On Teaching Vocabulary to ELLs

I though I’d write a blog post on teaching vocabulary to ELLs (English Language Learners).  Building vocabulary is one of the main tasks that EAL students have when developing language acquisition in English.  There are a number of ways that I’ve worked on vocabulary building with my students, as well as understanding vocabulary in context and reading comprehension (which I’ll talk about in a later post).  In this blog post, I’ll discuss a little bit of background on teaching vocabulary to ELLs that I’ve come across in the scholary world of English Language Acquisition and then move into explicit vocabulary teaching techniques I use in the classroom.

Vocabulary Research and English Language Learning

First and foremost, there are two types of Oral Language.  Many of you have already heard of BICS and CALP.  They are as follows.

BICS – Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills: Face-to-face conversational fluency, language used in everyday…