Written form first or Spoken form to teach?

Question

Dear Sir,I would truly appreciate if you could give me some pointers with regard to teaching on introducing vocabulary item to the class for the first time. I'm looking into the context of what to teach first, whether written form first or spoken form later. Perhaps it would be great to have some examples as well. Or rather what may be good based on your own view? I shall be truly grateful for your assistance if you could also provide me with some links on the internet to source such topic.Thank you very much.

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

Hello, Andrew - and welcome to English Forums.

I don't know of any links offhand, sorry. I can advise from my own experience, however.

First, I can say that the answer to your seemingly simple question depends on many factors, the main of which are: the language experience your students have had, the way they are used to learning a language, their ages, how many are taught at once, the relation of their L1 to L2.

My best results with Japanese students (both private and in groups) is to mix it up. I do not want them to get into any rote learning routine, either their traditional one or something I learned at TEFL training.

(1) I take vocabulary as it appears in class - accidentally in an aside, as a question from a student, as a look of confusion on a student's face. I take it as an integral part of language learning, all mixed up in everything else that is going on.

And (2) I vary presentations, sometimes starting with short theme-based word lists, sometimes giving them to the students, sometimes reading them to the students, and other times extracting them from texts which the students first hear then read, or take home and read first, etc. Anything, in short, to keep the students a bit 'off-balance' so that they don't expect vocabulary to arrive in any specific kind of memorization byte, but so that they learn instead that it comes from anywhere and everywhere.

(As an aside, you might want to know that, in general, ongoing vocabulary acquisition for both EFL/ESL students and native speakers comes from reading. Think about how many words that you discover you mispronounce because you never actually heard it before, but just read it somewhere.)

Written form first or Spoken form to teach?

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