Vocabulary Profiling 1

in Cambridge Exams, EAP - English for Academic Purposes, ESP - English for Specific Purposes, IELTS exam, Reading, Vocabulary acquisition, Writing

How do you decide on the vocabulary to teach students?

Which vocabulary in a given text would you want students to learn and which items could you just gloss?

If you use a course book, you probably don’t really think about this but if you’re adapting resources (either authentic materials or changing the level of ELT materials), these are important questions.

Usually, I think it’s a mixture of experience and guesswork. And, arguably, for general EFL classes that’s fine.

But, how do you choose the vocabulary you will focus on if you’re teaching courses in specialist subjects you don’t have as much experience in?

What if you want to prove to your students that those particular vocabulary items are useful?

What if you want students to be able to assess their own use of vocabulary in written work, in terms of level?

Vocabulary Profiling is the answer!

I’ve just discovered (through the CertPT in EAP) VocabKitchen and LexTutor. They’re really exciting and they’re free to use!

Using VocabKitchen you can check a text against CEFR levels, the Academic Word List (AWL) and the New Academic Word List (NWAL).

You can use it to choose which words to teach or change or to get students to profile their own writing. You might want to point out, if using the CEFR list, that the majority of words will be highlighted in blue (A1 level) if the text is grammatically correct. Also, students should note that this only indicates the level of discrete lexical items, idiomatic phrases or collocations which would be considered ‘advanced’ won’t necessarily be highlighted as advanced.

For help using LexTutor, have a look at Vocabulary Profiling 2

Literature Circles

in Children, Effective Thinking, Learner Autonomy, Reading, Teenagers

Over the summer I explored Academic Reading Circles (ARC) with pre-sessional students and was impressed with the depth of reading comprehension and quality of discussion they prompted. The students found them both valuable and enjoyable.

CPD Course 5:: Teaching English through Literature

in CPD - Continuing Professional Development, Poetry, Reading

This is a free British Council course. It’s different from the graded reader course as it includes poetry and how to exploit literature to work on all four skills. There wasn’t much that was new to me but I got some good example texts to use.

CPD Course 4: How to use Graded Readers in the English Language Classroom

in CPD - Continuing Professional Development, Reading

This is another short course by ‘Language Fuel’ and FutureLearn. It’s a good introductory course explaining Extensive Reading and giving practical ideas for using graded readers with students.

I researched this as a resources creator at British Study Centre 20 years ago and the activities were similar.

Update:

Nik Peachey’s course on ChatGPT opens up a lot of new, really interesting ways of using graded readers with students.

The Inner Voice

in Poetry, Presentations, Pronunciation, Reading, Teaching

This phrase has come up a few times recently in different contexts and it’s one I’m interested in: a language teacher, you’d be forgiven for presuming, would tend to concentrate on the ‘outer’ voice. Read more

This is just to say… William Carlos Williams

in Language Play, Poetry, Pronunciation, Reading

This Is Just To Say

By William Carlos Williams

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

Reading Aloud

in Reading

Doing presentations with the pre-sessional students is difficult online. For an in-person presentation we could check the students’ notes. Online there is a greater temptation for students to read from a script. Read more

Academic Reading Circles (ARC)

in EAP - English for Academic Purposes, Reading

This year we’ve started using Academic Reading Circles. They’ve really worked. Not just in training students to read texts more carefully but in giving them the opportunity to participate in seminar-type discussion afterwards. The students really enjoy them. Read more

Reading with Children

in Children, Reading, Vocabulary acquisition

Everyone knows the benefits of reading to babies and toddlers, right? Health visitors hand out Bookstart packs in the UK almost as soon as your child is born, libraries run all-singing, all-dancing, glue & glitter sessions for families; Dolly Parton posts books monthly to children in the UK, the US, Canada and Australia. And the results from research is overwhelming: a child is never too young for a book. Read more

EFL Extensive Reading

in Reading, Vocabulary acquisition

In EFL we talk about two types of reading Extensive Reading and Intensive Reading. Intensive reading is what usually happens in the classroom: reading to answer comprehension questions or to teach ‘reading skills’ such as skimming and scanning. Extensive reading is reading for pleasure, often fiction at around or just below a learner’s language level. Ideally extensive reading texts should be 98% known vocabulary.
Read more