| Body | Renée Marshall is a Research Assistant at CASLS. Her interests are in bilingualism, bicultural identity, second language acquisition, and language policy and advocacy. She taught French at both the high school and university level. She earned her Master's in Education from UC Santa Barbara in 2011 and her M.A. in Romance Languages from University of Oregon in 2014.
This activity has two goals: to check if students know certain vocabulary words and to help students practice successful use of circumlocution to describe the meaning of the word. This activity should be used after students have been exposed to and have had ample opportunities to practice the assigned vocabulary. This is a way to gauge student vocabulary knowledge and also to help them to practice an invaluable language skill: circumlocution. Circumlocution in language learning is when you talk around the word; you describe it; you try to express the meaning of the word without actually using the word itself. In this way, even when students do not know a particular word, they can still express their ideas through circumlocution.
Objective(s):
- Students will be able to employ circumlocution to get their partner to identify the appropriate vocabulary words.
- Students will be able to decipher the appropriate vocabulary words based on the descriptions given by their partner.
Resources: Check your vocabulary handout
Procedure:
- Have students partner up and decide who is Partner A and who is Partner B. Pass out the Check your vocabulary handout to students, being sure to give Partner A the Partner A handout (top half of handout) and Partner B the Partner B handout (bottom half of handout). Stress that they cannot show each other their handouts!
- It's a good idea to go over the directions (#2 on handout) as a whole class. Model the example given on the handout. You could explain the importance of learning how to use circumlocution, and that this activity will help test their vocabulary and practice their circumlocution skills.
- While students work on the activity, walk around and monitor. Take notes of which words are harder than others for students.
- When students have finished guessing all 4 of Partner A's words, have a few Partner A's share what they said to get their partners to guess the word correctly. This highlights the variety there may have been in describing the words.
- Now have students move to #3 on the handout and switch roles. Partner B now uses circumlocution to describe the vocabulary on their sheet to try to get Partner A to guess the vocabulary words correctly.
- Again, once students have finished guessing all 4 of Partner B's words, have a few Partner B's share what they said to get their partners to guess the word correctly.
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