TESOL Spain, March 2012

Maria Heron

Maria Heron is a practising teacher and teacher trainer with 30 years experience. Her work has been mainly in the UK but she has also worked in Germany, Switzerland, Kazakhstan, Russia, Canada, Argentina, Chile, and Panama. She is CELTA Centre Manager at NILE and a DELTA tutor and materials writer.

The ‘Vocab. Box’: its possible applications in CLIL contexts

This workshop will focus on a challenge facing language teachers: how to keep taught vocabulary ‘alive’ and move from understanding to productive use. We will explore how a simple vocabulary box with different fun activities can help to achieve this objective and how this resource can provide support for content teachers whose vocabulary needs are even more challenging.

Session outline

This hands-on workshop aims to focus on the continuing challenge facing language teachers: having taught vocabulary how to ensure that it is kept ‘alive’ and moves from understanding to appropriate, confident, productive use. We will start by discussing statements about the role of vocabulary in the syllabus. We will then look at how a low-tech vocab. box, accompanied by a range of fun activities, can help learners to develop their vocabulary skills in terms of systematic storage, recycling and the opportunity to use the lexis in a variety of contexts. The participants will then have the chance to try out different activities which focus on word practice and revision:

Elicitation activities ‘Grabbing ‘activities

Then, in the light of the increasing popularity of Content and Language Integrated Learning, particularly here in Spain, we will look at how the vocab. box could provide support to content teachers whose vocabulary load is even more challenging. The audience will again have the chance to try out different activities within different subject areas:

Hot seat Hot seat race One word clues Grouping & labelling

The workshop will conclude with an opportunity for teachers to share ideas and ask questions.

From vocab box to text

Equipment needed:It’s a very low-tech piece of apparatus, consisting of a shallow box, perhaps 40cm by 20 cm (e.g. the top of a photocopy paper box) and pieces of card or paper on which the vocabulary is written. It is kept in a central part in the classroom, for example on the teacher’s desk, in order that the teacher and the students can pick out a card at any time.

Where do these words come from?They are the words that naturally occur in the classroom, either from the coursebook, or authentic materials or conversations, discussions or role plays. They are words the teacher wants the students to learn productively. Most teachers make a clear distinction between lexis that will probably only be required receptively and that which the students will need to produce.

Who chooses which words go in the box?Normally the teacher, as this is quicker but the teacher can also nominate two students who are the vocabulary choosers for any one lesson.

What goes on the cards?

Whether it’s the teacher or a student who records the vocabulary, it needs to be done clearly and accurately so that the learners begin to see some system in lexis. The words go in the box after clarification and can include: word class, stress, pronunciation, derivatives and strong collocations.

Colour codingWe found it useful to use different colour cards or papers for different weeks if we were doing anything from a two to a 12 week course, because the students had regular vocab tests at the end of each week. Other teachers found it useful to record chunks of language on different colour cards to individual words (e.g. idiomatic expressions). Or different teachers sharing the same class might want to indicate this by using a different colour.

ACTIVITIES1) Elicitation Activities: These activities are very useful, not only for revising vocabulary, but also for fostering communication within the classroom. They help to create a nice atmosphere. When doing these activities, the students who are eliciting have to produce some precise, clear language. Students often find that the process of trying to find the appropriate language of elicitation and asking for clarification is a profitable end in itself.

2) Teacher elicitationThis is probably the most frequently used technique. The teacher may randomly select the cards or choose certain items which he or she then elicits from the class. Students can then be encouraged to produce derivatives of the elicited word, put the word in context, give a word with similar meaning or opposite meaning, give words that collocate with this one, etc.

Hot seatOne student sits in front of the class facing the others with his or her back to the board. The teacher, or another student, writes a word from the box on the board. The student in the ‘hot seat’ must not look at the board but the others have to elicit the word from him or her. Each student stays in the hot seat for 2 or 3 words and then nominates another student to take over. Before doing this with a group, it is useful to have done the activity a few times with the teacher eliciting. It also helps to provide and practise phrases such as:

This word is a noun, adjective, regular verb, phrasal verb, idiom… This word/ phrase means…

It is the opposite of It is similar to… You can find this in…

Hot seat raceThis makes the previous game more competitive and helps to build team work skills. Depending on the size of our classes, it can be done in several groups. Ideally not more than 5 to a group as follows:

- Each group has its own hot seat, facing away from the whiteboard. - The first group to successfully elicit the word gets one point. After

about 4 or 5 words, a different student in each group takes the hot seat

One-word cluesThis is an interesting variation on the above. The students are arranged in the same way, but just one student who is eliciting can give a one word clue. Then the next student can give another one word clue; so all the students have a chance to try to elicit with one word.

Grabbing activityThe teacher needs to do a bit of preparation for this activity as multiple sets of words are needed (about 10 to 15 words). The students are divided into groups of 5 or 6 and the words are spread on the table facing the students. The teacher reads one word at a time (or he/she can give a definition of the word) and the students have to grab the words (it can get a little violent!). The one who has grabbed the most words is the winner.

Vocabulary tests:Weekly vocab tests can be given without the teacher having to spend a lot of time preparing a test. The teacher just picks out the words he or she wants to test and gives oral clues, but the students write the answer, rather than saying it. I normally test students on the words we covered that week, which are colour coded, plus a few randomly chosen from other weeks, to make sure vocabulary is recycled.

GroupingFilingPairs of students can be given a pile of words to file. They could categorise them by: topic, number of syllables, word stress pattern, parts of speech, formal and informal words, negative and positive words, etc!

Maria Heron

CELTA Centre ManagerNILE (Norwich Institute for Language Education)