Discovering Techniques of Vocabulary Teaching in Middle Schools

His brother, too, was extremely tired.
②Mary, why are you talking so fast? The Chinese don’t understand you when you speak so quickly.
c) Categories: Names of categories can be taught verbally if the students know some names of items that belong within a particular category.
Teacher: Coffee is a beverage. Coca-cola is a beverage. Tea is a beverage. Give me some other examples of beverages.
Student: Milk is a beverage.
Teacher: Tennis is a sport. Baseball is a sport. What is another sport?
Student: Football is a sport.
d) Definitions and paraphrases: Definitions and paraphrases may be given in the target language. Target language dictionaries are useful to the teacher, especially those dictionaries prepared to help foreigners learn the second language.[NextPage]

    ①A singer is a person who sings.
②A girl who is “bad news” is not very pretty. She is ugly.
vi. Grouping:
Many textbooks present vocabulary items in random order. Some books have alphabetical lists of new words. In either case, new words may be further grouped to point out similarities and differences among them. Bright students do this automatically, but often the slower students experience difficulty precisely because they do not notice the obvious groupings.
The teacher can prepare handouts that group words to help students remember them more easily.
a) Nouns: Nouns can be grouped in families:
①Colour: white, black, yellow, brown, green, pink…
②Foods: bread, milk, apple pie, grapes, cake…
b) Verbs: Verbs can be grouped by its usage and collocation:
1. enjoy, avoid, escape, finish, can’t help…+ doing
2. go  v.
go about: perform;   go after: try to get   go against for: oppose
go by: pass;      go for: attack      go along with: agree with…
c) Adjectives: Adjectives can be grouped according to the way they are used
-ous: famous, dangerous, generous   -able,-ible: eatable, accessible
-ful: useful, doubtful, resentful      -ary,-ory: elementary, contradictory
-ic: patriotic, heroic, historic        -ant,-ent: important, different
-ive: comparative, progressive, passive…
d) Pares of words: Synonyms and antonyms can be grouped. Root words may be paired with forms using prefixes or suffixes.
vii. Discovery techniques:
Especially at intermediate levels and above, discovery techniques (where students have to work out rules and meanings for themselves rather than being given everything by the teacher) are an appropriate alternative to standard presentation techniques. This is certainly true of vocabulary learning where students will often be asked to discover for themselves what a word means and how and why it is being used.
At intermediate levels we can assume that students already have a considerable store of vocabulary rather than teach them new words we can show them examples of words in action ask them to use their pervious knowledge to work out what words can go with others, when they should be used and what connotations they have.
Even at beginner levels, however, we may want to ask students to try to work out what words mean, rather than just handing them the meanings, when students have had a go, with the words we can lead feedback sessions to see it they have understood the words correctly.
We know that

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