Low level activities to revise vocabulary: what to choose

To learn words students need to recall and use them multiple times, so it is good to have activities to revise vocabulary in class. In this post I look at choosing items to revise and what difference low levels makes on this and the tasks we do.

Not just vocabulary

The first thing to say is that I think we should encourage students to think that when they revise vocabulary they also revise grammar. This is particularly true at the lowest levels where so many words are what might be described as grammar words and others have a an overall conceptual meaning that allows for a huge number of combinations –  have, take, do, go, see, take, put etc. Furthermore, to reach a B1 level, students need to understand a range of grammar and be able to actively use a variety of ‘routines’ as the CEFR calls them. I take routines to mean, very typical exchanges about you and your needs that we have everyday and which include a the most common words in repeated combinations,

Acquiring grammar with words

So when we choose the vocabulary to revise we want to either start with examples that go beyond a single word or in our follow-up interaction or activity, ensure that the students do. So for example rather than simply revising brother, sister, mum, we could at the very least start with MY brother or THEIR mum or HER sister. However I would tend to go further such as: I know/knew his brother, my older sister, my mum was a teacher, I’m meeting my brother later.  You can think of other examples I am sure. Don’t get too hung up about what the ‘right’ combination is. The principle is that we want students to recall an aspect of grammar not just the word and/or that they revise other common words (know/older/teacher) alongside the initial singe words you choose. Ideally, the examples are related to things students might say and can become frames for their own examples (I’m meeting [my sister] [on Saturday]). Note that you could sometimes include a new word as part of the revision set. So we might be revising sister, but we could include older sister as part of the revision set.

Two simple activities to revise vocabulary (and grammar)

How would we go about the revision? After we have identified the key words and thought of the examples, we can give the students this list translated into their L1. You can ask students to work in pairs to translate them back into English. You could alternatively read out the L1 list to put students under some time pressure to do their first translation. They they can then share and improve this initial translation in pairs.

In a multilingual class, you could dictate the phrases in English. As students try to make sense of what they hear they will recall words that they know to match these sounds. We can probably assume that students know the word in most cases if they accurately write it down, but I would normally do some other kind of follow-up where students can further test/check their understanding.

As a follow-up you could ask students to each replace one word in each item so it still made sense. Again they compare ideas in pairs and then as a class. I will discuss what you may do as a teacher in whole feedback in a later post, but it would be similar to the ideas here.

How many items in a low level activity to revise

When choosing the list to revise, another thing I would suggest is don’t be afraid to push the number of words/phrases you cover in any one activity. I am thinking 25 is a good number, but why not have more and see how far your students can go. Students should NOT get everything right. The point about revision tasks is we are looking to focus on what students have forgotten and help them remember it. So notice what words students struggle with. As was mentioned before, when we have an activity to revise vocabulary, it is good to have a few words (two or three within the 25 items?) which you have NOT had in class before. You may not have had these words in class, but some students may have encountered them outside. Even if this is not the case, evidence suggests that this mixing of new with old is also an effective way of acquiring new language.

Mixing sets – interleaved practice

The last thing to think about when choosing vocabulary to revise is that you want to mix vocabulary from different topics. In a way this is another reason to a) work with word combinations, b) have a fairly large number of items in the activity and c) have a few ‘new’ items. We can still have a core focus on the set of, say, food, but these food items might be combined with words outside of the set and some items entirely unconnected with the topic.  Evidence from psychology *see the same link as above of the IATEFL plenary) suggests that we fix knowledge in our memory better when we space our activities to revise vocabulary and interleave the topics we are covering.

An example set of items around food

So if I was thinking of an activity to revise food vocabulary at a beginner level this might be the list of word combinations I’d choose:

1. read a lot
2. want anything
3. can’t eat tomatoes
4. he doesn’t drink
5. want an ice cream
6. I live near here
7. a black coffee
8. what do you do
9. a lot of sugar
10. I went there
11. I don’t really like English food
12. do you eat meat
13. green tea
14. the tomato salad
15. sit outside
16. do you like football
17. a café near here
18. does it have eggs?
19. a Chinese restaurant
20. with a bit of milk
21. It’s in the north
22. fish or meat
23. chocolate ice cream
24. a small town
25. the soup sounds nice
26. want to sit here
27. a nice place
28. a big piece
29. it’s a good book
30. get a bus

I will look at other principles and activities when we revise vocabulary with grammar at low levels in future. Subscribe to the blog to get notifications.

Our next webinar is on May 2nd on Using L1 (and L3) in class. You will get a recording if you can’t attend live, If you want to develop further why not try our course on teaching low levels or join one of our next zoom courses.