Page 123 - Teaching English at Primary Level: From Theory into the Classroom

Vocabulary Focus

memberscanbeaddedasnewconceptsorobjectsarecreatedordiscovered.
The others (modal and auxiliary verbs, articles and prepositions) are function
words and are also termed closed-class words as their number is generally
fixed within a lexicon (Diaz & McCarthy, 2009). They signal the relationships
that words have to one another. In other words, we could say they are the
glue that holds sentences together.
Content words are usually stored in networks, they can be talked about
and their meaning can be explained or shown with pictures or flashcards.
They can be learnt in a more planned and explicit way. In contrast, function
words are learnt incidentally, through continued use in different contexts.
Function word are thus best taught in activities in which vocabulary and
grammar are contextualised and which enable learners to notice the syntac-
tic roles of words.

Using Flashcards
Flashcards are a common learning resource in the FL classroom. They are
used by the teacher to introduce the meaning of new words, to revise vocab-
ulary, practice pronunciation, as a warm-up activity etc. They can be used in
several different ways by the teacher, either in teacher-fronted activities or
in group tasks. Carol Read has proposed a number of ideas for using flash-
cards, from simple activities in which the teacher ‘flashes’ the cards quickly
at the pupils and asks them to guess what is on the card to more organised
group activities. An example of such activity is a game in which pupils are
divided into groups and are given instructions to go to the flashcards with
animal pictures hanging on the walls around the classroom: Group A walk to
the monkey. Group B jump to the giraffe., etc.

Reflection Point
1. Imagine you have to remember a list of new words in Norwegian (kanin,
(rabbit), ekorn (squirrel), spise (eat), eple (apple), søvn (sleep), pinnsvin
(hedgehog), øyne (eyes), frukt (fruit), nese (nose). How would you go about
it? What strategies would you use?
2. Discuss the mistakes in these two sentences, the first contains a grammar,
the second a vocabulary mistake: (1) I’m liking cake.* (2) Can I borrow your
cadger?* Which of the two examples is easier to understand? What does
this tell you about the role of vocabulary and grammar in understanding
utterances?
3. Watch Carol Read giving tips on how to use flashcards in an English class-
room with YLs and create your own bank of flashcards using her ideas.

123