Vocabulary teaching

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Teaching vocabulary means more than just teaching our students new words in a lesson. With our lesson about this topic, I have learnt that  teaching vocabulary also includes:

Phrasal verbs: These are verbs that work together and mean something different than if we translate verb by verb and have a specific meaning. For example: Look up or look down.

Synoysms: Words that have a similar meaning. Eg.  Big / huge.

Content words: Such as nouns, adjectives and so on.

Idioms: Sayings of phrases originated from a specific country or culture, such as: That was a piece of cake,  which means that something was so easy.

It was nice that in this lesson, we could rank the importance of things we teach according to the time we dedicate to them. As for me, this is my rank:

1. Vocabulary
2. Listening
3. Writing
4. Speaking
5. Grammar
6. Reading.

And what determines the amount of time I give to each of the above in my classes?
In my case, it is based on the time students take to comprehend things.

I have found easier that when teaching vocabulary, my students comprehend a lot better if I use gesture of the vocabulary, pictures of the vocabulary words, realia, and songs related to the topic. However, with this lesson I have learned that when you introduce new words to your students you could also use sinonyms and antonysm when intriducing the new words to help them understand what  the word means, instead of just translating words to them into spanish. I am so willing to try that when I go back to Panama.

Comentarios

  1. Unknown26 de septiembre de 2018 a las 6:25

    This was a good reflection. Thank you.

    Why didn't you use synonyms and antonyms in the past? That's somewhat surprising to me.

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    1. Keysi Owens13 de octubre de 2018 a las 10:41

      Now, I keep asking myself the same thing, I would instead use gestures or pictures to get them to know what word I was trying to teach them, it would just have been easier for them if I had taught them using synonyms or antonyms.

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