Recommending the right strategies for memorizing new words and providing the right tools to put these strategies in practice are two of the many ways in which language teachers can facilitate their students' success in extending and improving their vocabulary.
English and German teacher Oana-Karina Lugojan proposes a collaborative activity using Padlet as a virtual poster, which caters especially to the needs of her visual learners. For this activity, the teacher asks the students to search for new words related to spring (types of flowers, trees, animals or different celebrations held during springtime). The next day, each student comes up with a word and chooses a picture for the poster. The activity is very useful for enriching students’ vocabulary and encouraging teamwork.
Another digital tool that Oana has used in her vocabulary lessons is StudyStack . "For me - says Oana - StudyStack represents an online teaching resource I could always count on and have used for both my English and German classes. Whether you use it as an icebreaker activity or as a consolidation one, it could be adapted and customized to any content and any stage of the lesson. It keeps students stimulated and it provides a wide range of options. Most of the times, I use it as a memory game where the students have to recall the content of the previous lesson. It is very useful for practising word memorization and for this kind of activity I usually use the stack Targets where my students have to match the picture with the right word."
StudyStack offers the possibility to create your own lists of words, which can then be easily transformed into fun activities using Flashcards, Matching or Crosswords challenges, the Hungry Bug game, Targets, and many others.
