The Effective Methods to Learn New Vocabulary

Shiyu Wang EDI 300 Dr. Pole 09/26/2011 The Effective Methods To Learn New Vocabulary Vocabulary is one of the three main elements of language, and it is the base of literature. Whatever people communicate with others by any language, and the first requirement is that people must have certain vocabulary. In study activities, teachers emphasize listening, speaking, reading, and writing, but students cannot learn without vocabulary. Vocabulary learning is a process of memorizing and recognizing. If students don’t have enough vocabulary, they will spend more time to read, and they are not interested in the books they read.
Learning language base is very important in English teaching, and learning language base includes knowledge and skill. For accumulating vocabulary knowledge, and pointing to the difficulties to students, some researchers provide some methods below to develop the learning qualities. In the beginning, vocabulary learning includes two sides, and they are accumulating and understanding. The purpose of learning vocabulary is letting students handle every word, so the best method of learning vocabulary is by reading. If they handle the sentences, they will remember the words.
One disadvantage of learning by rote is that all words are in alphabetical order, and student cannot be interested in those words because of no connection with their life. This will be a very passive activity, but memorizing is active. For example, people might remember name of the person they want to make friend with. That is not because you repeat it, but also you are memory activator. The other disadvantage is that even though people remember the meanings of the words, they cannot use them to write articles.

In different language environment, one word has different meanings. So, using sentence frame to develop vocabulary is a better method. If you read a sentence every day, the value will be more than that people recite twenty words. Dr. Kesler “prompted students to continue using the textual information to consider the word’s meaning. After reading, we revisited the words in context and how often they appeared in the text. The students then refined and generated new possible sentences that we discussed based on new textual information. (Ted 2) Reading is good, but the sentences should be found in our favorite articles. Firstly, people must love that sentence, because understanding is the basic of using. For instance, when I read Mark Twain, one sentence is written like that “…constantly worries about money as her family teetered between near-prosperity and genteel poverty. ” This sentence describes the family economic situation exactly. Because I love this sentence, I immediately remember the word “teeter”. Then, American sociologist, Dr.
Hymes stated that only studying one language is not enough, students must have the ability of communicating by the language. They must understand how to use suitable methods to express the true purpose, and this expression method depends on the social cultural background. The cultural background is abundant. Generally, learning vocabulary has the firm connection with learning cultural background. Therefore, during the studying process, we might meet many words related to culture, when we learn these words, we should know the culture around the words. For that reason, they are not separated.
I am an international student in the USA, so I live in a totally different culture environment, so the same meaning word has different meaning and usage in different culture environment. For example, in American people mind, “week” is from Sunday to Saturday, but in Chinese culture, “week” is from Monday to Sunday. At the same time, in different culture background, every word have abundant cultural connotation except denotation. Therefore, people should communicate with others by mixing language and culture. On the other side, good culture knowledge can not lead people communicate with others.
Reading a lot of newspaper, books, and movies can let students understand the suitable environment, and they can know the true meaning of the vocabulary, so they will have the ability to communicate with other people, and get the purpose of using the new words. Using new pictures to learn and review Next, teachers should develop the interests of learning words. For changing the boring learning methods, they must use several different teaching ways to let students are interested in new vocabulary by themselves. Firstly, teachers can use new pictures to learn and review, so they can use several pictures to lead students to learn.
For example, they can create many kinds of picture cards to learn fruit and vegetable words. Those cards will catch children’s attention, and this will be the best time to remember vocabulary. Secondly, teachers can use real things. Students don’t like boring lecture, but several real things are close to the reality life, so they can see and touch the objects, so they will develop their study interests, then teachers can teach new words with letting students look at the real objects. Thirdly, teachers can let students to sing songs.
If teachers can compose the songs by the new words, they can let students sing with performance, and it will build a relaxing study environment. Fourthly, playing games is also a good method to let students have study interests, and it can change the boring language situation to be an interesting course structure that students can accept. Fifthly, teachers can use some simple drawing. When they draw the pictures, they will remember the words effectively. In Janet Towell’s E-journal named Fun with vocabulary, she also introduce many other interesting ways to learn vocabulary, like color shock.
It “is a technique that was originally designed for right-brained, learning disabled students to help them remember sight words. Right-brained children seem to have a special sensitivity for bright colors. ” (Janet 356) This way is using different colors with different letters, so it will be a best way to learn words. The other way she Word cross game show readers is onsets and rimes, and “ this technique for developing phonemic awareness can help beginning readers quickly and effectively learn many sight words using word patterns. (Janet 356) Those methods are all good for students to learn new vocabulary. Last but not least, technology will be another effective methods to learn new vocabulary. Using new technology can imitate several situations, and in teaching process. Firstly, powerpoint can be used independently without other software. Powerpoint can link to video, flash, picture, and other audio records, and teachers can show the course content by several media. Powerpoint is very active, and it cannot only catch students’ attention, but also help student remember words well.
Secondly, study is a process of structure knowledge and studying actively. Therefore, teachers should let students think continuously, and get knowledge by thinking. By looking flash, students will find that words can have their living power because changing can develop memory. Thirdly, teachers try their best to using the Internet resource. On the Internet, students can read some materials that are related to the content they need to learn. They will understand the textbooks deeply, and at the same time, they will develop their reading ability. Dr.
Dalton thinks that “teachers can create a digital version of a vocabulary field trip using a free program called TrackStar. It allows you to collect a series of websites and annotate them so that students follow the online journal. ” (Bridget 4) They also can use advantage of online word reference tools as teaching tools, for example, “the visual thesaurus website complement its freebased content with free information such as the Behind the Dictionary and Teachers at work. ” (Bridget 4) Additionally, students can exchange their thoughts with other students on the Internet.
In conclusion, Emily Dickinson writes a poem called A Word that “ A word is dead When it is said, Some say, I say it just Begins to live That day. ” So, learning new vocabulary can be very interesting, and there are many different effective methods to remember words. Fluent language cannot exist without huge vocabulary accumulating, so enjoying vocabulary is the basic of learning language well. Without vocabulary, reading, translating, and writing cannot continue. Language learning develops by practicing and repeating, so teachers must keep students’ passion.
Interest is the best teacher. The effective method to make vocabulary learning active is a necessary way teachers must research. Works Cited The Reading Teacher. Newark, Del. , etc: International Reading Association, 1989. Internet resource. Reading Teacher. Newark, Del: International Reading Association, 1900. Internet resource. “Games. ” Photograph. Webshots. 2011. Web. 2 Dec. 2011. ;http://vocabulary. net/games/; “Basic Vocabulary Skills Cards. ” Photograph. Webshots. 22 August. 2011. Web. 2 Dec. 2011. ;http://www. ssww. com/item/basic-vocabulary-skills-cards-LR1184/;