Teaching English, How To.... Essential Ideas 12

Language investigations I: An important part of language study in the early 1970s, now almost forgotten in the revival of the basics in which language study means grammar. The idea was to gather data about language, analyze the data and draw conclusions about language. Example: cut maps of the U.S. into sections. Students look at place names on the map and jot down any that are interesting. In groups, students organize the place names according to probable origins. They then draw generalizations about how Americans named their towns and cities. p. 443.

Language investigations II: Students ask among themselves, teachers and relatives why they were named (first name) as they were. For example, one teacher’s name came from a disagreement between her parents, her mother’s wanting to name her “Gloria” and her father’s wanting to name her “Rita.” They finally agreed on “Glorita,” a good example of the process of putting two words together, as in “smoke” and “fog” = “smog.” Such words are called “portmanteau” words after a kind of suitcase. Another example of a portmanteau word is “chortle” from “chuckle” and “snort.” p. 447.

A complete vocabulary program I: Pre-teaching important vocabulary before students read their assignments. Purpose is to alert students to the presence of the words, which they might not see because they don’t know the meanings of the words. Students would increase their vocabularies exponentially if all teachers in all subjects in all grades pre-taught the important words in reading assignments. p. 452.

A complete vocabulary program II: A second approach to developing vocabulary would be to use Norman Lewis’s Word Power Made Easy as a class text. Lewis bases his vocabulary development program on prefixes, roots and suffixes, mainly roots. For example, he introduces the Latin root “ego meaning “I” or “self” and then adds the related words, “alter ego,” “egotist,” “egoist,” “egomaniac,” “egocentric” and the word “ego” itself. Students remember the words because all of them are based on “ego” meaning “I” or “self.” However, his frequent tests are short, interesting and also help students remember the words they have learned. Students who finish this text will increase their vocabularies by thousands of words. All of my students enjoyed this approach to vocabulary development. p. 453.

A complete vocabulary program III: Students should record unfamiliar words on index cards when reading on their own. They should limit the meanings to as few words as possible. The fewer the words in the meaning, the better they will remember the words and meaning. Students will find many valuable words if they read a news magazine each week. Reviewing the words once a week and sorting them into a “known” pile and “not sure” pile will help them to remember the words. p. 464.

A vocabulary development warning: While I rarely say that any method is wrong, I am extremely skeptical of memorizing words and meanings for a Friday test. And NEVER, NEVER have students write a composition, using every word in a vocabulary list in order. Before you assign that exercise, do it yourself.

Vocabulary and the SAT. Time was, back in the 1970s and 1980s, when the SAT was an “aptitude” test, the Verbal Section of the SAT consisted almost completely of vocabulary. Three of the four tests in the Verbal Section were vocabulary tests. The antonym test was supposed to be the only test of the extent of a student’s vocabulary. Students either knew the words or they didn’t. The analogies were supposed to be “vocabulary free,” but with the harder items, students did not know the words.
Sentence completions are now the only vocabulary items remaining in the SAT Verbal Section, together with the writing section and the section on critical reading. The key to sentence completions is to insert your own words to complete the meaning of the sentence and then to find the words in the answer that mean approximately the same as your words. Unfortunately, if the answer is “ephemeral” and you do not know its meaning, you’re out of luck.