In his article in the latest issue of ETp, Chris Payne quotes linguistDavid Wilkins’ famous statement: ‘While withoutgrammar, very little can be conveyed, withoutvocabulary, nothing can be conveyed’, and theimportance of the exploration of vocabulary lies at the heartof this and several more articles in this issue.
Both Fran Sokel and Mark Fletcher look at the words thatEnglish has borrowed from other languages, and whichmany of us use every day, completely unaware of theirorigins. Fran exploits the wealth of loan words to feed herstudents’ fascination with language and to deepen theirunderstanding and knowledge of English. For Mark, anunderstanding of the debt that English owes to MiddleEastern languages brings an acknowledgement of the rich heritage of knowledge and innovation that has passed fromEast to West throughout history. This provides him with anopportunity to celebrate with his students past exchanges ofculture, to raise awareness of diversity and to promoteintercultural tolerance. (We welcome Mark back to ETp aftera long absence, and we are particularly grateful for thecartoons he has done to decorate his and Fran’s articles, as well as this issue’s Scrapbook.)
Zdenek Rotrekel also has a keen interest in vocabularyteaching. He explains how he exploits his students’ mothertongue to help them learn English words. He proposes aseries of activities which employ both English and L1, in order to maximise his students’ vocabulary learningpotential. Readers with monolingual classes may like to trythese activities with their students and see if their vocabularylearning is enhanced.
In our main feature, Jason Anderson argues for theimportance of making our intentions clear to our students atthe start of each lesson, something that is a keystone ofmainstream education, but which he feels is often overlookedin our field. This kind of signposting is also evident inBenjamin Moorhouse’s technique for using process writing with young learners. Each step of the process is keptseparate from the others and each session begins with areminder of what the students will do that day, and why.
Chris Banister points in the opposite direction – his ‘review collage’ activity gives the students an opportunity to lookback at what they have learnt, to reflect on their learningexperience and to give feedback on the materials theyhave used.
