Teaching Harry Potter: Dealing with Vocabulary

Using Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone as the basis for vocabulary instruction offers a rich, engaging context for your students—especially those at B1 level and upward. This post provides research-backed insights, practical strategies, checklists and templates to help you navigate the complexities of vocabulary teaching in a literary context.

Glossaries by Chapter vs. Targeted Vocabulary Lists
Balancing Incidental and Deliberate Learning
Developing Dictionary Skills and Learner Autonomy
Using Frequency Lists, Corpora, and Spaced Repetition
Criteria for Choosing Vocabulary
Home Learning Activities
Annotated Bibliography
Conclusion
Checklist for Students for Deciding Which Words to Learn

Glossaries by Chapter vs. Targeted Vocabulary Lists

When working with Harry Potter, consider two complementary approaches to vocabulary:

Chapter Glossaries:
Provide a glossary for each chapter that includes all potentially unfamiliar words with brief, contextual definitions.
- Pros:
  - Supports overall reading comprehension.
  - Minimizes disruptions during reading.
- Cons:
  - Will include too many words that are not essential for long-term vocabulary development.
Targeted Vocabulary Lists:
Curate a shorter list of words that are pedagogically valuable—words that are common, versatile, and useful beyond the text. Researchers like Paul Nation suggest that learners can optimally acquire about 7 words (or up to 14 in some contexts) per lesson.
- Consideration:
  - Focus on words that students can actively use in various contexts.

Balancing Incidental and Deliberate Learning

Incidental learning occurs naturally through extensive reading, while deliberate learning involves targeted activities. Combining these approaches is essential for robust vocabulary retention. For example, use the chapter glossaries to support comprehension (incidental) and the targeted lists to build active vocabulary knowledge (deliberate).

Key References:

Nation, I. S. P. (2001). Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cambridge University Press.
Schmitt, N. (2008). Review Article: Instructed Second Language Vocabulary Learning. Language Teaching Research, 12(3), 329–363.

Developing Dictionary Skills and Learner Autonomy

Empower your students by teaching them to build their own glossaries. This not only helps with vocabulary retention but also instills essential lifelong learning skills. Guide your students through these steps:

Identifying Words: Mark unfamiliar or intriguing words while reading.
Finding Pronunciation: Use online dictionaries (e.g., Cambridge, Oxford) or apps to listen to the correct pronunciation.
Locating Visuals: Find images that illustrate the meaning.
Collecting Example Sentences: Record examples from the text or search online.
Noting Word Stress: Mark syllable stress for multi-syllable words.
Writing Translations: Translate words into the students’ native language for reinforcement.

By engaging in these practices, students learn to use a range of digital and printed resources, boosting their autonomy.

Using Frequency Lists, Corpora, and Spaced Repetition

Consider integrating digital tools into your vocabulary instruction:

Frequency Lists and Corpora:
Resources like the British National Corpus (BNC) or the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) can help identify high-frequency, versatile words.
Spaced Repetition:
Tools like Anki or Quizlet support long-term retention through repeated exposure over time. Research (Karpicke & Roediger, 2008) highlights the importance of retrieval practice in vocabulary learning.

Reference:

Karpicke, J. D., & Roediger, H. L. (2008). The Critical Importance of Retrieval for Learning. Science, 319(5865), 966–968.

Criteria for Choosing Vocabulary

When curating your targeted vocabulary list, consider these criteria:

Frequency: Words that appear often in general English and within the text.
Relevance: Terms that are useful in academic, professional, or everyday settings.
Cognateness: Words that share similarities with learners’ native languages.
Usability: Vocabulary that students can easily incorporate into their active speech and writing.
Contextual Richness: Words accompanied by rich, illustrative contexts in the narrative.

Home Learning Activities

To reinforce vocabulary outside the classroom, consider assigning the following activities:

Personal Glossary Journals: Maintain and review vocabulary journals.
Digital Flashcards: Use spaced repetition apps like Anki or Quizlet.
Word Maps: Create mind maps connecting the new vocabulary with synonyms, antonyms, and related concepts.
Contextual Storytelling: Write creative stories using a set list of vocabulary words.
Peer Teaching: Organize small-group sessions where students teach a subset of vocabulary.
Online Quizzes: Use digital tools to design quizzes that test recall and application.

Annotated Bibliography

Nation, I. S. P. (2001). Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cambridge University Press.
Discusses vocabulary acquisition, highlighting both incidental and deliberate learning strategies.
Schmitt, N. (2008). Review Article: Instructed Second Language Vocabulary Learning. Language Teaching Research, 12(3), 329–363.
A review of research on vocabulary learning methods and different instructional approaches.
Webb, S., & Nation, P. (2017). How Vocabulary Is Learned. Oxford University Press.
Explores vocabulary acquisition emphasizing the difference between receptive and productive vocabulary.
Karpicke, J. D., & Roediger, H. L. (2008). The Critical Importance of Retrieval for Learning. Science, 319(5865), 966–968.
The benefits of retrieval practice (spaced repetition) for long-term retention.
Oxford, R. (1990). Language Learning Strategies: What Every Teacher Should Know. Newbury House.
Metacognitive and autonomous learning strategies.
Coxhead, A. (2000). A New Academic Word List. TESOL Quarterly, 34(2), 213–238.
Introduces a list of high-utility academic words, which can be useful for selecting vocabulary that benefits learners beyond literary texts.

Conclusion

Using Harry Potter as a springboard for vocabulary acquisition can make learning both magical and meaningful. By balancing chapter glossaries with targeted vocabulary lists, teaching essential dictionary and metacognitive skills, and integrating technology, you can support both immediate reading comprehension and long-term language development. Although this is a lot to take on initially, teaching the students to do this themselves are essential skills in language learning and critical thinking.

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