Week 1 December 2013

Good morning teachers,

Thank to those of you who posted their ideas on assessment in November. I could see that you not only wrote your ideas but also put an effort to provide comments of your colleagues’ writing. It was fantastic to see more people posted in November. It is also lovely to have more people who tried to catch up with other participants. It would be superb to hear from more of you in December. I am eager to see the rest of your posts and comments on the readings soon!

This December I have one of my supervisors posting for you all. Once you have written your own blog post, please read other posts on the topic and continue the discussion by adding comments, or even creating another blog post.

Please remember that your active participation in this blog will be used to issue a certificate of participation at the end of the study. You also go in the draw to win one of four autographed-books by Professor Paul Nation - a world-renowned TESOL scholar. The winner for November is Ibu Agnes Endah of SMAK Kolese Santo Yusuf Malang.

If you have any problems or questions, please do not hesitate to let me know!

Cheers,

Anik Wulyani

Averil Coxhead

Kia ora tatou/greetings to everyone

My name is Averil Coxhead and I am writing to you because I'm interested in vocabulary teaching and learning in your context.  I thought it might make an interesting discussion for your blogs.  I think vocabulary is one of the most important aspects of learning another language - you could say vocabulary is a passion of mine.

I have found a text about vocabulary and language education written by Professor Paul Nation - one of our professors here at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.  In this short article, he discusses learning and teaching vocabulary through different kinds of classroom tasks and from different approaches.  For your blogs, I would like you to read the article and comment on Nation's ideas and their connection to your classroom, your learners, and your context. For example, you might like to comment on the five principles he outlines later in the article, or you might like to discuss aspects of vocabulary such as fluency, learning through listening, and learner responsibility. Please visit this link: http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/about/staff/publications/paul-nation/2006-Language-education-vocabulary.pdf

Another thing you could try is Nation's Vocabulary Size Test - take the 20,000 version on this link - http://my.vocabularysize.com/.  You could test your own vocabulary size and consider your results, and then perhaps test some of your students and see how they do. How useful is this vocabulary size test in your context?  Do you think a bilingual Indonesian/English vocabulary size test might be more useful?  Why/Why not? 

Best wishes and I look forward to your discussion.

Averil Coxhead