Vocabulary Learning Vocabulary Teaching
12 Matching Activities
These are activities to recognize matching items or to complete pairs or sets.
Communication Strategies These activities encourage students to practice communication strategies
such as paraphrasing, borrowing or inventing words, using gesture, asking for feedback, and simplifying.
Picture and Picture Stories These are activities which utilize picture and pictures stories to stimulate
communication activities. These activities can be in the form of a memory test and sequencing pictures to tell a story. In the end of these activities, students are
expected to be able to describe the picture or arrange a story based on the picture. Puzzles and Problems
Puzzles and problems require students to make guesses by utilizing students’ general knowledge, personal experience, and imagination. These
activities aim at testing students’ logical reasoning. The objective of these
activities expects that in the end of the lesson students are able to solve puzzles and problems.
Discussions and Decisions These activities require students to collect and share information to
produce a decision. During these activities, students are required to discuss in pairs or groups. In the pair or the group discussion, students learn how to share
their opinions and argue among themselves to produce a decision.
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According to Willis 2003, there are seven activities to stimulate students rehearsing the topic language p. 43. Furthermore, Willis 2003 adds that most
of these activities begin with class activities and then continue in groups or pairs p. 44. These activities are done in pre-task language activities. These activities
are classifying words and phrases, odd one out, matching phrases to pictures, memory challenge, brainstorming and mind-maps, thinking of questions to ask,
and teacher recounting a similar experience. Those activities are conducted based on the varieties of task proposed by
Willis. There are six types of tasks defined by Willis 2003. Those types are “listing, ordering and sorting, comparing, problem solving, sharing personal
experience, and creative tasks ” p. 26.