher should not overload students with so many words; it can make learning burdensome, there are limits to how much vocabulary anyone can absorb especially learners. (McCarten)

Conclusion:

                 

        In this chapter Jeanne McCarten has expressed the use of vocabulary and its teaching as well as learning. The strategies of learning and teaching vocabulary with various activities are useful and interesting. Teaching of vocabulary is very difficult but McCarten has given so many methods.


Here is presentation my presentation on this assignment:

Teaching vocabulary from yeshab68  

Reference:

McCarten, J. Teaching Vocabulary .

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