Overcome Some Problems with Vocabulary

Some students have trouble recalling an English word and its spelling. When they come to me and ask for my advice, I often tell them to make sentences orally. If they can make a sentence like

"John is compassionate to his poor neighbors. He often gives them money or food,"

they will be able to recall the word more easily. It would better if they can form some images in their mind. For example, when they make a sentence as stated above, they picture a man with a compassionate expression on his face.

Why orally? Because it helps learners with the spelling. Quite a few students misspelled the word "compassionate" on the 2nd mid-term. They put down the word "compassional." At first, I couldn't figure out why. We never said this word this way in class. Then a student told me that was because in Lesson 7, the word "unconventional" was mentioned many times in the text and that the word "compassionate" is given in the book only as additional information of the word "compassion." So it was natural for those students to put the common adjective ending "-al" after the word "compassion." A good example of overgeneralization. However, I believe if we had spent more time making sentences orally with the word "compassionate" in class, fewer students would have made the mistake.

Making sentence orally is surely a good way to help with vocabulary learning.