Page 108 - E-Modul Pembelajaran Bahasa Inggris SD
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The first stage of vocabulary learning introduced by Brewster Ellis
and Girard is connected with the introduction of new words and the several
different ways of presenting vocabulary. They claim that new words are
ideally presented in a context which is familiar to the child and that visual
support is very important to help convey meaning and to help students
memorize new vocabulary. They claim that it is helpful to introduce new
words in groups, based on certain similarities, e.g.:
1. Lexical sets, e.g. shops, fruit, clothes, house, etc.
2. Rhyming sets, e.g. bat, rat, hat, man, etc.
3. Colour sets, e.g. things that are green: frog, pea, apple, leaf, etc.
4. Grammatical sets, e.g. adjectives, verbs, nouns, prepositions, etc.
5. Partners or collocations, e.g. play the piano, ride a bike, loud noise, get
up late, etc.
6. Opposites or male and female, e.g. hot/cold, boy/girl, husband/wife,
Grouping words together definitely helps students associate new
words with words they already know and assists them in recalling words.
When learning new words, the emphasis should definitely be placed on
consolidating words that students know and practising a fewer number of
words rather than presenting a huge amount of words and expecting children
to memorize them.
The stage of 'Attending to form' refers to learning the right
grammatical form, spelling and pronunciation of words. Students also need
to learn if the word has an irregular plural form (e.g. child children) or
whether a given noun is countable or uncountable (apple — apples,
information — no article 'an'). This stage should involve a lot of listening
and repetition as well as organizing and copying.
Vocabulary practicing, memorizing and checking activities involve
the active participation of students. Children need to do certain activities
with words in order to learn them properly and to make strong memory
connections. The more things they do with the new words, the more
frequently they use them, the more likely they are to remember them. This
stage is interrelated with the stage of consolidating, recycling, extending,
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