When it comes to teaching vocabulary in foreign language classes words are often taught in isolation, without regard to the context in which they appear. The paper draws attention to the importance of teaching words in context so that the meaning of a word often results from the meaning of a larger construction it is part of. After presenting the…

Lexical items, because they are language specific forms are undoubtedly one of the most difficult tasks in learning a second language. Phrasal verbs perhaps further exacerbate this difficult task since the meaning of already known verbs changes drastically when combined with different particles. Hence, facilitating the learning of these commonly…

This article focuses on the development of vocabulary among English language learners. The author first defines what a "word" means, then discusses five aspects of vocabulary knowledge. Drawing on Swain (1993), the author identifies three main goals of vocabulary learning. The rest of the article is devoted to the description of six…

This lesson uses a text about the houseboats of Kashmir to give students practice with descriptions, compound words, and participles. The lesson plan could be adapted to tourist destinations familiar to the students. Students are asked to write a description of their homes and create a tourism brochure for their own cities or towns.

Presents a discussion of teaching May Swenson poems. Notes that what students receive from May Swenson's work is a "consciousness of looking at writing in a physical way." (SG)

Discusses the construction "Sentence + no + Noun" in contemporary Japanese. (AM)

Discusses some possible phrase-structure patterns for the "for + noun/pronoun" structure, exemplified in "It is easy for you to say that." Only the simple active patterns involving the structure should be taught at the elementary and intermediate levels. Passive and other patterns should be delayed in teaching. (PJM)

Described is a teaching technique designed to eliminate word-by-word reading: the teacher listens to a child read, notes the phrases which are causing difficulty, and writes these phrases on a card so the child can practice them for a few minutes each day. (KC)

Relative clauses are useful for differentiating clearly between similar ideas. Exercises that demonstrate this purpose of relative clauses, or other grammatical constructions, can provide useful practice for students. More generally, an approach to teaching grammar that asks what purpose a structure serves can enable teachers to design exercises…

Warns against the overuse of cohesive conjunctions in writing and recommends that teachers instruct students on contextual use of conjunctions rather than on their random use. (CRH)

This article focuses on the value of developing the skills involved in grouping text into syntactically appropriate units with students having reading problems. It suggests use of phrase-cued texts (in which phrase boundaries are explicitly marked) to move from word-by-word reading to reading in meaningful phrases. (DB)

Discusses similarities and differences between vocal music and spoken language. Uses for vocal music to aid in the phonological instruction of Russian are suggested. (LMO)

Prepositions have different but related senses. In cognitive semantics, figurative senses are extended from spatial senses through conceptual metaphors. Pedagogically, it is useful to draw learners' attention to those aspects of a preposition's spatial sense that are especially relevant for its metaphorization. Ways in which cognitive semantic…

Defines formulaic phrases by showing their stereotypical nature. A taxonomy of phrases is proposed for classificatory purposes, and some techniques are suggested for teaching these structures. The techniques are based on analogy and analysis, where students imitate a sentence by keeping certain structures unchanged and changing the rest. (PJM)