http://www.livesofteachers.com/2009/10/10/what-does-it-mean-to-know-a-word/

Anyway, I used to pre-teach (after all, I did a CELTA). I also used to teach what Scott Thornbury calls ‘Grammar McNuggets’. I could whip you up a past perfect continuous lesson in a flash. But now I prefer to take a bunch of stuff in the room and let the learners make sense of it, add to it, manipulate it. Pre-teaching means that the activity is too difficult, or that the teacher doesn’t trust the learners, or that they don’t have confidence in themselves. They need to learn to deal with unknown vocabulary by ignoring it, guessing it, checking it, negotiating it… whatever. I am only there to pre-teach for 90 minutes a week, so what will they do outside the classroom when they encounter authentic texts / language?

But having said all that, Paul Nation is pretty keen on balance. And he is a chap who knows a thing or two…. http://languagelinks2006.wikispaces.com/file/view/nation,+four+strands.PDF

But surely that is what pre-teaching is??

Anyhow, in summary, the post is called “overrated”, not “totally useless”. My philosophy of teaching is that people who do it should try and do without (That’s you Nick!) and people who don’t (That’s me!) should give it a go again, but obviously in a different way to how they did it before

On your comment, I am one of those people that doesn’t like to introduce vocab out of context. I think you’re right and it can be useful for noticing, but I have so many students that like to compile word lists with translations next to them and it’s so ineffective that I don’t want to provide them with an example of a method like that. I saw a post on this somewhere. It sounds like something Darren would write about, but I can’t find it on his blog, so no link I guess.

I pre-teach for a couple reasons

1) To hit key words that the students will need to understand the text.

2) To eliminate the need to sneak peaks at dictionaries during the actual activity.

3) To create pronunciation recognition. There are so many times my students know a word, but can’t understand it in the listening because they pronounce according to L1 rules.

4) So my students aren’t overwhelmed by new words and shut down. Sometimes I like to challenge my students with something a bit tougher, but, if there is too much new vocab, they’ll give up on the task before we even start.

5) To get my students used to listening to definitions, synonyms, explanations, and sentences in English rather than trying to translate them. Bascially, I’m modeling what I want them to do in the future.

Honestly, I’d have to say I pre-teach vocab at least once a week. You’ve got me thinkin though. I think I’ll try to change that. I also create homework activities the day before, play word games, or actually do a vocab lesson prior to a main activity to get the new words in. Those are probably better and more useful than simply teaching it.

I’m glad you linked back to this or I would have missed it. Count one teacher as influenced :)

Anyone out there actually pre-teach vocab post-CELTA? Might be a survey in the making?

If it will be tested at a later date and is one of the key reasons for actually doing the reading, do it properly and make sure the students really get to grips with it. Exploit its use in context to the full.

If it will merely aid understanding of the text, you could even go as far as giving an L1 equivalent to really speed things up.

I’d say if you have to pre-teach vocab the text/task are too hard for the level.

I prefer a simple gist task – perhaps as simple as 3 questions – What’s it about? Why is it important/interesting? [If neither why are we reading it??] What will happen next? (if appropriate). Then I get the students to use dictionaries or do a matching exercise to learn the vocab. Next, they can do the fiddly ‘test’ questions.

It’s nice to do a skills transfer activity – writing a summary from memory (using the new vocab as a framework) or retelling the story. Split readings are great and all too rare in coursebooks.

When I do preteach vocab I usually use it as a dictionary skill task. But I agree, it’s unnatural and awkward.