TEACHING VOCABULARY TO ADVANCED STUDENTS: A LEXICAL APPROACH

By: Dannae Del Campo Méndez

The teaching of vocabularyAspects of lexis that need to be taken into account

when teaching vocabulary.

Boundaries between conceptual meaning:

• Knowing not only what lexis refer to, but also where the boundaries are that separate it from words of related meaning.

Polysemy:

• Distinguishing between the various meaning of a single word form with several but closely related meanings.

Pronunciation: • Ability to recognise and reproduce items in speech.

Homonymy:

• Distinguishing between the various meanings of a single word form which has several meanings which are NOT closely related.

Homophyny:

• Understanding words that have the same pronunciation but different spellings and meanings (e.g. flour,flower).

Synonymy:

• Distinguishing between the different shades of meaning that synonymous words have.

Affective meaning:

• Distinguishing between the attitudinal and emotional factors.

Style, register, dialect:

• Being able to distinguish between different levels of formality, the effect of different contexts, as well as the differences in geographical variation.

Translation:

• Awareness of certain differences and similarities between the native and the foreign language.

Chunks of language:

• Multi-word verbs, idioms, strong and weak collocations, lexical phrases.

Grammar of vocabulary:

• Learning the rules that enable students to build up diferent forms of the word .

Memory and storage systemsUnderstanding how our memory

works might help us create more effective ways to teach vocabulary.

• Grouping• Asosiating• Placing new

words into a context

• Using imagery, semantic mapping, using keywords.

• Representing sounds in memory.

• Physical response or sensation, using mechanical techniques

• In a structured way

Creating

Mental Linkag

es.

Applying

images and

sounds

Employing

action

Reviewing well

Dealing with meaningGuided discovery

involve asking questions or

offering examples that guide the

students to guess meanings correctly helps them learning

and retaining

Students should star using EFL dictionaries as

early as possible, from Intermediate

upwards.

Using language

A lexical item…

• Is most likely to be learned when a learner feels a personal need to know it, or when is a need to express something to accomplish their own purposes.

Production…

• Will depend on motivation, and this is what teachers should aim at promoting, based on their awareness of students need and preferences.

The Lexical ApproachPrinciples (Lewis

1993 , 1997)

His most important

contribution was to

highlight the importance of vocabulary.

However, he said: “Language

consist not of traditional

grammar and vocabulary, but often of multi-

words prefabricated

chunks”

Apart from identifying

chunks ;it is important to

establish clear ways of

organising and recording

vocabulary (with

collocation tables, mind-maps, word trees, etc…)Lewis also defends the use of “real” or “authentic”

material from the early stages of learning, because “acquisition” is facilitated bu material which is only

partly understood.

Rationale of the lesson :

Choice of material:

Noticing collocations and dealing with the meaning:

Plan a lesson that is based on its main concepts, specially exploring the use of collocations.

We wanted to use autenthic material to expose the students to rich, contextualise, naturally-ocurring language.

For the few words we predict students will not fully understand the meaning, we will ask them to look these up in monolingual dictionaries and notice examples to observ and record other possible collocation of the word.

Group work:

Choice of task:

Working in group help fostering learning independence and specially in vocabulary work, learners can exchange knowledge and asking others to explain unknown items.

We find it vital that students are given the oportunities to use the language in real context .