When it comes to teaching vocabulary to my afternoon students, my school has a set way for us teachers to go about it.
1- Give them a sheet where they practice writing the words. They do this so that the next class they can have a spelling test. Most students, 7 out of the 10 don't even bother memorizing the words and usually score between 2 or 3 on the spelling test. I find this extremely pointless.
2- Give them a worksheet that consists of the words with a space to write their meaning and then another line to write a sentence with that word. We are supposed to give them this worksheet as homework. Again, most students don't complete the worksheet and there are no real consequences to not doing your homework because keeping the students and their parents happy is the golden rule at hagwons.
For the past few months, instead of sending the definitions worksheet home, we started completing it together in class. The first time we did this, we simply looked at the words together and I tried to elicit some form of meaning from them through a general classroom discussion.You can guess what happened. I ended up giving them all the answers. Well that was a giant fail.
The next story, I thought we could use the glossary at the end of the book as a helpful resource for defining the terms. The students really enjoyed racing to find the words in the glossary. They were so active and seemed to really enjoy this activity. After finding the word we would read the definition and some example sentences then I would ask them to rephrase the meaning in their own terms. It was difficult at first because they had never done such a task. I would call it a half fail.
I thought about it some more and this month I refined the task even more. Before the main reading, there is a short story that will incorporate the target language. I started off by making the students read the short story by themselves to get the gist of it. We discussed as a group what everyone had understood from the story. Then we looked at the vocabulary words together. We tried to find their meaning within the context of the story.This was a little rough at first because it was the first time we had looked at vocabulary in this way. We then moved on to the worksheet. I divided the class in two and they raced to find the words in the glossary. Then I gave them a minute or so to read the definition and come up with their own meaning of the word. we compared both answers and decided on a final version of the word. I was surprised how well they did. We did it word by word since they had never done anything like this before.The next class, I paired them up to write sentences together and at the end they shared their answers with the class.
I'm feeling more confident about teaching vocabulary now. I know I still have to improve my method of teaching it but for now I am satisfied with the results of last week compared to a few months ago. In the future I will consider including more follow up activities with the students to ensure that the TLC has been understood by everyone.
1- Give them a sheet where they practice writing the words. They do this so that the next class they can have a spelling test. Most students, 7 out of the 10 don't even bother memorizing the words and usually score between 2 or 3 on the spelling test. I find this extremely pointless.
2- Give them a worksheet that consists of the words with a space to write their meaning and then another line to write a sentence with that word. We are supposed to give them this worksheet as homework. Again, most students don't complete the worksheet and there are no real consequences to not doing your homework because keeping the students and their parents happy is the golden rule at hagwons.
For the past few months, instead of sending the definitions worksheet home, we started completing it together in class. The first time we did this, we simply looked at the words together and I tried to elicit some form of meaning from them through a general classroom discussion.You can guess what happened. I ended up giving them all the answers. Well that was a giant fail.
The next story, I thought we could use the glossary at the end of the book as a helpful resource for defining the terms. The students really enjoyed racing to find the words in the glossary. They were so active and seemed to really enjoy this activity. After finding the word we would read the definition and some example sentences then I would ask them to rephrase the meaning in their own terms. It was difficult at first because they had never done such a task. I would call it a half fail.
I thought about it some more and this month I refined the task even more. Before the main reading, there is a short story that will incorporate the target language. I started off by making the students read the short story by themselves to get the gist of it. We discussed as a group what everyone had understood from the story. Then we looked at the vocabulary words together. We tried to find their meaning within the context of the story.This was a little rough at first because it was the first time we had looked at vocabulary in this way. We then moved on to the worksheet. I divided the class in two and they raced to find the words in the glossary. Then I gave them a minute or so to read the definition and come up with their own meaning of the word. we compared both answers and decided on a final version of the word. I was surprised how well they did. We did it word by word since they had never done anything like this before.The next class, I paired them up to write sentences together and at the end they shared their answers with the class.
I'm feeling more confident about teaching vocabulary now. I know I still have to improve my method of teaching it but for now I am satisfied with the results of last week compared to a few months ago. In the future I will consider including more follow up activities with the students to ensure that the TLC has been understood by everyone.
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