vocabulary teaching

Memorising lexis

• Use alternative ways of recoding lexis

• See Scrivener, 2011:  200-205

Recalling and using lexis

• Revisiting lexical item pages
• Redesigning your pages
• Using via various exercising?

gloves /disgusting /swimming /café /often/
chase/frightened/crossroads/window sill/ 
exploitation/Hope/put up with/
Stapler/put your foot down/contact lens/
reduction

Alternative techniques:

• gloves – Mime putting them on.
• disgusting – Mime (e.g. smelling old food) and make a 

facial expression.

• swimming – Translate it.
• café – Draw a quick sketch on the board or show a 

flashcard or picture in a book.

• often – Draw a line. Mark never at one end and always

at the other. Mark points along it: usually, rarely, etc.

• chase: Get two or three students to act it out;
• frightened: Tell a personal anecdote.
• crossroads: Build a model with Cuisenaire rods or toy 

construction bricks.

• window sill: Point to the object. 
• exploitation: Explain the meaning with examples.
• hope: Read out the dictionary definition.
• put up with: Tell a short story that includes it.
• stapler: bring one into class to show them.
• put your foot down: Act out a short conversation.
• contact lens: Students who know explain to those 

who don´t.

• reduction: Draw a diagram or graph.
(Some of the ideas – time-consuming, but may be 
valid if they are generative.)           Scrivener, 2011

Implications for teaching

• Learners (Ls) need tasks and strategies to help 

them organize their mental lexicon by building 
networks of associations

• Teachers need to accept that the learning of new 

words involves a period of time

• Ls need to wean themselves off a reliance on 

direct translation from their MT

• Words need to be presented in their typical 

context, so that the Ls can feel their meaning, 
register, collocation, syntactic environment