Prefixes can make a word negative, for example, adding ‘un-’, ‘a-‘ or ‘dis-’. Sometimes single words in English have different meanings, for example, the words ‘drive’, ‘pool’, ‘stroke’, ‘bottom’, ‘fence’, ‘catch’, ‘strike’, ‘match’.In telephone calls, we talk about ‘being put through’ and ‘cutting someone off’.In addition there are lots of idiomatic and phrasal verb collocations such as: More idiomatic phrases such as ‘practise makes perfect’, ‘it’s a high mountain to climb’ or ‘it glides like a knife through butter’ are good for fluency and help with understanding commonly used similes. Phrases such as ‘thanks very much’, ‘don’t mention it’, ‘have a nice day’, ‘sorry about that’, are all useful in conversation. Lexical phrases are good for teachers to include in lessons as another way of improving the natural sound of the students in speaking the language. Examples of lexical collocations are: dripping tap, hopelessly addicted, cook dinner, happy birthday, great expectations. Lexical collocations are made up of combinations of lexical items such as nouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs. For example: ‘on purpose’, ‘by accident’, ‘in case’. Grammatical collocations are when a noun, verb or adjective occur (usually) alongside a preposition. Idioms can be introduced to the ESL classroom through authentic reading materials such as informal text from magazines, low-brow newspapers, letters, comic strips, pop songs, dialogue from radio or television, popular films and soaps. Idioms are common features of every day language and are an important part of advanced language use and a major step towards fluency. IdiomsĪlongside chunks of language and fixed phrases and expressions, teachers should include in their vocabulary lessons these kinds of idioms of the English language. It also requires knowing hidden implications that could be connected with the word. Knowing a word means knowing not only the meaning, but knowing the contexts in which that word is used, the words which are related to it and where to use the word. Teachers need to ask what is it to know a word? There is more to teaching a word than simply translating it or even using it in a sentence as an example. Students can also make up sentences using this technique, matching the beginning of the sentence or phrase from column 1 with the end of the sentence or phrase from column 2. The new words are numbered in column one, and the definitions are mixed up and lettered in column two. Testing comprehension is vital before moving onto new vocabulary. Once the new vocabulary has been taught, a useful way to test if students have understood the meanings of this new vocabulary is to ask them to match new words from one column with definitions from another column. This is called productive knowledge of English. This is because in order to create their own sentences, students need active vocabulary.Īctive vocabulary contains the words a student can understand and manipulate in order to use for their own personal expression. Teaching active vocabulary is important for an advanced student in terms of their own creativity. This is also called receptive knowledge of English. Teaching passive vocabulary is important for comprehension – the issue of understanding another speaker needs the listener to have passive vocabulary, that is, enough knowledge of words used by others to comprehend their meaning. That is, students must vocabulary should consist of English words the learners will be expected to use themselves in original sentences, and those they will merely have to recognise when they hear them or see them written down by others. When thinking about how to teach vocabulary, it is important to remember that learners need to have both active and passive vocabulary knowledge.
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