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Next update: 21 November 2008

Lexical notebooks
Shaun Dowling, Teacher trainer, Cultura Inglesa, Brasilia

I don't think there is ever a class where a student has not queried a new word. Words pop up all of the time and it seems that the more words students notice inside or outside the classroom, the more likely they are to see their own level of English progress.

So teaching vocabulary is one of the most important areas for teachers to deal with. The problem with vocabulary is that there seem to be so many words and sometimes it is difficult to know which ones to teach. They are all over the place and don't come in nice little rules like so many grammar items. So, what can we do to help both our students and ourselves learn such a diverse area of language?

Ways to help our students
The first way is not to "teach" vocabulary, but help learners to "see" words as Lexis. This means seeing words that come in phrases, groups or words that combine together, which then means looking at areas of Lexis such as fixed and semi-phrases, idioms, and collocations. The second is by organising these phrases in order to help our learners actually produce new language through speaking and writing.

One efficient way of doing this is having your learners keep their own lexical notebooks. It aids autonomous learning and, when designed correctly, can give them a long-term strategy for dealing with vocabulary. By keeping a record of their work in this way students can see that their learning does not just stop and start as each semester starts and finishes but continues and improves as they maintain their notebook.

How I start
So, how do we make lexical notebooks? I have found small A5 notebooks (148x210mm) that you find in any supermarket or shop which sells school material. They do not cost very much, are small enough to be carried around, have 200 pages and strong enough to last years.

• When you introduce the lexical notebook to your students, ask your students at the start of the semester to buy one of these notebooks. This allows them to have a sense of ownership; the books are theirs, not the schools, the teachers or anyone else's. I have found this means they will take more care of them and use them far more often.
• If you take a look at the photocopiable page which accompany this article you can see 3 different sections that I have successfully used (with my Brazilian students), that you should be able to cut out and fit into the first 3 pages of your students notebooks. Of course you may have to adapt them for your own particular students needs. So when your students have bought their book collect them and stick these (or your adapted versions) into each one. Let's have a look at the reasons why we have each one and how can they help the learners.
  
  Download example pages 57k
• The first page is a statement, which will help your learners see how important it is to study Lexis. It is very explicit and clearly explains how they can make a shift in their learning by focusing far more on words rather than grammar.
• The second page has a simple explanation as to how learners should look at vocabulary. Not in single words but in phrases, groups or chunks. I have used the word "collocations" as I have found it much easier for Latin languages, such as Portuguese, to understand this word concept rather than that of the commonly used word "chunk".
• The third page organises the notebooks in themes. The list shows some of the most frequently used lexical combinations, which can be allocated to different pages or each theme. This helps you and your learners see the main typical word combinations to be concentrated on. Choosing to separate language in themes helps not only contextualisation of these word combinations but gives students an organisational tool that they can use to produce language. If the class theme was for example "the environment", the learner can note down the combinations studied and then use them when they come to speak and write about the subject.

Using it on the course I'm teaching
In a period of study, many courses and course books are designed by themes and so the notebook can follow a course quite easily. Throughout a long-term course of study these themes will reappear and if your students have already studied a theme, they can go back to their notebook and add new word combinations as well as review the old ones.

This means learners see both old and new language and when they go back to a new theme they will naturally notice the progress in their own learning. Their notebooks then become a tool to use outside of class.

What I have to do
Upon receiving my students' notebook, I first stick in these first few pages from the photocopiable sheet, then I write on the first 20 pages (the first two Themes) the word combinations the students must note down in each page. Then as a new theme in class comes up my learners have an example of how they should organise the rest of their book. If you do this students see a model of how each theme is set out, some personal input by the teacher and lots of space for them to continue expanding their learning.

Autonomy
The lexical notebook can be initially compared to teaching someone to ride a bike. You need to guide and secure the students before they are balanced and can peddle by themselves. When they start noticing language and writing down words they are becoming self-sufficient and autonomous. The more autonomous our learners become the much more likely it is that they will become better language learners.

Learning strategies such as lexical notebooks will set them on the road to becoming much more successful in their studies and reach levels they might not have thought possible. By organising their learning I can give students a chance to achieve this. Hopefully a few years later, students will still remember the teacher who wanted to give them a way to really improve their whole English studying. You never know they may even come back one day and say "Thank you".

Conclusion
I hope this article will help you make your own lexical notebooks with your students and bring you success when teaching vocabulary. I am sure by doing this it will help benefit your own personal development and go some way to becoming more understanding towards your students needs.

This article first appeared on the British Council ELT Online Community website at: http://www.britishcouncil.org.br/elt/

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