Teaching_vocabulary_through_communicative_activity

Content   IntroductION	3
1 THE THEORY OF COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING. VOCABULARY TEACHING AND LEARNING	5
1.1 A Brief Introduction of CLT	5
1.2 Vocabulary Knowledge. The Importance of Vocabulary Teaching	7
2. GENERAL WAYS OF TEACHING VOCABULARY	12
2.1 Vocabulary notebooks. Presenting Vocabulary.	12
2.2 Presenting Vocabulary through Activities	16
CONCLUSION	21
BIBLIOGRAPHY	22

 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

A long period of time grammar was viewed as the main task in second language teaching. Mastery of grammatical structures was the main goal in second language acquisition. The Grammar--Translation Method dominated second language teaching. On the contrary, vocabulary teaching and acquisition were of relatively minor importance. Vocabulary development was approached as some kind of auxiliary activity and, often through memorizing decontextualised word lists. The relatively minor importance attached to lexical knowledge and context was visible in the scant attention paid to it by second language researchers and teachers in the last decade.

Vocabulary, which is the basic material of the language, is, of course, of crucial importance in expressing ideas and thoughts when communicating. The following statement about the relationship between grammar and vocabulary demonstrated by the British linguist Wilkins in 1976 argues that without grammar, there are few things we can express; while without vocabulary, there is nothing we can express.” Wilkins verifies the importance of vocabulary in communication. Insufficient vocabulary or vocabulary difficulties will result in communicational barriers or failures. Without the mediation of vocabulary, no amount of grammatical or other types of linguistic knowledge can be employed in second language communication or discourse [1, p.45].

Since the 1960s, many new ideas and approaches to the study of vocabulary acquisition in a second language have emerged through many English linguists’  efforts and research. Among them, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) pedagogy which originated from the changes in the British Situational Language Teaching approach dating from the late 1960s deserves to be mentioned.CLT evolved as a prominent language teaching method and gradually replaced the previous Grammar-Translation Method.

In the last twenty years practice has showed that CLT, which has many advantages compared with the Grammar--Translation Method, has been a remarkable success and made great contributions to English teaching and learning in eastern and southern areas. Nowadays CLT is very popular in English language fields in that area.

The actuality of the project  is focused on vocabulary because vocabulary is essential for building knowledge of a new language. It provides basis for learning structures and grammar. Without vocabulary it is not possible neither to communicate nor improve in language.

This project aims to investigate and evaluate the effectiveness of Communicative Language Teaching in vocabulary teaching and learning .

The tasks:

1) to study  the materials of literature and Internet resources on the given theme;

2) to investigate the effectiveness of Communicative Language Teaching in vocabulary teaching and learning;

3)to improve on examples that Communicative Language can be effective in vocabulary teaching.

The object of investigation is vocabulary.

The subject of investigation is the influence of communicative activities on the teaching vocabulary.

In the given project the following methods were used:

1. Descriptive
2. Integrative

The given project consists of 2 parts, an introduction, the conclusion and  bibliography.

 

1 THE THEORY OF COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING. VOCABULARY TEACHING AND LEARNING

 

         1.1 A Brief Introduction of СLT

The origins of CLT are to be found in the changes in the British language teaching tradition dating from the late 1960s. With the founding of the European Community in 1957, research was encouraged and sponsored by the Council of Europe in the 1960s on the ways in which members of Europe could best learn to communicate with each other in common languages. It was an attempt to specify the most important communicative needs that are likely to arise in everyday situations and suitable language forms that could be learnt for coping with those needs. In the early 1970s, The Threshold Level edited by Van Ek came out. This brings people on to another aspect of language use that was being studied at the time: it was not just important to know the forms of the language, but it was also important to know which forms you use, when and with whom. Some materials and syllabuses appeared at that time, for example, John Munby’s Communicative Syllabus Design , D. Wilkins’ Notional Syllabus and L. Widdowson’s Teaching Language as Communication. It was not until 1979, when the Communicative Approach toLanguage Teaching by C.J. Brumfit and Johnson was published that the term “communicative approach” became popular formally as an independent approach.

            Many British applied linguists have made great contributions to CLT. For example, Berns, an expert in the field of CLT, writes in explaining Firth's view in 1984 [2, 104]:

"Language is interaction; it is interpersonal activity and has a clear relationship with society. In this light, language study has to look at the use function of language in context, both its linguistic context (what is uttered before and after a given piece of discourse) and its social, or situational, context (who is speaking, what their social roles are, why they have come together to speak)” [3, 35].

According to CLT, the learners must develop skills and strategies for using language to communicate meanings as effectively as possible in concrete situations. The learner must become aware of the social meaning of language forms. For many learners, this may not entail the ability to vary their own speech to suit different social circumstances, but rather the ability to use generally acceptable forms and avoid potentially offensive ones.

CLT makes use of real-life situations that necessitate communication. The teacher sets up a situation that students are likely to encounter in real life. Unlike the audio lingual method of language teaching, which relies on repetition and drills, the communicative approach can leave students in suspense as to the outcome of a class exercise, which will vary according to their reactions and responses. The real-life simulations change from day to day. Students' motivation to learn comes from their desire to communicate in meaningful ways about meaningful topics.

CLT lays emphasis on developing the communicative competence. This view of second language acquisition has influenced language pedagogy in encouraging learner-centered teaching. Learner centeredness, combined with the shift to a focus on communicative competence, has helped to transform the language-teaching field dramatically in the past twenty years. Instead of an explicit focus on language itself, there has been an emphasis on learners’ expressing their own meanings through language. The learner must distinguish between the forms which he has mastered as part of his linguistic competence, and the communicative functions that they perform.

Communicative Approach is most widely used today. It is a way of teaching

that puts the impact on usage of the target language. Jeremy Harmer offers the

following characteristics:

“Because of the focus of communicative activities and the concentration on language as a means of communication such an approach has been called the communicative

approach.”

   [4, 67]

Not only structures and vocabulary are stressed but also the ability to be

communicatively competent. Generally speaking this approach uses graded series of communicative tasks and activities working with various situations (greetings, advising, dis/agreeing...) communicative activities have three main features: information gap (a person knows something that other person does not), choice (students have a choice of what they will say and how – open-ended activities) and feedback (as true communication is purposeful, students should have the chance to evaluate whether or not the purpose has been achieved or not). Through these activities students are taught when and how to use the language. A wide range of authentic language in real context is introduced to students, who should be able to work with it and use it. Grammar and structures are acquired naturally, fluency is stressed.

Finocchiaro and Brumfit present clear and detailed explanations of the features of CLT. According to them, in the communicative approach, language learning is seen primarily as ‘learning to communicate’, and the goal of the approach is the acquisition of communicative competence, which enables second language learners to use the target language for communication effectively and appropriately. This approach also argues that ‘the target linguistic system will be learned best through the process of struggling to communicate’ and learners are expected to learn the target language through interaction with other people [5, 96].

CLT stresses the need to allow students opportunities for authentic and creative use of the language. It focuses on meaning rather than form; it suggests that learning should be relevant to the needs of the students; it advocates task-based language teaching. Students should be given tasks to perform or problems to solve in the classroom. What’s more, CLT emphasizes a functional approach to language learning (i.e. what people do with language, such as inviting, apologizing, greeting and introducing, etc.). Also, to be competent in the target language, learners should acquire not only linguistic knowledge, but also the cultural background of that language.

Richards and Rogers address the issue, saying that in practice there are some elements to be taken into account: the communicational principle (i.e. activities that involve real communication promote learning), the task principle (i.e. activities in which language is used for carrying out meaningful tasks promote learning) and the meaningfulness principle (i.e. language that is meaningful to the learner supports the learning process). Finocchario& Brumfit summarize the principles as follows:

- Teaching is learner-centered and responsive to the students’ need and interests.

- The target language is acquired through interactive communicative use that encourages the negotiations of meaning.

- Genuinely meaningful language use is emphasized, along with unpredictability, risk-taking, and choice-making.

   - The formal properties of language are never treated in isolation from use.

     language forms are always addressed within a communicative context.

- There is exposure to examples of authentic language from the target language community.

- The students are encouraged to discover the forms and structures of language for themselves.

- There is a whole-language approach in which the four traditional language skills (speaking, listening, reading, and writing) are integrated [6, 90].

 

1.2  Vocabulary Knowledge. The Importance of Vocabulary Teaching.

 

Vocabulary is of great significance in expressing thoughts and ideas in interaction activities. Vocabulary acquisition is the main task of second language acquisition.

There are various theoretical studies on exploring the types of vocabulary knowledge related to the familiarity with a word (Richards); Nation; Carter , etc.) Richards made the first attempt to list the different types of knowledge that are necessary to fully know a word. He was more concerned with applicability to pedagogical practice than attempting to provide a systematic framework for describing or accounting the word knowledge. In the word knowledge list, there is no attempt to distinguish productive vocabulary from receptive vocabulary. Elaborating on Richards’ list, Nation developed a list of various types of vocabulary knowledge that one must possess both receptively and productively in order to have complete command of a word:

- the spoken form of a word (receptive): What does the word sound like?    (productive): How is the word pronounced?

- the written form of a word (What does the word look like?  How is the word written and spelled?)

- the grammatical patterns of the word (In what patterns does the word occur? In what patterns must we use the word?)

- the collocational behavior of the word (what words or types of words can be expected before or after the word? What words or types of words must we use with this word?)

- how frequent the word is (How common is the word? How often should the word be used?)

- the appropriateness of a word ( Where should we expect to meet this word.  Where can this word be used?)

- the conceptual meaning of a word ( What does the word mean? what word should be used to express this meaning?)

- the associations a word has with other related words ( What other words does this word make us think of? What other words could we use instead of this one?) [7, 106]

Nation also states that knowledge of a word can be divided into knowledge concerning its form (spoken/written), its position (grammatical patterns/collocations), its function (frequency/appropriateness), and its meaning (concept/associations). Thus it is not the case that a word is either known or unknown. A word can be known in all sorts of degrees: from knowing that given form of an existing word to knowledge including all four aspects mentioned above. These degrees of word knowledge apply to native speakers as well as to second language acquisition learners.

In addition to Richards and Nation, researchers have put forward their own way of categorizing word knowledge. Carter has defined the similar vocabulary knowledge categories such as pronunciation, spelling, grammatical properties, syntactical features, collocations, associations and senses, etc. Laufer categorizes word knowledge as the form, the word structure, the syntactic pattern of the word in a phrase or a sentence, meaning, common collocations, and the lexical relations of the word with other words, such as synonym, antonym, and hyponym, and finally common collocations.

Although many researchers have classified vocabulary knowledge in different ways, there is a consensus among them that vocabulary knowledge is a complex system which consists of several types of vocabulary knowledge besides meaning and form. Any research that tends to explore vocabulary acquisition should regard it as its task to study the different types of word knowledge, and most importantly, to explore the links and interrelationships between the different types of word knowledge [8, 32]

To build a good stock of vocabulary is the first and most important

step when starting to learn a new language. Well mastered ability of using the right

expressions, phrases, grammatical structures and functions ensure students to be

successful in their communication. Monolingual dictionary specifies it more properly. It says that vocabulary means:

“1) all the words that a person knows or uses,

  2) all the words in a particular language,

  3) all the words that people use when they are talking about a particular subject,

  4) a list of words with their meanings, especially in a book for learning a

foreign language.[9, 200]

Chambers Dictionary offers other explanations:

“1) words in general,

  2) words known and used by one person, or within a particular trade or profession,

  3) a list of words in alphabetical order with meanings added as a supplement to

a book dealing with a particular subject.”

All the definitions are right with no doubts. But vocabulary is not as simple as that. It does not only mean to understand the definition of single words or collocations but it also requires the knowledge of how words fit into context. Therefore it is very difficult to be fully mastered by students. Vocabulary learning does not officially count among the language skills (which are listening, speaking, reading and writing) but it might be included there as there is no way of making progress in language without building vocabulary that can be then applied into grammar and create meaningful utterances through which people communicate among themselves. It is difficult for students to communicate without developing their own lexicon.

Vocabulary plays an essential role in expressing ideas and thoughts. The well-known British linguist, Wilkins (1976) says people could describe few things without grammar, but they could express nothing without vocabulary. Widdowson thinks that native English speakers can understand language material with correct vocabulary but not so proper in grammar rules rather than those with correct grammar rules but not so proper in vocabulary use. Lord mentions that ‘vocabulary is by far the most sizable and unmanageable component in the learning of any language, whether for a foreign or one’s mother tongue because of thousands of different meanings’ [10, 126]. Lewis holds the idea that vocabulary acquisition is the main task of second language acquisition and the language skills as listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating all can not go without vocabulary.

Vocabulary teaching has been developing greatly since 1980s. Several experts and linguists began to pay attention to vocabulary teaching during that period. For example, in the 1980s Terrel proposed the Natural Approach which emphasizes comprehensible and meaning input rather than grammatically correct production. In 1983, Allen mentions the presentation and exemplification of practical techniques in the teaching of vocabulary. Later, in 1985, Ruth Gairns and Stuart Redman state the principles of vocabulary teaching. In 1997 Sokmen discusses the current trends in teaching second language vocabulary. He points out that current research would suggest that it is worthwhile to add explicit vocabulary to the usual inferring activities in the for language classroom.

There are a growing number of studies researching what second language teachers do about vocabulary in second language classrooms. Among them, some strategies relevant to the study are listed as follows:

a)Basic Skills

Repetition is essential for vocabulary learning because there is so much to know about each word that one meeting with it is not sufficient to gain this information, and because vocabulary items must not only be known, they must be known well so that they can be fluently accessed [11, 77].

There are several ways to show the meanings of an English word, through such aids as : (1) objects that can easily be brought to class(umbrellas, scissors, tools, buttons of many colors and sizes, etc); (2) drawings by the teacher and drawings by the students; (3) demonstrations to show actions. Allen recommends teachers using the real object whenever possible when showing the meaning of an English noun. Real objects are better than pictures.

Body language is another useful way in vocabulary teaching. It is easy to demonstrate in class. The meanings of words can be shown through simple dramatic presentations. Even teachers can mime certain actions and gestures well enough to know the meanings of words.

Defining words by means of other words is a technique needed by the teacher. The students’  dictionary is a good source helper. An example sentence for drown might be, “the dead boy’s mother was very sad after her son drowned in the river.” .Often an example sentence can help the student more than a definition. Well-known dictionaries, such as the Oxford Student’s Dictionary of American English, the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, give helpful example sentences in addition to definitions [12, 156].

b) Contextualization

Every word has its own usage context. It is ineffective for students to master words from the concrete situation if the teacher explains them monotonously and abstractly. Lack of context makes vocabulary learning difficult. Words taught in isolation are generally not remembered. Therefore the background knowledge of words is very important in vocabulary teaching. Coady(1987) suggests that background knowledge may serve as compensation for certain syntactic deficiencies. Students pay attention to the content and show much interest in background knowledge. Some related words are remembered effectively and firmly. While reading, the communicative approach needs to inform and guide classroom practice. As for the communicative tasks, David Nunan describes it as “ a piece of classroom work which involves learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing or interacting in the target language while their attention is principally focused on standing alone as a communicative act in its own right” [13, 89].

c) Role-Play

There are varieties of activities in a classroom to help students learn target language effectively, such as games, music, dramatic stories, amusing anecdotes etc. Role-play is one of them. Role-play helps students learn effectively and use target language as freely and communicatively as they can. Role-play aims at fostering the ability of students and is characterized as mutual teaching and learning. It can realize the teaching model of “students play a principle role and the teacher plays a leading role” .