Observation Report #3: Instruction-giving skills

Classroom Observation 3

The ability of teaching vocabulary in the language classroom

It is a hard job to find interesting activities to introduce vocabulary items in the language classroom. Certainly, the teacher's job is to select appropriate material in order to carry out with it. Books in general suggests a number of techniques or proceddures where the teacher can find how to deal with vocabulary.

As regards my own teaching experience I should say that I've been looking for different strategies to introduce vocabulary to my students and I have selected a variety of activities from the book and from others that allows the learners to acquire lexical sets sometimes difficult to understand. Sometimes the course book is no enough so it is necessary to look for other proccedures as regards vocabulary. The book I am working with my students this year is called Adventures Elementary, Oxford University . This book suggests differents techniques to deal with vocabulary. The use of pictures at the beginning of each unit give the learners the opportunity to connect them with their own reality, Then the different sections also shows drawings to show actions or phrases that the learners will apply through

different activities. Decoding messages through symbols is another activity of showing how this book introduces vocabulary: The learners by looking at a symbol that represents different letters decode a word hidden. Matching activities is also another activity that students will develop by using this coursebook. Last but not least, a wide variety of completion exercises such as oguefill in the blanks, use the words in the box to complete a text or mini dialogues, or choose the correct word is what this book offers.

Naturally, this is not enough when you present new vocabulary lexical sets through diagrams or mind maps is also useful to the learners because it allows them to develop their

own knowledge. When recycling new vocabulary presented the use of crosswords and different sources from different books is also relevant in the language classroom: Students need to be exposed to language 2 as many times as posible and the idea of giving them different effective strategies and variety of methods that will help the learners to cope with words, in this case the teacher's job is to encourage students in using them and to introduce some of them through teaching.

Originally posted on July 10, 2008

Sitting in on lessons: report #2

Here's my second report on a lesson I've sat on:
Lesson Observation2.2009

Sitting in on lessons: report #1

Here's my first report after observing a lesson:
Lessonobservation1.2009Doc1