Journal #8

Teaching vocabulary in reading

I was taught two different method of teaching vocabulary in reading. The first one was that the teacher gave explanations or definitions of the target vocabulary before reading a passage. The other one is that students guessed the meanings of words from the context and then teacher gave students activities like close questions and matching definiton to a word. I prefer the latter one because it helps learners to develop autonomy and to activate long-term memory. However, there are some limits to teach vocabulary in that way. The reading passage should not be difficult for students. It means that the reading passage should not consists of grammatical points that beyond target learners' level and difficult text structure. Otherwise, it is going to be really hard for students to guess the meanings of target words. Also, teachers should present exact difinitions of the words. It is possible for learners to guess incorrect meanings so the teacher should make sure they are going to the right way, and provide students opportunity to check wheter thier quessing is right or not.