Our brains can only handle so much information at once. And this is true when we’re overloaded with too many new words in our second language. To really acquire a new word our brain needs to interact with it at least 17 times. This can be listening or reading.
When I think about that in conjunction with the lengthy vocabulary list in my textbook, it makes me cringe. First, there’s way too many words for me to be able to give the students adequate input. Second, the majority of the words are often low frequency. For example, in my Spanish 2 textbook there’s a chapter about aliens. Seriously? How often are my students really going to talk about this in everyday life? Simultaneously the textbook expects them to master the past tense. They struggle with describing what they did last weekend, but they’re expected to talk about extraterrestrials?
So where do we begin?
Think about how a small child learns their first language. At the start, they only know a few words – milk, mom, dad, up. But they’re the necessary words for communication. You want to mimic that environment in your language classroom. Focus on the most important words for communication and give them tons of repetition.
This is sheltering vocabulary. They need the most important words and they need to hear/see them a ton of times.
I love to have posters with key words on the walls. Students can reference them and use them to facilitate conversation. The more they read and use those words, the more they will acquire them!
Give it a try and let me know how it goes! Drop me a line on Instagram or Facebook and tell me about your experience.
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