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Increase Student Engagement and Vocabulary Retention with These 2 Major Teaching Tips!

 

Holly Prather

No amount of critical reading skills can make up for limited vocabulary when learning to read in a second language. You can teach your students how to summarize a text, look for transitional phrases and ideas, or any other amount of necessary critical thinking/strategic skills, but if the students can not understand the words on the page, they can become easily frustrated and quickly reach their quitting point. It has long since been recognized that teaching vocabulary is essential for developing many L2 language skills (Grabe, 2009), including reading comprehension, but what is the most effective and engaging way to do so in the classroom, particularly for your middle and high schoolers who already struggle with apathy?

Most teachers would probably agree that simply writing words on the board as the students copy them down is not the most engaging method for learning vocabulary but with the long hours most teachers put in, it can be difficult to constantly create new and creative ways to learn vocabulary.  Below are two major tips (backed by research!) on how to engage your students when teaching them vocabulary without costing you a ton of time and effort!! 


Posters! (Yes, even for your middle and high school students!) 

Posters? Yes, really! But i’m not talking about the explosion of motivational words and pictures found in many grade school classrooms, but rather specifically targeted foreign language posters designed to increase students' vocabulary knowledge/retention. Cetin and Flamand posit that the presence of posters in the classroom bought/created by you or, even better, your students (talk about double points for increased retention and less work for you) increases what they term ‘self-directed inferential learning’ or “the active and conscious role of the learner in acquiring knowledge that is not explicitly transmitted by a teacher” by allowing students to “take an active interest in their surroundings” (2012, 54). That is, even if you aren’t directly teaching from the posters, by utilizing them in your classroom, research has shown that students, by nature of being attracted to visual cues, really do increase retention of vocabulary, particularly if the posters reinforce the content of the current unit (Ibid).   

So what does this mean for you? It means that after you introduce the current unit’s vocab, students can spend several days creating posters (and here you change the type or style of posters unit to unit to retain engagement, i.e. cartoon, ads, hand-drawn, digital, etc.) to hang in the classroom. This will increase student engagement with the vocabulary and allow them a creative break from the textbook while not putting as much pressure on you as the teacher to come up with various vocabulary activities. It’s a win-win!   


Utilize Technology! (Kahoot saves lives!) 

Another great way to engage your students in learning vocabulary is through the use of digital apps and websites. Technology—in combination with the more traditional posters—opens up many different avenues of vocabulary retention!  Northrop and Andrei state that integrating technology into the classroom can be beneficial for students, particularly because it allows students to receive multiple exposures to words in a variety of manners which allows for greater retention (2018). While they admit the selection for different vocab apps that are free and truly effective is not great, there are a few time tested gems such as Kahoot or Quizlet that can be helpful resources. These are both great in that you as the teacher can control what words they are learning and measure student progress. Additionally, you don’t even have to worry about creating vocab sets anymore as both websites now have over 500 million different pre-created sets so you are almost guaranteed to find yours already made. So go ahead, find a vocab set and take a day to play a Kahoot or Quizlet game with your class; their competitive natures will enjoy it and you can gauge student vocabulary knowledge with little to no prep on your part! 


Conclusion

Now that you know that you can’t go wrong with either more traditional posters or technologically-oriented vocabulary apps (particularly if you combine both), you’re armed with two great resources to carry into your classroom! Your students will thank you for it and so will your lesson planning! Go forth and conquer the world of L2 vocabulary acquisition! 


Sources:

Cetin, Y., Flamand, L. (2013). Posters, self-directed learning, and L2 vocabulary acquisition. ELT Journal, 67(1), 52-61. DOI: 10.1093/elt/ccs053.  

Grabe, W. (2009). Reading in a second language: Moving from theory to practice. Cambridge University Press. 

Northrop, L., Andrei, E. (2018). More than just Word of the Day: Vocabulary apps for english learners. The Reading Teacher, 72(5), 623-30. DOI: 10.1002/trtr.1773.


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