- There are a few techniques that can help students memorize words.
- Say the word and try to see what it means in your main. Use your senses: its smell, its taste, what it look like…
- Write the word while you say it and visualize it.
- Copy words and keep them in a vocabulary notebook.
- You can copy them: in alphabetical order, in lexical fields.
- While you write words, say and try to visualize them in your mind.
7. Memorizing words:
- By doing activities and exercises and playing games.
- “Other things being equal, a colour picture will be remembered longer than a black and white picture;
- A sentence spoken by a skilled actress will make more of an impression than the same sentence read in the ‘now-listen-carefully’ used by some teachers.”
- Prepare cards:
Side B – spelling + pronunciation +
the word in context (in a sentence) + translation (?)
- Invent key words that will remind you of them: chest – Chester = bad for your chest.
- Revise the words and check if you remember them. For this you can use: word cards, lists of words with their Spanish equivalents, use a dictionary.
8. Vocabulary activities
- Variety is a very important factor here, since children get enthusiastic easily but they also get tired and lose concentration fast.
- Listen-and-do-something type: listen and point, listen and colour, listen a draw, listen and circle, listen and tick/cross, listen and order, listen and follow instructions, listen and identify, listen and label and listen and raise your hand when you hear a specific word.
- Mixed types of techniques: classification, association, memorization…
- Listten and say, listen and repeat, listen, point and name, listen and complete words, match words with definitions, match synonyms or opposites, find the odd one out, group words belonging to the same semantic fields, and brainstorm round a word.
- Games. Grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and spelling.
- Cardboard games (bingo, dominoes, noughts and crosses, happy families…).
- Memory games (Kim’s game, disappearing pictures…).
- Guessing games (guess the person, riddles…).
- Miscellaneous games (Simon says, based on Asher’s Total Physical Response Methos).
