Just loving learning lexis!!

Claire Potter TESOL Madrid 2014

In this practical session we will look at ways of helping students to notice, learn and recycle lexis. Areas of focus include; what there is to know about a word; activities to help students notice and manipulate lexis; ways of conveying meaning; and different ways to record lexis. Participation and a sense of humour important!

a. Define it!

Write down the following ‘in secret’

A place

A person

A free time activity

Something you did yesterday

An adjective + noun

With a partner try to elicit the five things thatyou have written down on your paper – use as manydifferent methods as possible…

b. How did you do it?

Reflect on the knowledge that you had thatallowed you to identify the lexis in the previousactivities – what helped you?

Knowledge of

the meaning of the words of a lexical set of places / people etc

the parts of speech

collocations

the correct pronunciation of the lexis

syntactic features such as affixation, morphemes, etc

shared cultural / contextual knowledge

c. Why could the following words be difficult for students?

  • Sensible, pretend, constipation
  • Impartially, underachievement, unbelievable
  • Take a photo, depend on, unreservedly apologise
  • Fine, light, book
  • Powder my nose, not your best colour,
  • Drink, swig, gulp, sip
  • Hare, steel, brake
  • Clever, far, fun

d. How can we help students to notice and then acquire lexis?

Ensuring that they have to process / interact with / manipulate the lexis in some way

Using engaging / memorable texts / contexts

Developing strategies to deduce meaning in context

Increasing knowledge of lexical systems

Through activities such as dictagloss / other forms of dictation

Through analysing exam activities (PET / FCE) for common lexical fields and lexical chunks / collocations to build up their lexicon

Encouraging students to record lexis in a personally effective way, using word-building and other techniques

Recycling lexis constantly

e. What activities could you do to get students to recognise homophones?

Dominoes – two homophones,

Memory game – either pairs or threes – the third card could have the phonetic script

Wordsearch – the students find the pair

Crosswords – write the definition for their half, the other partner has homophones to also define

Definition game…it’s a person who / place where/ thing which etc

f. An example of how to ‘chunk’ a text so that students can then manipulate the structures – the words in bold are the sentence frames and the words in italics can be changed:

This photo was taken at a friend’s wedding. The man getting married wasone ofagroup of us who spenda lot of our free timefollowing our favourite football team, Sevilla FC. The wedding was booked for September 29th in a castle in Almodovar del Rio in Cordoba. We were all looking forward tothe weddinguntil we heardwhat was happening the same night – Sevillawere playinga match at their stadiumagainst Barcelona, and we were going to miss it! Luckily, one of our friendstook an i-pad to the wedding, so we saw the goals, even though Sevillaeventuallylost2-3!! I think the bride was secretly pleased!!

g. Sentences – first and last words

Divide the class into As and Bs

You dictate a number of sentences (up to six) The As write down the first word of each sentence on the left hand side of their paper; the Bs write down the last word on the right hand side of the paper

They then pair up and try to reconstruct the sentences, which include lexis you want to introduce or revise

e.g.

1. Living in the city has many advantages

2. Employment prospects are often better

3. There are many amenities close at hand

4. You are never short of something to do

5. Despite these things, many people often find city life stressful