Read How to Improve the Effectiveness of Vocabulary Teaching

Many students always complain that they can't remember words, excluding the factors of intelligence and laziness, some of them do put in hard work in vocabulary memorization but don't see any effect. How can teachers help these students remember words better? This book, How to Improve the Effectiveness of Vocabulary Teaching, provides us with some reference ideas and methods.

How to Improve Vocabulary Teaching: Working with Words: A guide to teaching and learning vocabulary is one of the 10 books in the Cambridge English Classroom Teaching Series, and is based on the concept of "doing things with words". Working with Words: A guide to teaching and learning vocabulary" is one of 10 books in the Cambridge English Classroom series, and is based on the concepts of "Do things with words" and "Learning in Doing".

The core idea of this book for teaching vocabulary is "use". The book gives an example of vocabulary memorization, where one group of students directly memorizes the words, while another group imagines themselves on an island, and how they can use the words to survive. The final test showed that the second group of students memorized the words better.

This book is divided into 4 major parts***12 chapters, from shallow to deep, from principle to practice, detailed vocabulary teaching ideas and methods.

PART A WORDS : THEIR MEANINGS AND FORMS

The topic of Chapter 1 is Language awareness activities. This chapter is a foundation for chapters 2 and 3 and includes 16 reading activities. These reading activities range from simple to complex, starting with students reading simple sentences and identifying what information, facts, or opinions are being conveyed in those sentences, then transitioning to word forms, meanings, usage, and near-synonyms and antonyms, and finally testing students' mastery of the words in the context of the text.

The theme of Chapter 2 is Words and their meanings i.e. words and meanings. Teachers should cover the following aspects when introducing the meanings of words: conceptual meaning, emotional meaning, domain, synonyms, near-synonyms, antonyms and so on. At the same time, teachers should also explain fixed collocations, proverbs, etc. and do component analysis. The so-called component analysis applies to different degrees of similar words, such as the different descriptions of "beauty", which includes different degrees of good-looking, elegant, beautiful and so on.

Chapter 3 covers Words and their forms. This part contains lexicography, word formation, and pronunciation.

PART B PRINCIPLES IN LEARNING AND TEACHING VOCABULARY

Chapter 4 topic is Decisions about content i.e. decisions about content. In selecting the content, the teacher can use the following criteria: frequency, cultural factors, need and level, convenience, quantity, category, etc.

Chapter 5 theme is How the learner discovers mearning i.e. how the learner discovers meaning. Traditionally, vocabulary is taught by the teacher who tells the students the meaning of the word directly, possibly using visualization (e.g., pictures or objects), oral narration, and translation. However, this book recommends some new teaching methods that are student-centered, such as students asking each other questions, using dictionaries, or guessing games.

The topic of Chapter 6 is Memory and written storage. Students' difficulties in memorizing words are centered on high rates of forgetting and spelling errors. This chapter explains the possible reasons for this, such as low frequency of use and interference with memorization. After that, the chapter gives some practical practices, such as giving students meaningful exercises, asking them to use vocabulary to describe their imagined scenarios, reviewing in a cycle, and categorizing vocabulary using mind maps or tree diagrams.

PART C CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES

This section is the most hands-on, and includes activities that can be directly applied in the classroom. Chapter 7 deals with Using visual aids, Chapter 8 deals with Using authentic reading texts, Chapter 9 deals with Teacher designed contexts and the use of the dictionary, Chapter 10 deals with Teacher designed contexts and the use of the dictionary, and Chapter 11 deals with Teacher designed texts and the use of the dictionary. Chapter 9 on Teacher designed contexts and the use of the dictionary, Chapter 10 on Speaking activites and Chapter 11 on Games, questionnaires and problem solving. These activities place high demands on teacher competence and require teachers to synthesize and manage the material, students and activities, implying that teachers have to do a lot of desk work before class.

PART D VOCABULARY IN COURSE BOOKS

This part contains only one chapter, Vocabulary in course books. Teachers must consider a number of issues, such as how the vocabulary is appropriate to be presented, whether it should be presented at once or in groups, and if so, how it should be grouped; and what teaching method should be used, whether the course books are suitable for it, whether the course books provide any consolidation exercises, and how the students can review the vocabulary outside of the classroom, and so on.

Summary

Students' vocabulary problems are often a roadblock to improving their performance in foreign languages. This book provides ideas and solutions from the theoretical and practical levels, and the accompanying teaching activities are described in detail, so that we can use them according to our own teaching practice.