In this lesson, you will learn what it means to know vocabulary (passive) and use (active) vocabulary.
Evaluate the vocabulary sections of your past test scores. Why do you think the evaluator scored you that way?
Have your student look at their past test scores with you, if applicable. Focus specifically on the vocabulary sections. If this is the student’s first time, you can ask why they chose vocabulary as a necessary step to improving/reaching their goals.
Relation to the GBC: This lesson will specifically target students' abilities to learn and grow basic vocabulary and phrases, and use the right words.
- What do you think having good vocabulary means?
- Why is it important to have broad vocabulary in your workplace? When do you feel it is enough? When do you feel it is lacking?
When you study vocabulary, it’s important to have both passive and active understanding of words. In other words, merely memorizing vocabulary and its meanings is not enough - you need to be able to use it, too.
Discuss the above questions with the students. Good vocabulary doesn’t merely mean knowing the word, but it also means being able to use it flawlessly in sentences, describe it and pronounce it properly. We want to try and get the student from knowing vocabulary passively (i.e., rote memorization) to knowing it actively.
Here’s a blog post for extra reading that you can show your students: Expand your vocabulary.
There are 5 parts to knowing a word:
- Knowing a word means knowing the definition.
- E.g.: ineffective — not achieving what you want to achieve; having no effect.
- Knowing a word means understanding how it is used in a sentence, and how it is not used.
- E.g.:
- Her boss’s management style was ineffective; she had no command of her team. (CORRECT)
- Her day was ineffective. (INCORRECT)
- Knowing a word means knowing its word forms (or family).
- E.g.: ineffective (adjective) → ineffectively (adverb)
- Knowing a word means knowing how to pronounce the word in its various forms.
- Knowing a word means knowing collocations, and expressions that use the word.
This list is in no particular order, but these are some of the things that students will need to know when they say they “know” vocabulary words..
You might also mention (although it will be mentioned in Lesson 4) that knowing what it means in the L1 can be helpful, too.
The point is for students to understand that vocabulary is not merely memorized, but that there are many facets to learning vocabulary.
For extra reading: The 3 aspects of new vocabulary: definition, connotation and collocations.
Choose a word—any word. Do you know:
- the definition?
- the word forms?
- how to pronounce it?
- its collocations?
- expressions that use it? and
- how to use it correctly in a sentence?