Name: Sherene Ferguson
Instructor: Brenda Magnetti
Date: 11/05/2015
Teaching Demonstration - Vocabulary
Duration: 50 minutes
Topic: Estás en tu casa.
Communicative Goal: Students should be able to use the appropriate vocabulary to talk about
their homes in the target language.
Communicative skills: Listening, speaking, reading and writing
Lexical content: Vocabulary associated with the different parts of the house and the things that
are to be found therein.
Grammatical content: singular and plural nouns, adjectives, and prepositions
Methodology: Form focused instruction with strong emphasis on lexical forms, via the use of
collocations and concordances.
1. Notices (1 minute)
* tarea # 25 (Thursday/ 11/ 06/2015)
* Tertulia : Thursays, 5 – 6 p.m. at Qdoba
2. Warm up Activity (Una actividad de describir) (3 minutes)
- Students will sit in groups of fives
- Students will look at the house presented on the whiteboard and produce as many adjective as
possible within a minute, to describe it
3. Transition
Una charla (4 minutes)
- The teacher will pose the following questions orally to the students (2 minutes):
a. ¿Vives en una casa o un apartamento?
b. ¿Cuál prefieres más? ¿Por qué?
c. ¿Cómo es tu casa ideal?
- The students will identify the maps displayed on the whiteboard in at order to determine the
countries that will be highlighted in chapter five (2 minutes)
4. Topic of the day (En Casa) (5 minutes)
- The teacher will divide the class into two teams
- Each team will choose the names Nicaragua or El Salvador
- The lesson will then be introduced to them in the form of a ‘Concurso de Vocabulario’
Content will include:
a. parts of the house
b. items that are found in the different parts of the house
c. a description of the function of the different parts of the house
5. Activity 1 – Una Entrevista (10 minutes)
-Students will interview at least two person about the homes in which they live using the
following questions (7 minutes):
a)
b)
c)
d)
e)
-
¿Cómo es tu casa?
¿Cuántas habitaciones hay?
¿Cuáles son?
¿Qué hay en la casa?
¿Cuál es tu lugar favorito en casa? ¿Por qué?
The teacher will then call upon random students to report their findings orally the rest of
the class (3 minutes)
6. The Latin American Home - Nota Cultural (5 minutes)
- Students will read aloud the mini passage provided about the Latin American home (p.132)
(3 minutes)
- the teacher will intermittently ask the following questions (2 minutes):
a. ¿Hay una casa típica hispanoamericana?
b. ¿Por qué?
c. En las ciudades, ¿Dónde viven la mayoría de personas?
d. ¿Cuáles son dos otras palabras para decir apartamento en español?
7. Expressing the days of the week (los días de la semana) (15 minutes)
* Students will watch a music video about the days of the week in the target language
(4 minutes)
- the teacher will then ask each group to compete by performing the song. The winning group
will get three points towards a quiz (6 minutes)
* The students will read aloud the content of a mini presentation in PowerPoint about the use of
the articles with the days of the week (3 minutes)
-
A mini class discussion will ensue
8. Activity 2 – page 133 / A (groups of two)
- students will complete a Fill – in- the- blanks activity based on the use of the days of the use
of week in the target language (2 minutes)
9. Prepositions – (las preposiciones/ p.131 / D) Oral group activity
- in groups of twos, students will use the prepositions presented on the whiteboard in order to
choose the correct preposition to complete the statements given (3 minutes)
10. Comentarios/ preguntas/ deberes/ despedidas (2 minutes)
Teaching vocabulary has always been one of my favorite activities in the classroom, due to the
level of creativity that it allows the teacher to use. Coined with this, I believe that the learning of
vocabulary is fundamental to one’s efficient acquisition of L2 and as such, is “… of critical
importance to the typical language learner” (Zimmerman, 1997, p.2). This stems from the fact
that within any language one can find a common patter of phonological grammatical and lexical
forms (Brown, 2007, p.425). The student who excels at L2 then, will clearly be the one who is
able to efficiently retain the different words or phrases (competence) and use it in order to
produce meaningful structures, in the appropriate time (performance).
It is with this in mind that the teacher chose to impart this lesson in this manner. Students were
given the vocabulary for this chapter beforehand to study so as to be better able to compete with
their classmates. By so doing, two goals were met. The vocabulary that was studied was very
specific and concise According to Rivers (1968), “excessive vocabulary learning early in the
course gives students the impression that the most important thing about learning a language is
accumulating new words as equivalents for concepts that they can already express in their native
language” (p. 254). Secondly, students were presented with vocabulary that is contextualized. By
so doing, they are better able to relate to it in a real setting – the context of their home. Due to the
fact that traditional vocabulary lists rarely provided context of this type, students were often
unable to use the words that they had learnt “as isolated units in an approximation to authentic
communication” (p.254).
The fact that the students were preempted about a vocabulary competition was also motivation
to get them to study the appropriate vocabulary to be used in the specified context. This is also in
sync with Brown’s five principles for teaching vocabulary. Engaging them in such a competition
will only help or motivate them to learn these words in a context (2007, p.436). Furthermore,
when students engage in group work in the context of vocabulary learning, they are less likely to
rely upon the use of translators/ dictionaries for phrases that they might not remember. This is so
because of the comfort they feel to consult with the members of their groups. In addition,
Activity 3, (associtaions), was employed to teach students to develop strategies for the meaning
of words. In this activity, clear descriptions are given of the different rooms in the house, thus,
highlighting to them the fact that sometimes an explanation can be provided, when the exact
word or concept is forgotten.
In accordance with Wilga River’s conception of how to teach a foreign language, the teacher
engaged students in high interest oral activities (warm up, mini chat and interview) so that the
words and phrases will be reused extensively in order to foster long term retention (p.256). The
variation of the different activities was also done in order to hold the attention of the students.
Learning vocabulary can become monotonous and or boring if the teacher is not equipped with
various methods of delivery.
In conclusion, throughout history, theoretical priorities regarding the teaching of a foreign
language have changed drastically. However, unfortunately, until recently, there has been little
emphasis placed on vocabulary learning. Despite this, one cannot downplay the fact that the
acquisition of words and phrases is essential to a speaker’s success in learning L2. This context
however, must be concise and contextualized at all times.
Works Cited
Brown, H. Douglas. Teaching by principles. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1994.
Larsen-Freeman, Diane, and Marti Anderson. Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching
3rd edition. Oxford university press, 2013.
Rivers, Wilga M. Teaching foreign-language skills. University of Chicago Press, 5801 S. Ellis
Ave., Chicago, IL 60637, 1981.
Zimmerman, Cheryl B. "Historical trends in second language vocabulary instruction." Second
language vocabulary acquisition (1997): 5-19.