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Unit 7 gave an overview of how to teach new vocabulary, grammatical structures and language function. Grammar and vocabulary are best suited to straight arrow lessons, while function based lessons work better with boomerang or patchwork structures. There are four things a student needs to do with new language: see or hear it, understand its meaning and structure, and be able to reproduce it. Receptive vocabulary is the language a student understands but doesn?t use. Productive vocabulary includes only the words someone is able to use, and is much smaller than the first category. This is a helpful concept for me because I?ve noticed this phenomenon with both myself (learning German) and my students. Choosing which vocabulary to teach is not as obvious as choosing which grammar topics to teach. You should pay attention to what is appropriate for the students and the particular task, how common it is in everyday language, and how easy it is to teach. It?s necessary to specify the differences between spoken and written forms when teaching grammar. I find that it can be confusing to teach too many options at first, but I can see how it?s important to at least point out the different forms. Intonation and pronunciation should be taught during the study phase. Teaching language function is a way to group together vocabulary and structures according to how they are used. It could be really useful for teaching business English, for example when writing emails. Formal and informal phrases could be compared for each function or section of a typical email.
