Saturday, 1 March 2014

Clarifying meaning

From the Author:
Dear All,
The blog has been permanently moved to teflreflections.wordpress.com This particular post can be found here: http://teflreflections.wordpress.com/2014/03/01/clarifying-meaning/ I'm not going to publish anything on the blogspot address any more, and I'll delete the blog within a week or two.
So if you'd still like to follow my posts (I hope you do), please visit the wordpress version and click follow there: teflreflections.wordpress.com You can also find regular updates on the posts on the new blog's FB page by clicking here.
Thanks for reading and commenting on the posts here, and I hope to see you soon on wordpress.
Best,

Marek Kiczkowiak


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4 comments:

  1. Anonymous1 March 2014 at 15:06

    I love no.6, and try turn to it first, before doing all the rest...
    And i choose translation over the other ways if iwe are pressed for tine and the word doesn't seem smth the students will learn and use a lot (for instance,some technical vocab in a job descriptionbfor HR english)

    I fully agree that giving definitions we sometimes risk being unclear, so I tend to blend no.3and 10: after having given an explanation, I can ask my students to think of an equivalent in their L1

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    1. Marek Kiczkowiak3 March 2014 at 12:30

      Thanks for your comment!
      I like number 6 as well, although sometimes I feel it's overused. I go for translation when I'm pressed for time as well, and when it's the easiest way out. What do you think are the possible pitfalls of this approach, though?
      Or better still, combine 10 with 7. You could also ask a CCQ here, i.e. When did you last feel "surprised"? (to answer this question correctly the students need to understand the meaning of the target language, in this case "surprised". What do you think? Any other approaches to clarifying lexis you frequently use?

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  2. Anonymous3 March 2014 at 10:03

    I'm teaching English for specific purposes this term and my problem is the medical terminology which I have to explain in English and deduce the required vocab item in L1 too.
    Here I need recycling techniques/activities as the objective of the course is to facilitate their academic studies.
    could you suggest any?
    You always take up the real problems that the teachers encounter in the class; I appreciate your approach and style too.

    Thanks

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    1. Marek Kiczkowiak3 March 2014 at 12:34

      Thanks for your comment. I'm glad you've found my posts helpful. If you have suggestions for future ones, please let me know.
      I wrote a post about different activities to recycle vocabulary in class. You can find it here: http://teflreflections.blogspot.nl/2013/12/recycling-best-habit-on-earth_12.html
      What you're teaching sounds quite challenging, especially if you have little background in medicine yourself - I wouldn't have a clue.
      These courses on Memrise might be helpful: http://www.memrise.com/courses/english/?q=medicine
      You can check my post about Memrise to get an idea what the website is about if you haven't used it yet: http://teflreflections.blogspot.nl/2013/10/mem-up-your-memory.html

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