English Vocabulary Acquisition and Teaching Stages

English Vocabulary Acquisition

How Children Learn Word Meaning

Children are always acquiring and building up their L1. They must find out which things can be packaged together under a label.

Knowing a Word: Types of Knowledge

Knowing a word involves different types of knowledge. The importance is how it is pronounced.

Factors Affecting Vocabulary Learning

• Demonstrability: Can the meaning be easily shown? (e.g., car = transport)
• Similarity: Is it similar to known words? (e.g., equal)
• Brevity: Is it a short or long word?
• Regularity of Form / Learning Load: Does it follow typical patterns? (e.g., bedroom)
• Opportunism: Is the word relevant to the child's immediate situation?
• Centres of Interest: Are words likely to be of relevance to the child's interests?

Stages of Vocabulary Instruction

Stage 1: Understanding Meaning

Understanding and learning the meaning of new words.

Organizing Vocabulary

• Lexical Sets: shop, fruits, rooms in a house
• Rhyming: bat, rat, mat
• Color Sets: a pea, a leaf, an apple
• Grammatical Sets: verbs, prepositions, nouns
• Patterns: play the piano, ride a bike
• Opposites: hot/cold

Techniques to Convey Meaning

Some techniques to introduce new vocabulary and convey meaning are by demonstration:

• Using objects
• Using drawings on the whiteboard
• Using illustrations/pictures
• Using mime
• Pointing
• Touching
• Tasting
• Using technology

Stage 2: Attending to Word Form

This can involve, depending on the age and level of your pupils:

• Listening and repeating
• Listening for specific phonological features
• Looking at and observing the written form
• Noticing grammatical information
• Copying and organizing

Stage 3: Practice, Memorization, and Checking

Activities for practicing, memorizing, and checking vocabulary:

• Classifying/Sorting: Pupils sort words into categories.
• Giving Instructions: Show me a red ruler.
• Picture Dictation: Pupils draw what you say.
• What's Missing: Look at pictures and discover what is missing.
• Kim's Game: Played the same way as above, but objects are used and displayed.
• Word Searchers
• Sequencing: Jumbled pictures.
• Labelling: Pupils label a picture in order to practice.

Stage 4: Consolidation and Extension

Activities for consolidating, recycling, extending, and organizing vocabulary:

• Vocabulary Books: Encourage pupils to create their own vocabulary books.
• Collages: Collect pictures around a particular theme.
• Word Networks/Webs
• Clines or Steps: Degrees of temperatures (e.g., hot, warm).
• Word Stars: Rhyming words.
• Word Boxes: Pupils can make their own vocabulary store.
• Mobiles: Craft activity with a vocabulary learning activity.

Stage 5: Developing Vocabulary Strategies

Strategies for vocabulary learning:

• Linguistic Knowledge: Grammatical clues, links and similarities to L1.
• Textual Clues: Punctuation, use of capitals, speech marks.
• Extralinguistic Knowledge:
  • Visual clues: gestures
  • Audio clues: sounds
  • World knowledge