‘Class Scribe’ and other ways of recycling vocabulary

“Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed”

David Wilkins

“Various studies create a range of 5-16 encounters with a word for a student to truly acquire it”

Paul Nation

“We may know a very large number of words with various degrees of vagueness – words which are in the twilight zone between the darkness of entire unfamiliarity and the brightness of complete familiarity”

F. Twadell

Vaughan Jones 1

www.insideout.net

‘Class Scribe’

Recording and recycling vocabulary is a vital part of teaching English. Try instituting the ‘Class Scribe’ idea in your classroom. Students take it in turns to be the class scribe. They are given a blank sheet of paper at the beginning of the class and their role is simply to record any new language that ‘comes up’ during the lesson. This ‘data’ is then collected by the teacher who can use it as a basis for recycling and revision activities. Having a class scribe will:

·  provide a unique record of each lesson

·  help improve classroom dynamics

·  reveal learning styles and difficulties

·  systematize repeated exposure

The following tried and trusted activities can usefully recycle the vocabulary that has been noted down by the class scribe. The activities can be used as lead-ins, warmers or fillers. They require very little or no preparation and can be adapted to cover a wide variety of different lexical areas.

Board bingo

Write down twelve to fifteen words you want to revise on the board. Ask the students to choose five of the words and write them down. When they’ve done that, tell the students that you’re going to read out dictionary definitions of the words in random order and that they should cross out their words if they think they hear the definition. When they’ve crossed out all five words, they shout Bingo! Make sure you keep a record of the word definitions you call out so that you can check the students’ answers.

Odd one out

Think of the vocabulary, pronunciation or grammar point you want to revise. Write five words on the board and ask students which one is the odd one out. The students then explain why. This is usually relates to the meaning of the word so in the following example the odd one out is dog.

pink red dog blue yellow

However, you could have any criteria you like, say, number of syllables. In that case, the odd one out would be yellow. The important thing is that they’re looking at and thinking about the words you want them to revise.

Category dictation

Choose the language you want to review and devise a way of categorising it into two or more categories. Write the category headings on the board and ask the students to copy them. Two simple categories is usually best. Then dictate the words (10–12 maximum) slowly and clearly, and ask the students to write them down in the correct category. For example, say you want to revise jobs. Your categories might be jobs you do inside and jobs you do outside.

Inside / Out

Then dictate the words: e.g. a farmer, an archaeologist, a surgeon, an au pair, a vet, etc. The students write down the words in the correct category. When you’ve dictated 10 or 12 words, ask students to compare their lists.

Scrabble

Choose a lexical set you want to revise. Students work in pairs. They’ll need a piece of paper, preferably graph paper with squares on. Choose a topic, for example, school subjects. Student A writes ‘Across’ words, and Student B writes ‘Down’ words. It’s a good idea to provide the first word across, and make sure that it’s a long one. Student B then adds another school subject down the paper from top to bottom. This word must intersect with the school subject written across the page. Student A then writes another school subject across that intersects with the school subject Student B has written down. Students continue taking it in turns to write in their words.

T
F / R / E / N / C / H
C
H
E / C / O / N / O / M / I / C / S
O / U
L / S
P / O / L / I / T / I / C / S
G / C
Y

Students build up ‘a scrabble board’ until they can’t think of any more school subjects. (You could make it into a game by saying that the last person to write a school subject is a winner.) Note that students must leave one square between each word – this is why it’s better and clearer to use squared paper.

Odd connections

This activity is good for revising any type of vocabulary. It works best if the words are a fairly random selection and not part of a tight lexical set. Choose 12 words you want to revise and write them in a circle (like a clockface) on the board. Students work in pairs. They choose two or more of the words and try to make a sentence with them. The students then read out their sentences and you connect the words they have used on the board. You can correct the grammar as necessary (or you can make it more difficult for the students by only accepting grammatically correct sentences). It doesn’t matter how bizarre the sentences are, the important thing is that students spend time looking at and remembering the vocabulary.

Random Letters

This activity is good for revising any type of vocabulary. Ask the students to call out any seven letters from the alphabet. Write the letters scattered on the board. Then ask the students in pairs to think of a word beginning with each letter on the board. The most obvious criteria is to revise words from a specific lexical set that you have taught recently, e.g. jobs, clothes, food, animals, etc. Alternatively, you could simply ask them for words they’ve noted down in lessons over the past two weeks. Another possibility would be to find the most interesting words they can from the Student Book unit that you’ve just finished. If the lexical set you want them to revise is particularly rich, you could ask the students to think of as many words for each letter as they can in say three minutes: make it into a contest to find the most words.

Five favourites

This activity is good for revising any words learned recently. Students look back through their lesson notes for the last two weeks and select from the words they’ve recorded five words that they think are particularly useful. They compare their list with a partner and together they produce a common list of five words from the combined list of ten. To do this they’ll have to argue for and against words on the combined list until they are both satisfied that they have the most useful five. If you wanted to continue the activity, you could then have each pair join up with another pair as a group of four and repeat the procedure. Depending on the size of your class you might continue until you had established a list of ‘five favourites’ for the whole class. The value of this activity lies in the students looking back through their notes, choosing the words and then arguing for them to be part of the combined list. The whole procedure gives them valuable repeat exposure to words recently learned.

Vaughan Jones 1

www.insideout.net