Unit 1 Friendship（I）

the teacher should create activities and tasks (to be done both in and outside class) to help students to build their vocabulary and develop strategies to learn the vocabulary on their own. students experiment and evaluate and then decide which to adopt or reject since strategies are not intended to be prescriptive.

iii. practical activities

here is a selection of practical activities that direct learners towards using strategies of vocabulary learning.

1. the useful alphabet (self-initiated independent learning)

each student gets a letter and has to find 5, 10 or 15 words he or she thinks would be useful for him or her. he or she then report to the class, perhaps as a mingle activity, using word cards (on one side they write the letter, on the other the information on the word - spelling, pronunciation, definition).

2. word bag (formal practice)

this is to get your students to write down new words they hear in class.

at the beginning of the term/course, divide students into groups of about 5 and give each group a number (e.g. 1-6). at the beginning of each class, give each group about 10 cards on which they write the number of their group and the new words they hear in class. at the end of each class, they put their cards into the “word bag” and every 2 weeks you check whether they still know those words and which group has the most cards. in the end there are two winners: the group that has the most cards, and the one that knows more words.

3. especially for you (functional practice)

the teacher prepares a list of words. each student gets one word, which is prepared especially for him or her. the trick is that each student gets a word whose initial letter is the same as the initial of the student’s first name, e.g. linda gets listless. each student must look it up in the dictionary during the class and after a few minutes report to the class. e.g. “my name is linda and i’m listless. that means that i am ... (definition)...”. for homework students can do the same using their surname.

4. word tour (memorizing)

instructions for your students: think of a town or city you know well. imagine that you are organizing a sightseeing tour. think of 5 places you would include on your tour and write down the order in which the tourists would visit them. learn your tour off by heart so that you can picture it in your mind. whenever you have 5 new english words to learn, imagine these words are the tourists on your tour and picture the words in the places on your tour like this.