This is one of my favorite activities to do when I need to pre- teach a number of apparently unrelated words for a reading. I usually agree that it’s best to elicit, and not just present students with a list of unknown words, but this activity can be good for variety as well as for demonstrating to students that their classmates can be a good resource for sharing information.
Write the 10-12 words on the whiteboard. Tell students no dictionaries can be used yet and that they will have a chance to speak to classmates about these words, but for now they need to write them down and mark them: with a check/tick if they know the word already, with a question mark if they’ve heard it but aren’t sure, or with nothing if they have no idea.
Then they have two minutes (you pick the time but don’t give them too long) to check with their neighbor. If one of them knows a word the other doesn’t, he should try to explain or give an example of the word in English. After two minutes, one of the partners gets up and moves over to the next pair. Repeat for three or four pairs.
Now comes the team competition. Divide the class in half. You read out the definitions and as soon as someone knows which word you are explaining, they call out the word and that team gets a point. They can call out the answer at any point, but make sure to finish explaining so if anyone hasn’t found the meaning, they do now.
You can also have a standing up competition after this (and if they know the words well by now, erase them off the board; if they are still having a little difficulty, leave them there). Prepare slips of paper with one word (or definition if you don’t think you’ll remember exactly or quickly enough) each. Students stand up and make two lines, all facing you. For the first item the first two students in line – one from each team – are the only ones competing and the others must remain silent. You read out the definition and whoever says the correct word first gets the paper/one point. Regardless of who wins, both students go to the ends of their respective lines and the next two step up. At the end the team with the most papers/points wins.
Finally, to really exploit this for all its worth…give students a tapescript or text with those words you’ve learned blacked out. They have to fit them in and then listen to check if applicable.
{ 4 comments }
Like it a lot!
As it takes quite a lot longer than other pre-teach activities, teachers would need to make sure they choose the pre-teach vocab carefully as words that the students need to remember after the text is finished. This can take a little thought as it isn’t always the vocab that is chosen by the textbook writers, whose focus at the pre-teach stage is just on getting the students to understand the text. This is particulary true with textbooks that insist on using ungraded and unedited authentic texts- a piece of dogmatism that thankfully seems to be dying a death amongst publishers that don’t own the Economist or the Financial Times…
TEFLtastic blog- “All the truth that’s fit to teach”
It is a lot of fun as long as students don’t start to feel like you are asking them to do the impossible or something. This is a risk when you only give them two minutes to speak with each person, but necessary to keep the knowledge flowing!
Good call about selecting words. It can get tricky sorting out what they only need for the reading, what is more useful to remember later on and so on. One nice thing that (hopefully) works however you do it is that students see that they and their classmates do, together, have a good pool of knowledge.
This sounds like a really nice idea. And fun to boot!
I do have one slight issue with it:
How do you know that ALL students have dealt with the vocab that you want them to?
It seems that this kind of activity would lend itself well to the stronger students in the class while easily (particularly in the hubbub) creating a sizeable crack for the weaker ones to slip down without the teacher even noticing!
Do you have a strategy for preventing/overcoming/sidestepping this?
Suggestion: How about some kind of concept-checking stage after the two-minute, two-minute, two-minute rotation stage?
It sounds like fun; I’ll give it a spin!
Thanks!
Leslie
P.S. I ditto Alex’s comment re which words are chosen.
You should go back and re-read that bit again in case you glossed over it.
If, for example, there is a word or phrase or expression in the text that you would consider to be very low-frequency, then DON’T include it in your pre-teach list. Just let them look it up in their dictionaries at some other stage of the lesson–where will depend on what you are doing with the text and which skills you are targetting in that lesson.
Oh, and this applies to any and all pre-teaching style activities, btw, not just this particular one.
Thanks for your comment! Good points. I will start by saying – I’m long-winded! It’s great to see discussion of all these things, and I plan to make a few more posts – and maybe have you do a guest post?
To answer some of your questions – I definitely don’t expect all of the students to have come across all of the vocabulary already – but some of them have come across some of it, and the fact that those who have are explaining to those that haven’t is part of what makes it so great.
I guess it’s always a risk that stronger students will dominate…but that’s always a risk when the teacher turns some of the control over to the students. Pairwork has the advantage of getting those two people to work together – so if there is a weaker student, s/he is interacting with the stronger one, not sitting in the corner silently. Also, because the pairs change so frequently, if there is an imbalance…in two minutes there is a new partner. Like with any activity, I would monitor students, and I suppose it depends on your students how they would interact.
As for concept-checking, it’s an interesting point. In the first portion of the competition part, it is the first person/group in the class that calls out the word once they know it, but in the second part, it is between only two students each time. So in this way, you are still only using definitions, not concept-check questions, but you can get a more personalized idea of how well people are making the connections.
It is probably also related to the point about selecting vocabulary. I understand the idea of choosing words to pre-teach that students need to remember later. Concept-checking seems a lot more important to me for those words, and to be honest, I’ve always associated this activity with exactly those other words – the ones they need mainly to understand the text.
It is a great point that you shouldn’t always be pre-teaching every single word they might not know. And I don’t mean to imply the opposite with one activity. I guess what I’ve noticed is that sometimes those vocabulary boxes I come across are mainly made up of the “shorter-term” words, and it’s just not a practical reality to bring in a new text every time. Sometimes you can chose an alternate text, sometimes students can use dictionaries, and sometimes they can do this.
Yikes! I’ve written a lot … If you have made it to the end – let me know what you think!
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