Teaching Vocabulary To Young Learners

Bernadeta Setianingtyas
1441110025
Universitas Tridinanti Palembang
1 What is Vocabulary?
• Vocabulary is the collection of words that an

individual knows.
• As a teacher, it is important to teach
vocabulary not only nouns but also verb,
adjectives, adverbs, and preposition
• It is important to help young learners expand
their vocabulary both formal and informal
instruction
Background to the teaching of
2 vocabulary
 Vocabulary development is an important aspect
of language development
 The goal : make student become word-savvy and
excited to manipulate them in playful ways.
 Teacher should facilitate vocabulary learning
 Learners need to acquire vocabulary learning
strategies in order to discover the meaning of
new words.
 Vocabulary should be integrated into teaching the
four skills- listening, speaking, reading, and
writing.
3 Principles for teaching vocabulary
1. Emphasized both direct and indirect teaching
- Direct instruction refers to the words and their
meaning
Eg : give a direct instruction to find the meaning
of the following words:
- car, train, & plane
- Indirect instruction refers to helping children
learn appropriate strategies so they can figure
out the meaning of words on their own
Eg : teaching the prefixes uni, bi, and tri to
students. Then having them pointed out to
pictures of unicycle, bicycle, & tricycle
2. Teach vocabulary words before a new activity
Benefits :
1. They are better
able to
comprehend the
activity
2. They will acquire

the target
vocabulary words
3. Teach how to use context clues appropriately
• Student can benefit from learning how to use

context clues and guessing the meaning from the
context
Eg : The grandmother found some cherries, figs,
apples, and pears on the table
• Student also need to be taught that context clues
do not always help readers to understand the
meaning of unfamiliar words
Eg : She found a dove next to the fruits
4. Present multiple exposures to new vocabulary items
Eg : Teaching about rooms in a house

A new word
should Monday
reappear • Bring doll furniture for each room
many times
and in Wednesday
different • Play different vocabulary games with picture
situations for cards featuring rooms in a house
the next Next week
several weeks • A puppet show where the puppets are
of instruction moving into a new house
5. Give opportunities for deep processing vocabulary
items
• Deep Processing means working with information at
high cognitive and / or personal level
• Part of deep processing : new words – prior
knowledge
• It refers to using words in context which are
especially meaningful to the learner
• Eg : if you teach about the rooms in a house, you may
want to end the unit by having students talk or write
sentences about the rooms in their house
6. Teach students to use dictionaries
• The use of dictionaries as a tool for EFL & ESL
instruction has come back into style
Under 6th Beginning stages of English-
years old language and literacy language
development literacy skills
Picture Picture dictionary Dictionary
dictionary
7. Have students keep vocabulary notebooks
Cc
Car
Cc
DD
4 Classroom techniques and activities
Connecting vocabulary to young learners’ lives

through personalization
Word for the day
Categories
Scavenger hunt
What’s missing?
Mystery words
Concentration
Vocabulary basket
1. Connecting vocabulary to young learners’
lives through personalization
What time do you wake up in the morning?
How many season that exist in Indonesia?
What kind of gift do you want if today is your birthday?
These questions are design to :

-Prompt learners to really think about the words
-relate the words to their own lives
-encourage cognitive skills
-Develop higher-order thinking skills
2. Word for the day Select a
specific word
each day
Jungle animals :
• Tiger Ask them to
say the word
• Turtle when take
• Elephant attendance
The elephant is Make it a

drinking water in the sentence
river when children
waiting for the
bell ring
3. Categories Related Related to
- Each learner should create a set to water land
of picture cards or word cards Harbor Railroad
with different vocabulary item Water Travel
- One card consist of one Chilly Mountain
vocabulary Ocean Train
- Ask the students to sort the Sea-sick Climb
words into 2-5 different Aqua valley
categories Ship
Foam
- Ask them to explain how & why
Shark
they put the categories together
octopus
4. Scavenger hunt _________
____________________
• Give them a course _____________________
book that appropriate cat
______________________
_______________________
• Give them a word to ____________________
find in the book _____________________
______________________
• Ask them to tell the ______________________
path they took to find _____________________
______________________
the word ________________
• The teacher/student 14
should write all of page
numbers on the board
5. What’s missing ?
• Place 12-20 picture or word
cards on the table or floor
wa
What’s • Let the students look at the
cards for a minutes
watermelon • Ask them to apple
close their eyes
missing???
banana
and remove 1 card
• Ask the group or an individual
learner to tell you which card
was removed
• Ask them to describe the
picture or word card that was
orange
removed
dragon fruit
6. Mystery Words
I like to put ______ and mustard on my hot dog
I wear a ________ on my head
hat cap
7. Concentration
dance write
drink eat
8. Vocabulary basket
5 Vocabulary in the classroom
1. Hidden Object
- Find the hidden Monster in
the picture
2. Activity
- how many animals are there?
3. Dialog
- pretends you are one of the
bears
A: good morning daddy, mommy
B: good morning son
C : morning, let’s breakfast
-pretends you are one of the bears
A: what’s on the table?
B: bread
--pretends you are one of the
bears
A : how many forks on the table?
References
Linse, C.T., &. Nunan, D.(2006). Practical English language teaching : Young
Learners. Singapore: Mc Graw-Hill.

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Bernadeta Setianingtyas

• Vocabulary is the collection of words that an

2. They will acquire

• Student can benefit from learning how to use

Eg : Teaching about rooms in a house

Connecting vocabulary to young learners’ lives

These questions are design to :

The elephant is Make it a

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