1. VOCABULARY TEACHING
AND LEARNING
STRATEGIES
By Merve Karaca
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2. WHAT IS VOCABULARY?
 In general, set of words that people use in communication
-To give a message
-To TEACH something
 ‘’ My vocabulary’’ > Number of words that we know
-It can be changed from person to person
-Beginner or advanced learner in a language
 Vocabulary in a context
-Words related to the topic or ideas in a text
-For example; Texts about professionals
(Pharmacy, psycholocy, marine..)
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3. WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
Easy way;
 To express feeling, ideas and needs,
To understand others better,
To learn/teach something deeply,
To memorize things permanently,
To impress someone with using words.
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4. WHAT IS IT?
Strategy : What is it? By Nation (1978)
Process:
1. Asking if class knows the word uttered
2. Students already knowing start to raise their hands
3. Not directly saying the meaning of the word, but
examplifing it in sentences
4. Increasing raised hands because of inferences from
sentences.
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5. NATION’S OTHER STRATEGIES
1.The taxonomy : Organizing a schedule of
 what to learn,
 how much time to spend,
 where the vocabulary comes from, and
 set of information about words.
2. Learning from context
3.Dividing a word into parts to make connections between root and
suffixes or prefixes.
4.Using dictionary (Nation,2001)
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6. CODE-MIXING
It consists of the combination of words from L1
and L2
For example; ‘’This situation is a problem for
yetkililer too. What can they do?, I
mean, authorities. ‘’ (Çelik, 2003, p. 364)
Mehmet Çelik (2003) studied a research to find
out if code-mixing tecnique can be a strategy to
learn new words of second language.
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7. CODE-MIXING
Process:
1. Telling a story including mixed words from both L1 and
L2
2. Making students discuss what they heard
3. Making students write what they discuss
After analyzing the results, he concluded that;
-teachers can use code-mixing in vocabulary
teaching,
-it may seen that students have some spelling
mistakes and use incorrectly when writing the words.
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8. READ-ALOUD
It was studied by Karen J. Kindle (2010).
The study based on interacting with students by;
-reading text loudly,
-highlighting new words in conversation,
-giving clues about the meanings, and
-exemplfying.
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9. READ-ALOUD
For example;
Teacher: Maybe humble, humble?
Student: What is humble?
Teacher: When you are humble, you don’t brag, like she
didn’t say ‘’I’m very pretty’’ (page 73)
After analyzing the results, it was founded;
-learning new words were gained successfully,
-the teachers who were not familiar with common strategies
were very successful in creating their own strategy.
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10. STORY-TELLING
Story-telling means conveying a message or event for different
purposes.
As a strategy of vocabulary teaching and learning, it is also used for
mostly small children.
Process:
 Cain (2007) studied with a group of children to understand that
this method is effective to develop vocabulary skills or not.
 Students read short stories including some clues about words
Result:
 It is found that students were able to derive new words from
context and make definitions of the words thanks to story telling.
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11. STRATEGIES FROM KAREN
BROMLEY
Karen Bromley (2007), who is one of the teachers at
Binghamton University in the USA, suggested these;
 Creating a list of English words
 Teaching suffixes and prefixes to make students understand
better (2002)
 Reading texts aloud and playing oral games with small
groups
 Using pictures and drawing trees for related word structures
 Having a word-book written descriptions of words
 Making connections between combined words
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12. SPELLING
Spelling makes language learners different from each other
according to how they pronounce a word.
According to Rosenthal and Ehri (2008), vocabulary can be
provided by teachers who pay attention to spelling.
Process:
 52 elementary students participated
 All were exposed to pronunciation
 But only some were shown the written forms of words
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13. SPELLING
Results:
 All participants developed great scores, but
 Students exposured to written forms had more
satisfying results in remembering the words
 Learning the correct pronunciation is more
challenging than learning the definitions
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14. RETELLING
Retelling can be thought as an activity which
students read texts and tell what they
understand.
Leung (2008) studied a research and found
these;
 Students can learn scientific words in a text
 Students being part of retelling activities are
more successful at explaining a word which is
learnt newly.
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15. Thank you!
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