Teaching English Vocabulary to Children: for ELT and ESL 

For Juniors (5 – 11 year olds. You will be able to adapt the activities for younger or older students)

Words are the building blocks of language and having a good supply of them is very important for students right from the beginning of their English learning.

With young students vocabulary learning is relatively easy as the words they need (the words they would use in their mother tongue too) are concrete – things they can see, touch, taste, play with etc; so it easy for the meaning of the words to be made apparent without resorting to translation or complicated explanations. How better to teach the word ‘apple’ than to show the children an apple or a picture of an apple?

The sooner students are able to communicate ideas in English, the more motivated they will be, so giving them a bank of vocabulary to draw on is necessary – starting with nouns and adjectives.

Although children seem to learn new words very quickly, they will also forget quickly, so it is very important to give them lots of practice of vocabulary to help them remember.  

Presenting new vocabulary

At the presentation stage it is vital that the meaning of new words is clear. I am a great advocate of avoiding mother tongue in the English classroom. Translation is unnecessary and indirect and also creates a dependence in students that is later hard to cure.

To present concrete vocabulary: a staged approach

e.g. Fruit

1.   bring in a bag of different fruit – six to eight items at a time is plenty

2.   pick up one fruit and say the word clearly a number of times, encourage the students to repeat the word

3.   go through all the words in this way

4.   return regularly to a word they have already been introduced to and check they have remembered it e.g. pick up a banana and say ‘an apple?’ or ‘is this an apple?’, students should be able to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ appropriately before you move on to check the vocabulary further

5.   to further check that students have connected the new word to the meaning ask students individually ‘show me the banana’ etc. they will get actively involved in recognising the target word and indicating the object which it describes

With vocabulary like animals pictures can be used.

With verbs actions can be used – walk, sit, swim, hop etc and students encouraged to respond to the words with the appropriate actions – this is a great game.

Once children have been introduced to the alphabet and have started reading and writing words, after the introduction of the meaning and sound of new words, introduce the written form. Make flashcards with words on them, read them aloud with the students and get them to match the words to the objects or pictures.

          b_ _k                                  c_a_r                                  p_ _c_l

Get students to write the words under pictures like this:

Pronunciation/Drilling

Students must hear correct models of the target vocabulary in order to copy the pronunciation and to recognise the words later. They should also have plenty of practice of saying the words in order to get the pronunciation right and also to help memorisation. Choral repetition of words is useful but can become meaningless. To keep focussed on meaning, try choral repetition like this:

Put these five faces on the board:

When children repeat the words they have to do so conveying these emotions. Try it with the word chocolate. Children enjoy doing this and they do the activity meaningfully.

Chants and songs are a good way to get students repeating vocabulary and by adding actions focus on meaning is not lost.

Songs and Games for Children by David Paul has lots of lovely chants and songs for example:

Chants for teaching children, + Teacher's notes 

Get students moving their arms wide apart when they say big and close together when they say little to indicate meaning. Students can also make up their own verses with other animals, which they decide are big or little – or even other objects like house and cup.

Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes + Notes

This old favourite is very meaningful as children must touch the right part of the body as they sing the word.

The other good thing about songs and chants is that the words are part of connected speech at a reasonably fast speed, so that weak forms and sound linking occur naturally. E.g. ‘knees and toes’ if said at the speed of the song have a natural link of the ‘s’ in knees and the ‘a’ in and, also the ‘a’ in and becomes a schwa and not a long sound.

Another fun way of getting children’s tongues around English sounds are tongue twisters:

e.g.

Yellow lorry, yellow lorry

Sally sells sea shells on the sea shore

Practice Activities

Pizzas

• For food vocabulary and fun

• Give each student a paper plate and ask them to design their favourite pizza by drawing the things they most like onto it. You can show them your own example with e.g. cheese, tomato, ham, pineapple and chocolate!

• If they are pre-writers, they can tell you and each other what is on their pizza. If they are able to, they write the words of the ingredients next to them on the pizza. The ‘pizzas’ can be displayed on the classroom walls.

I went to market

• For older students with a bigger bank of vocabulary.

• For all vocabulary, alphabet awareness and fun.

• Get students into a circle.

• Start by saying: ‘I went to market and I bought an apple’.

• The student to your right must repeat what you said and add another thing beginning with B.

• Keep going until the last student has to remember 26 things bought in market!

Hangman

• A quick and effective way of getting students to revise spelling of previously introduced words. A great warmer at the start of a lesson.

• Think of a word students learnt last lesson e.g. mountain

• Draw eight dashes on the board – one for each letter of the word

 - - - - - - - -

One at a time students guess which letters may be in the word. If they are correct the letter is added to the word:

’N’ = _ _ _ n _ _ _ n

If they guess incorrectly, the teacher draws one part of a hangman’s noose on the board

Students can guess the whole word at any time. But the teacher wins if the whole hangman is drawn before the word is guessed.

Pelmanisms

Prepare separate cards with words and pictures.

1. spread them on the floor or table and ask children to match the words to the pictures

2. once they have done this successfully turn all the cards over and jumble them up

3. in groups of up to six, students take turns to pick up 2 cards and show them to everybody. If they get a picture and the word that goes with the picture they keep the cards, if their cards do not match they put them back where they find them.

4. Students must try to remember where the cards have been put down.

This is a great game for concentration, reading and meaning.

Bingo

To practise word recognition

Collate a list of 20+ words the students know well – they can recognise them in their written and spoken form and know the meanings. Either write the words on the board or hand out a list of the words to the students. Students must choose any 9 of the words and write them onto a piece of paper that looks like this:

E.G.

Teacher chooses words form the list at random and reads them aloud. If the student has the word on their paper they cross it out. As soon as a student has crossed out three words in a line – up, down or diagonally – they shout Bingo! And are the winner.

Label the classroom

Children learn from everything around them and need constant reinforcement of language. A fun way of reinforcing the written form of the words for classroom objects like door, board, window etc is to label them.

• Write the words on card and as you teach the words stick them to the appropriate object

• Or get students to label the objects themselves

• One lesson jumble them up and get students to label them appropriately

Some more nice vocabulary practice activities for Macmillan books:

LINK pp 12,13,52 Heinemann Children’s Games, Maria Toth

Great practice of clothes vocabulary

LINK pp 58,59 100+ Ideas for Children, Holderness & Hughes

Food vocabulary

These materials are prepared by Olha Madylus, who has been a classroom teacher for over twenty years as well as a teacher trainer in state schools and other institutions, including The British Council, in Greece, Hong Kong, Venezuela and the UK. 

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