Bill Mascull is a business materials writer and lexicographer, and has previously taught in Sweden and France. Most recently, he has authored new editions of two business vocabulary books and ebooks: Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate and Business Vocabulary in Use Advanced. In Bill’s first post, he explored the importance of context and word combinations when teaching vocabulary and grammar. In the second of four posts on teaching Business English, Bill presents some exercise types for vocabulary learning that teachers can create themselves.
Written exercises
Many teachers at some point find it necessary to create their own materials and tests. For Business English teachers in particular, course books or grammar and vocabulary books can be valuable tools, but with very specific learner needs, these texts may need to be supplemented with additional content.
Written exercises can be used to practise and reinforce what has been learnt, but they also allow teachers to see problems that learners are having and that require more work. There are some issues that may not be obvious when students are speaking, that become apparent when they undertake written exercises. There is also the notion of process, the idea that students should be encouraged to think logically about what is possible in different contexts.To illustrate different types of exercise, I’ve used examples from Business Vocabulary in Use, but the exercise formats I’m going to talk about are suitable for many types of English language teaching. Some of the same techniques can also be used in testing, but here I’ll concentrate on language presentation and practice.
Gap exercises
Perhaps the most common form of written language practice is to get learners to complete gaps in sentences or in longer stretches of text. This allows them to develop their knowledge of how particular language − vocabulary items or grammatical patterns − are used appropriately in context.
The sentences or text in which the gaps occur will provide this context, and learners complete each item in relation to what is logical and/or grammatical in relation to the surrounding vocabulary and grammatical structures − answers must ‘fit’ in the gaps both meaning-wise and grammar-wise. Here is a gap exercise on just-in-time manufacturing from the new edition of Business Vocabulary in Use Advanced.
The use of an article extract rather than isolated sentences makes for text that is more intrinsically interesting in itself. It’s also good for learners to see how the items of target vocabulary occur in proximity to each other and in relation to each other, and one of the target items occurs twice. (In passing, I should mention that it’s sometimes useful to include ‘red herrings’ among the items, i.e. items that do not occur at all, but that might occur. The exercise instruction should mention this, e.g. by saying ‘two of the items are not used’.)
There are also ways of varying the single underline. You can use these techniques:
- show the item’s initial letter
- show the number of letters in the item
- use an alternative choice format, giving two or three possible answers, only one of which is correct
- give the ‘base form’ of the item (verb infinitive or singular form of nouns) and get learners to find the correct verb or noun form for the context.
Matching
The above two exercises are examples of matching sentence-parts, but other matching exercises include matching:
- sentences with the following sentence.
- words and expressions to their definitions.
- headlines/headings to paragraphs or complete texts.
The third post in this series of four will explore more examples of useful tools commonly found in the material writer’s toolbox. Read Bill’s first post on the importance of context and word combinations when teaching vocabulary and grammar.