As a response to my own challenge (?!), I’d like to share this experience which was responsible for getting the rusty old cogs moving in my head and lead me to put this challenge together.
Aga is a Polish student who recently spent ten years living in Germany where she met her Welsh now-husband. Now they are settling in the UK and I have been lucky enough to be one of Aga’s English teachers. She is one of those students who always makes me happy to be going what I’m doing – I hope you know the ones.
Aga is a very visual person. For example, she sees time in shapes and pictures. We’ve had many an interesting conversation about this. So, I thought we should tap into this visual preference and use it to help remember new vocabulary. English is Aga’s L3 so remembering and separating is particularly important for her. I asked Aga to draw a picture incorporating the following items of new vocabulary: volcano; earthquake; a bolt (of lightening); eruption; a fence; common land; series; to make a good impression; soporific.
These lexical items came up during some work we were doing on describing photographs of natural disasters, so much as they might sound it, they’re not totally random. I did want to ensure we had some unusual words in there however so that we can assess later whether there is any pattern as to what sticks in the mind.
These are the pictures that she did – I just love them!
I think the trick here is to revisit these pictures on a regular basis, frequently at first and then over longer periods of time to commit the lexis to memory.
Have you had any experience using drawing in the classroom to help remember vocabulary? Did it work?
