Vocab bag

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Bags of Fun with Vocabulary

Catherine MorleyBritish Council, Alcalá de Henares

Session aims

- WHY use vocabulary bags

- WHAT exactly is a vocabulary bag.

- WHAT information do learners need to know about a new word / collocation

- WHEN, HOW and WHERE should I use vocabulary bags

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How many time do students have to ‘meet’ a new word before they are able to use it themselves when speaking?

- Minimum 7 encounters needed (Woolard, 2000). Other experts say up to 16 meetings required (Koprowski, 2006)

- Vocab bags help to keep track of vocabulary for recycling

- Useful resource to fill a few spare minutes at the beginning / end of class

- Learners can choose what vocabulary they want to put in the vocab bag

- Content more important than presentation.

- Set it up in a way which minimises extra work created for you, the teacher!

What other information about a word might it be useful to include on vocabulary cards?

Some information you might include on vocabulary cards

- Part of speech

- Collocations

- Stress

- Example sentence

- Register

- Phonemic script

- Other forms of the same word (verb, noun, adjective etc.)

BUT there’s no need to be a perfectionist!

Who writes the words on papers for the vocabulary bag? The teacher or the students? Or both at different times?

Where do the words come from?

- In each class, give a different student the responsibility for recording new vocabulary from that day’s lesson

- OR at the end of the class, ask students to decide what vocabulary from the lesson they would like to include in the vocabulary bag

- Students in pairs can work to write example sentences on the cards (and teacher checks them)

- You could also do this at the beginning of the next lesson

‘Principle of expanding rehearsal’

- Review new words shortly after they are presented, then at increasingly longer intervals

- To stimulate long-term memory, ideally words would be reviewed

-5-10 minutes after class-24 hours later-one week later-one month later-six months later.

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Practical implementation:

• Review new vocabulary at the end of each class

• Set homework that involves using the new vocabulary, for ‘real’ communication when possible

• Regular (every lesson? every two lessons?) use of the vocabulary bag

• Include speaking / writing tasks that require use of vocabulary from earlier units, not just the current unit

• On longer courses, have a vocabulary bag ‘clear out’ after a few months, when students decide which words from the vocabulary bag they need to keep practising, and which they want to get rid of.

Talk about a friend you’ve known for a long time. You could mention:

- how long you’ve known this person, and how you met

- what this person looks like

- what kind of clothes this person usually wears (look at page 148 to help you)

- what this person is like (personality) and why you get on so well

- how often you see this person and what you like doing together

Try to speak for at least two minutes, and use at least 3 of the adjectives / phrases on page 146 of the Student’s Book.

Record using mobile phone

Or use MailVu:

http://mailvu.com/

save up (p.v.)

a swamp (n.)

blackmail (v.)

an attempt (n.)

sensible (adj.)

blurred (adj.)

a genre (n.)

a billboard (n.)

biased (adj.)

boil (v.)

compulsory (adj.)

multi-task (v.)

starving (adj.)

07/03/13www.britishcouncil.org

Catherine Morley

British Council, Alcalá de Henares

cath.morley@gmail.com

Vocab bag

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