Teaching Practice

Practices for Teaching Vocabulary

Mr Ashok Pandya

Department of Communication Skills, MEFGI - Rajkot

Words have power to destroy and heal. - The Buddha

Whatever and wherever we are today it’s because of our words that we have used in our life. Using minimum words and conveying maximum thought is heart of communication. One of the problem with vocabulary is that students (we also) do not remember new words for longer time, I had question in mind that how we can teach vocabulary in such way that students can remember it for longer time. I tried to find out answer. There are some techniques that I have come across which teacher can experiment for example teaching words with different images, showing movie scenes in which character uses that particular word, using it in their conversation, recording that conversation, creating story by using that particular word, creating what’s app group etc. I have experimented some of the techniques.

1.   Teaching words with different images:

Science says whatever we see we can remember it for longer time. When I teach anything and when   I use any word that students find difficult I explain that word by showing image of that word for   example ‘LIONIZE’ means to treat someone as celebrity, after explaining usage of that word, I       showed an image of that word on projector screen (type particular word on Google and click on       image)

I also explain it with white board.

      

2.   Creating WhatsApp group:

In my lab, Students have created WhatsApp group for learning vocabulary. I have advised them to introduce any new words with images in group and then they are supposed to make sentence of that words.

3.   Teaching through particular movie scene:

Students like when you talk about movie. Movies are source of learning. Students might not remember text but they remember dialogues of the movies. For example, I taught word ‘ENTREPRENEUR’ by showing movie clip of English Vinglish.

Now questions are: have they learnt words in a better way? Are they able to use effective words? Are they now able to remember words for longer time? Answers of these questions will be written in my next article.