Learning vocabulary with the whole brain

Active Vocabulary versus Passive Vocabulary

Making inferences and reducing anxiety

We all understand a lot more words than we will ever use.  Students should be aware of this fact. They need not know every single word in a text. Language is very redundant — we can guess the meaning of unknown words by making inferences. Practice making inferences by asking students  to guess the meaning of unknown words with the help of context clues, using their knowledge of word roots, pre- and suffixes, other languages or pictures that accompany the text.  

Fast-reading helps lower students’ anxiety of new and unknown words. There is no time to worry about them. Hand out a page of text (including pictures and other features of the original layout). Give the students 30 seconds to read the WHOLE page — tell them they will have to answer questions about all the parts of the text. After 30 seconds collect the students’ ideas in the plenary. Then give them another 30 seconds and collect more ideas. Usually the class will be able to sum up all the main facts. Discuss how they did it. They will probably notice that they did not have any time to worry about unknown words but just picked out what they knew and understood immediately and tried to make sense of this. That is exactly the kind of top-down reading strategy that learners need to develop.   Cloze texts and C-tests also show the students that you need only part of the text to reconstruct the meaning. It also helps to replace common words with nonsense words and ask the students to guess the meanings from the context. This is a non-threatening way to practice top-down reading skills and expand passive vocabulary.

From understanding to using vocabulary

In recent years exciting discoveries have been made in neuroscience as well as cognitive psychology. These findings help explain how the brain works and how we can learn new things more efficiently.

In a nutshell they all agree that we need rich,meaningful, multi-sensory input that can be linked to previously existing knowledge in our brains. The following picture shows a brain that is exposed to such input. It sees, hears, moves and feels all at the same time. Neural networks created under such conditions will be long-lasting and efficient.

 

 

Networks of Meaning

The ISM Model

According to Ahsen’s ISM model (Ahsen, 1984)  our memory stores “multisensory images” consisting of Images, Somatic responses and Meanings (ISM). These three elements are constantly interacting and interlocking. In general it can be said, that what has been experienced personally is most memorable and will have the most visual and somatic elements attached, followed by richly imagined input, and lastly by input that has only been understood form words. (Stevick, 1996, S. 49)

Images

• visual stimuli, things we have actually experienced
• mental images, things we have actively imagined
• imagery derived from descriptions in words

Somatic response

• our body’s reaction to the sensory images (skeletal, muscular, endocrine changes…)
• may be very strong or fleeting and negligible, depending on the input

Meaning

• includes the full spectrum including lexical meaning, expectations, involvements, purposes
• example: What does the word “bakery” include for you? What do you see… hear… smell… taste…feel…?

 

Neural Activity: Let’s look inside the brain.

Watch the following animation of neural activity in the brain. See how impulses go back and forth in all directions. Keep these images in mind when presenting new vocabulary or ideas to your students. How can you trigger this kind of activity in your learners’ brains?

 

VMIs: Voice Movement Icons

The research of Manuela  Macedonia  shows that meaningful multisensory input leads to better learning of new items. When we

• hear a new expression,
• understand its meaning,
• see the item or scene  or create mental images for it
• use our own muscles to pronounce the new expression ourselves
• use movements or gestures that are in some way related to the message

we have created extended  neural networks in our brain that will help us recall and use the new expression efficiently.

For more information follow these links:

Macedonia: Mit Händen und Füßen

Macedonia: Learning a Second Language Naturally

Macedonia: Voice Movement Icons

 

How to create multisensory images in the learners’ brains

Dos and Don’ts

students select useful phrases from meaningful contexts	never teach single words or wordlists
when writing vocab always write phrases rather than individual words	discourage learners from writing vocab lists in the traditional 2-column vocab-books
practice collocations
use all the senses (speak and hear, visualize, move, associate)
make learners say the new phrases out loud several times
when writing vocabulary use lots of space for each new item so learners can add collocations, sample sentences, doodles etc.
translating a phrase is often more helpful than long and complex definitions in the target language

 

Practical examples for the classroom

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