Vocabulary, Superordinates and Discourse

Aims

• • to teach some vocabulary items through examples

  • to show how superordinates occur with their hyponyms for the sake of cohesion in discourse

  • to experiment with a number of vocabulary teaching techniques

Steps

Yes/No quiz: Do you know these words?

• • browser, keyboard instrument, event, dance step, kitchen appliance, storage device

Personalisation

What is your favourite browser?

• • Internet Explorer

  • Mozilla

  • Chrome

  • Safari

  • Opera

  • other

Which of these keyboard instruments have you heard live?

• • piano

  • organ

  • harpsichord

  • synthesizer

  • spinet

Which of these events have you attended?

• • concert

  • opera

  • play

  • ballet

  • festival

  • fete

Can you do any of these dance steps?

• • foxtrot

  • tap

  • soft shoe shuffle

  • other - which ones?

Which of these kitchen appliances do you own?

• • toaster

  • kettle

  • toasted sandwich maker

  • blender

  • other - which ones?

Which of these storage devices do you use?

• • flash disk

  • memory stick

  • external hard drive

  • floppy disk

  • MP3

  • other - which ones?

Now search a corpus for sentences which contain both the superordinate and the hyponym. You might be able to see how the text hangs together because of the use of a more general term to refer to the more specific topic word.

Create a little quiz for your colleagues in which you ask which of the following this is NOT a browser, an event etc.

Note

At the time of writing (25th August 2010), this is just an idea. It has not been developed or pilotted.

This will be part of my Teaching Learners to Define series.