Smart.fm is a very useful free site for pre-teaching or for reviewing vocabulary. Users can create lists for online flashcard-type drills, short matching quizzes, productive quizzes, and dictation. There is a wealth of material already there for students to access. Most of my students have quickly found either TOEIC and TOEFL prep or more casual and idiomatic vocabulary such as slang or song lyrics.

The system works by spaced repetition and some of the content is rich enough to maintain interest over time. There is also a social aspect that allows users to follow and encourage each other.

I recently created a list of 40 key vocabulary words from units 9-12 of Let’s Talk 1 for my Level 2 Eigo IIA class, but the system is open and anyone can use the list. Please take a look and consider giving it a try with a class if you have time in the computer room. Each target word has one or more example sentences with high quality audio for some basic, brief listening input and dictation practice.

Eigo IIA: U-80: Step 1: Units 9-12

Site navigation is in Japanese or English and login is quite simple. If students already have a Mixi, Yahoo, or Google account, they can simply login in with that username and password.

These worksheets are intended as a trial. If you use them in your class, please remember that they are not in addition to the vocabulary requirement as stated in the Student Notes (30 words and sentences). They are to be used instead of this requirement or to replace part of it (Eg. 15 words and five worksheets). The workload on the students should remain the same, so as not to skew the grading process.

They are in ‘Beta’ form. Please give me any comments for improvement that you have if you use them on the class.

This batch consists of 6 worksheets and a brief overview. They cover vocabulary from Unites 1, 4 and 5 in Firsthand Success.

Different Approaches to Vocabulary

On Wednesday, December 13th, I did an in-house presentation on the principles underlying an effective vocabulary learning programme. This session focused on such practical considerations as: how many words learners need; which words are important; and how new vocabulary can be remembered. The slides for the presentation are contained in this post. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me.
Paul’s Vocab Workshop

Level 2 Reading teachers are due to give a minimum of five quizzes this semester. As well as the in-house quizzes that you can use with your classes, there are also a set of publisher tests. They are a little easier than the in-house ones, as vocabulary is not recycled from previous units.
unit-quizzes-for-totally-true-3.pdf
unit-quiz-answers-for-totally-true-3.pdf

This is the vocabulary list for Level 3 Reading classes. This is also available in the shared folders and on elpweb.com for students.

Passages Vocabulary List

This activity encourages students to learn/use the words they have written down in their vocabulary notebooks.

This is a modified version of something that a colleague, Dexter Da Silva, previously passed onto me and it can be adapted to suit any level and can be carried out as often as you wish.

The materials include the interview sheet and some instructions for the teacher.

Vocabulary: self-assessment sheet

Vocabulary: self-assessment sheet (teachers’ notes)

Looking ahead to next term (Yes, even though Final Exams are going on right now.) I put together a basic wordsearch worksheet for place names and adjectives to help students practice these words. Most of the words are taken from the textbook and students should have at least a passing familiarity with them from junior high school.

Please comment with any typos, edits, suggestions or other ideas.

Please note that two entries are not countries, but locations: Bali and Hawaii. Therefore, I used the term place names, not countries in the directions.

Bali – Balinese
Brazil – Brazilian
China – Chinese
France – French
Germany – German
Greece – Greek
Hawaii – Hawaiian
India – Indian
Indonesia – Indonesian
Italy – Italian
Japan – Japanese
Korea – Korean
Mexico – Mexican
Morocco – Moroccan
Singapore – Singaporean
Spain – Spanish
Thailand – Thai
the US – American
Turkey – Turkish
Vietnam – Vietnamese

There is a short model dialogue to prompt students to ask each other for help and confirmation of answers as they work on the puzzle. Copying only one worksheet per pair or small group will prompt more interaction and save on time and copies.

Download the worksheet and answers.

This is a supplementary activity for the reading in Unit 8: “It’s not so bad to be middle-aged.” It is intended to help students process some target words in the unit deeply by finding substitutes for selected words in the article.

Passage Unit 8 Vocab&Reading activity.doc

Here’s the Passages vocab list useful for the vocabulary and reading quizzes as well as small group discussions (and group presentation!)

Passages Vocabulary List (Autumn).doc

As part of most writing courses, there are a number of technical writing terms that students need to be aware of. However, few of the first year students are familiar with these words at the start of the year. To help them review these words, I’ve been using a few vocabulary related warm-up activities. The crossword is self-explanatory, but there are teacher’s notes for the pelmonism activity. I’ve focused on the vocabulary, topic sentence, transitions, details, draft, mind map, paragraph, sentence, and indent, but you can easily adapt the materials to anything you want.
Writing Vocabulary Crossword.doc
Vocabulary Pelmonisms.doc
Teacher Notes – Pelmonisms.doc

A vocabulary challenge is a good schema building activity that can get individuals, pairs or groups going on a topic.
I prefer to put students in pairs or small groups, requiring all of them to have the same answers on their sheet. Be prepared to circulate around the classroom a lot, as students often have questions about what is being asked for.
When the students have finished, you can mix the groups up and have them compare answers, or take it up as a whole class.

Let’s Talk Unit 8 Entertainment Vocab. challenge

A vocabulary challenge is a good schema building activity that can get individuals, pairs or groups going on a topic.
I prefer to put students in pairs or small groups, requiring all of them to have the same answers on their sheet. Be prepared to circulate around the classroom a lot, as students often have questions about what is being asked for.
When the students have finished, you can mix the groups up and have them compare answers, or take it up as a whole class.

Let’s Talk Unit 7 Travel and tourism Vocab. challenge

A vocabulary challenge is a good schema building activity that can get individuals, pairs or groups going on a topic.
I prefer to put students in pairs or small groups, requiring all of them to have the same answers on their sheet. Be prepared to circulate around the classroom a lot, as students often have questions about what is being asked for.
When the students have finished, you can mix the groups up and have them compare answers, or take it up as a whole class.

Let’s Talk Unit 5 Vocab. challenge Money

Here’s the list of target words in Unit 1 – 6 of Passages. Please distribute this to the students and inform them that

1) words on the vocab quizzes will be selected mostly from the Vocabulary and Reading sections of Unit 1, 2, 3, and 5.

2) the words on the list will help their speechs and group discussions.

Passages Vocabulary List (spring).pdfPassages Vocabulary List (spring).doc

This is a folder which contains crossword puzzles for Units 1 to 8 from Totally True Book 3. The crosswords target all the ‘New Words’ from the Glossary and use the (rather naff) definitions from the book. There are 2 files per unit, a student puzzle and an answer key.

These puzzles can also be done online by students on the elpweb.com site. Here is the link http://elpweb.com/resources/slevel2reading.php?id=menu

Toally True 3 Units 1-8 Crossword Puzzles

Provoc is a free Mac OS X application for vocabulary study. I’ve tested it myself recently and found it to be very useful. It is something that we might want to consider using on the eMacs in the FLSC. If you want to try it yourself, You can download some sets of vocabulary to practice with from the Provoc developer’s sharing website under the tab Vocabulary and practice your irregular French verbs.

Another way to try it might be to use a Provoc file I created from a provisional vocabulary spreadsheet. Download and import the files to allow flashcard and multiple choice vocabulary drills.

One very nice feature of Provoc is that it will print beautifully formatted flashcards in a variety of sizes. Here is a sample of small flashcards in pdf format to use for games or drilling. If you install Provoc yourself, you can make cards as large or as small as you like.

Maybe we can set this up in the FLSC, so students will be able to do it themselves?

I have entered the vocabulary for Totally True 3: Chapters 1-4 into an Excel spreadsheet with definitions which differ slightly from those in the textbook. This spreadsheet should make it easy to manage word lists, create simple quizzes, generate flashcards, and make other study materials. If we are all working from the same set of vocabulary, teaching and testing should be more consistent without forcing everyone to do exactly the same thing.

Download the Totally True 3: Chapters 1-4 vocabulary list (in progress).

The current fields in the spreadsheet are:

• ID
• UNIT
• WORD
• POS
• 日本語
• ENGLISH
• SYNONYM
• ANTONYM
• RELATED WORDS

If you think these need to be changed, go right ahead and make any changes you like to the spreadsheet and attach your version in a comment at the end of this post. I would suggest adding rather than deleting fields. If some information is not needed or wanted, those columns can be hidden as needed.

Obviously, this spreadsheet is not yet complete. The Japanese meaning of the target words is still missing for some vocabulary. I’ve added synonyms and antonyms just off the top of my head. Please add more as they come to you. Proofreading would be much appreciated!

This is meant to be an example of what can be done to organize materials for teachers and students.

This contains a matching activity for vocab that describes personality as well as a an exercise to describe things that people may or may not have in common. Useful input for the Compare and Contrast essay.

Click here to download the Vocab for Character Activity

I’ve used word cards with my EAP students this term instead of vocabulary notebooks. We’ve used the cards for in-class practice with partners or small groups quizzing each other.

Having completed Part 1 of the book, it seems like a good time to review. I’ve compiled most of the student-selected words and the target words from Simon C’s cloze exercises to make a vocabulary list which could be used in several ways. This list is divided using Lextutor’s Vocabulary Profiler.

Download the Holes Part 1 Vocabulary Checklist

The list is lengthy, with one hundred words, but you might choose to only use the first 50 words on the front page.

Here are the directions:

Quiz your partner. Read each word and ask if they: remember seeing the word; can give a Japanese meaning for the word; or, can use the word in English.
Mark the words R/J/U for REMEMBER, JAPANESE MEANING, and USE.
Mark your own answers as well. Take turns every 4 or 5 words.

***Some words are not real English words, so think carefully.***

The fake words are:
• reckle
• flenge
• attionate
• trenture
• extond
• kouret
• nofflate
• rowte
• unbremle

Thanks to Jim and Simon C for feedback on this.

A follow up to the handout on suffixes in Alibrandi (thanks for the comment, Ted). Same format, but this one’s on prefixes. It may seem out of sequence to present suffixes THEN prefixes (after all, prefixes come at the beginning of a word), but I would point out that words with suffixes are easy to classify according to part of speech (e.g., words w/ -tion are nouns, words w/ -ly are adverbs, etc.), while words with the same prefix can be different parts of speech (e.g., international, internationally). I don’t know if this makes them harder to learn, but you can’t really organize them to the same extent…

Word parts II (ali)