Teaching Vocabulary to Advanced Students

First of all, I have to emphasize this document has quite relevant information which is related to

the lexical analysis course. However, unlike the other documents, this one can be applied not

only to the English language, but also to any language in the world.

In the document I read about two things that I already knew because of my personal experience

as a student. The first thing was that if learners relate the new vocabulary to their personal life

is going to be easier to store it. The second one was that the vocabulary that we use to express

ourselves depends on the different contexts and situations.

According to me, what was certainly new and interesting was the information about the

effectiveness you can achieve in one single lesson. In other words, I found out how important is

the number of new words that we can learn without forgetting them in the long term.

On the one hand, I realized that if in future I am teacher, and I know the way memory works, I

will achieve positive results with my students.

On the other hand, as a student, I understood that if my goal is to increase the number of words

I know, I do not have to be too ambitious. Nevertheless, practice is absolutely necessary.

Referring to that, I learnt different useful strategies that I can apply if I want or need to expand

vocabulary.

Also, when I was reading about the strategies I realized that I had many of them. For instance, a

good way of creating a strong concept about a word is to remember sounds or pictures which

represent those concepts and then create a relationship between the concept and its reference.

Clearly, the purpose of that method is to enrich those ideas in our minds.

Another thing, I did not know was that the longer knowledge about idioms or collocations the

more fluency you can have when you are having a conversation.

Moreover, when I was reading the Lewis lesson format I remembered most of my classes at the

university and all those moments when teachers demand us to use dictionary or put the new

words in context. That is way the document was meaningful to me.

In conclusion, even though I already had some knowledge about the things that appeared in the

document, I can definitely say that it helped me a lot. According to me the document is an

enriching and valuable tool for all those who will became teachers in the near future, and for

the ones that already are.

By Juan Andres Rosales Torres/ Pedagogía en Inglés UCSC