learning vocabulary

At the end of with my toefl 2/48 class on Friday, we wrote some new vocabulary on the board that came up in the reading questions we'd done. There was a pregnant pause and a couple of students asked why I wasn't going to explain the new words.

This is something I feel very strongly about and which has probably put me at odds with some many of my Vietnamese students. There are a couple of issues to deal with.

Traditionally, Vietnamese students view the teacher as the explainer or the source and everything should come from the teacher and students should obediently write down what comes out of the teachers mouth or goes onto the board. My experience and instinct tell me that this isn't really learning. If it is, why do I meet so many people who have "studied" English for six years in school who can barely express a thought in English.

If I lapse into the Teacher=Explainer role, that removes responsibility from learners to think and work for themselves. I think this is probably one of the biggest problems for VN students in foreign studies.
In my own language learning expeience, the most powerful (and consequently memorable) moments for me have been when I've figured things out for myself.

The people at the University of Manchester in England agree with me.

Among their 10 Hints on Learning Vocabulary:

You're more likely to remember something you've worked out for yourself

I couldn't agree more! The whole list is worth reading.


There is also useful, more generalized advice at Oxford University Press.



However, if explanations are really what people want, there are some useful ones at http://www.english-at-home.com


Finally, I'll repeat what I think is the most useful trick I've found in the last year. I've used this dozens of times. In the
Google search box, type define: and the word you're looking for. After you press Enter, you will get any definitions of that word on the web. It works better for longer words or specialized vocabulary: medicine, science or engineering, for example. It's an excellent way to check words you don't know while surfing the web.