The Principle of Cognitive Depth

“The more one manipulates, thinks about, and uses mental information, the more likely it is that one
will retain that information. In the case of vocabulary, the more one engages with a word (deeper
processing), the more likely the word will be remembered for later use” (Schmitt 2000: 120).

I picked out 8 words from the text that I wanted my pupils to learn. Then I had my pupils identifying
the words in the text. Task 2 was a selecting task where the pupils had to underline the words that
were typical for India. They shared their work with a partner, explaining their choices. As task 3 they
were matching the words with an English description from a dictionary. They also found antonyms
and synonyms. Task 4 was a sorting activity where the pupils had to decide whether the words were
nouns, verbs, adjectives or adverbs. Finally, as a ranking and sequencing activity I had my pupils
rank the words according to preference, to decide how important they thought knowing each word
was. They discussed their ranking with a partner. (Mette B.)

The Principle of Retrieval

“The act of successfully recalling an item increases the chance that the item will be remembered. It
appears that the retrieval route to that item is in some way strengthened by being successfully used”
(Baddeley 1997: 112).

My Vocabulary activity was “Categories” … The students worked in groups of four or five. They were
handed out a piece of paper where five columns were drawn up. Each column was labelled with the
name of a lexical set: Food, transport, clothes, animals and sport. I called out a letter of the alphabet
(e.g. B!). The students wrote down as many words they knew began with the letter to a time of limit
which was around 2-3 minutes. The group with the most words won (I did not demand that the words
were spelled correctly. (Gunn)

There is also Pictionary, where you divide the class into two groups, and one member of each team
goes to the Smart Board. The teacher flashes them a card with a word, phrase or expression and
the pupils have one minute to make their team say the word on the basis of their drawing on the
Smart Board; no other clues are allowed. (Vanessa)
The Principle of Associations

“The human lexicon is believed to be a network of associations, a web-like structure of

interconnected links. When students are asked to manipulate words, relate them to other words and
to their own experiences, and then to justify their choices, these word associations are reinforced”
(Sökmen 1997: 241-2).

Make true and false sentences about yourself using eight of these words.

I believe this is a good activity for deeper processing of words, because the learners have to relate
to the words and phrases personally. I have tried it out in class and found it a motivating activity both
for me and for my pupils. We all got to know each other better by sorting out the activities they liked
more and liked less. This was a concrete task, easy for them to relate to and to make up sentences
from a given pattern. The activity guessing what is false and true is fun and easy to understand.
They have to use what they already know about each other to decide whether the statements are
true or false. (Anne Katrine)

The Principle of Re-contextualization

“When words are met in reading and listening or used in speaking and writing, the generativeness
of the context will influence learning. That is, if the words occur in new sentence contexts in the
reading text, learning will be helped. Similarly, having to use the word to say new things will add to
learning” (Nation 2001: 80).

I showed them the list of words on the projector and introduced the task to them. Their first task was
to translate the words and write them in Norwegian. … When the pupils had finished this, they were
asked to use at least five words/expressions from each column to write a paragraph on US politics.
The task had to be finished before the lesson the week after. This sentence or text creation task
required the pupils to create the context for the given words and phrases. In addition to the meaning
of the words, the pupils also needed to think about word tense, grammatical behaviour and so on.
(Sturla)
The Principle of Multiple Encounters

“Due to the incremental nature of vocabulary acquisition, repeated exposures are necessary to
consolidate a new word in the learner’s mind” (Schmitt & Carter 2000: 4).

The class was supposed to work with reading comprehension, but before starting the reading, the
pupils were given a pre-reading task related to vocabulary in the text. … After a while, the teacher
went through the task with the class, asking for the matching words and the definitions. The teacher
repeated the answers to model the correct pronunciation.

Then the class was instructed to read the article and use the worksheet on vocabulary while reading
and after reading when they were asked to answer questions from the article. This way the
vocabulary was met several times. (Anette)

1. Give out the texts. Find out partner.

2. When you’ve found your group, think of another example of an activity that might use this
principal
3. Regroup to trainers / content
a. Trainers – which of these stratagies do you see teachers using? How could we encourage
them to use these more?
b. Content – which of these do we use in our courseware