3 Tips That Will Rock Your ESL Vocabulary Instruction

Language is made up of words and learning new words allows us to understand what people are saying. Therefore, ESL vocabulary instruction is key.

If you ever learned another language, you will know that in the beginning, the sounds and the words that are made up of them really do not make much sense or even stick in your brain. But it is the constant repetition of the same in different contexts that makes your brain discern the meaning and usage.

ESL students, especially in higher grades are at a disadvantage because not only do they have to learn Tier 1 words (common, everyday words such as “desk”, “chair”, “eat”) but also the more specific Tier 2 (“consist”, “pollute”, “negotiate”) and Tier 3 (“photosynthesis”, “thermodynamics”, etc.) words.

This year I have a lot of older newcomers and it has been quite a task working with them and teaching vocabulary. I like teaching words because while explaining them to the students we always learn something new about each other and our cultures.

For example, there are a lot of cognates between English and Portuguese and when I do vocabulary instruction, I always check with my students if a similar word already exists in their language. Quite often, it is only a matter of pronunciation. That makes it much much easier for Latin-based language speakers to learn English words.

On the other hand, I also work with Chinese and Turkish speakers, which means that almost all words (especially with the former language) are new.

Here are a few tips and strategies that I have successfully employed in vocabulary teaching at all levels.

Total Physical Response

Being an ESL teacher (any teacher, really) means that you are willing to go out of your comfort zone and make – as others might see it – a little bit of a fool of yourself. You won’t believe how many times I have demonstrated words with my entire body (not just my hands). It works amazing when you are trying to explain meanings of simpler  words like “jog”, “dream“, “drink” and a bit more intricate ones like “settle”, “contain” and “approve”.  I usually show students until I can see that they understand and then ask them to show me what the word means. They are to say it so they can hear it and demonstrate its meaning with their bodies. Notice, the example words that I gave are verbs, which tend to be easier to show with your body than nouns. Which brings me to the next section.

Pictures

All right, this is probably no news to you, but pictures are an amazing thing in vocabulary teaching world. You can teach all parts of speech with pictures, not just nouns. Google images is a treasury of pictures for almost any word (I do suggest to pick them out or preview them before doing a search in class of minors because you never know what might come up, especially with words that have multiple meanings). Another fun way is to draw pictures on the board yourself, and the lousier the artist you are, the better. I am terrible at drawing things, but when we learn vocabulary, I try to draw the word on the board. Quite often I hear giggling behind my back but I love it because it tells me the students are engaged. When you have drawn enough to ensure that the students understand what you mean, you can ask them to draw their own pictures and compare with the class. This teaches not only the target word but also basic discussion, which usually involves a lot of gestures and additional pictures.

Drawing on background knowledge

Teaching English to students of different proficiency levels in the same classroom is no new concept, especially in schools and districts where the numbers do not allow for separate class periods. Therefore, you may end up with a newcomer, a low intermediate and an upper intermediate students in the same room, possibly at different grade levels and in need to understand different content area vocabulary. Not an easy task for an ESL teacher, but I learned that it is doable.

Here are a few ESL vocabulary instruction tips that I found work:

• For the higher proficiency students, we generate the necessary vocabulary from their social studies, science and/or other class readings. The lists may or may not be individualized, but I have found that taking words from something that has meaning rather than plopping a pre-made list in front of them works better.
• For the newcomers, I have units that we go through in the beginning such as: survival English (polite phrases and questions, personal information), classroom objects, body parts, clothing, food, etc. Therefore, I am the one that determines the vocabulary for them, at least for now.

• Since the higher proficiency students are able to do independent work, they can write their own sentences using the new words (we spend the first day or two working on the definitions).
• At the same time, I work with the newcomers to review their vocabulary and introduce/review new words.
• When the sentences are written and I am finished with the newcomer instruction, we go over the sentences and I include the newcomers by speaking slower and omitting unnecessary words. In addition, I might write words that will continue to be used in my and other classrooms on the board and have them look up a translation on Google Translate.
• This way I have noticed that the higher proficiency students are learning the vocabulary and are able to practice speaking by explaining it in simpler terms and the newcomer students learn not only the Tier 1 words but also are introduced to the more specific vocabulary.  
• Finally, the best part is that the entire class is engaged.

As a final note, check out the 7 steps to vocabulary pre-teaching by Dr. Margarita Calderon, a professor emerita and senior research scientist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education.

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How do you teach vocabulary?

What are some of the tips and tricks you employ? I’d love to hear from you. Share in the comments below!