The Teachers’ Corner:

Vocabulary is the key to understanding language.  With this as a background, I use to post 10 words on the board every Monday morning for my Grade 12 English class.  I took the words from an old ratty paper back called Increase Your Vocabulary in 30 Days.  The system I used was to post the words on Monday and then test them on Friday. The test took the form of:

• spelling some of the words
• giving the students a word and then asking for an antonym or synonym of the word which was on the list for the week
• asking them to use a word from the list correctly in a sentence etc. etc.

The tests were marked by other students in the class.  I recorded a mark in a special section of my marking book and told them I would take their average from all the tests and give them a mark out of 5 as part of their report card mark.  They were also alerted to the fact that if they correctly used any of the words that were on the list in a test or assignment, they would get a bonus mark.  It started off slowly and then took off after the students began to see it as a challenge game.  They had fun with it and debated the answers as we took them up.  One class even recommended we set up teams for the game – but I couldn’t quite figure out how to mark that!

I decided that, for the next year, I would make a change.  First, I would use the technique in all grades from 9-12 and I would begin to split the words into two groups:  one group (5 words) was just for basic vocabulary improvement and the second group (5 words) were words I collected from the students that were common terms in their other subjects.  We used words like ‘conjugation’ from French and German, ‘osmosis’ from Chemistry and ‘isthmus’ from Geography.  It became my own little classroom version of the drive for teaching language across the curriculum which was being heralded by the Ministry of Education in our province.

This very concrete task and sense of gamesmanship really took root with the students.  I was not surprised, then, when I was the recipient of queries from other teachers who had heard about “Dr. Dan’s Friday Game Show” (which is what they called it.)  Much to my surprise, several teachers from Science, History, Geography and Mathematics took up the idea in their own classes so what began as a trial for me became practice both in my class and other teachers’ classes as well.  This exercise became a staple in my class over the next few years at several schools where I taught English.

I fused it with the concept of Madeline Hunter’s “anticipatory set” technique (q.v.) for my Friday classes.  As much as anything, this little addition to my class shows how a sometimes very simple, useful and time-effective exercise can actually take off with students and benefit them in several ways.  It increased their vocabulary, provided extra assistance to them in terms of learning for other classes and it was an easy way to earn an extra few marks per term which often made the difference between a 79 or 80 or a 59 or 60.  In addition, I believe, though I have no real proof, that for many teachers who were not English teachers (i.e. teachers of English) it probably gave them an insight into something that is not often done in many subjects.  That is the teaching of vocabulary as a vehicle for decoding some of the more complex explanations in textbooks in areas like Physics and Business education.  All teachers should be teachers of language.  This was just one way of introducing almost incidentally that notion to teachers outside the English Department.

Dr. Dan

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