Introduction

The learners in this class are aged between 14 and 16. They are mainly at intermediate level. The learners and the teacher are speakers of Chinese.

The learners have completed a reading text and watched a video on geographic features. The learners took the reading text home and were able to look up any vocabulary items that they did not know but the teacher did not tell them which items to look up. Before they watched the video, the learners were given some questions to answer to be able to ask the teacher about any unfamiliar vocabulary.

In this activity the teacher is aiming to revise some of the vocabulary which was used in the reading text and video. The learners are divided into groups and one member of each group comes to the front of the class. The revision takes the form of a quiz in which clues are provided about items of vocabulary until the word is guessed. The first person who guesses the word wins a point for their team. This is a form of what Nation (2001: 94 et seq.) describes as rich instruction, something which is also covered in Badger (2018: 156-157).

In the clip, you will see three questions out of the fourteen in the quiz. Each sentence appeared on the white board separately and the learners shouted out what they thought was the answer.

a. They are very dry and often hot.

You don’t need an umbrella in them
Camels like them.

The answer was desert and the learners needed all the clues.

b. They can be big or small.

Ireland is one.
They have water all around them

The answer was island and one learner guessed this after the first clue.

c. Dangerous.
Sometimes they get very hot.
Sicily has a famous one.

The answer was volcano and the learners needed all three clues.

Activity

1. Could you use this kind of activity with any level and or age of learner?
2. This activity has an element of competition. How do you feel about this? What would see as the short and long term impact of competitive games on learners’ motivation and relationships within the class?
3. Based on the video clip, what would see as the impact on motivation and relationships within the class of this game in this class?
4. The three items in the clip were “desert”, “island” and “volcano”. The teacher also chose the words “scenery”, “monument” and “waterfall.” Can you write these clues for these words? Does this suggest that certain words lend themselves better to this activity than other words?
5. The teacher uses a lot of Chinese in the class and the learners also seems to be speaking in Chinese. How do you feel about this? For each of the focus words, the teacher provides the word in Chinese. Being able to translate the word is a good indication that the learners have understood the meaning of the word but translation can increase the amount of time that it takes learners to understand or produce a word. How useful is translation in vocabulary learning? See Badger (2018:156) for more discussion of this.
6. When the learners did the quiz, they had already been exposed to written form and the spoken form of the words, which means they may have notices the words twice. If words need to be met seven times to be remembered, how would you help ensure that learners have met these words the requisite number of times?

List of references

Badger, R. 2018. Teaching and learning the English language: a problem solving approach. London: Bloomsbury.

Nation, I. S. P. 2001. Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.