View Content #18583

Renée Marshall is a Research Assistant at CASLS. Her interests are in bilingualism, bicultural identity, second language acquisition, and language policy and advocacy. She has taught French at both the high school and university level. She earned her Master’s in Education from UC Santa Barbara in 2011.

Both size and depth of vocabulary are essential components of language acquisition. Size refers to the number of words learners can use and depth refers to how familiar a learner is with the complex uses of a word. The goal of this activity is to help language learners expand their vocabulary within a particular domain. For my example, I have chosen the topic of job-hunting, but this activity can be adapted for varying specific purposes.

Objective: Students will be able to identify high frequency and useful vocabulary for job-hunting in the target language.

Resources:

• Job-hunting Vocabulary handout
• Helpful Job-hunting Websites handout

Procedure:

1. Have students brainstorm with a partner about what they already know about job-hunting in general in their home culture and/or the target culture. Elicit from students the different steps people go through when searching for a job (job-hunting, applying, interviewing, etc.). Where do people go to search for jobs (newspapers, online websites)? What vocabulary do the students think they will need to know in order to search for a job in the target language? This is also a good time to point out any important cultural differences when job-hunting in the target culture.

2. Pass out the Job-hunting Vocabulary handout to all students. Have students complete #1 either alone or with a partner. Circulate and offer any help/commentary as needed. Review Activity #1 as a class, ensuring comprehension of vocabulary words and highlighting any relevant cultural information or additional vocabulary as needed.

3. Have students move to #2 on the handout. They will complete #2 on their own. Note that students will most likely need to use a dictionary (online or hardcopy) as well as guidance from the teacher in order to find the vocabulary they need for their specific job interests. The vocabulary words on the Job-hunting Vocabulary handout are mainly nouns, but there may be specific verbs that students will need, particularly for the job duties section (such as: answer, provide, read, write, handle, file, etc.)

4. Once #2 on the handout is finished, have students do a real job search (#3-#5 on handout). The teacher will need to provide students with, or point them in the direction of, resources for job-hunting in the target language, such as newspaper help-wanted ads or online resources like Monster.com or craigslist.org (see the helpful job-hunting websites handout.

Note: You can give students the freedom to search websites and newspapers for job postings on their own, or you can structure the activity more by selecting job postings yourself and providing only the selected job postings to students. With either variation, it is important for the job postings to be authentic postings in the target language.