Teaching vocabulary.

[Derek]

I had a little difficulty in teaching the following vocabulary to a group of intermediate level students. All Native Spanish speakers. I used Pictures to explain & elicit the meaning of the first 4, how ever I did have some difficulties in teaching the word inconsistent.

I am interested to see how other more experienced teachers would have tackled this. I am a new inexperienced teacher.

Archer, to pout, to throw a tantrum, to be the apple of someone’s eye, inconsistent.

Thanks in advance.

Best wishes

Derek.

[Ceidwad]

I'm not a TEFL teacher (yet), but it seems to me that you could use pictures to convey the meaning of 'inconsistent'.

Inconsistent can mean a few things, but most of the time, its meaning is concerned with performance. Someone/thing is consistent if they/it produce predictable performances and results. If they are unpredictable, they are inconsistent (because you never know what you're going to get).

You could illustrate this with pictures of graphs (something like performance = x axis, time = y axis). One would be a fairly straight line over time, the other would be up and down like a yo-yo.

If you can make this in some way engaging for your students it would help. For example, do they have a favourite football team/player? Use them to illustrate it (e.g., "last season, Cristiano Ronaldo was consistent. He played well every week and the newspapers praised him. This season, though, he's playing well some weeks but not others, and the newspapers are saying some bad things about him. He is inconsistent.")

Hope that helps. One good thing is that as you're teaching Spanish speakers the words should be partly familiar to them, given the common origins of the Spanish and English languages.

[Derek]

thank you Ceidwad. I´m not a TEFL teacher yet. I am teaching (temporary contract only, classroom assistant) and studying at the same time. I got hired on the basis of being completely fluent in Spanish & a native speaker under the promise that I do get my TEFL certificate.

I ended up giving a short homework assignment to point out the inconsistencies in an Alanis Morrisette song.

I new to tis forum & world. I think it is a great place to be as there are many experienced teachers willing to pass on their experience to assist newbies like us, a bit like virtual mentoring in the digital age.

[richardj]

Ceidwad, really clear instructions with good example you have provided. The implementation of the items that way will help to create more perfect results.