Creating word-meaning awareness

by Paula Jullian (2000)

New Words
-The new car design incorporates all the latest safety features.
-Inflation has reached a plateau.
-This word has several shades of meaning.
-The storm resumed with even greater intensity.
-The word ‘professional’ has connotations of skill and excellence.
-Her latest novel was dissected by the critics.
-He shows great discernment in his choice of friends.
-Science can penetrate many of nature’s mysteries.
-Prefix ‘un’ is a classifier that shows the word is negative.
-‘Dog’ and ‘cat’ are hyponyms of ‘animal’.
-‘Fruit’ is the superordinate/hypernym of ‘apple’, ‘orange’, etc.
-The theory of natural selection was first propounded by Charles Darwin.
-Patience is one of the most important attributes in a teacher.
-His actions are in contradiction to his words.
-The advertisements depict smoking as glamorous and attractive.
-They tried to discern what really happened.
-She went on to elaborate her argument.

Summary
This activity for creating word-raising awareness has 6 steps; collecting lexical sets, classification, word mapping, contextualization, using the new words and presentation of the research. It helps upper-intermediate and advanced learners expand their vocabulary. Their vocabulary is limited and they tend to overuse simple terms on the production side and misunderstand on the reception side. Through this activity, they learn to approach new alternative terms.