Learning Vocabulary

Learning Vocabulary

Everything you need to know

On the menu ...

• What to learn and how to do it

• Keeping a record

• Using a dictionary

• Managing unfamiliar expressions

Which words?

There are so many !

Poll

On average, how many words do French speakers regularly use?

• 60000

• 6000

• 1600

• 600

La plupart des Français utiliseraient 5000 mots, mais l’essentiel se dit en 600 mots, qui s’avèrent les plus fréquemment utilisés. Ils représenteraient 90 % de

n’importe quel texte français.

On compte 60.000 mots dans le Petit Robert. Un adulte en utilise 3000 dans sa vie de tous les jours. Les lycéens oscillent entre 800 à 1600 mots à l’oral.

Gabizon, C., Lefigaro.fr Etudiant, 18/02/2013.

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In English, many words have more than one definition​

What does 'learn a new word' mean, exactly?

Learning a word is

• Understanding the meaning, the definition

• Identifying the function

• Knowing how to use it grammatically

• Understanding register and connotations

• Saying it with the correct pronunciation

Multiple Choice

Are the following words formal or informal?

a draughtsman / paperwork / apply

• formal

• informal

Learning must include

• memorising phrases, not individual words

• Identifing collocations (i.e. common sense, black and white ... )

• Observing irregular forms, noun plurals and verbs

• Checking how the word is most commonly used

• Practising the stress pattern and precise pronunciation

Multiple Choice

Select the best way to learn new words

• Make a list

• Find the translation

• Make a sentence

• Search the internet

Open Ended

What is special about these words?

data, criteria, scissors ...

Remembering words

• Label objects

• Draw diagrams and Illustrations

• Use mnemonics

• Sort expressions by themes

• Identify linguistic categories

Museum artefact                                                             

Open Ended

You have got 2 minutes to find

✔ 2 irregular verbs,

✔ a word which is only used in the plural,

✔ a word which is different in its plural form,

✔ 2 uncountable nouns

✔ a word with a silent letter

Your vocabulary notebook

• Organise words into charts, tables and diagrams

• Add information about word categories, synonyms, antonyms

• Record any uses of idioms and collocations

Mapping and connecting ideas and concepts

what can you add to this diagram to help you learn the words?

Building vocabulary tables

Which theme is being used to group these words together?

Multiple Choice

Which theme do these words belong to?

engineer

code

experiment

discovery

problem solving

• science

• friendship

• fine art

Multiple Select

Which theme do these words belong to?

hanging out with sb.

be close to sb.

count on sb.

casual acquaintance

• science

• friendship

• fine art

Word categories

Develop your vocabulary by adding words from other categories

Using a dictionary

• Online : Larousse / Cambridge / Word Reference   ––> Visual Thesaurus
  

• phonetic diagrams
  

• Stress patterns

• Use? Transitive? Intransitive?
  Register = formal? slang? archaic?
  

Unfamiliar words

• Don't panic

• Context, co-text and personal experience

• Find nearest known words

• Similarities / transparency

• Structure and syntax

• Prefix, affix, suffix? Latin-based root?

• Learn phrases for explaining unknown words

(n) thingummyjig (ˈθɪŋəmɪˌdʒɪɡ)

• It’s probably something ( a bit ) like ( a chair ) ...

• It’s got to be something you use for + V_ing ...

• It’s a kind of ( bird / musical instrument / building ) ...
  

Fill in the Blanks

Draw

Draw a circle around the wavelength

​Tell your classmates what you found most interesting about this lesson

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