1. m n RAJU words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words
12. Use a Thesaurus m n RAJU The little boy slipped, tripped, stumbled, tumbled, dropped and fell, but continued his journey till he was ankle-deep in the cold, blue, white and wonderful water in the river.
21. Antonyms m n RAJU Was he _______ (slavish)? Was he _______ (sad)? The question is _______ (meaningless). Had anything been _______ (right), we should _______ (doubtfully) have heard.
22. Homophones m n RAJU Aloud – allowed Peace – piece Hire – higher Root – route Might – mite
23. Homonyms m n RAJU Rise – raise Book – book Bank – bank Story – storey Knees – niece
24. Collocation m n RAJU Heavy rain Strong wind Mobile phone A quick meal
25. Collocation m n RAJU homework, effort, mistakes, something, copies, a job Make Do effort mistakes copies money judgments sure a difference sense a decision homework a job something whatever gardening work anything things nothing well Make Do
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29. Using Images m n RAJU Sunshine Lightning Puddles Raindrops Hailstorm Snowflakes Frost Weather Forecast Flood Drought Tidal wave Tornado
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33. m n RAJU Send your comments to [email_address] This slideshow is available at www.slideshare.net/lionnagaraju www.authorstream.com/tag/lionnagaraju
Hinweis der Redaktion
This 45 minute presentation is about effective vocabulary and word learning strategies. To make it a little more relevant to you, I have drawn all the examples from the first and second year text books prescribed for graduate students in Andhra Pradesh.
This presentation includes a brief discussion on what is effective vocabulary, why we should learn more words than we already know, how many words should one ideally know to converse in English, which words are useful and relevant to learn as compared to the not so useful words and what does knowing a word mean. The major and most significant part of this presentation will be about a few word learning strategies.
Effective vocabulary is using the right word in the right place. Take a look at these examples: This college has no principal’ is different from ‘This college has no principle’. Principal and principle are two different words and if you write one for the other, the meaning will be disastrously different. Similarly, a sermon on “immortality” is different from a sermon on “immorality”. We can say “the right word”, but we cannot say “the rightly word” because though the word used is right, the form used is wrong. Right is an adjective and rightly is an adverb. Right, correct, accurate, exact, fair, fitting, suitable are all synonyms. But we use each one of them depending on the context and audience.
How many words are there in that title? What – is – a – word. Four. How do we know that? What characterizes each one of those words? A word is one or more letters in writing and one or more sounds in speech. A word is the smallest unit for independent use. Though words are built with letters or sounds, individual letters and sounds themselves do not carry any meaning. Words are separated by spaces in writing and are chief carriers of meaning.
More words ensure more effective communication. Words help us convey ideas, communicate and comprehend. Words help us read, write, speak and listen and also think better. More words help us invite more ideas into our minds. If we know enough words to communicate effectively, we are likely to be more successful in life.
A lay man on the street may not more than a thousand words and that meets all his basic conversation needs. Knowledge of about 2000 words can see us through the day and help us transact all our day-to-day communication needs. Even for university education, it is found that only about 10000 words is all that is needed. Word frequency studies conducted on a large corpus of language use have proved that only 20% of the words in any language are used 80% of the time to meet our needs. So success and effective communication depends on identifying and learning those words that are more relevant and useful to us for meeting our needs.
It is quite obvious that we should learn words that are new to us, instead of the words that we already know; and words that are important to meet our communication needs as against words that are not so important. It is a good idea to spend our time and effort in learning words that we use actively to express ourselves when we speak and write, instead of the words that we need to comprehend when others use them as we read or listen.
As many of us think, knowing a word is not merely knowing its meaning. The words that we really know are words that we know in detail – their meaning, pronunciation, grammar, usage, appropriateness and collocation. We will learn these things in more detail in the next few slides.
Let us now begin taking a detailed look at some strategies that can help us learn new words. I have organized these strategies in three groups and the first one is discovery strategies. We can discover new words from increased exposure. The more we read and listen, the more likely we are to know more words. As students, you may read your text books, additional reading materials, newspapers, magazines, fiction, in fact whatever interests you. Similarly listen to news broadcasts or telecasts, watch movies and expose yourself to as much English as possible. Most words that we know are learnt incidentally, without any significant conscious effort. Sometimes we learn them without even knowing that we have learned them. An excellent tool to learn words is to guess the meaning of words from the context in which they occur. If we cannot make out the meaning from the context, we can look up a dictionary or ask someone who possibly knows the word.
Take a look at this example from Gajar Halwa by Githa Hariharan. Guess the meanings of the words in green from the context. Perumayee is standing at the water queue where she is fighting, pushing and shoving. We can easily guess that shoving is something similar to pushing and from the crowd condition of the queue we can guess that it must be something rough and rude. Similary, in the next sentence, Perumayee’s Amma is screaming at her. From the kind of things that Amma says in the quoted sentence, we can guess that she must be shouting out loud. These two words might be new to you, but you can make a guess as to their meaning and then if necessary, you may look up a dictionary to check and find if your guess is right.
This is an excerpt from an English dictionary on the meaning of the word ‘scream’. Scream means a long and loud cry in pain or anger. It may not always be convenient to look up a dictionary immediately, but we can either underline the words while we are reading, or make notes when we are listening, for later reference. There are different kinds of dictionaries in the market and on the net. We have dictionaries that meet our exact requirement. What you see on the right side of this slide is a visual thesaurus where all the connected words are shown linked in a web, very convenient to locate the word that exactly meets our needs. A thesaurus is, in a way, the opposite of a dictionary. We use a dictionary when we know a word and do not know its meaning. A thesaurus is used when we know the meaning but do not know the correct word to describe it.
Take a look at this example from “How Far is the River?” by Ruskin Bond. This sentence is not found as it is in the text, but I have rewritten it to demonstrate the usefulness of a thesaurus. Slipped, tripped, stumbled, tumbled, dropped, obviously have similar meaning and may have shades of difference. A thesaurus lists all such words in one place.
The most useful means of learning new words is by asking those who are likely to know the words – like your teachers, your parents, your seniors. Always make it a point to use only English when we make such enquiries. Sentences such as these may help you make enquiries. For instance, when you don’t know the English equivalent of a word in your mother tongue, you may ask, what’s the word for “that word” in English. When you don’t know how a certain thing is said in English, you may say “How do you say ‘that thing’ in English. If you begin using such sentences for your conversational needs, you not only learn new words, but your confidence and comfort improve.
The second set of strategies are memory strategies. There are a few things about English language that are best learnt when committed to memory, are learnt in association with the other words to which they are related. You may also use possible imagery and mnemonics to remember words easily.
There are hardly any rules to learn English spelling. There is no one-to-one correspondence between sound and spelling. So, we have to develop a photographic memory and remember the spelling of each word carefully. Just take a look at a few words from The Conjurer’s Revenge by Stephen Leacock. Can you rewrite the words with their correct spelling. Look at the words listed in the glossaries and vocabulary check exercises given at the end of lessons in your text books. You may also underline the other words which you find difficult in your text and memorize their spelling.
These are jumbled spellings. Unscramble these words from the lesson Song 36 by Rabindranath Tagore. Prayer, strike, penury, strength, surrender, trifles The last word ‘filters’ is an anagram for another word in the poem - trifles. Anagrams are meaningful words formed by reordering the letters of other words. You may use your free time to create such jumbled spelling and anagram exercises to help each other learn spelling the fun way.
Crossword puzzles are excellent tools to learn spelling and vocabulary. Every newspaper and magazine these days has a corner exclusively dedicated to such puzzles. Many magazines carry puzzles graded to meet the needs of different levels of English users. You may spend your free time to solve such puzzles by choosing the ones that suit your vocabulary levels.
Pronunciation is another thing that does not follow any rules in English, because there is no one to one correspondence between spelling and sound. These words chosen from the notes on The Conjurer’s Revenge are a list of words with silent letters. Each of these words has one or more letters that are not uttered when these words are pronounced. The first word is pronounced ‘koo’ with the last letter ‘p’ not pronounced. The other words are pronounced – dyafrm, bom, soodonim, thum, kor, nyumonia, rain, saam.
Some useful tips to learn English pronunciation – learn the symbols used in your dictionary to describe pronunciation. Symbols used in one dictionary may be different from the ones used in another dictionary. It is a good idea to listen carefully to some good models available on news broadcasts and telecasts.
Learning synonyms helps us use words much more effectively. For instance, all these words listed here mean almost the same thing. They are synonyms. But each one of them has a different shade of the same meaning. Some of them have a positive connotation while the others are negative. If you call your girl friend slim or slender, she may consider it a compliment, but if you call her skinny or thin, she may feel offended. So we have to be careful with the choice of our words if we have to communicate effectively.
These are the last two lines of The Unknown Citizen by W H Auden. Can you find the antonyms from the text using the clues given in brackets. Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd. Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard. By learning appropriate antonyms, we can enrich our vocabulary and make our communication effective.
Homophones are words that are spelt differently but have the same sound. Aloud is an adjective and refers to the high volume of sound. Allowed is the past tense of the verb allow. Both are pronounced exactly alike. So we have to be careful when we write these words and we should be able to distinguish one from the other when others use them.
Homonyms are words that are very similar to each other either in spelling or in pronunciation or in both, but have different meanings. They are so similar to each other that we often get confused and misuse one for the other. Take the first one for example. Rise is to get up. We rise for the national anthem. Students rise in their places when a teacher enters the classroom. Raise is to lift. We raise a thing from one level to a higher level by lifting it. I am raising my arm now. If we use one for the other, we may communicate something completely unintended. So we have to learn such pairs of words for more effective communication.
Some words are commonly used in the company of other words and they make popular word combinations. Mobile phone is not a portable/carry/pocket/moveable phone. Rain is heavy, not strong, but wind is strong, not heavy. A quick meal is not fast food.
Look at this example. Which of these things do we make, and which ones do we do? For instance, do we make homework, or do we do homework? We do homework. So homework and do collocate, but not homework and make. Similarly, the other combinations – make effort, make mistakes, do something, make copies, do a job. After this presentation is over, make a list of five other examples under each list.
These words are from the story Mr Know-All by Somerset Maughm. They are all connected by their meaning or by theme. They are related to a liner, a ship and become a lexical web. It becomes easier to remember words by connecting by their theme. For instance, think of all the words related to a prayer, related to a telephone conversation, to a magic show and so on. Make lists of lexical webs and increase your vocabulary.
One of the most effective ways of learning vocabulary is by learning the roots of words. If we know the meanings of prefixes, suffixes and roots, it becomes very easy for us to guess the meaning of a new word. For instance, there are a few new words coined in your lesson The Last Clock using the root ‘chrono’. Chrono means time. So we can guess that a chronometer has something to do with measuring time and is a clock. A chronologist could be someone who makes or repairs clocks. Chronic is for a very long time. Synchronous is happening at the same time. Chronology is organizing things in the order of their sequential happening.
Knowing vocabulary includes knowing the grammar related to the words. For instance, we need to know what part of speech is a certain word in order to use that word effectively. Look at the underlined words and find out what part of speech each one of them is. Study, student, studious are the same root, but different parts of speech. We cannot use one for the other.
Some concrete nouns can be remembered best when we associate the words with some images. For instance, if you are learning the new word hailstorm, if you visualize an image of hailstorm every time you hear the word, it is very easy for you to remember the word.
Word Mnemonics are simple tricks to remember words. Manners of articulation: Stops, Fricatives, Affricates, Nasals, Diphthongs, Monophthongs Shun – away from the sun Attendance = at ten dance Planets in order of distance from the Sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto.
This is the third set of strategies to learn words. Having learning goals for learning vocabulary is a great idea. ‘I want to enlarge my vocabulary by another 20 words this month; I will learn one new word every day; I will pick up at least two new words from this lesson or from this telecast; I’ll teach this word to my friends in my class; I’ll use this word in a meaningful context today are some smart goals for learning vocabulary. We need to make a conscious effort and practice regularly to learn new words. Words learnt and not practiced or used can easily be forgotten. An occasional vocabulary test to check whether we know the words that we have learnt helps us immensely. Like in the process of learning anything, periodic reviews of the progress we have made is another useful tool.
There is no substitute to practising the words we have learnt. The more we practise, the more we use words in meaningful contexts, the more we retain. I would like you to maintain your own vocabulary lists either in exclusive notebooks or even on mobile phone notes feature. Finally, learn more words, learn different aspects of those words thoroughly, practise and become perfect. Wish you all the best for effective vocabulary.
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