Humor4u

Photo by Tzvi Meller As much as it seems counter-intuitive, teaching new vocabulary in semantic sets (e.g. jobs: doctor, teacher, lawyer etc. or colours: red, blue, yellow  etc.) does not facilitate learning. As far back as in the 1990s, research showed that teaching semantically related items is counter-productive . Have these findings been taken on board? Of course not! New vocabulary in elementary level coursebooks is routinely presented in lists of semantically related items. Semantic sets and interference In 1993, Thomas Tinkham investigated the effect of learning new words under two conditions. One group received a list of words belonging to the same semantic set while the other was given random, semantically unrelated words. Tinkham revealed that list-learning of unrelated words yielded better results as the second group performed significantly better when they were asked to recalled the target words. A few years later, Rob Waring (1997) replicated the experiment with two gr...

By @eannegrenoble |  eltpics  on Flickr In the middle of the market where I go for my weekly vegetable shopping there is a stall where I buy olives. The owners of the stall are a husband and wife team who know I am an English teacher. The other day the wife – let's call her Lily – pointed at lettuce and asked me: "What do you call it in English?" (the exchange took place in Hebrew) "Lettuce," I replied. "Letters?" asked Lily. We then worked on the pronunciation a little until she got it right. I thought it was time to move on to new items. I pointed at olives. "And what's this in English?" I asked. Lily looked puzzled. "Come on. You have a bottle over there with a label in English". "Olives!" exclaimed Lily – she clearly knew "Olive oil" in English. A week later it's time for my next trip to the market and a little vocabulary review. "Do you remember the words from last week?" I asked Lily who g...

There is a widespread belief among teachers that collocations are only reserved for higher levels. Likewise, there is a popular misconception that authentic video can only be used with higher levels. This short and fun activity proves otherwise. It is based on a film clip, it focuses on collocations and it’s aimed at Elementary level students. Procedure Preparation You will need a DVD of the animated film “Flushed Away”. The scene starts at 1:17 (“when the cat’s away the mice will play”) and ends at 3:14 (“Goodnight”). Or use the Youtube clip below: Click here to download COLLOCATION CARDS or do this ONLINE QUIZ   Make a few copies of the page and cut it up so that you have at least one set for a group of 3-4 students. Pre-task Give students collocation cards and ask them to match the verbs with the nouns they go with. While watching – Watch & Observe Tell students to watch the clip and put the cards in the right order – the order the main character (the Mouse) does the activit...