Building a Supportive Vocabulary Learning Environment
To every learning curriculum, it is a fundamental requirement to provide a sustainably befitting environment at the background to ease the flow of assimilation and aid the mission accomplishment of a prolific study. Without an enabling environment, the efficiency of the learning result is significantly reduced. Though avoidable, many unrefined teachers still take with levity, the necessity of creating an environmental aura that permeates the mind of learners involved towards creating a smooth psychological linkage to understanding the vocabulary lesson (Diller & Karl, 1978).
Supportive Tools Firstly, we design a befitting structural arrangement that reflects some basic expectations concerning the vocabulary to be studied, the choice of which ranks common in preference of usage (Foss & Lenzini, 1999). The pictorial representation (e. g. on the wall) enables learners to access unrestricted support; demonstrating how tongue or the entire “buccal” cavity (mouth) is expected to be positioned while a particular sound is being pronounced. The pictorial representation should equally demonstrate practical situations where each word is most appropriately in day-to-day events.
In buttressing the importance of this structural or pictorial design as a supportive learning tool, researches have shown that new vocabularies are best understood by exerting a subconscious effort sequel to the first pronunciation exposure in class (Holden, et al. , 1998). The sub-consciousness is characterized with the absence of stress, sensual tension or urgency demand to study within a restricted period. The presence of pressure brings a sense of active competition among other colleagues in class.
The slow learners, the average and the fast learners are the three classes of learners that must have their interest managed on the overall while determining the contextual modalities of supportive environments to be considered (Foss & Lenzini, 1999). Moreover, it is of importance to recognize the use of student-to-student interactive class session in learning foreign vocabulary. This creates an enabling environment where learners can share and gain views from one another. This in a great sense, is a complementary learning tool to teachers own method.
The teacher here, logically listen and gain from diverse ways of interaction that exist in this session of students’ group discussion. The specific style of teaching to adopt will be gotten from preponderances of events as they unfold (James L. B. , 2001) One-to-many Learning Support Scheme In this scheme, each learner on rotation is given an assignment to present a topic to other co-learners in class. Preferentially, suggestion of a multi-media projection could aid teaching. Here comes a research among students in science class, a class of 50 students was given an assignment to treat 10 topics within a course.
The modality involved allotment of a topic to a group of 5 students within which they are equally expected to further divide the topic into sub-headings. Other remaining 45 students follow suit in their respective groupings. The examination result for this method of teaching was taken for over a period of 5 years, with the mean and mode recorded. The result showed a wide grade-gap between the first three best students and other members of the class. The mean was high but students within this range were found scanty (James L. Barker lecture, 2001).
One-to-many learning scheme shows that the method could only help the confident students to perform even better at the expense of other colleagues. The other group members does belong to the same class but perhaps, limiting study to what they actually present and not bordering to probe other students’ presentation to perfect understanding from the first exposure in class. Participative/Interactive Class Session Another proposed scheme suggests a modality where members of the class have no formal presentation for others to listen.
But rather, everyone prepares for the task ahead of the class and involve in a general discuss. All opinions are accommodated by the supervision of a tutor in charge. In furtherance to the earlier research for another five years, findings were taken from another set of 50 students with different learning environmental supportive modality. In this scheme, no student is expected to teach the other colleague but rather each student contributes one after the other to the pending discussion on the vocabulary lesson.
In this way, the teacher set the ball rolling by introducing the topic and secondly in guiding against shifting of focus to irrelevancies. The reciprocal interactions give a supportive environment that deposit in each student a personal sense of meeting the huge challenge to perform up to expectations among peers (Kinsella, K. , 1995). The result of the later five years shows students having a higher mean gradient. The mode was slightly reduced, an indication pointing that only minority members of the class understand on the average with one-to-many learning support.
Conclusion When discussing vocabulary skills, some basic essentialities are necessary; a listening, speaking, reading and writing acts. Other recently identified skills include description, narrating and summarizing skills among others. All supportive environments must focus on ensuring these necessities. Having an enabling environment in assisting the students reading culture is most important especially when learning an unfamiliar vocabulary, hence, the derivative of interactive study guide is just a perfect one to make learners actively involved.
Findings had also shown that students usually get frustrated over time if encouragement and assistance are not near. Conclusively, teacher could equally assist in instilling the culture of reading; this is the strongest individual tool. References Diller, Karl Conrad (1978). The Language Teaching Controversy. Rowley, Massachusetts: Newbury House. Foss, C. R. , P. , & Lenzini, J. J. (1999). Textual and pictorial glosses: Effectiveness on incidental vocabulary growth when reading in a foreign language. Foreign Language Annals, 32 (1), 89-113.
Holden, Susan; Mickey Rodgers (1998). English language teaching. Mexico City: DELTI. James L. Barker lecture on November 8th 2001 at Brigham Young University. Kinsella, K. (1995). Understanding and empowering diverse learners in ESL classroom. In M. J. Reid (Ed. ), Learning styles in the ESL/EFL classroom (pp. 70-86). Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle Publishers. Koda, K. (1997). Orthographic knowledge in L2 lexical processing: A cross-linguistic perspective. In J. Coady & T. Huckins (Eds. ), Second language vocabulary acquisition (pp. 35-52). New York: Cambridge Universit
