Show, don’t tell

One of the basic principles of learner-centred language teaching is to guide the learners through a discovery of knowledge rather than imparting knowledge by the teacher. This principle manifests in everything the teacher does in the classroom.

When the teacher is providing feedback on exercises, s/he would, at the very least, provide the learners with a source in which they can check their answers. When correcting students’ language, the teacher may, for instance, ask a series of questions to lead the students to discovering the correction themselves. In an eliciting activity, the teacher is equipped with a set of triggering prompts, including questions, that s/he can use to help students figure out the missing piece of information.

Vocabulary work in the classroom cannot be over-emphasised. Right at the heart of learner-centred methodology is learner training in which students are given opportunities to use and access various language resources themselves. Dictionaries are without doubt first-hand language resources. For lower-level classes a dictionary task could be devised to help students make their first steps into using dictionaries.

Designing such a task is now easier than ever with the help of electronic dictionaries. Basically it depends on compiling some entries from a suitable dictionary. Suitability here means using an elementary dictionary for elementary students and so on. In one page, students can find relevant lesson vocabulary that they can explore.

The advantage of such a task could be that it familiarises the students with dictionary conventions without overwhelming them with the density of information the dictionary offers. For the teacher, it helps him/her manage the task well and maintain students’ focus on the relevant vocabulary of the lesson.