Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary

nothing can be conveyed David Wilkins

How does vocabulary learned?

• Knowing a word involves knowing its form and its meaning.

• The mind seems to words neither radomly nor in the form of a list, but in a highly organised and interconnected fashion called the mental lexicon.

• the brain is better disposed to begin search via the meaning based lexicon than the form based one.

• Acquire knowledge requires not only labelling but categorising.

• The second language learner simply maps the word directly onto the mother tongue equivalent.

• It may be the case that , for a good many second language learners, most of the words in their L2 lexicon are simply acquantainces.

How many words does a learner need to know?

• Educated native speaker: 20.000• Longman dictionary of contemporary english:

80.000 words and phrases• Oxford english dictionary: 500.000• A lucky learner: 5.000 words

How are words remembered?

• Short term store (STS) : store only few seconds.• Working memory: cognitive tasks such as

reasoning, learning, and understanding depend on working memory

• Long term memory: as a kind of filling system. Some strategies to develop memory are repetition, retrieval, spacing, pacing, use, cognitive depth, personal organising, imaging, mnemonics, motivation, attention

Why do we forget words?

• It has been estimated up to 80% of material is lost within 24 hours of initial learning.

• Overload students with vocabulary , may students forget the old ones.

• Don’t recycle words.

VOCABULARY STRATEGIES

LEARNING VOCABULARY THROGH MNEMONIC TECHNIQUESMnemonic work by utilizing some well-known principles of psychology: a retrieval plan is developed during encoding, and mental imagery, both visual and verbal is used. They help individuals to learn faster and recall better because they aid the integration of new material into existing cognitive units and because they provide retrieval cues. Mnemonics can be adopted voluntarily, and once learned are difficult to forget.

VOCABULARY STRATEGIES

a. Linguistic mnemonicsThe peg method: allows unrelated items to be recall by linking these items with a set of memorized “pegs” or “hooks” which can vary from rhyming words to digits.Example: one is a bun, two is shoe, three is tree, four is a door, five is a hive, six are sticks, seven is heaven, eight is a gate, nine us a line, ten is hen. (Paivio and Desrochers, 1979).The key word method: it calls for establishment of an acoustic and imaginal link between an L2 word to be learned and a word in L1 which sounds familiar. (Atkinson and Raugh, 1975). Example: the Spanish word pan can be learned by imagining a loaf of bread in a pan.

• b. Spatial mnemonics• The Loci method: to use this ancient technique, which dates

back to the Romans, one imagines a familiar location, then one mentally places the first item to be remembered in the first location, the second item in the second location, and so forth. To recall the items, one takes an imaginary walk along the landmarks, mentally examines each one, and retrieves the item one has “put” there (Yates, 1966).

• Spatial grouping: rearranging words on a page to form patterns, such as a triangle (Decker and Wheatley, 1982).

• The finger method: a variation of the spatial method is to associate the item to be learned with a finger.

THE PHYSICAL RESPONSE METHOD: Physically enacting the information in a sentence results in a better recall than simple repetition.THE VERBAL ELABORATION METHODSGrouping: organized material is easier to store in a retrieve from long term memory (Bousfield, 1953)The word chain: instead of associating each item with a cue, each item in a list is associated with the preceding and following one (Delin, 1969). Example: car, house, flower.The narrative chain: one links the words in a list together by a story (Bower and Clark, 1969).

OTHER MEMORY-ENHANCING TECHNIQUESSelf-testing: testing students in a learning session involving the memorization of words (Mandler, 1967, Tulving, 1968).Spaced practice: long periods of study are less helpful to L2 learners than shorter but more frequent study periods.Real-life practice: the participation in real life communicative situations during language training should be attempted at all levels of proficiency to ensure a greater match between coding and retrieval conditions (Jones, 1979).Word cards: learners write a word to be learned on one side of a small card and its mother tongue translation on the other.Guessing from context: make intelligent guesses as to the meaning of unknown words.Coping strategies for production: paraphrasing, describing, using synonyms, using gesture and mime, using L1 word.Using dictionaries: when guessing from context strategies fail. They can be used productively, both for generating text and as resources for vocabulary acquisition.

Activities to teach Vocabulary

The author Wilga Rivers said once:

• “Vocabulary cannot be taught”It can be presented, explained, included in all kind of activities.

What are the activities that can help the students to get the words they need?

Types of activities for vocabulary

• Identifying activities: It is a kind of activity that involves detecting words . For example: word soup, unscramble, etc.

• Selecting activity: Here you can recognize words and make choices amongst them. For example: Choosing the odd one out, choosing words for descriptions etc.

• Matching activity: This one involves first recognizing and then pairing them. For example: Pelmanism.

• Sorting activity: It requires learners to sort words into different categories. Example: Word field.

• Ranking and sequencing: It requires the learner to put the words in order. Example: chronologies.

• Producing activities: they are divided in two:• Completion: completing sentences or texts.

Example: Gap filling.

• Creation: it requires the learner to create context for given words. Example: making sentences, including words in dialogues etc.