telc Workshop during the IATEFL 2016 in Birmingham. Many students have problems expressing themselves, simply because they lack the right words. Nevertheless, vocabulary learning has been neglected for a surprisingly long time. With Michael Lewis’s The Lexical Approach as background, we will use Jean Aitchinson’s Words In The Mind and recent neurodidactic studies by Marion Grein to find out how vocabulary learning can be both effective and enjoyable. Subscribe our newsletter: https://www.telc.net/kontakt.html

1. 08.05.2016 telc gGmbH 1
Into the mind –
How to teach vocabulary
effectively
Alexandra Haas

2. 08.05.2016 telc gGmbH 2
Schedule of the workshop
 Why teach vocabulary?
 How does the memory work?
– an experiment
 Words in(to) the mind

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Why teach vocabulary?
 Grammar rules are the
bones, words are the
flesh.
 Language learning is
mastering structures or
functions.

 Grammar is subordinate
to lexis.
 Language is grammati-
calized lexis, not lexical
grammar.
 The Lexical Approach (Michael Lewis)
Language is a lexical phenomenon.
Language learning is achieved by the ability of the
mind to learn, store and process lexical items.

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How does your memory work?
water life fire square death
line air angry pencil ball
picture appel year sheep cluedo
sky hill cloud spring shape
pen foot wind round happy
cat paper arm dog point
foot rabbit round sad intelligent

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How does your memory work?

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Words in the mind
Any town in real life is likely to
contain “social networks”, groups of
people who know one another and
interact fairly often. […]
This analogy can be transferred to
the mental lexicon. Each 'lexical
town' will contain numerous clumps
of words with strong ties to one
another - though each clump will
also have bonds, yet weaker ones,
with other groups.
(Jean Aitchinson, Words in the Mind)

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Words in the mind
The neurobiological view: introducing …
… the brain cell

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Words in the mind
 Making connections: synapses
 Learning = building new neuron populations in the cortex
 Babies are born with 100 million neurons, they need to get
connected by synapses
 Synapses get stronger every time they are activated
 The dentist effect: Hebb‘s rule
 „Cells that fire together, wire together“
 Fuel for thoughts – neurotransmitters
 transmitting impulses between neurons/synapses
 excite or inhibit? – neurotransmitters have to be in balance
 a person‘s neurotransmitter-cocktail is as individual as their
fingerprint, unlike the fingerprint, it changes during our lifetime

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Take home messages:
 Build networks
= connect new words with things your learners know
(words, things, sounds, tastes, emotions …)
 Recycle words
= do/say new things with old words
 Repeat vocabulary in growing loops
= cf. vocabulary box
Words in the mind

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Words in(to) the mind
kutsu
Espressolia / pixelio.de
gudu
Sven Richter / pixelio.de
Tim Reckmann / pixelio.de
Schuh

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Words in(to) the mind
The limbic system
 limbus (lat.) = border, the limbic system is the gate keeper
 10 million items of information per second,
only 20 are let through
 the limbic system checks for relevance:
- new? important? pleasant/interesting?
- Is the person in front of me credible?
= the role of the teacher
OpenStax College

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Take home messages:
 get the brain‘s attention
 be (in)credible as a teacher
 it‘s all in the mix:
There‘s no such thing as „the ideal learning method“
Words in(to) the mind

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Help your
students find the
right methods

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Minds are like parachutes.
They only function when open!
Röhl / pixelio.de