How To Maximise Your Pupils’ Vocabulary

Getting pupils to learn the words is our most important task: vocabulary is paramount for any language..

It cannot be done by absorption,  as with our ancestors in the Middle Ages. Then the flying hours had less urgency: with six days of the week at their disposal, pupils spent half a morning with Latin, reading it, writing it and learning the words as they went, by constant repetition.

But our time is sternly restricted. We may see pupils only three or four times a week, for less than an hour.  The words still have to be learnt—but consciously – by heart. How should we do this?

The process must be imaginative. It must also be systematic and motivational. It requires the extremes of a teacher’s skill, insight and communication.

The systematic nature of it can begin from the outset, when, before any Latin vocabulary is learnt, the pupil can correctly identify the parts of speech in English. It falls to the classics department to teach this. (The traditional terminology, though queried in the post-Chomsky era, has been found to work with European languages.)

It is essential for memory that pupils write down the words that are to be learnt, in their own handwriting, in a notebook for that purpose—written so carefully and neatly that revising them later is a pleasure.

In the early stages, a list to be learnt will probably be of the vocabulary found in the passage of Latin that they are currently reading. And here it may be noted that the Latin they read should be memorable—dealing with things of significance, and not trivial or patronising. If the passage describes or explains memorable things, then that is a vivid aid to remembering the words used.

The words to be learnt, then, should be written in the student’s own handwriting, and in every case should be done as in a dictionary: the nouns with declension number, or genitive and gender, and the verbs with principal parts, or number if regular, and so forth.  Here is a list given to some pupila in Year Nine, written on the whiteboard and discussed with the class as they wrote the words down. It was done before reading the passage where they were used.

Later, for students at public examination stage, it can be useful to take the examiners’ wordlist and reformat it so that words are listed not only by parts of speech, but by declension and conjugation. The very sight of words collected in this way can be enlightening to students because it reveals connections they have not noticed before, and displays some of the patterns of word formation.

Connection is seminal to the learning of vocabulary—as it is with any memorizing. So it is useful for teacher to be all the time noticing means of connection that may aid students’ memory—not random similarities, but connections  between words that are organic, both within the Latin language through its internal formations, and in the development of European languages since.

For this reason, it is useful even with the younger students to introduce them to the following:

• The three principal parts of an English verb, with the distinction between strong and weak formations.
• The nature of the four Latin principal parts, which can usefully compared with the three of English verbs.
• The manner in which the Latin verb, most often in its supine form, has generated words in English and in all the western European languages,  not only the Romance ones. Young students get pleasure from such words—fraction, audition, station, traction, constipation, etc.  
• Compound verbs. English words like those ending -duction, -jection, -pulsion can be a prompt for presenting compound verbs in Latin.
• Patterns, of which there are a large number: for example, the way capio, facio, jacio form their principal parts in the same way: and of course these verbs in compound have given dozens of modern words.
• Word formation within the language, e.g.

This kind of study makes Latin immediately relevant to what students read or hear every day:  and discovering some of the basic processes of language seems to motivate them to observe and collect words. They can be explicitly encouraged to become word collectors.

Is this a philological approach? Yes, but everyone who learns another language properly – i.e. to read and write it – has to be a philologist to some extent.

As far as motivation is concerned: one misconception about children is that they do not like writing things down. This may be the opposite of the truth.

One of our alumni said, some years later, about his early Latin, “We knew you were in business when you made us write the words down and learn them.”

The learning of the words, followed by the written test on them, can be a matter of enthusiasm with the whole spectrum of students’ ability. For the slow learner, it is remedial, and, for the able, it aids reinforcement. It compels detailed observation and attention to spelling, and the words themselves suggest endless connections. And nowadays, all students need more practice at writing.

In the test, the students are asked to write down the word, which the teacher carefully pronounces, with its details, exactly as above. They are then required to give the English meaning. It is useful to do verbs first, then nouns by gender, then the rest. The details of the word should always be written. Correct spelling is required, and only half a mark given if there is any spelling error.

The pupils think that the purpose of the written test is to check that they know the words.  That is part of it, but we the teachers will want to use the test to reinforce their memory of the words. This means that the teacher must give the questions orally, and provide enough in the way of hints and suggestions to make sure that most of the students get nearly all the words right.

This is important, because every time they write down something correctly, they have a better chance of remembering it.

The hints given can be clever, amusing and things to tickle their sense of humour—but always relevant to the etymology, and not random coincidences of sound. To make sure that the slowest pupils get as much a possible right, the odd bit of personal help does not come amiss (for the teacher is moving around the classroom during tests like this)—though that is not an option at the moment; and a difficult Latin word can be written on the whiteboard for slower learners to copy.

People like lists, as advertisers on the net have discovered. Children also tend to like rationale, accuracy, and understanding. These likings can be harnessed for the learning of words.

Material for some of the above suggestions can be found on the website: teacherofclassics.com