View Content #1982
| Contentid | 1982 |
|---|---|
| Content Type | 1 |
| Title | Pre-teach vocabulary or not |
| Body | Question under discussion: Is it better to teach new vocabulary items before a presentation (e.g., a listening segment, a reading, etc.), or should we allow the students to try to determine the meaning of the new words in context as they are presented? For many years, I went along with a sort of grammar-translation approach of going over long vocabulary lists before a presentation. My students did not understand the material presented particularly well, but we struggled through the material, and we all assumed it was the best and only way we could approach vocabulary learning. In recent years, I have refused to pre-teach vocabulary, expecting the students to understand the new terms in context. With this approach, the students seem to understand the aural or written presentations just about as well as they did when I pre-taught the vocabulary. In effect, my observation is that it doesn't seem to make any difference whether or not vocabulary is presented first or in context. Some students seem to like the idea of singling out vocabulary items, making it easier for them to study and memorize them for tests. The problem that I have with presenting vocabulary prior to a presentation is that it is just not conducive to good language learning strategies. Students who learn to deal with new lexical items as they come up and who learn to make guesses and face the frustration of not knowing exactly what a new term means will be the ones who eventually do well in English, or at least better than the students who are presented vocabulary lists prior to hearing or seeing them in their context. Nevertheless, in spite of my misgivings about pre-teaching vocabulary lists, I have to admit that I occasionally do offer my students the meaning of a particularly difficult vocabulary item before a presentation. Recently, the terms YUPPIE and DINK came up in a reading which did not offer a clear explanation of these terms, so I did in fact explain them before the reading: YUPPIE - young urban professional; DINK - double income, no kids. The result was that we had a very interesting discussion on big city life, and my students seemed to profit from my pre-explanation of the two acronyms. Would it have been better if I had let them try to figure out the meaning of the acronyms by themselves? Maybe. But since the results of my lesson were very positive, I tend to think I was right in offering the explation of these two modern acronyms in advance. In short, I think that whether or not you present vocabulary first depends on a number of different factors not the least being the students that you are working with but -- perhaps most important -- the nature of the material. Sutherland, K. Pre-teach vocabulary or not? Teachers of English to speakers of other languages electronic list. TESL-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (8 Aug. 2004). |
| Source | TESL-L listserv |
| Inputdate | 2004-09-02 12:40:00 |
| Lastmodifieddate | 2004-09-02 12:40:00 |
| Expdate | Not set |
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| Active | 1 |
| Emailed | 1 |
| Isarchived | 1 |
