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Alastair Horne

Alastair Horne
Teaching Vocabulary: Making an Impact

In this week's article for Cambridge English Teacher, Penny Ur looks at how teachers can make the introduction and review of new vocabulary items more interesting and impactful. The article will go live on Wednesday July 11th. Do you have any suggestions on how to make vocabulary learning more effective and enjoyable for learners?

16 Replies Last updated on 10 July 2012 10:44 am by Alastair Horne . 16 replies 332 Views.

Marta Gonzalez

Marta Gonzalez
Re: Teaching Vocabulary: Making an Impact

Vocabulary should always be learnt in context. One of the biggest concerns is always the lack of vocabulary for the students to express real ideas, feelings, thoughts. I always encourage adult students with a B1 or B2 level to start the lesson by explaining a piece of news they have listened or read. This way they see they are using English to express what worries them, what they find on the news, what they are up to in their real lives.

Luisa Formisano

Re: Teaching Vocabulary: Making an Impact

I think that Penny's suggestions are very useful to make words mobile in class moving collocations all the time even if these are not very inductive activities. The recovery of vocabulary is necessary to use language. The problem s also presentation of new items. Why don't you match impact and presentation?

nour ismail

Re: Teaching Vocabulary: Making an Impact

Hi. I think using concordances in the classroom might be quite effective for teaching new vocabulary because they give learners the opportunity to encounter language in use. When the material sounds to the learners as useful, it's very likely that it will achieve an impact.

Dorota Florkiewicz

Re: Teaching Vocabulary: Making an Impact

Hello, My name's Dorota. I think Penny's article gives very usable tips. I work with young lerners (10 -13 year old) and they like learning vocabulary with pictures, flashcards and we use body language as often as possible because they love to have possibility of movement during the lesson.

Claire Hastings

Claire Hastings
Re: Teaching Vocabulary: Making an Impact

I personally believe all the activities based on the lexical approach are really both enjoyable and effective when it comes to teaching new lexical items. The icing on the cake is that they are communicative, too. Games are good to recycle/practice vocabulary and are generally very popular with students.

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Itzel Adames

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