Includes bibliographical references (p. 165-167).

Forewood

Introduction

1. Pre-text activities

1.1 What's in the text? Level: Elementary to advanced Time (minutes): 20-30 Aims: To motivate students to read a text by getting them to speculate beforehand about its content.

1.2 Predicting meanings Level: Elementary to advanced Time (minutes): 10-20 Aims: To encourage students to work out from context the meaning of unfamiliar words.

1.3 Predicting words Level: Intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 20-25 Aims: To review areas of vocabulary with which the students already have some familiarity, so that new items in these areas can more easily be 'slotted in' and remembered; to stimulate interest in a dull text.

1.4 Criminal records Level: Elementary to advanced Time (minutes): 30-40 Aims: To focus the students' attention on the ways they associate words by meaning or context, and especially on the positive and negative connotations words have for them.

1.5 Ungrammatical gender Level: Intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 30-40 Aims: To encourage students to explore their preconceptions, about particular words before meeting them in a context, so that their reading becomes more directed and critical.

1.6 Look, remember, and complete the set Level: Elementary to advanced Time (remember): 30-40 Aims: To focus the students' attention on how they try to remember words, and on how context might influence their memory.

1.7 Words on a map Level: Intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 20-30 Aims: To motivate and focus the students' reading of a text by first exploring the personal connections of some of the words and phrases used.

1.8 Cards on the table Level: Intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 20-30 Aims: To get the students to clarify their ideas about a topic or attitude before reading a text, especially one that will be used as the basis for discussion or essay-writing.

2. Working with texts

2.1 Customizing a text Time (minutes): 20-30 Aims: 1. To focus the students' attention by giving them a specific task, rather than simply telling them to read a text; 2. To encourage them to look closely at words and phrases in context.

2.2 Favourite phrases Level: Beginner to advanced Time (minutes): 15-30 Aims: To give students a chance to share their feelings about vocabulary, and, perhaps, overcome personal dislikes

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2.3 Correct the teacher Level: Elementary to advanced Time (minutes): 25-35, 45-60 Aims: 1. To give a task-based focus to listening; 2. To encourage students to build up a wider set of vocabulary choices.

2.4 Deleting words Level: Post-beginner to advanced Time (minutes): 15-20 Aims: To focus on whether a word is necessary or not as a way of exploring its meaning in context.

2.5 Marginalia Level: Intermediate to advanced Aims: To get students to look closely at vocabulary in context, and to express their own understanding of specific meanings and connotations.

2.6 Hunt the misfits Level: Intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 20-35 Aims: To develop students' critical awareness of meanings in context.

2.7 Ghost definitions Level: Elementary to intermediate Time (minutes): 20 Aims: To focus on the exact meanings of lexical items, and how they can be expressed by definitions and paraphrases.

2.8 Patchwork text Level: Elementary to advanced Time (minutes): 20-40 Aims: To scan and re-contextualize text fragments.

2.9 The words in your past Level: Elementary to advanced Time (minutes): 20-30 Aims: To make new vocabulary memorable by linking it to important memories in the students' own lives.

2.10 Towards learning a text by heart (a) Level: Beginner to advanced Time (minutes): 15-40 Aims: To encourage students to remember contexts as well as single words and phrases.

2.11 Towards learning a text by heart (b) Level: Beginner to advanced Time (minutes): 15-30 Aims: To encourage students to remember contexts as well as single words and phrases.

2.12 Cross-associations Level: Elementary to advanced Aims: To use creative word-association as an aid to memory.

2.13 Be someone else Level: Intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 30-40 Aims: To get students thinking about words and phrases in their cultural/historical context.

2.14 Email language Level: Upper-intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 40-50 Aims: To get students to learn from 'informal', uncorrected native-speaker texts.

3. Writing activities

3.1 Invisible writing Level: Elementary to advanced Time (minutes): 10-20 Aims: To get students to reflect on and use 'known' vocabulary, and to learn from each other by reading and discussing what others have written.

3.2 The oracle Level: Lower-intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 15-20 Aims: To practice newly-learnt vocabulary in a wide range of contexts and situations.

3.3 Adding words to a story Level: Elementary to intermediate Time (minutes): 30-40 Aims: To give the students an opportunity to start writing creatively within a safe, controlled frame.

3.4 Expanding a sentence Level: Lower-intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 10-15 Aims: To give the students an opportunity to start writing creatively within a safe, controlled frame.

4. Bilingual texts and activities

4.1 Sensory vocabulary choices Level: Lower-intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 40-50 Aims: To make target-language words more memorable by evoking strong personal associations through the mother tongue. The students are encouraged to use all their senses in this.

4.2 Changing the order of the words Level: Elementary to upper-intermediate Time (minutes): 15-20 Aims: To give guided practice in contrastive translation.

4.3 Focusing on difficulty Level: Intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 40-50 Aims: To provoke contrastive awareness of vocabulary in two languages.

4.4 Cultural keywords Time (minutes): 40-50 Aims: To explore the cultural resonance of vocabulary, and the ways in which specific vocabulary items, can represent important aspects of a culture.

4.5 How many letters in the word? Level: Beginner to intermediate Time (minutes): 10-20 Aims: To get students to visualize the look of a word on the page, as an aid to memory and spelling.

4.6 Two-language texts Level: All Time (minutes): 15 Aims: To deduce the meaning of target-language words from a mother-tongue context.

4.7 Learning by associating Level: Beginner to elementary Time (minutes): 15-20 Aims: To introduce students to a practical way of quickly learning vocabulary on their own.

4.8 Two-facing words Level: Upper-intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 10-15 Aims: To explore lexical ambiguity in a focused but amusing way, looking at homonyms, homophones, and words that can be used as different parts of speech.

4.9 On the walls Level: Beginner to elementary Time (minutes): 15 Aims: To practice skimming and scanning target-language texts for equivalents of mother-tongue expressions.

4.10 Translation reversi Level: Elementary to advanced Time (minutes): 20-30 Aims: To use a simple board and some pieces of card as a vocabulary exercise, in which the player who can translate most accurately has the best chance of winning.

5. Using corpora and concordances

5.1 Reciprocal verb phrases Level: Upper-intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 30-40 Aims: To show how corpus analysis can highlight patterns of grammar and meaning.

5.2 'Tend to': using concordances with students Level: Intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 30-40 Aims: To present and practise the language patterns associated with particular words and phrases.

5.3 More on 'tend to': using a corpus and software in class Level: Intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 40-60 Aims: To work with a corpus to discover the language patterns associated with particular words and phrases.

5.4 Which word are we after? Level: Elementary to advanced Time (minutes): 10-20 Aims: To show how corpora and concordance software can help teachers (and students) to prepare classroom materials.

5.5 Bare facts, naked truth Level: Intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 20-40 Aims: To use a corpus to find out which of two or more apparent synonyms is appropriate to a particular context.

5.6 Working with student texts Level: Elementary to advanced Time (minutes): 20-45 Aims: To show how concordance software can be used with the students' own texts to discover or highlight features of vocabulary and style.

5.7 Quarrying the Internet for words Level: Intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 30-60 Aims: To encourage students to learn how words and phrases are used by searching the Internet for example texts.

6. Words and the senses

6.1 Words and our senses Level: Lower-intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 25-40 Aims: To make students aware of their own sensory preferences through the words they choose and the texts they respond most strongly to.

6.2 Notion pictures Level: Beginner to intermediate Time (minutes): 20-30 Aims: To review and recall vocabulary

6.3 Machines and scenes Level: Elementary to advanced Time (minutes): 30-40 Aims: To provide visual and kinaesthetic ways of presenting and learning new vocabulary.

6.4 Elephants Level: Elementary to advanced Time (minutes): 40-50 Aims: To encourage peer-teaching both of subject-matter and of lexis.

6.5 Exploring vocabulary kinaesthetically Level: Beginner to advanced Time (minutes): 15-30 Aims: To learn vocabulary through movement.

6.6 Coins speak Level: Elementary to advanced Time (minutes): 15-25 Aims: To explore the spatial and hierarchical association of words, as an aid to understanding and memory.

6.7 Picture gallery Level: Elementary to advanced Time (minutes): 35-50 Aims: 1. To get students to use known (or half-known) vocabulary in new situations, and to learn vocabulary from each other; 2. To get students to write texts that other students will want to read.

6.8 Listening in colour Level: Elementary to advanced Time (minutes): 15 Aims: To learn vocabulary through specific visual associations.

6.9 Get as much wrong as you can Level: Upper-intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 10-20 Aims: To meet head-on the challenge of linking the meanings of words with their visual and auditory representations

6.10 OHP lists Level: Beginner to advanced Time (minutes): 10-15 Aims: To break up the order and visual monotony of lists as an aid to memory.

6.11 Words round the circle Level: Beginner to intermediate Time (minutes): 10-15 Aims: To practise saying words using the full vocal range

6.12 Filling a landscape Level: Beginner to advanced Time (minutes): 3, 10 Aims: To encourage students to discover vocabulary for themselves and to teach it to others.

6.13 Fishy adjectives Level: Beginner to upper-intermediate Time (minutes): 10-12 Aims: To use, in a creative, memorable way, adjectives that describe people.

6.14 Objects round the circle Level: Beginner to upper-intermediate Time (minutes): 10-12 Aims: To encourage students to express meaning in any way that suits them (visually, through movement, etc), and then to ask for and learn the specific vocabulary they need.

6.15 Picturing words and phrases Level: Elementary to advanced Time (minutes): 20-30 Aims: To use detailed, creative visualization to associate with the English words the students are learning.

7. Word sets

7.1 Intelligence test Level: Beginner to advanced Time (minutes): 10 Aims: To explore the idea of a 'word set' and the many different ways in which one can categorize vocabulary.

7.2 Unusual word families Aims: To encourage students to group words in unusual, memorable categories.

7.3 Chains Level: Elementary to advanced Time (minutes): 20 Aims: To encourage students to group words in imaginative and memorable ways

7.4 Collecting collocations Level: Intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 5, 30-40 Aims: To expand students' understanding and acquisition of above-the-word vocabulary.

7.5 How strong is the collocation? Level: Upper-intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 20-30 Aims: To expand students' understanding and acquisition of above-the-word vocabulary.

7.6 Diagonal opposites Level: Beginner to intermediate Time (minutes): 10 Aims: To get students to look closely at the semantic and situational associations of a word, and thus fix new vocabulary firmly.

7.7 The egg exercise Level: Beginner to advanced Time (minutes): 20 Aims: To explore the various meanings and associations of a word or phrase.

7.8 Prototypes Level: Beginner to advanced Time (minutes): 2-3, 20-30 Aims: To get students to consider how word-sets are built up, by asking such questions as 'How strongly does this word belong to its set?', and in so doing to consider how effective for them such categorizations are in organizing and remembering vocabulary.

7.9 Words from the homestay family Level: Beginner to advanced Time (minutes): 2-3, 20-30 Aims: To provide a simple research tool for students studying in an English-speaking environment and living in host families.

7.10 Mapping one's mood Level: Post-beginner to advanced Time (minutes): 15-20 Aims: To differentiate items in a 'word field', which may easily be confused with each other, in a personal, memorable way.

7.11 A hierarchy of association Time (minutes): 20-35 Aims: To organize word sets as a hierarchy.

8. Personal

8.1 You give my talk Level: Elementary to advanced Time (minutes): 5-10, 30-45 Aims: To motivate students to listen to, and therefore learn from, each other.

8.2 Life keywords Level: Elementary to advanced Time (minutes): 25-40 Aims: To practise and share vocabulary which is personally important.

8.3 Turn out your pockets Level: Elementary to upper-intermediate Time (minutes): 20-35 Aims: To use practical, day-to-day vocabulary in personally relevant conversations.

8.4 Scars Level: Elementary to upper-intermediate Time (minutes): 40-60 Aims: To motivate students to overcome lack of vocabulary when narrating.

8.5 Words my neighbour knows Level: Intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 20 Aims: To encourage students to teach each other and learn from each other.

8.6 A letter from the teacher Level: Post-beginner to advanced Time (minutes): 10-15 Aims: To present vocabulary to students in a direct, 'I-Thou' context.

8.7 The secret dictionary Level: Elementary to advanced Time (minutes): 15, 10-15 Aims: The private connotations of a word or phrase may have can be very strong - strong enough to express as a 'definition'.

8.8 Phrases I like Level: Lower-intermediate to advanced. Time (minutes): 15-25 Aims: To encourage students to acquire a wider choice of expressions.

8.9 What have you got ten of? Level: Beginner to lower-intermediate Time (minutes): 15-20 Aims: To get students to discover and use new words to express things that are important to them now.

9. Word games

9.1 Circle games Level: Beginner to advanced Time (minutes): 10-15 Aims: To provide a bank of games with a variety of learning purposes that can be played in circles of three to seven players.

9.2 The prefix game Level: Intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 30-40 Aims: To work on various negative and pejorative prefixes in English, especially for students preparing for an examination such as FCE or TOEFL.

9.3 Definitions dictation Level: Intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 20-30 Aims: To use a guessing game to practise using definitions.

9.4 Crosswords Level: Intermediate to advanced Aims: To introduce students to English-language crosswords and show ways in which they can be adapted and made more creative.

9.5 Pivot words Level: Lower-intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 20-30 Aims: To explore the different semantic and grammatical uses of words.

9.6 Hiding words Level: Lower-intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 10-20 Aims: To discover words 'buried' in other words or surrounding text.

9.7 Treasure hunt Level: Intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 10-20 Aims: To practice identifying words with the help of definitions.

9.8 Storyboard Level: Elementary to advanced Time (minutes): 20-30 Aims: To practise relating words to context.

10. Dictionary exercises and word history

10.1 Word dip Level: Elementary to advanced Time (minutes): 15-25 Aims: To familiarize students with the structure, uses, and limitations of dictionaries

10.2 From word to word Level: Intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 15-25 Aims: To give further practice in the use of dictionaries, with the emphasis on the language used in the definitions given.

10.3 Write yourself in Level: Elementary to advanced Time (minutes): 10-15 Aims: To add a strong personal element to dictionary practice.

10.4 What do I mean? Level: Lower-intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 10-15 Aims: To introduce and practise words and phrases used in defining and explaining meanings.

10.5 Borrowed words Level: Intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 20 Aims: To show how words can change form and meaning across languages.

10.6 Commemorative words Level: Upper-intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 20-30 Aims: To explore words with a history.

10.7 Dating words Level: Upper-intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 15-30 Aims: To explore more words with a history, with the emphasis on more recent coinages.

10.8 Thesauri Level: Upper-intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 30-45 Aims: To show how words may be grouped by meaning and context; to introduce and practise using a thesaurus; and incidentally, to show how words can be used to disguise and distort meaning.

11. Revision exercises

11.1 Open categorization Level: Beginner to advanced Time (minutes): 15-20 Aims: To allow students to categorize vocabulary in any way they want

11.2 Guided categorization Level: Beginner to advanced Time (minutes): 15-20 Aims: To get the students to form interesting and memorable word groups, and to deepen their understanding of words by comparing categorizations.

11.3 Words on a scale Level: Intermediate to advanced Time (minutes): 15-20 Aims: To concentrate the students' attention on the words under revision by focusing on their own, subjective reasons.

11.4 Lexical furniture Level: Elementary to advanced Time (minutes): 15-20 Aims: To fix vocabulary in memory by visualizing connections with familiar objects and places.

11.5 Leaping words Level: Beginner to advanced Time (minutes): 10-15 Aims: To get students to 'draw' words as a simple but creative way of remembering vocabulary visually

11.6 Find the word a picture Level: Beginner to advanced Time (minutes): 20-40 Aims: To get students to link words and visual images.

11.7 Rhyming review Level: Elementary to advanced. Time (minutes): 20-30 Aims: To provide a simple auditory review of vocabulary, which also focuses on pronunciation and spelling.

11.8 Draw the word Level: 5, 15-20 Time (minutes): Aims: To get students to visualize words as a means of remembering them.

11.9 Matching words Level: Elementary to advanced Time (minutes): 15-30 Aims: To review words, focusing on meaning and context.

11.10 Gift words Level: Beginner to advanced Time (minutes): 20 Aims: To review vocabulary and at the same time to establish or improve rapport within a group.

11.11 Forced choice Level: Elementary to advanced Time (minutes): 15-25 Aims: To generate conversation by a fast and energetic review of words.

11.12 Question and answer Level: Elementary to advanced Aims: To practice the vocabulary under review interactively and in new contexts. Time (minutes): 15-25

11.13 Words to story Level: Elementary to advanced Time (minutes): 20-30 Aims: To use oral storytelling to review words.

11.14 Word rush Level: Beginner to advanced Time (minutes): 10 Aims: To review words in an energetic, non-wordy way.

11.15 Comparing random words Level: Elementary to advanced Time (minutes): 5, 15 Aims: To provide a somewhat surreal way of reviewing 'hard-to-remember' words.

11.16 Multi-sensory revision Level: Elementary to advanced Time (minutes): 30-40 Aims: To get students to choose whether to revise linguistically, kinaesthetically, auditorily or visually.

11.17 Writing to rule Level: Elementary to advanced Time (minutes): 30-40 Aims: To encourage students to extract as much meaning as they can from words by limiting the number they are allowed to use.

Annotated bibliography

Index

"The second edition of Vocabulary is a fully revised edition of this classic Resource Book. 118 classroom activities. Four new chapters covering recent developments in the field including collocations, the mother tongue, and lexis as a system. Favourites from the original edition have been updated with new texts and examples." (Book Cover)

Elementary to advanced ESL learners.