Tag: learning

Although vocabulary is one of the most challenging elements for EFL and ESL students to understand, you should master vocabulary as it offers huge benefits in the future. However, the simple truth is that almost all students try to find the equivalent of this unknown English word only in their native language. They do not connect a psychological image of what makes them decide to use the new language. We maintain our mother tongue through the institutions of the word. In other words, we receive emotional images of abstract and concrete words through our perceptions associated with fresh words. In the following guide, I will describe my language teaching adventures by teaching EFL and ESL students.

Give Them Oral Presentation of the New Words

Before my students see the new words, I always say the new words to them several times. The key is to repeat the way to pronounce the new words and allow them to see your mouth, making the sounds of those new words. After that, I ask my students to listen and repeat the word after me. I make sure they pronounce the word correctly. If I don’t have a picture or can’t draw it on the board, I will emphasize its importance.

Give Them Written Presentation of the New Words

After my class has heard and proclaimed the word well enough, I will show it in its written form. Considering that the students see the word on the board, I will repeat it three times or until the pronunciation is correct. If my children are still not sure of the word’s special meaning, I will try to describe it in simpler words. If this is not successful, I will ask a student who knows the meaning of the expression to translate the course in the students’ mother tongue. If no student can do this, I will ask them to look up bilingual dictionaries’ meaning. At this point, all students should look up the expression and its meaning in their notebooks.

Ask Them to Use the New Words With Associations

Explaining the best way to use new words with compounds is the focus of my lesson. How do I do it? Let me give you some examples. Let’s start with the new expression “delicious”, which will be presented to the students. After describing in English that “yummy” means good to eat or delicious, I will ask students to look at all the words or things they know that have to do with “yummy”. When students hear or see the word “yummy”, what exactly do they think or see in their head? I also instruct students to look at different words to improve the list of associations they reproduce from their notebooks.

Ask Them to Test the New Words With Associations

I collected evaluations and exercises to measure how my students have found ways to use new words together with associations. For my favorite exercise or evaluation, students were assigned the new language with the appropriate associations. For example, I could include the new phrases “yummy”, “sour”, “candy” and “vanilla” in bold on one level and have my students relate these words to these institutions by writing the phrases in spaces.

Have Them Make Sentences Using Those New Words

This is the previous step to gain control over the use of the new vocabulary. After my students can use the new vocabulary correctly in their sentences, I let them produce sentences with new words. For example, when creating paragraphs using newly acquired terminology of tasty, sour, and sweet, students should create some sentences using those new words, for example, “The candy is sweet.” “This meat is very tasty.”…

View More Effective Tips for Teaching Vocabulary by Word Associations to ESL Learners