Task 8. Read the following text ‘How to Put Words to Work’. Be ready to discuss it. Give definitions to the words in bold.

Integrating new knowledge into old

Traditionally, the presentation of new language items would swiftly be followed by the practice of these items. This practice would typically take the form of some of kind of oral repetition, such as a drill. This notion of mechanical practice underlies the popular belief that 'practice makes perfect'. However, simply repeating newly learned words is no guarantee that they will move from the short-term memory store into permanent memory. New knowledge - i.e. new words - needs to be integrated into existing knowledge - i.e. the learners' existing network of word associations, or what we called the mental lexicon. There is a greater likelihood of the word being integrated into this network if many 'deep' decisions have been made about it. In other words, to ensure long-term retention and recall, words need to be 'put to work'. They need to be placed in working memory, and subjected to different operations.

Such operations might include: being taken apart and put back together again, being compared, combined, matched, sorted, visualised and re-shuffled, as well as being repeatedly filed away and recalled (since the more often a word is recalled, the easier recall becomes).

Decision making tasks

There are many different kinds of tasks that teachers can set learners in order to help move words into long-term memory. Some of these tasks will require more brain work than others, roughly arranged in an order from least cognitively demanding to most demanding:

Tasks in which learners make decisions about words can be divided into the following types:

1. Identifying words simply means finding them where they may otherwise be 'hidden', such as in texts.

Give the learners some text and ask them to:

¾ Count the number of times a vocabulary item occurs in the text.

¾ Find other words connected with this vocabulary item in the text.

¾ Find five phrasal verbs in the text.

¾ Find eight comparative adjectives in the text.

¾ Underline all the words ending in -ing in the text.

¾Ask them to read the text, then turn it over, and then ask:

¾ Did the following words occur in the text? and suggest a list of various words to choose from. Then let them look at the text and check if they are right.

Listening out for particular words in a spoken or recorded text is also a form of identification activity.

‘OK, that's Mr Brown. He's wearing a jacket and trousers, no tie, and he's talking to the woman with the long dark hair - she's wearing a black dress. Now Mrs Brown is over there. She's wearing a skirt and a blouse, and she's talking to a tall man with fair hair. And their son, Richard ... yes, there he is, he's over in the corner. He's wearing jeans and a T-shirt - he's the one with very short hair’.

a) List all the clothes items that you hear.

b) Raise your hand when you hear a clothes item.

c) Put these items in the order that you hear them:

blouse tie skirt jeans jacket T-shirt dress trousers

d) Tick the items that you hear:

blouse shoes tie shorts skirt socks jeans jacket hat T-shirt dress trousers suit shirt

e) Listen for clothes words and write them in the correct column:

Mr Brown, Mrs Brown, Richard

Identification is also the process learners apply in tasks in which they have to unscramble anagrams (such as utis, snaje, eti - for suit, jeans, tie), or when they have to search for words in a 'word soup'.

2. Selecting tasks are cognitively more complex than identification tasks, since they involve both recognising words and making choices amongst them. This may take the form of choosing the 'odd one out', as in this task (again, based on the lexical set of clothes):

Choose the odd one out in each group:

1 trousers socks jeans T-shirt

2 blouse skirt tie dress

3 T-shirt suit shorts trainers

Note that with this kind of activity, there is no 'right' answer necessarily. What is important is that learners are able to justify their choice, whatever their answer. It is the cognitive work that counts - not getting the right answer.

Here is another open-ended selection task, with a personalised element:

1 Work in pairs. Choose five words to describe yourself. Use a dictionary if necessary: careful interesting clever cold confident fit funny imaginative intelligent kind lazy nervous optimistic patient pessimistic polite quiet calm rude sad sensitive nice serious tidy thoughtful

2. Think of other words you can use. honest, friendly... Discuss your choice of words with your partner. I think I'm usually optimistic. And I'm always polite! Does he/she agree with you?

3. Think of three people you admire very much. They can be politicians, musicians, sports personalities etc. or people you know personally. Choose the person you admire most and think of three adjectives to describe this person. Then choose the second and third person you admire and think of three more adjectives for each person to explain why.

3. A matching task involves first recognising words and then pairing them with - for example - a visual representation, a translation, a synonym, an antonym, a definition, or a collocate. Pelmanism is a memory game which involves nothing but matching. Word pairs (or picture-word matches) are printed on individual cards which are placed face down in a random distribution. Players take turns to pick up a card and then search for its partner. If they correctly locate the partner (initially by guesswork, but, as the game progresses, by remembering where individual cards are located), they keep the pair, and have another turn. If not, they lay the cards face down where they found them, and the next player has a turn. The player with the most pairs at the end of the game is the winner. Typical pairs might be:

¾ antonyms (tall - short, thick - thin, dark - light, etc.)

¾ British and American equivalents (bill- check, pharmacy - drugstore, lift -elevator, etc.), or

¾ collocations (wide + awake, stark + naked, fast + asleep, etc.)

4. Sorting activities require learners to sort words into different categories. The categories can either be given, or guessed.

Word field: characteristics

Put these adjectives into two groups - positive and negative.

emotional friendly good-humoured outgoing

confident ambitious rude self-centred

offensive kind selfish nice

Here is an activity in which learners (at a fairly advanced level) decide the categories themselves:

Put these words into four groups of three words each. Then, think of a title for each group.

goal net piece club racket shoot board green court hole pitch referee check serve tee move

Now, can you add extra words to each group?

5. Ranking and sequencing activities require learners to put the words into some kind of order. This may involve arranging the words on a cline: for example, adverbs of frequency (always, sometimes, never, occasionally, often, etc). Or learners may be asked to rank items according to preference:

Imagine you have just moved into a completely empty flat. You can afford to buy one piece of furniture a week. Put the following items in the order in which you would buy them:

fridge bed desk dining table sofa wardrobe chair dishwasher bookcase cooker washing machine chest of drawers

Now, compare your list with another student and explain your order. If you were sharing the flat together, would you agree? If not, make a new list that you both agree about.

Ordering items chronologically is another way of getting students to make judgements about words. For example:

Put the following words in the order in which they typically happen in your country:

graduate get married be born get divorced get engaged die retire leave home have children re-marry start school

Production tasks

The decision-making tasks we have been looking at are principally receptive: learners make judgements about words, but don't necessarily produce them.

Tasks that are productive from the outset are those in which the learners are required to incorporate the newly studied words into some kind of speaking or writing activity. These can be classified as being of two main types:

¾ completion - of sentences and texts

¾ creation - of sentences and texts

¾ Here are some example instructions for open and closed gap-fill tasks:

¾ Complete the text by writing an appropriate word in each space:

¾ 'Greta Garbo, the Swedish-born film ___, was born in 1905. She won a scholarship to drama school, where she learned to ___. In 1924 a film director chose her for a ___ in a Swedish film called ..."

¾ Choose the best word from the list to complete each sentence. Use each word once ...

¾ Select words from the list to complete these sentences. Note that there are more words than sentences ...

¾ Choose words from the text you have just read to complete these sentences

¾ Choose the best word to complete each sentence:

When I feel tired, I can't stop __.

a) sneezing

b) yawning

c) coughing

d) weeping

Note that the last example is a multiple choice task. These are very popular with designers of vocabulary tests.

In completion tasks, the context is provided, and it is simply a matter of slotting the right word in.

Sentence and text creation tasks, however, require learners to create the contexts for given words. Here are some typical task instructions:

¾ Use each of these words to make a sentence which clearly shows the meaning of the word.

¾ Choose six words from the list and write a sentence using each one.

¾ Use each of these words to write a true sentence about yourself or someone you know.

¾ Write a short narrative (or dialogue) which includes at least five words from the list.

Tasks such as these lead naturally into speaking activities - either reading aloud or performing dialogues to the class, or comparing and explaining sentences in pairs or small groups. These activities involve many of the processes that serve to promote retention in long-term memory, such as rehearsal, repetition and explanation.

Not all creation activities need start as writing tasks. Here is a speaking task which requires learners to create sentences using pre-selected vocabulary:

¾ Work in pairs. Ask and say how you feel about your town or village.

I love it. It's all right. I can't stand it.

¾ Which of the following adjectives can you use to describe your town or village?

interesting boring annoying depressing frightening marvellous beautiful peaceful noisy lively

¾ Can you explain why?

I find it boring because there's nothing to do in the evenings.

The use of questionnaires is a good way of putting vocabulary to work in the form of question-and-answer exchanges. Many areas of vocabulary lend themselves to some kind of questionnaire or survey. The same vocabulary items in the preceding example could be used as the basis of a questionnaire or survey.

Students can prepare a survey - using these examples as a model:

1. Is your hometown boring or interesting? Why?

2. Do you find big cities: depressing, interesting, lively or noisy? Why? etc.

They then ask each other their prepared questions, and report the results to the class, using full sentences, such as Maria thinks her hometown is interesting because it has a lot of historical monuments.

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 1295