865. Building the edifice of vocabulary



One day teacher of English A said to teacher of English B, “Being able to retrieve a word in English when you just need that word is easier when you have a lot of practice learning words.

You told me you learn one new word every day: this exercise is making up a tank of words to you. This habit may consists of kind of taking a mental picture of a new word. Some words are simple to learn because they have a cognate word in Spanish, your mother language, like for instance ‘intervene’, which is similar in form and meaning to ‘intervenir’.

As well it can be sound: you spell new words several times or you write it,
you teach that word to your students,
you play with the word and write an original sentence with it, you use it in your personal notes and organizer,
you focus on the context where that new word appears.

The more you read texts in English, you, a non-native teacher, the more you will be acquiring the sense of the language – the ways native people speak and write that language. Every word you learn is one more brick in the learning (and acquisition) of the language: you’re building an edifice on the foundation of your previous knowledge, of which you may not be conscious and aware.” / Photo from: farmcollector com. milkman     

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