TECHNIQUES OF PRESENTING VOCABULARY

                            AND

VOCABULARY EXPANSION TECHNIQUES

INTRODUCTION:

“Without Vocabulary Nothing Can Be Conveyed
Without Grammar Very     Little Can Be Conveyed”            
                                 - David Wilkims

The English Language is Very Rich in it’s Vocabulary. It is so because it has borrowed words from many languages. It is interesting to know that “word” in english is “Ved” in Sanscrit, “waurd” in Gothic, “wort” in German and  verbum in Latin.

     A Person’s Vocabulary is Set of Words With in a Language that are Familiar to that Person.A vocabulary usually develops with age and serves as a useful and fundumental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge.

   In this paper we are going to look at english vocabulary studies in terms of ‘lexis’, ‘morphology’, and ‘semantics’ or broadly speaking ‘Lexicology’. This lexical level of language studies is different from Grammar,but it is closely related to other levels of language studies.

MATTER:

Vocabulary is commonly defined As   “ All the
Words known and used by a particular person”.

TYPES OF VOCABULARY:

We know that there are four types of vocabulary included in this session.It is the common factors or most important factors of classification of vocabulary.It is also listed below……..

There are four types of  Vocabulary

Ø Listening vocabulary

Ø Speaking vocabulary

Ø Reading vocabulary

Ø Writing vocabulary

Reading Vocabulary as we know that a literate person’s Reading Vocabulary is all the Words He or She can Recognize when Reading. This is generally the largest type of Vocabulary

In the case of Listening Vocabulary ,a person’s listening Vocabulary is all the Words He or She can Recognize when Listening to Speech people may still understand Words they were not exposed to before using cues such as  Tone, Gestures in the context of communication.

A person’s Speaking Vocabulary is all the Words He or She  uses in Speech .it is likely to be a subset of the Listening Vocabulary.

Words are used in various forms of Writing from to informal .Many  Written  words do not commonly appear in Speech. Writers generally use a limited set of Words  when Communicating  for example……

§  .He is  unlikely to use  technical vocabulary relating to a subject in which He has no Knowledge or interest.

§  .If there are a number of Synonyms, a writer will have his own preferance as  to as to which of them to use.

PRODUCTIVE AND RECEPTIVE VOCABULARY:

   Vocabulary can be classified as  Receptive & Productive  Vocabulary

Words that are generally understood  when heard or read or seen constitute a person’s Receptive  Vocabulary. Means words we understand  when others use it.It is also known as Receive Vocabulary.Example A  Young child may not yet be able to speak, Write, or Sign , He or she may be able to follow simple commands &appear to understand a good portion of language which they exposed .in this case of child’s Receptive Vocabulary is likely ten’s  ,if not hundreds of words but his or her active vocabulary is zero. When the child learn to speak or sign the vocabulary begins to increase.It is possible for the productive vocabulary to be larger than the Receptive vocabulary.Productive vocabulary is known as Achieve vocabulary.It helps to understand how to pronouns ,or  write a word has been used to correctly or accurately reflect the intended message of the utterance.

WORD FORMATION:

In linguistics , word formation is the creation of new words.Word formation is sometimes contrasted with semantic changes, which is the change in a single word meaning.

TYPES  OF WORD FORMATION

v Morphological word formation

There are two sub catogaries; words created by deviation and words created by conversion.

v Derivation (Linguistics)

Derivation is the process of  forming new  words from existing  ones  by adding  Affixes to them . Like Shamelessness in cases in which there is a one –two –one correspondence between affixes and syntactical catogaries

v Conversion.(Word formation)

Also known as zero-affixation ,conversion involving forming a new word from an existing identical one.Doubt,turn, release are used as nouns as well as verbs.

v Blending (Blend word)

 A blend is a word  formed by a joining parts of two or more older words . example ‘smog, which comes from ‘smoke’ and ‘fog’ brunch which comes from ‘break fast’ and ‘lunch.

Ø Clipping ; (sub category of blending)

Also known as ‘truncation’ or shortening ’, clipping is the process which consist of the word reduce of the word to one of its parts example fax (facsimile)flu (influence)  Bot  (robot)

Ø Composition (compounding)

By joining two ore more  words a compound word is formed compounding take place between any two ore more of the word clauses namely nouns , verbs,  adverbs, adjectives. Example , words ;noun+ noun ,noun +verb  ,  compound words ; headache , sunrise.

               As we know that there are many techniques for presenting  vocabulary  infront of the students. Presentation of vocabulary can be done by using reacia,  pictures,name,action ation  and gestures, contrast ,enumeration,explanation or translation. The  presentation of different techniques made the  students much  interested to studies at all. The techniques of presenting realia refers to the use of real objects in the class room. These objects make the meaning  of the word clear.(eg,an Apple, A Pencil, A ball etc..) the teacher may also use classroom environment; a desk a chair , a board. This approach is widely used  with begginer  classes.

                  The techniques of using pictures can be a very useful tool in language teaching ,sence it is used in different ways there are pictures black board drawings, wall pictures, charts, photos from magazines etc…

                             Mime action and gestures techniques are useful for the explanation of actions and  grammar itemes.such concepts as jumping, running or the words from ,in,under etc….are items easy to through performing those actions.

                                Another techniques is interest,it usually shows the similarities and the differences between persones ideas, or thing.when using interest we can ask learners to fined antonymo,or synonyms of words. This teachniques is best used with the learners who already have some vocabulary knowledge.

In the ‘ENUMERATION’ Technique which was described by ‘CAROLINE BRANDT’. Words can be explained  by  ‘ENUMERATING’  or Listing various items.

Example ;VEGETABLES –Potatoes –carrot –cucumber-

                   CLOTHES- BOOTS- JACKET- JEANS.

   she also describe the EXPLANATION Technique.

CLASSROOM TECHNIQUES:

v USING OBJECTS

q  Labels: pasting labels on objects

q Magazine pictures that illustrate words in  Dialogue ,   black board sketches  etc….

q  Props: objects that can be   shown in the class

q Classroom Objects:  calender &  clocks

q  Slides: for   conveying the cultural differences of ordinary words.

               HOUSE IN A VILLAGE

                IN A CLASSROOM

                 IN GNGLAND       (these dwelling places are different in different geographical regions and climates.)

v USING GESTURES& SYMBOLS

v Descriptive objectives:  tall, thin ,happy, dumb, lame.

v Prepositions of place on, in, over, into, under.

v Active verbs :go, jump, throw,

v Symbols for Morning &Noon

v USING KNOWN VOCABULARY

§  Synonyms: probe 0  investigate

The same ideas expressed by two or more different words or phrases &one of these may be familiar to the Reader.

§  Antonyms

§   Synonyms &  Antonyms in sentence contexts.

   Ravana was a cruel man

Ashok was a kind &Noble man.

v USING WORD CATOGARIES

Names of catogaries can be taught verbally if students known some names of items that belong to a particular  catogary.

STATIONARY-pen, pencil, ink, paper

COSMETICS- cream, oil,  powder

FURNITURE-  table,  chair,  sofa.

q  A number of selected words can be introduced under a particular catogary

     A FARM- farm, Farmer, plough, harvest,  Nest,  Sow,  Reap

     MEALS (FOOD)-  Breakfast,  Lunch,  Supper .

DEFINITIONS&  PARAPHRASES

§  PARASITE: Animal or plant living on or in another and getting it’s food from it.

v USING MOTHER TONGUE

 Direct use of mother tongue

We have mentioned already that the prime consideration for the teacher must be to provide as much practice in the use of the target language as possible:The use of mother tongue in teaching new words is the best way to provide this.A lot of practice time will be wasted in avoiding mother tongue because it is of more importance for pupils to practice using the new words in different contexts.Then these words can be assimilated easily and are available for active use.

v VERBAL CONTEXT

Verbal context refers to the text or speech surrounding an expansion (word,sentence or speech).

Example-  EXPENSIVE-A cotton shirt  costs fifteen rupees, a silk shirt costs fifty  rupees.  Here  cotton shirt is cheaper but the silk shirt is expensive.

Glass bangles are cheaper but gold bangles are expensive.

v FINDING MEANINGS FROM CONTEXT

This is guess the meanings from the context.The most common way of finding meaning from the context is by inference.

v EXPERIENCE/ FAMILIARITY

        Means familiarity to the words.    

 Take the word ‘OBE’ Let us say , that students have never heard this word before, look at these sentances

q He used to be    ‘OBE ‘ player in the town.

q He never liked to play the clarinet After, he started playing the ‘OBE’.

     From these  Sentence  we can guess that the meaning of OBE  can be either a game or musical instrument. the second sentence makes the meaning of ‘OBE’  to be only a  musical instrument.

v SEMANTIC GROUPING

 The presentation by semantic grouping enables the learner to master vocabulary better than the presentation of individual items.Association of words by their meaning in vocabulary learning is an important factor.Words are easily learnt if they are organised into semantic grouping.When we learn our language we associate words and sentances with thought, ideas, actions and events. The best strategy for vocabulary teaching is to present words in a semantically organised group. Eg; shore,ocean island.

VOCABULARY EXPANSION TECHNIQUES:

There are three ways  in which Vocabulary is built to relation with vocabulary.

Wide reading is recommended as the best single way of increasing one’s vocabulary.Direct vocabulary instruction means selecting appropriate words to be taught and, then teaching association of meaning by various techniques- the direct approach is one in which lists of words containing words are studied deliberately for development of word power.The best illustration for this is the word power exercises that appear in the readers digest.Incidental instruction to build combination of wide reading and direct instruction.

        Reading vocabulary becomes permanent vocabulary only if it is trasferred to writing, speaking and thinking vocabularies.students ‘attention’ can be diverted to notice the author’s choice of words for accuracy of meaning and also to the power of words in appealing to the various sense.

    Learning at a lower level encode the words in memory on the basis of acoustic and orthographic similarities rather than by association of meaning.But learners of a higher level appear to encide vocabulary in memory primarily on the basis of meaning. Learners should be encouraged to build their own list of technical words. The study of multiple meaning is rewarding and teachers should encourage the students to use the same word for several  things. A word’s meaning depends on it’s context because isolated words mean diferent things for diferent individuals.

EASY WAYS TO IMPROVE AND EXPAND VOCABULARY:

v READ, READ &READ

    Read especially Novels &Literary works

v KEEP A DICTIONARY

    Use whatever versions prefer in print , software, or online.When uncover a new word, look it up in the dictionary to get both it’s pronunciation and it’s meaning.Next to go the treasures and find similar words and phrases and their opposites (synonyms and antonyms)

v LEARN A WORD A DAY

Using a word a- day calender or wedsite or developing learners own list of words to learn-  is a great technique many people use to learn new words.

v PLAY SOME GAMES

    Word games that challenge &help to discover new meanings &new words are a great and fun tool in the quest expanding vocabulary, examples includes..

v Crossword puzzle

v Word jumble

v ENGAGE IN CONVERSATION

    Simple talking  with other people can help to learn anddiscover new words.As with reading ,once we hear a new word, remember to jot it down so that we can study  it later and then slowly add the new word to vocabulary.

v USE FLASH CARDS

Use flash cards to expand vocabulary.

v RECOLLECTION

v A picture showing a number of objects or a tray  containing a number of objects say twenty is shiwn to the students for a limited time, say one minute and the picture or tray is withdrawn or covered.

v SYNONYMS AND ANTONYM CARDS

In this game  cards with two words which are synonyms  and cards with two words which are antonyms are prepared. The player looking at a card speaks one word, the other players are to give it’s synonyms /antonym as the case may be.

CONCLUSION:

In conclusion teaching vocabulary and expansion of vocabulary  are important. As we know that the presentation techniques are the best way to understanding vocabulary.In teaching vocabulary it is important to implimnt appropriate techniques and teaching aids.The teacher is responsible for  choosing best techniques for  students.Several teaching techniques includes the use of relia or pictures, mime , action and gesture techniques , the enumeration technique, interaction with words  , the traslation techniques.

                                                         Expanding vocabulary is achievable.It can improve our communication skills and develop reading and writing ability. It does not matter at what stage of our carer , education and personal growth.