Strategies For Teaching Vocabulary Games and Activities

A. Background
Traditionally, the teaching of vocabulary above elementary levels was mostly incidental, limited to presenting new items as they appeared in reading or sometimes listening texts. This indirect teaching of vocabulary assumes that vocabulary expansion will happen through the practice of other language skills, which has been proved not enough to ensure vocabulary expansion. Nowadays it is widely accepted that vocabulary teaching should be part of the syllabus, and taught in a well-planned and regular basis. Some authors, led by Lewis (1993) argue that vocabulary should be at the centre of language teaching, because ‘language consists of grammaticalised lexis, not lexicalised grammar’.
There are several aspects of lexis that need to be taken into account when teaching vocabulary. The list below is based on the work of Gairns and Redman (1986):
- Boundaries between conceptual meaning: knowing not only what lexis refers to, but also where the boundaries are that separate it from words of related meaning (e.g. cup, mug, bowl).
- Polysemy: distinguishing between the various meaning of a single word form with several but closely related meanings (head: of a person, of a pin, of an organisation).
- Homonymy: distinguishing between the various meaning of a single word form which has several meanings which are NOT closely related ( e.g. a file: used to put papers in or a tool).
- Homophyny:understanding words that have the same pronunciation but different spellings and meanings (e.g. flour, flower).
- Synonymy: distinguishing between the different shades of meaning that synonymous words have (e.g. extend, increase, expand).
- Affective meaning: distinguishing between the attitudinal and emotional factors (denotation and connotation), which depend on the speakers attitude or the situation. Socio-cultural associations of lexical items is another important factor.
- Style, register, dialect: Being able to distinguish between different levels of formality, the effect of different contexts and topics, as well as differences in geographical variation.
- Translation: awareness of certain differences and similarities between the native and the foreign language (e.g. false cognates).
- Chunks of language: multi-word verbs, idioms, strong and weak collocations, lexical phrases.
- Grammar of vocabulary: learning the rules that enable students to build up different forms of the word or even different words from that word (e.g. sleep, slept, sleeping; able, unable; disability).
- Pronunciation: ability to recognise and reproduce items in speech.
The implication of the aspects just mentioned in teaching is that the goals of vocabulary teaching must be more than simply covering a certain number of words on a word list. We must use teaching techniques that can help realise this global concept of what it means to know a lexical item. And we must also go beyond that, giving learner opportunities to use the items learnt and also helping them to use effective written storage systems.
Teaching Vocabulary Strategies
When a text may have too many challenging or difficult words, a teacher may want to employ a variety of techniques such as translation, picture matching, or explaining the new vocabulary in context. Pre-teaching vocabulary helps:
• learners focus on the subject of the text
• teachers predict the content of the text using the target vocabulary.
This pre-reading section of the lesson should take approximately ten minutes. Then, when the text is being read to the students, the teacher has the chance to either confirm the students' predictions or, to go straight to the main reading task depending on what was previously done.
There are also pre-reading lessons that are based on vocabulary review. Essentially, these act like warm-ups that have the effect of calming the class and help you get ready for the main task at hand. There are a variety of fun vocabulary activities that have game-like features that are very motivating.

B. Teaching Steps
Overview:
The Dictionary Game is an activity I use to introduce new vocabulary words from content areas. In order for the game to work all students playing the game must be completely ignorant as to the definition of the word being used.
Purpose:
Learning new vocabulary words is a tedious and boring process, but it's also a necessary activity. This game is one way to take the "boring" out of the process. When learning is fun, students remember what they learned longer.
Objective (s):
Students will learn new vocabulary words that are to be used in an upcoming unit. Students will also practice writing in a style different from any others they have tried (dictionary style).
Resources/Materials:
The words and their definitions plus enough identical pieces of paper to go around.
Activities and Procedures:
(how to play the game)
1. The teacher chooses a word that no student can define.
2. Each student (or group of students if teacher chooses to play in teams) will write a made-up definition for the word in question and the teacher will write the real definition. All of the definitions must be written on identical pieces of paper so that the paper doesn't become the clue.
3. All definitions are turned into the teacher and read by him/her. Then instruct each student to vote for a definition when the teacher reads them through the second time.
4. Points are scored in two ways:
a. someone votes for your definition as the real one (one point per vote).
b. you vote for the correct definition.
5. The winner is the student with the most points.


Tying It All Together:
The game is the most fun when the players get creative and humorous with their made-up definitions. The teacher needs model definitions so that students can see how to do it.
C. Conclusion
- Games have been shown to have advantages and effectiveness in learning vocabulary in various ways.
- First, games bring in relaxation and fun for students, thus help them learn and retain new words more easily.
- Second, games usually involve friendly competition and they keep learners interested. These create the motivation for learners of English to get involved and participate actively in the learning activities.
- Third, vocabulary games bring real world context into the classroom, and enhance students' use of English in a flexible, communicative way.'
- Therefore, the role of games in teaching and learning vocabulary cannot be denied.