3 tips to improve your vocabulary teaching

How many times have you heard a student say, ‘teacher, I don’t know how to express myself clearly in English’? Well, most of the time this is not due to grammatical errors, but a lack of vocabulary. So, what can we do in the class to help our students? Here are a few tips for how to vary our activities in the classroom:

1. Don’t do the same activity all the time

One of the risks is that as teachers, there is the temptation to repeat the same activity over and over again. It is important to vary our activities to keep the students interested.

2. Take advantage of technology

Teaching apps such as Kahoot, is free (basic account), has an intuitive interface, and is well designed to be utilised as a fun way to review target vocabulary at the end of the lesson. It takes very little time to set up can act as a fantastic bookend to a lesson as a review. Its interactive nature works well both in the classroom, as well as for online teaching.

3. Don’t give the students too many words to learn

Remember to limit the target language in each class. It is important to maximize the students’ exposure to fewer words, and not just give them long lists to ‘learn’. No more than 8 new vocabulary words per lesson is the general rule of thumb. If you give more than this, you are reducing the chances of students remembering the words.

These are just a few of our tips. Leave a comment if you have any other tips/strategies. 😊

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