What are the most useful and effective approaches in teaching vocabulary through stories in order to help learners to enrich their vocabulary?
Dear Salam, I was not sure which educational level you are interested in and I unfortunately do not have information about stories, but I embed two links to tools that may build students' vocabulary. Good luck!
http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2016/12/10-sites-and-apps-for-vocabulary-and.html#.WRCoFdKGPIU
http://teachthought.com/pedagogy/literacy/21-digital-tools-build-vocabulary/
Thank you very much Dr.Ungerer and Dr. Mustafa for your reply and the useful resources.
Dear Salam,
I couldn't believe it when I saw this project! This precisely what I have been advocating for the past 3 years. I have been teaching English as a Foreign Language to hotel staff in Mexico. The approach I took was to write my own short stories that contained the vocabulary and grammar development that I hoped to impart.
One important point that you left out is training in pronunciation. This is especially important for English.
As such, I also recorded my reading of the short story text.
In class, each short story would span several classes. At the first class, the students would be given the written text and a copy of the recording. They would be asked, as homework, to listen and read, say, 1/3 of the short story. They would be asked to repeat this, say three times.
The following class, on a rotational basis, each of them would be asked to read one sentence aloud. I would be listening for pronunciation problems. ... I could go on and on ...
I will look to see if I can give you more material that I had developed.
Suffice it to say that the results were astounding! This approach greatly accelerated their progress, introduced idioms in a natural way, gave them opportunities to guess at meanings from context, ...
Learning through the use of short stories is what our brains have been accustomed to for millennia. Just consider primitive tribal life when an elder would be teaching about, for example, which plants are edible and which are poisonous. The elder would not be didactic; instead he would tell a story around the campfire about the adventures and misadventures of characters who learned by direct experience about the various plants. The young pupils would then remember the thread of the story, and thereby remember which plants could be eaten and which were to be avoided.
Excellent answers colleagues, thank you so much. I completely gained knowledge and learning technique especially post of Dr. Mustafa.
Regards, Emad
Dear Sir
During my modest experience in teaching English as a foreign language, it is worth mentioning that using brainstorming technique is one of the best ways of teaching vocabulary specifically before beginning with the subject then one can use the meaning of words in context. It will be more memorable than memorizing lists of words with their meanings.
Liqaa
Dear Colleague,
I am just mechanical engineer and not specialist in English teaching, but I strongly recommended using pure practical lectures like visiting museums, factories, ..etc to create a new thinking style,it may be called image brain printing method, this simple model helps student to keep vocabularies as images in their brains. Right?
Emad
Dear Antonio,
I liked your approach that you used by writing your own short stories that contained the vocabulary and grammar development that you hoped to impart. I totally agree with you for what you mentioned in the last paragraph of your reply. I hope to get a copy of your research paper of your wonderful project as well as some of the material that you developed.
Salam
Dear Liqaa,
Thank you very much for sharing us the results of your experience. Yes, you are right, that brainstorming is one of the successful ways in teaching vocabulary and as Nagy,(1988) mentioned that it can be utilized to enrich the other learning skills as well.
Best,
Salam
When I taught English a number of years ago to Level 3 university students, I asked them to create their vocabulary bank. Students were asked to note down two English words they came across each day. They would then be asked to present their understanding and research of these new words in the class from time to time. Some students found this technique was very useful. The following are some examples of words from the students.
- Narcissism
- Hegemony
- Symposium
- Autocrat
- Nostalgia
- Pinnacle
- Hypocrisy
You are completely right Mr. Feng Su. The same technique was used with me when I was in the school which enabled me later to be excellent in English. Thanks for sharing your wonderful experience
The question includes the phrase "through stories". Then, my answer would be to make students learn the stories by heart and tell it in the class. Their telling is not necessarily be a complete recitation of the text, but reciting and speaking the stories would help memorize the new words they learned.
Good morning Salam Nahwi:
Role play is an amazing way to enrich a student's vocabulary and it is a fun way to do so.
I have tried this approach with 98% success rate.
Hope this helps.
Guillermo
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