“The teacher who really teaches, that is, who really works with contents within the context of methodological exactitude, will deny as false the hypocritical formula, ‘do as I say, not as I do.’ Whoever is engaged in ‘right thinking’ knows only too well that words not given body (made flesh) have little or no value. Right thinking is right doing.“ (Paolo Freire)
De Carrico (2001) added that that new and important words and phrases be presented in contexts rich enough to provide clues to meaning and that students be given multiple exposures to them.
What is “rich and deep enough”? In English Now! A/B, it means introducing vocabulary using available realia, large colorful photographs of nouns and verbs, the same nouns and verbs cut out by students and stored in nifty little card boxes, and used in big books, student books, storybooks, and CD-ROMs. The verbs are contextualized through simulation and mime. Most important of all, the meanings of new and important words are explained, practiced, discussed, read, written, and used in conversation with peers and adults inside and outside the classroom, school, and home.
This “rich and deep word knowledge” principle is what prompted English Now! developers to design English Now! A/B such that vocabulary words in challenging texts are developed deeply through listening, speaking, writing, and reading. Before Lesson 1, the target storybook is likely to be only10% comprehensible to beginning English learners. By Lesson 13, when they encounter the text for the first time, they will have richly and deeply learned the meanings of 95% of the new and important words in the text.
London: Thomson Learning.
Freire, P., 30th Ed. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.
Nagy, W. E (1989). Teaching vocabulary to improve reading comprehension. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
