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Session 4. Vocabulary and Academic Language
Objective. Choose five key words from a subject text, plan a five-move routine to teach them using pictures, cognates and home-language links, and plan three returns over the next week.
Vocabulary is often the first wall a second-language learner meets. A textbook page can contain forty words the pupil has never seen, and teaching them all in one lesson means none is kept. The better way is to choose a few words, teach them with meaning, picture and use, and bring them back on later days. This session shows how to choose, how to use what pupils already know in other languages, and how to fit the returns into lessons without extra time.
Key ideas
Choose few words, and choose them well
- Isabel Beck and colleagues describe three kinds of words: everyday words, general academic words that appear in many subjects, and subject words used in one topic.
- Pick 5 to 8 words per lesson: words that the lesson cannot be understood without, and academic words that will return in other lessons, like “compare” or “cause”.
- Skip words that pupils will never meet again, and explain them in one line when they appear.
A five-move routine for one word
- Say it (pupils say it back); show it (picture, object or gesture); explain it in simple words and give the home-language word.
- Use it: pupils say a sentence with the word to a partner, using a frame.
- Return to it on three different days with a 1-minute task, for example in the opening. A word met once is rarely kept.
Use what pupils already know: cognates and word parts
- Many school words look alike in Uzbek, Russian and English, for example temperatura, температура, temperature, or energiya, энергия, energy. Point these out; pupils feel they already know something.
- Warn about false friends: the English “actual” means real, but the Russian “актуальный” means relevant.
- Teach word parts too: once pupils know “photo-” or “-graph”, new words become easier to guess.
Academic language is mostly small words
- “Because”, “so”, “however”, “this means that”: these small connecting phrases carry the reasoning. Teach them like vocabulary.
- Words with several meanings also trap pupils: “root” of a plant and “root” in mathematics. Say when the meaning changes.
- Keep key words on a word wall with a picture and a home-language word, and let pupils point to it when they speak or write.
A word routine that repeats
Which words deserve lesson time
Ask three questions of each unknown word. Does the lesson fall apart without it? Will it come back in other lessons or subjects? Can pupils not guess it from a picture, a cognate or the sentence? A word that gets yes, yes, no deserves direct teaching. Words like “compare”, “cause” and “process” usually do, because they return in many subjects.
A word that is rare, or that you can explain in half a line, can be handled as it appears: say it, point at a picture, move on. This keeps the list to five or eight words, which is a number a class can actually learn. Put the chosen words where all pupils can see them for the whole lesson, with a picture and the home-language word beside each.
A word needs several meetings
A word heard once is rarely kept. Plan short returns on different days: a one-minute picture quiz on day 2, an odd-one-out on day 3, a sentence from a frame on day 5. Each return costs a minute in the opening or closure, so no extra lesson time is needed, and each requires pupils to use the word, not only to see it.
Use pupils' other languages as a bridge. Tell them when a word looks alike across languages, as with temperatura, температура and temperature. Tell them just as clearly when it does not, because false friends such as magazine and магазин can mislead. Do not trust your memory for translations of subject terms; check each with a colleague who knows both languages.
Examples from the classroom
Words they already know
Scene. Jasur teaches Grade 8 chemistry in a Russian-medium school in Tashkent. Before a lesson on heating, he writes “temperature” on the board. Pupils who speak Uzbek at home recognise “temperatura”; the Russian speakers say “температура”. Several smile. Jasur says: you already know this word in three languages. They then spend the time on the harder words: “heat”, “melt” and “substance”.
Insight. Showing a cognate gives pupils confidence and frees lesson time for the words that need it.
A shop and a magazine
Scene. Aziz teaches English in Grade 9 in Bukhara. A pupil writes “I bought bread in the magazine.” Aziz writes two columns on the board: “magazine” (a printed publication) and “магазин” (shop). He asks pupils for other pairs they have noticed. Two days later, in the opening, he shows five sentences and asks which are wrong. Most pupils spot the error.
Insight. Naming a false friend clearly and returning to it later prevents a repeated mistake.
Five returns in one minute each
Scene. Dilnoza teaches Grade 4 in Samarkand. The unit word is “harvest”. Day 1: picture, simple meaning, the home-language word, a frame “In autumn, farmers ...”. Day 2: pupils draw it in 60 seconds. Day 3: odd-one-out among four pictures. Day 5: each pupil says one sentence to a partner. Each return takes about a minute in the opening, and in the unit test every pupil uses the word.
Insight. Spacing the returns across the week fits the lesson plan and builds memory.
Common pitfalls
- Writing forty words on the board and having pupils copy them with translations.
- Teaching a word only in a list, never in a sentence pupils say themselves.
- Trusting that look-alike words always mean the same thing in two languages.
- Printing translations from a machine or from memory without checking them with someone who knows both languages.
Choose and Teach Five Words
- Read the short text about cotton in your Activity Kit (Grade 6 social science, Fergana) and the list of 14 words from it.
- In pairs (10 min): sort the 14 words into everyday, general academic and subject words, then choose the five that you would teach directly. Write why for each.
- In pairs (15 min): fill the five-word plan: picture idea, simple meaning, home-language word, sentence frame. Mark any cognate or false friend.
- As a group (10 min): one pair teaches one word in 3 minutes to another pair, who act as pupils. Then write when you will bring the five words back on days 2, 3 and 5.
Your facilitator will guide you through this activity in the session.
Questions to discuss
- Which words did the group NOT choose, and what will you do when they appear in the text?
- Which cognate helped, and which false friend surprised you?
- How will your three returns fit into lessons without adding extra lesson time?
Reflect
- In your last lesson, how many new words did you introduce and how many did pupils use?
- Which small connecting phrase would most help your pupils explain a cause?
- Which cognate or false friend in your subject have you never pointed out?
Try it tomorrow
- Choose five words from your next text with the three questions, and write the other words on a separate line for one-line explanations.
- Prepare one picture, one simple meaning and one home-language word for each of the five, and one sentence frame.
- Write three one-minute returns into your plan for days 2, 3 and 5.
Further reading and links
Choose a few useful words, teach each with meaning, picture, home-language link and use, and bring them back on different days.