The process of acquiring vocabulary

 

Scramble-word puzzles are also motivational devices. After scrambling the words, definitions of the words to be unscrambled should be provided to reinforce the importance of meaning in the activity.

 

1. d l m e o y - tune	1.
2. e e d t u a c – teach	2.
3. e m I k a s t – an error	3.
4. p e n e x s – cost	4.
5. o o l k - see	5.

 

 

4. Odd One Out

 

 

This game is also very interesting for children. Teacher gives a list of 3 or 4 words where children have to find a word out of the list. For example, in following list of words tea, milk, salad, fruit juice the word salad is out, because other words represent what we can drink, but salad is what we eat.

 

2. 7 Special Types of Vocabulary Terms

 

 

Some words and phrases have special attributes that make them particularly interesting to study. Synonyms, antonyms, homonym, multiple-meaning words, words borrowed from other languages, abbreviations, acronyms can all be the basis for meaningful lessons. Knowledge of these types of words and phrases can make understanding spoken and written language easier and can enhance usage in personal speaking and writing activities.

5. Synonyms.

Knowledge of synonyms can increase a person’s range of understanding when listening and reading, and it can make his or her spoken and written language more varied, interesting and exact. Although synonyms may have almost identical meanings at times, in most cases there are fine distinctions among the exact meanings of synonyms. A person may be pleased to be referred to as “slender”, but make take offence at being called “thin”, which is one synonym. Both “thin” and “slender” mean “not thick”, but “thin” implies a lack of fullness, whereas “slender” implies a graceful leanness. Carefully choosing synonyms, therefore, may make it possible to flatter, rather than insult people or to give a positive, rather than a negative, slant to what you are saying.

Playing a game called “Varied Verbs” can help children work on the fine distinctions in meaning among verbs that are listed as synonyms. For example, Webster’s New World Thesaurus list “march” , “amble”, “saunter” as synonyms for “walk”. Children can act out the meanings of these verbs and the class can discuss the differences among the ways of walking. Students can clarify the meanings of the separate words while they are adding to the repertoires of words that they can use to express themselves more exactly in speaking and writing.

Use of the dictionaries and thesaurus to promote understanding of synonyms can be effective. Children can look up words in these sources and discuss in class the information presented by them, calling attention to fine differences in word meanings, even when the words are very close in meaning. They can construct sample sentences to highlight the differences. For example, word “fried” is listed as a synonym to “heated” in Webster’s New World Thesaurus. A sentence such as the following could show how the meanings differ somewhat: “Since the potatoes had been fried earlier, I didn’t feel that they needed to be fried again, so I just heated them in the oven.” The teacher should think through some of these small differentiations and first explain them to the children as a model for the activity, and then let the children try to come up with similar differentiations for other words.

6. Antonyms.

Antonyms are words pair that have opposite meanings, such as up and down. Knowledge of antonyms can make speech and written communications clearer and more exact. This knowledge can also help an individual use context clues involving contrast to best effect when listening to oral communications or when reading. Students sometimes have some difficulty in differentiating between a word that has a meaning that is opposite from that of the another word and a word that simply has a meaning that is different from that of the other word. For example, when asked for an antonym for “hot”, they may say “warm” rather than “cold”. Quite a bit of instructional attention may be necessary to develop the idea that “hot” and “cold” represent extremes on the scale of temperature, whereas “warm” lies somewhere in between and is commonly thought to be the opposite of “cool”, another term that does not designate an extreme.

Playing a game called “Opposites” is good for developing meanings of antonyms. The teacher writes pairs of antonyms on word cards ad gives one card to each of a pair of students. The students act out the words on their cards simultaneously, while the children in the class try to identify the antonym pair involved. The pair can be as simple as “high” and “low” or as hard as “rude” and “polite”. The difficulty can be varied to fit the specific class.

As was true with synonyms, use of the dictionaries and thesaurus can be helpful in lessons concerning antonyms. Students can rewrite sentences, producing opposite meanings by changing single words. Debates on the accuracy of the outcomes can be arbitrated through use of the dictionary or thesaurus.

7. Homonyms.

Homonyms are sets of words the sound alike, but have a different spellings and different meanings, for example, “pear”, “pair” and “pare”. Homonyms may cause special decoding problems for some children in reading, since they have to learn that two or three different spellings result in the same pronunciation; however, these different spellings may actually have an overall positive effect on the reading act because the different spelling cue different meanings for the children. Homonyms cause many problems for students in writing also. Recalling the correct spelling for the particular usage appears to be very difficult for many students and incorrect choices abound in writing samples.

Students need to be encouraged to use the dictionary to decide on the spelling for the particular homonym that they wish to use. Activities in which the students replace incorrect homonyms in passages may encourage them to be aware of the need to check their own writing.

8. Multiple-Meaning Words.

Words that have more than one meaning can cause difficulties in understanding to both listeners and readers.

Very common words are often the ones that have the most different meanings associated them. For example, the word “run” has a different meaning in each of the following sentences:

1. I will run around the track for 15 minutes every day.
2. Let the water run until it gets hot.
3. There was a run on the bank when people heard about the arrest of the employee.
4. Mark had a run of bad luck.
5. They sold out the entire print run of the booklet.

There are only a few of the possibilities for using this word “run” in different context.

Young children and even older children have difficulty using the context when less familiar meanings of multiple-meanings words are found in sentences. This could either be because the don’t know the particular meanings involved or because they fail to attend the important context clues. Students need to be exposed to different meanings associated with the same word, and they need to be helped to use context clues effectively.

Brainstorming about multiple-meaning words can be a worthwhile activity, especially among gifted learners, who tens to have more meanings collected for the words in their vocabularies. The teacher can put a word on the blackboard and have children give as many different meanings as they can for it. The teacher can then write the different meanings on the board, surrounding the word, as in shown below. The children can discuss each meaning given and make sentences fitting each meaning.

 

весна прыжок

 

ключ, родник пружина

 

Another good technique to use when brainstorming about multiple-meaning words is to have the children come to the blackboard and illustrate the different meanings of the chosen word. They could even illustrate the meanings on large sheets of paper that could become murals in the classroom.

Students need to learn to use dictionary to decide on the meanings for multiple-meaning words that fit the particular situations in which the word are found. In order to do this, the children must look up the word, read each definition, and decide if that meaning fit to context in which the word was found. They need help in seeing that some of the definitions will not make sense in the given context and that a search for an appropriate definition, not just any definitions, is necessary. They can take a list of dictionary definitions for a given word and a number of occurrences of that word in context and match each context example to a definition that makes sense.

 

 

9. Abbreviations.

Abbreviations are shortened forms of words, generally ending with a period. Teachers need to lead children to see that some of the original letters are left out of words to form abbreviations. The children can discuss with the teacher why it is often convenient to abbreviate a word instead of writing it out completely. Common abbreviations, such as Mr., Mrs., Dr., am and pm, can be introduced and discussed. The children can practice using these abbreviations in writing assignments requiring the use of such specific terms. The teacher may also conduct activities in which the students are asked to match the words with their abbreviations.

10. Acronyms.

Acronyms are words that are formed from the first letters or initial syllables of a series of words in a term. For example, NATO stands for “North Atlantic Treaty Organization”, TOEFL stands for “Test of English as a Foreign Language” and radar stands for “radio detecting and ranging”. Radar has been in use for so long that most people think of it as just a regular word and don’t realize its origin. Students may understand acronyms better if they construct pronounceable acronyms for fictitious organizations in which the acronyms say something about the organization, just as is true of many actual organizations, for example, there is a MADD organization in United States of America that stands for “Mothers Against Drunk Driving”. This activity is a good one to stimulate creative thinking.

11. Words borrowed form other languages.

English language has borrowed many terms from other languages. Because many of these words are not pronounced the way that they look, they often cause reading difficulties for students. In these case teacher can just show how they are read and from what language these words came from. Even in Russian language there are many borrowed words from other languages, like we don’t say “электронная почта” we just say “e-mail”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conclusion

 

 

Vocabulary development is a main key to being successful at languages. Whatever language it is, vocabulary is still the most important thing to do first. What I like the most in vocabulary development that you can find and apply different ways of learning and teaching! To learn vocabulary demands the desire and creativity. If you have just one of these wishes above-you are on the right way to become a good learner!

The main task for teachers is to inspire their students to expand their vocabulary. I’m sure there are so many students who want to enlarge their vocabulary but they don’t know effective and productive ways of it. Most of students think that there is only the one way of expanding vocabulary- it is swotting. How wrong they are! There are so many ways to learn and they are interesting, exciting and lovely! Students and teachers should remember only one thing-revising. Revising is the first rule you should follow. If you really want to be proud of your flawless vocabulary then don’t forget about revising!   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

List of literature

 

 

1. Anitchkov I., SaakyantsV. Methods of teaching English. Moscow, 1966.- 248p.
2. Harner Jeremy. The practice of English language teaching. L. - New York, 
   1991.-296p.
3. Potter Mike. International issues. Teacher's book. L., 1991.- 125p.
4. Rogova G. Methods of teaching English. Leningrad, 1975.- 312p.
5. Зимняя И. А. Психологическая характеристика слушания и говорения как видов речевой деятельности. – «Иностранные языки в школе», 1973
6. Маслыко Е. А. Настольная книга преподавателя иностранного языка: Справочное пособие.- Мн.: Высшая школа, 1999.