How to pre teach vocabulary

How to teach vocabulary: practical tips from the book of Scott Thornbury

We are continuing to introduce the best practical tips from the books of prominent ELT experts that can be suitable in your classes.

Today we are going to present some practical tips from the book of Scott Thornbury “How to teach vocabulary” that may come in handy.

How to present vocabulary?

By saying “vocabulary presentation” we mean to prepare proper lesson stages in which students will be taught pre-selected vocabulary items. While choosing a set of words to teach, the following things should be taken into account:

— The level of the learners.

— The learners’ likely familiarity with the words.

— The number of new words (they shouldn’t overstretch the learners’ capacity to memorise them, so better to include 8 — 12 new words).

— The sequence of presentation (meaning first, then form, or form first, then meaning).

— The means of presentation (through translation, real things, pictures, actions/gestures, definitions, situations).

How to illustrate the meaning of a word?

An obvious way to present a set of specific objects is by demonstrating them. This can be carried out by using real objects, pictures or miming. This was actually a defining technique of the Direct Method. Visual aids take many forms: flashcards, wall charts and board drawings. Pictures of items belonging to the following sets are found very helpful in the ESL classroom: food and drink, clothing, house and furniture, jobs, sports, nationalities and appearance.

Here are some activities to illustrate the meaning of the words by using flashcards.

How to explain the meaning?

Despite the practical usefulness of the Direct Method and the technique of illustration, it can be applied in limited cases. The words like perspective, trustworthy, meaningful, etc can’t be explained through demonstration. Here there are different ways to use for clarifying the meaning of the words, such as:

— Providing an example situation.

— Giving several example sentences.

— Giving synonyms or antonyms.

— Giving a definition.

A situational presentation involves providing a scenario which clearly contextualises the target words. Here is a situation for teaching frightened/frightening.

Last night when Ann was coming back home, she had to walk the empty streets alone. Suddenly she heard some noises and saw a shadow of a man. She got afraid and screamed loudly. Ann ran as quickly as possible till she reached her place.

Ann was really very frightened because it was a very frightening situation.

Giving several example sentences includes the target word used in different sentences with the same meaning. For example, if you want to explain the meaning of “break into” you can provide the following sentences:

Someone has broken into our house through the bedroom window.

Last night the thief broke into my car and stole my wallet.

Explaining words through their synonyms and antonyms is perhaps the easiest way, that requires no preparation and no time. However, not for all words, you can find proper synonyms and antonyms. Here you can use definitions, which are easily found in monolingual dictionaries. To practise the words you can also use Taboo game, where the learners have to explain the meaning of the word without using Taboo words in the card. To simplify the game, you can just ask your students to give the definition of the word.

These were the tips and recommendations suggested by Scott Thornbury in his book “How to teach vocabulary”. We really hope that the article will be useful not only for new teachers but also for the experienced ones.

Pre-Teaching Vocabulary to Kids

I am so excited to say that pre-teaching is the easiest thing to do and for me personally, probably the most fun. I’d rather pre-teach vocabulary than having to go through grammar rules and implementing them. Pre-teaching vocabulary is great because the general rule of thumb stays the same whether you are teaching children or adults, pre-intermediate or advanced.

In fact, when teaching online, it is most definitely easier to teach vocabulary than in a classroom setting. When you are teaching online, you have all the tools needed to introduce new vocabulary at the click of a button and a quick Yandex or Google search.

Why is “pre-teaching vocabulary” important?

Pre-teaching is basically a strategy a teacher uses to introduce new words to a student. These new words usually come in the form of a reading text. This vocabulary is essential to understanding and grasping the text. Without the students’ understanding, the reading text would be a useless exercise and will leave you and your student frustrated.

Having a limited vocabulary is one of the biggest challenges our students face whether they are a child or an adult. You’ll find that most students can read fluently yet fail at comprehension and that is because more students are taught the parrot ways and, of course, different countries have different teaching methods. It is very normal in China for example to teach reading, phonics but not elaborate on the meaning of the words. “Pre-teaching vocabulary reduces the number of unfamiliar words the students will encounter in the text and boosts vocabulary acquisition”. (Adolescent Literacy, 2007, p. 16)

When we pre-teach vocabulary we are preparing the students for an exciting yet successful read! Their confidence also increases, so does their understanding and comprehension.

What is particular about teaching kids?

You see, there are so many different ways of introducing vocabulary that we will be here for days! From root words to matching definitions, realia, memory, pictionary, games, reading books, the list goes on for days!

You have to keep in mind that kids can only memorise about 5-7 words in a session. Thus, your reading material should be a short story.

Oxford Learning Tree is my personal favourite because the sentences are usually no more than 5 words, the story is about 10-15 pages long. My 2nd favourite is RAZ. levelled reading books. When you select a book, it shows you the most important vocabulary to pre-teach. You can send this vocabulary as homework to prepare the student for the next session or teach this vocabulary at the start of the session before the reading activity.

Now, let’s talk about creative ways to introduce the new vocabulary.

3 Best Methods for pre-teaching vocabulary online

When using word walls, we use pictures on the one side and the words on the other. This is a simple matching activity. You can make your own Word Wall by copy and pasting the words that you want to introduce and then adding images. Dictate the words first, show other images before having the student complete the activity. You can send the pictures or share your screen. Simple, easy and effective! You can also send this activity as homework.

2. The KIM strategy

The Kim strategy is almost like a word wall but here we use a little more detail.

What does KIM stand for? KIM is an acronym.

We can use this strategy as a graphic organiser.

See the example below from teachingchannel:

What is great about this is that you can add the page number, use the word in your own example sentences or use the actual dictionary definition. The student can write their own definition and for extra practice and recall. They can draw a picture or add any examples they wish.

You can do this activity together or this can be sent as homework.

3. Movement and TPR

Another way to get new vocabulary across is by physically moving.

Are you teaching animal names? That is super simple! Lion? Roar and show your fingers are claws! Money? Sound a monkey and behave like one?

Teaching colours? Show different objects which are the same colour, remember to dictate. Red Apple, Red Pen, Red Strawberry.

The above 3 methods are super simple but let’s dive a little deeper.

How to prepare for pre-teaching?

If you don’t have the luxury of already made lesson plans, you will have to go through the reading material in advance, that is a given.

Is your student more advanced?

Then take it a step further.

You can add synonyms and antonyms to the new vocabulary once it is clear the student understands the new words which were introduced. This is a safe exercise to use when the student learns 4 words and less.

If your students have read successfully and understood all the new vocabulary you can always ask them to underline the words in the text which they did not understand. Sometimes you will find that there are one or two words that you can additionally teach.

Want more information?

Check out some cool videos on how to pre-teach vocabulary:

Pre-teaching vocabulary is the most fun part of the lesson. Feel free to get creative and keep in mind that no two students are exactly the same. Some students learn better with games, some with audio and visuals. Remember to check for understanding and elicit as much as you can. It always helps to send the next lessons’ vocabulary in advance as homework as the student will have time to prepare and not feel intimidated by the material.

What is Pre-Teaching (and is it just about Vocabulary?)

Pre-teaching is the teaching of knowledge, vocabulary, and skills required for an upcoming lesson. It is most commonly used for English Language Teaching (ELT) but can be used by any teacher for any lesson.

Before diving into some examples, it’s important to set the parameters for what pre-teaching is and isn’t.

Generally, pre-teaching refers to the teaching of knowledge shortly before a main lesson or unit of work so that students will be able to complete the main unit of work successfully.

It’s not the use of ‘prior knowledge’ or a staged curriculum. These are longer-term concepts that are structured to help students in their overall educational trajectory. Pre-teaching, on the other hand, is a one-off event designed to lay the foundations for a single lesson or unit of work.

Here, we’re just referring to the idea of identifying students’ gaps in knowledge in the lead up to a lesson, and attempting to bridge that gap so that the upcoming lesson will be successful.

Let’s jump into some examples.

7 Examples of Pre-Teaching

1. Vocabulary Lists

Vocabulary lists are the most common form of pre-teaching the help English language learners prepare for an upcoming lesson. The teacher gives the students a list of words that need to be used in the upcoming unit of work. The students study the words so that they will be able to use them in the lesson.

But it’s not just English language teachers who use this strategy.

It’s so commonly used in classrooms that teachers don’t even give it a term: we just do it naturally! When I’m about to start a unit on shapes with my Grade 1 class, you bet “triangle”, “hexagon” and “pentagon” are going to be in our words list for the week!

One of the downsides of this method is that you teach the word “out of context”. This means students might know the words but not know how to use and apply them. So, when we go into the main lesson, there might still be a learning curve as students may still struggle to comprehend the words in context.

2. Flipped Learning Homework

Flipped learning is an approach to education where lesson content is presented at home for homework before the main lesson occurs. What we used to teach in the classroom is now presented for homework. This model came about because we realized that we spent far too much of our time talking at students in the classroom. We can just give them a video! Then, in the classroom, we can actually discuss the ideas.

You could consider flipped classrooms to have a strong element of pre-teaching in them. The idea is to present all the ‘knowledge’ before hand, so in the classroom the main event can be student-centered activities!

It’s reasonable that some people might say this isn’t really pre-teaching because the content taught in the homework section is the “main event” knowledge for the unit of work.

But, I’d argue it’s still a form of pre-teaching. Let me know what you think – tweet me your thoughts! @helpfulprof

3. Preparatory Research

I’ll often ask my students to interview their family about an upcoming classroom topic. If we’re studying “immigration”, I might ask them to go home and gather some information about when their family migrated to the country and which country they came from originally.

This preparatory research gets students into the mindset needed for the main lesson. They come to class with a little bit of the necessary knowledge: that 99% of us are immigrants, that we’re a diverse bunch of people, and we all have different experiences and cultures to draw upon in our past.

Here’s another example: once, I asked my students to go home and take note of how many hours they spent playing outside and how many hours they spent watching TV – every night for a week! They didn’t know it, but I was making sure they had the skill of survey research so when it came to teaching about it in class, I knew they all had experience doing it. It warmed them up for the main event so it was easier to teach.

4. Literature Analysis

I love teaching Grade 6. My favorite part about it is reading novels together. We’ll spend afternoons for weeks on end reading our novels together in class. And sure, part of this is so they can improve their reading skills.

But it’s more than that.

We have to read the book before we can start doing our literature analysis of it! Here, the act of reading the book together is the “pre” part of the teaching, and the main event is the subsequent analysis of the characters, plot, moral of the story, etc. But without that preparatory work of reading the book, the teaching can’t happen at all!

5. Preview Lessons

I love a good preview lesson. This is the sort of lesson that we have on Friday in preparation for the week ahead. During these lessons, I give students the baseline knowledge required.

That might be some vocabulary, but it could be other things too – like knowledge of history, or some math skills that might be required in order to complete the lesson next week.

By presenting those baseline skills before hand, the students come to class on Monday with the knowledge and skills required to really dig into the lesson content.

6. Guest Presenters

Inviting in a Guest Presenter into the class can be a great way to inspire students in preparation for a unit of work. At our school, we like to ask in a first nations presenter prior to teaching about first nations issues.

This does two things: it provides some base knowledge required for the lesson, and creates a buzz around the lesson.

We can often then refer back to the knowledge the guest presenter provided during the unit of work. We can talk about when the guest showed us something, used certain words, or talked about an idea, to help students to create connections in their minds.

Here again, the preparatory session sets students up for success in the lesson.

7. Assigned Readings

As a university professor, I assign readings to my students all the time. That’s because I need them to go home and learn about the ideas we’re going to be talking about. I want my students to come to class ready to talk, debate, argue, and present their ideas!

An assigned reading might be considered part of the ‘core curriculum’, but it’s not – or at least, not for me. I want my students to know about the ideas in the readings, but in reality what’s most important in my classes is my students’ ability to critically examine ideas and talk to each other about them.

That’s the main event!

Criticisms (and Defenders)

Pre-teaching is the subject of significant criticism. Some examples include:

But some defenders highlight its benefits:

Conclusion

Some people might argue I’ve significantly expanded the definition of pre-teaching in this article. But I’ve tried to be consistent with the core premise of the concept. I tried to identify examples of when we get students prepared and give them baseline knowledge and skills before the main event. For me and my teaching, anything I get my students do in the lead-up to the lesson itself to prepare my students is still teaching – it’s just a different type of teaching we might refer to as ‘pre-teaching’.

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About The Helpful Professor

Chris Drew (aka the Helpful Professor) is a university educator and former school teacher. Twitter: @helpfulprof

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Teaching English Vocabulary

Did you know that a student needs to encounter a new word 10 to 16 times to effectively «learn» it according to recent research?

Considering the number of new words students have to learn per course, this means us teachers have our work cut out for us. We all know that although it is important for students to use correct grammar and structures, words are the main carriers of meaning. This means that the more words students are able to handle accurately, the better their chances of understanding English and making themselves understood.

To effectively acquire English vocabulary, students must go through four essential stages:

It is essential that you, as the teacher, make use of activities that target each of these stages; more often than not, we make the mistake of merely introducing new vocabulary, and we don’t give students the opportunity to put these new words to use.

So, here are 10 great ways to teach English vocabulary, outlined for each of the stages of vocabulary acquisition:

Stage 1: Noticing and understanding new words

Introducing nouns, things, objects, animals, etc…

Visual elements work best with concrete nouns, but try to go beyond flashcards and illustrations. Try to use real objects whenever possible, or even sounds, smells, and tastes. Appeal to all of your students’ senses!

Introducing adjectives
Opposites, like “big” and “small”, “long” and “short”, are usually illustrated with pictures, but here’s another case where realia will help you teach new adjectives; the use of real life objects is wonderful for words like “soft” and “rough”, adjectives that may take precious minutes of class time to explain. For more advanced adjectives, like “stunning”, “gorgeous”, “spectacular”, “huge”, or “immense”, bring in photos of famous sights from around the world like the Louvre, Egyptian pyramids, the Eiffel Tower, etc…then use these new adjectives to describe these places in ways that clearly illustrate their meaning.

Introducing abstracts

There are things you simply cannot teach with a flashcard. What works best in these cases are synonyms, definitions, substitutions, or simply placing students within a given context. Consider this simple example: To teach the difference between “early” and “late”, remind students what time class begins, then state that those who arrive before this time are “early” while those that arrive after this time are “late”.

Stage 2: Recognizing new words

Bingo
Bingo is one of the most versatile games employed by ESL teachers. For younger learners, make bingo cards with illustrations, and call out each word. For those who can read, do the opposite, make the cards with words, then draw the flashcards from a bag. For teens or adult learners, you can make cards with the definition and call out the words, or vice versa.

Matching
Another type of exercise with countless possibilities. Students may be required to match opposites, synonyms, or a word with its definition, as well as a picture to a word.

Fill in the blanks (with options)
Hand out a piece of written text (anything from a description, song, letter, to even a short story) with blank spaces that must be filled in from a list of words. You can adapt this to longer texts, and also have longer word lists.

Stage 3: Producing vocabulary

Descriptions

From a newspaper photo of a recent event to a personal account of a recent trip, there are countless things students can describe while putting new vocabulary to good use. This goes for both oral and written descriptions. You may give them some guidance, like indicating that they have to use at least five adjectives in their description, or five words related to sports, weather, etc…to no guidance at all.

Fill in the blanks (no options)

Supply students with a piece of written text with blank spaces that have to be filled in with any word that fits. You may give them indications for each space, like “noun”, “adjective” or “adverb”, if they’re advanced students. You can then read several out loud to compare the different words used to fill in each blank.

Mind maps or brainstorming

Tell students they need to think of words they can use to describe the weather. Write “weather” at the center of a blackboard or whiteboard and circle it. Write every word supplied by students as “rays” that shoot out this circle. They should reply with previously taught words, like “chilly”, “scorching”, or “mild”. You may even have sub-circles shooting off to the side for winter, summer, etc…words. This works great for vocabulary review lessons.

Guess what I’m thinking
Students take turns describing something, like a place: “I’m thinking of a place that is so huge it takes visitors hours to see all of it. It has stunning works of art. It is a breathtaking building, very old, but with a modern glass pyramid in the front.” Students choose to be as obvious or as cryptic as they like. Even little ones can do this with simple descriptions: “It’s an animal. It has a very long neck and big brown spots.” Or simply state a series of words: “Africa, black and white, stripes”.

It’s better to teach vocabulary in context, in other words, teach highly descriptive adjectives when the lesson is about travel. Or clothes and accessories when you’re talking about shopping. Never teach a list of words just because, or students won’t have a chance to practice this new vocabulary.

On a final note, remember to cater to different learning styles or multiple intelligences.

Use songs and music, real life objects, or puzzles, but the more you mix the better. Remember the difference between recognizing and producing words: to practice recognition the words have to be supplied by YOU; then students use them to fill in blanks or match them. For students to effectively and accurately produce vocabulary, they have to spontaneously recall the words.

Should we pre-teach vocabulary before reading- and, if so, how?

Pre-teaching vocabulary is something that many of us were taught to do on our CELTAs or other pre-service course. I hold my hand up to having trained other teachers to do it- and to having, as a result, sat through an excruciating 20 minutes plus while trainee teachers laboriously explained word after word until the students had lost the will to live, never mind the will to read the text.

Another argument against pre-teaching is that it doesn’t train students for real-life encounters with language; that we’re spoon feeding them rather than teaching them the skills to deal with unknown words.

I am sure this is true, and I would certainly not recommend pre-teaching as a way of explaining all the words in a text that students are unlikely to know. However, done sparingly, I think it can have some value both in terms of practicality (making sure they can actually do the task you set, and that you don’t have twenty people all asking the same question, one after another) and in terms of helping to raise interest and motivation.

The questions you need to ask yourself are, I think:

– Do the students actually need to know this word/phrase to do the task?

– Could they guess it from context?

– Can this word or phrase be used productively within this lesson?

Selecting what vocabulary to pre-teach

1. Look at what vocabulary the students will need to know to do the task you set, rather than what they probably won’t know in the text.

2. Look at vocabulary which is directly related to the topic of the text, so that it can be used to activate schema.

To illustrate what I mean, here is a scan of three pages from IELTS Foundation 2nd edition Macmillan 2012, with a set of activities around a reading text. Looking at the tasks set on the third page, there are certain words which the students will need to know to carry out these tasks. I would suggest:

current reluctant short term effects essential reduce prevent tend to encourage efficient

congestion charge higher parking charges public transport pay per mile

The first set of words could be looked at, as necessary, when the teacher is setting the tasks. Many of them are very typical of IELTS questions and so might well be already known. If not, a matching activity with synonyms might work well with these words, especially with synonyms in the text (most IELTS questions will use a synonym rather than the words in the text itself)

The second set of words however are all linked to the topic, so provide scope to act as a lead in to the text as well as a pre-teaching activity. If you look at the first page of the extract, you can see that these and other related words from the text are given to students to categorise into traffic problems and possible solutions. The students then use the words in a personalised way, to talk about problems in their city before reading the text and comparing with their ideas and opinions.

One of the major problems with pre-teaching vocabulary is dealing with a set of seemingly disconnected words, with no context. Choosing words which relate to the topic of the text is a good way round this issue, and the words can also be used productively.

Ideas for pre-teaching vocabulary

1 Categorising is often a good approach, as it should get the learners to engage with the meaning of the words. If the words aren’t related in terms of meaning you could always get them to categorise into ‘words I know’, ‘words I am not sure about ‘and ‘words I don’t know’. Done in pairs, this should lead to peer teaching and you can monitor and then help with any still causing difficulties.

2 Connecting words: ask students to choose two or more words and phrases from those you want to pre-teach and write a sentence using them. This will only really work if the words are at least half known though.

3 Predicting: Ask students to make predictions about the text using the words given. Depending on the words and the students this could range from guessing the topic, to guessing the attitude of the writer, to guessing the answers to the questions they are going to answer.

4 Using the context of the text: Pull out some sentences which contain the words you want to pre-teach and put them up on the board with gaps. Get the students to decide which words go in which gaps.

5 If appropriate, matching the vocabulary you want to pre-teach with pictures. Relatively easy these days, pictures are a great way of providing the context which would otherwise be missing.

If you do decide to pre-teach (and there are, as we have seen, arguments against it), make sure that the words and phrases are useful and contextualised and that the time spent pre-teaching is worth it for what the students will get out of the process.

Please see the previous post on selecting authentic reading materials if this is an area which interests you, or the next one on reading tasks.

If you are currently taking CELTA, can I suggest my e-book, The CELTA Teaching Compendium, available from Amazon and Smashwords, containing everything you need to know for CELTA teaching practice.