Teacher training courses often encourage teachers to write new words up on the board after students have asked about them and they have been explained. However, this leads to boards covered in random, decontextualised, ungrammaticalised words, which makes vocabulary learning harder for students for a whole host of reasons: denied access to examples of typical usage, they have to rely on intuition – or, more likely, translation! – when they want to use the words themselves; denied exposure to common chunks and colligations, they are forced to construct their each and every utterance using the fall-back plan of words plus grammar; denied information about the way in which words work with other words, they continue to go through life with only a very partial understanding of how language really works!

In this workshop, we will explore what kind of examples work well – and which don’t. We will look at some real questions asked by students at a range of different levels, and then consider how they could best be answered, what boardwork should ensue and what spanners in the works might be lurking unseen.

This workshop aims to give an essential practical classroom skill a theoretical underpinning and to help teachers feel more confident about their ability to teach vocabulary better.

Presented by Hugh Dellar – Teacher Trainer & Author @Lexical Lab & National Geographic Learning.