Secrets and techniques … to help teachers improve teenagers fluency and make their vocabulary learning more effective

What should a short language course syllabus contain?

Two types of English … English for passing exams Whats important? grammatical accuracy English for effective communication Whats important? large vocabulary and fluency

Memory We forget about 75% of what we learn after 48 hours

Hermann Ebbinghaus The Forgetting Curve (1885) spaced repetition

ENGAGEMENT Topics must be: Relevant Interesting Lessons must be: Interactive Fun

MOTIVATION Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire.

Learner Training We cannot teach a language, we can only create the conditions under which it is learnt. Wilhelm Von Humbolt ( )

exposure

What is the significance of word frequency in teaching and learning English?

A passive knowledge of the 2,000 most frequent words in English would provide a reader with familiarity with nearly nine out of every ten words in most written texts. Source: Thornbury, S. How to Teach Vocabulary Longman 2002

So corpus data reveals that % of written English is made up of just 2,000 words. This seems amazing, particularly when you consider that the vocabulary of an educated native speaker of English is estimated at 20,000 words.

Now put each of these computer-related words in the correct group: software, download (noun or verb), scanner.