Stage 3 guidelines for speaking: Vocabulary

Here are some vocabulary objectives for Stage 3 for speaking:

To develop a broad enough vocabulary to participate effectively in most formal and informal conversations on practical, social, professional, and abstract topics within your personal experience

• To determine the topics you need to use in your job, and to work toward fluency in these areas.

  Include abstract topics, as well as more concrete ones.

Here are some vocabulary strategies for Stage 3 guidelines for speaking:

• Analysis

  Investigate the topics you have chosen with a language associate (LA) or other friends, doing semantic analysis. In a language with literature and media resources, discuss books you have read on a given subject or television programs you saw.

• Practice

  Make a conscious effort not to "fossilize." Continue to expand the domains in which you learn and use new words. Be sure to learn to use new words in appropriate circumstances.

• Ask for correction

  Ask a local friend correct your incorrect vocabulary choices such as swear words, and social blunders. Look for synonyms and do a semantic investigation.

Here are some vocabulary techniques for Stage 3 guidelines for speaking:

The Ethnographic Interview technique

• The Discovering Categories technique
• The Audio Archive technique

Here is a vocabulary activity for Stage 3 guidelines for speaking:

• Use the language as much as possible in daily life.

  Deliberately expose yourself to a wide variety of communication situations, and being aware of new vocabulary you hear. Incorporate new words into your active vocabulary by finding ways to bring them up in conversations.

  Look for feedback from your conversation partners that might indicate that you are using the word incorrectly.

• Generic module: Stage 3 guidelines for speaking: Vocabulary
• In overview module: Stage 3: Speaking modules
• In modular book: Guidelines for a Language and Culture Learning Program, by Carol J. Orwig
• In document collection: Other Resources
• In bookshelf: Language Learning

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 3.5, published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 1999. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 8 December 1998

© 1999 SIL International