http://vocabulary.co.il/blog Learning Fun, Building Vocabulary, ESL Wed, 08 Sep 2010 14:59:43 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en One of the most fun parts of teaching English to students is by letting them discover figurative language.  Figurative language is any speech that is not meant to be taken literally.  Students in traditional classrooms and ESL classrooms will enjoy learning about three of the most interesting types of figurative ... http://vocabulary.co.il/blog/learning_vocabulary/that-crazy-englishidioms-oxymorons-and-onomatopoeia/ Who doesn’t like a riddle, right??  Riddles stretch our brain muscles and make us think in “outside-the-box” kind of ways.  One of many children’s favorite kinds of riddles are the ones that lead to rhyming pairs of words.  Often called “Hink Pink” (one syllable) or “Hinky Pinky” (two syllables), or ... http://vocabulary.co.il/blog/learning_vocabulary/learning-vocabulary-with-rhyming-words/ Americans love their slang. It is unusual to get through even one normal conversation without at least one idiom or slang phrase coming up.  Idioms, or slang expressions, are words or phrases that you cannot figure out from the actual word choice. They often mean something completely different from the ... http://vocabulary.co.il/blog/learning_vocabulary/learning-english-slang-with-idiom-games/ If I overhear a part of a conversation at the next table in a restaurant where a woman says she pushed her brother off the bridge, I am likely to want to call the authorities.  But if I had heard the part of the conversation before that, I would know ... http://vocabulary.co.il/blog/learning_vocabulary/building-vocabulary-in-context/ My dad was an English teacher and was obsessed by words.  It wasn’t unusual for us to be walking along a sidewalk or down a store aisle when he would suddenly turn to me and ask me if I knew the root word of the word “obligingly.”  Not knowing that ... http://vocabulary.co.il/blog/learning_vocabulary/learning-root-words-with-games/ I have been blessed to know some amazing ESL teachers over the last several years.  Thanks to our ever-shrinking world, teaching English as a Second Language is crucial for the millions of students in American schools who need to operate bilingually every day.  The English language is the ... http://vocabulary.co.il/blog/learning_vocabulary/foreign-language-and-esl-games/ Do you have a particular homophone weakness?  You know…a pair of words that you can’t ever seem to remember which one to use when??  Mine is most definitely the homophone pair hangar and hanger.  I am NEVER sure which one holds clothes and which one holds airplanes.  Maybe you have ... http://vocabulary.co.il/blog/learning_vocabulary/building-vocabulary-with-homophone-games/ Compound words can be surprisingly fun for students to study. (A compound word is made when two or more words are joined - - with or without a hyphen - -  to form a new word and subsequently, a new meaning.) Don’t miss this opportunity to really engage your students.  ... http://vocabulary.co.il/blog/learning_vocabulary/building-vocabulary-with-compound-words/ It is difficult to talk about vocabulary without also talking about spelling.  Educators have shown that spelling not only improves reading and writing fluency but also vocabulary and comprehension. Words are the building blocks of the English language, and one cannot really communicate well without having skills in both vocabulary ... http://vocabulary.co.il/blog/learning_vocabulary/spelling-and-vocabulary-fun-all-in-one/ If you ever had even one classroom lesson on diagramming sentences, then you probably feel the sudden urge to run - - far, far away - - when you hear the phrase “parts of speech”.  But the truth is that understanding the parts of speech and how they fit ... http://vocabulary.co.il/blog/learning_vocabulary/building-vocabulary-with-parts-of-speech-games/