Imagine this scenario… Young learners grapple with standard reading texts in their classes, unable to read and comprehend the text and its message. They are tongue-tied to answer questions posed to them as they think in their mother tongue and try to translate the same to English. Alas!! their vocabulary fails them..because it doesn’t exist in the first place.
You can see this situation across most of the Urban English Medium schools in India. The average student struggles with verbs and adjectives on a daily basis. Unsure of himself or herself when it comes to the English language. So students perforce learn by Rote memorization hoping to neutralize this weakness. Unfortunately, recall and comprehension capabilities collapse when asked to rephrase.
Translating a thought process from mother tongue to English is fraught with challenges due to inadequate vocabulary comprehension and recall.
Teachers are at a loss for better strategies to improve the vocabulary levels of their students. They have been trying in their own ways with their limited abilities, but with little success. Teachers are surely not part of the solution. If at all they contribute to its exacerbation.
It is almost a routine to see teachers mildly admonishing parents of their students for not encouraging them to read and improve their vocabulary. How does a child do that without being guided in a sensible manner?
Most of the students are First Generation English Language Learners. Both parents would be educated in their Mother tongue medium of education in their schools.
Vocabulary development is a grossly neglected aspect in English Language classes in Schools. Teachers lack understanding and techniques of teaching vocabulary besides rudimentary methods. They are challenged with time constraints, classes with mixed ability groups, and unforgiving deadlines.
Year after year students struggles with inadequate vocabulary development. They have been paying a heavy price for the sheer lack of competence of the teaching fraternity to teach them better techniques of comprehension, retention, and recall of vocabulary. The burden of vocabulary development now falls on the parents of these hapless victims of Systemic inefficiencies and mindsets.
It is pointless to expect the School Education system to do more than what it does. The more sensible option would be for parents to seek specialized help which may be online or offline..workbooks..reading with a vocabulary-building strategy. Reading clubs. Online or otherwise may be a good option.
Research across the world over the decades has clearly established the direct correlation between Superior vocabulary usage capabilities and higher academic grades.
We think with words. Words are building blocks of thoughts and ideas. The most powerful ideas are conveyed cogently with the usage of better vocabulary.
Vocabulary development triggers and enhances competencies in the comprehension and expression of English. This in turn results in better communication.
As the world moves towards online education whether by choice or by compulsion then Teacher independent learning is best achieved by learners with a better vocabulary. This is something for all parents to cogitate.
An investment in vocabulary development is possibly the best initiative parents can make for their school children. Vocabulary development is democratic and agnostic to class, caste, religious and linguistic classifications of people. Every learner benefits and can reap the fruits.
Regular reading of fiction stories is a good way to start. As one progresses it is important to read articles and opinions written by specialists. This helps in two ways. First, it helps in understanding the subject better, and second, it provides the reader with challenging words, word sets, and sentence structures.
Learners who struggle with basic English would benefit immensely from these activities. What the learner needs is a hunger for words. This hunger is essential for sustained vocabulary development.
Vocabulary development will neutralize the need for mindless rote memorization which is the bane of our young learners across India and possibly in many parts of the world where English is not the mother tongue or the National language.
Parents and other stakeholders have to step in immediately to ally the fears of their children and take effective measures to mitigate and eventually help to eliminate their vocabulary inefficiencies. This would be the best investment parents can make in their children.
https://telsaenglish.blogspot.com/2021/08/vocabulary-development-ultimate-english.html
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