Studies lexical material of English

As with phrasal verbs, a more effective and less perilous approach might be simply to teach them as they arise, and in their contexts of use. That is, to treat them as individual lexical items in their own right, without making a song and dance about them. Since idioms tend to cluster together, certain text types are often very rich in them. In this extract (from Sugar) idioms (including idiomatic phrasal verbs) are underlined.

Eastenders

Martin gets a big wake-up call this month when Mark is taken seriously ill. How will he cope knowing his big bro's days could be numbered and will Nicky stick by him through thick and thin?

Home and Away

Tom offers to pay for Justine's courses in the city with the money 1 earned from acting in the commercial. What a sweetie, eh? However, Justine isn't that impressed, and feels that Tom's cramping her style. Ho can she let him down gently?

Coronation Street

The Mike, Mark and Linda triangle's still going strong, and sparks are beginning to fly between Linda and Mark's new girlie, Claire. Eeek! Things aren't too good over at the Platt's either.

Emmerdale

Mark is annoyed when neither of his parents make it to the parent evening ... how embarrassing! Richie lends Sarah a shoulder to cry on after yet another bust-up with Jack. Will those two ever get on?

To use a text like this in class, learners could be set the task of working 01 the underlined idioms from either their form or their context. For example, going strong is easily unpacked from its components. Sparks are beginning to fly is less obvious, but its negative connotation can be deduced from what follows (Eeek! Things aren't too good...). Showing learners how to work on idiomatic meaning from these kinds of clues can not only contribute t passive vocabulary knowledge but can improve reading skills as well.

Conclusions

There is more to words than simply 'words'. In this chapter we have seen:

- how parts of words combine in systematic ways to form whole words

- how whole words combine in systematic ways to form chunks

But, the fact that these combinations are systematic does not mean that the teaching of word formation or of word combination should necessarily be rule-based. The systems may be too complicated or too irregular to be of much use to learners, either for receptive or productive purposes.

Instead, an approach that combines frequent and contextualised exposure with consciousness-raising may work best. This is recommended for the teaching of:

- composite words

- collocations

- phrasal verbs

- idioms

Conclusions

In this term paper we have looked the implications of findings for the teaching of vocabulary:

- Learners need tasks and strategies to help them organize their mental lexicon by building networks of associations - the more the better;

- Teachers need to accept that the learning of new words involves a period of “initial fuzziness”;

- Learners need to wean themselves off a reliance on direct translation from their mother tongue;

- Words need to be presented in their typical contexts so that learners can get a feel for their meaning, their register, their collocations and their syntactic environment;

- Teaching should direct attention to the sound of new words, particularly the way they are stressed.

In this work we have looked the ways the teacher can make the presentation of vocabulary maximally effective, both in terms of word form and word meaning. Some of the conclusions reached include the following:

- establishing the meaning of a new word first and when presenting its form is a standard approach;

- translation is an economical way of presenting meaning but may not be the most memorable;

- illustrating meaning is effective but is limited to certain kinds of words;

- explaining meaning verbally is time-consuming but can be effective if explanations are kept clear and simple;

- the spoken form can be highlighted through the giving of clear models, the use of phonemic script, and repetition;

- the written form should not be withheld too long;

- learners should be actively involved in the presentation.

Bibliography

1. A.S.Hornby. Oxford Student's dictionary of current English. Oxford. oxford University press, 1984. - 770 p.

2. Методика викладання іноземних мов в середніх навчальних закладах. Підручник для студентів вищих закладів освіти. - К. Лен світ, 2002. - 328 с.

3. Scott Thornbury. How to teach vocabulary. - Longman. 2002. - 185 p.