I just posted a teaching idea on teflclips called Guess the context. The basic activity involves giving students a line from a film clip and asking them to guess who is speaking and what is happening.

I use this technique to demonstrate to students the importance of context. I think that a language learners’ appreciation of this is important for practical reasons. Here is why:

I have a small group of Spanish students. Like most language learners, they like to write down new vocabulary that they meet in the classroom. Beside each new item, they will usually write the Spanish translation. Here are a few random items taken from the notebook of one of these students:

• Delay : aplazar
• Look like : parecer
• Bothered : dar palo
• Spend time : pasar tiempo
• Blank : virgen
• Well-known : famoso
• Refuse : negarse
• Think of doing something : pensar hacer algo
• To be worth : valer
• Cliff : acantilado / precipicio
• Mature : maduro
• Plug in : enchufar
• Get : buscar
• Flooded : inundado
• Pretend : fingir
• By : antes
• Postpone : aplazar

Some of these translations are quite good. To spend time = pasar tiempo is fairly straightforward, for example. But on the whole, I would say that the usefulness of vocabulary lists like these is very limited.

Firstly, there is the problem of meaning. Look at the word blank. My student wrote “blank : virgen“. But which meaning of the word is he referring to?

• A blank CD
• A blank stare
• My mind went blank
• To fire a blank

Could the Spanish translation virgen be used in all of these cases? The answer is no.

The second problem is that each of these items has its own grammar. For example, it is possible that postpone and delay are usually used in passive structures. The verbs refuse and pretend are followed by infinitives (refuse/pretend to do something). And the word bothered should form a collocation with can, can’t, could or couldn’t if we want the expression which means dar palo in Spanish.

So, by writing these items in isolation, my students have left out a lot of information that is important if they want to learn them.

One solution is to encourage students to capture the context. Imagine if, instead of a vocabulary list, they had written the following:

• M. didn’t come to class because her flight from Madrid was delayed.
• In the film Alice doesn’t live here any more, Jodie Foster looks like a boy.
• I can’t be bothered to work today.
• We have spent 3 years developing our computer system.
• If you give me a blank CD, I will make a recording for you.
• London is the most popular conference city in Europe, probably because it is so well-known.
• During the coup d’état, Suarez refused to go down.
• F. was thinking of going to see Barça and Chelsea.
• My flat is worth more than when I bought it.
• Donald Sinclair threw a guest’s briefcase over a cliff.
• Normally girls are more mature than boys.
• S. couldn’t use her phone because she had forgotten to plug it in.
• M. left the room to get an aspirin.
• M. had a problem when his hotel flooded.
• The girl at the New Camp pretended not to hear me.
• RSVP by the 1st of July (seen on a wedding invitation)
• The Stones concert was postponed because Keith Richards fell out of a tree.

Most of these sentences will mean nothing to anyone that wasn’t present in our language classroom. Most of them come from things that my students said or wrote - things that were either prasiseworthy or in need of correction. A few come from the texts that we were looking at.

These sentences capture the original contexts of the items in question. Students can be encouraged to write new words and phrases (especially more complex ones) in their notebooks in this way.

If you want to do this, here is a procedure:

1. Keep a note of all the vocabulary that your students meet over a couple of classes. For each word or item, make sure you keep a note of its specific original context.
2. A few weeks later, ask one of your students if you can borrow his or her notebook.
3. Go through the notebook and see how the student wrote down each piece of vocabulary when it was met in the classroom.
4. Choose about 16 words and write them out just as your student did along with the translations (see first blue list above).
5. Also prepare a sentence for each item that captures the context that it was met in (see second blue list above).
6. Give students the first vocabulary list. For each item of vocabulary, ask them to write a sentence which contains it.
7. Let students compare their results.
8. Give out copies of the original contextualised examples.
9. Do the activity at teflclips (Guess the context).
10. Discuss the importance of context with your learners and encourage them to write down full contextualised sentences for new words and vocabulary that they meet in class - especially complex ones.

Later, contextualised examples can be used for diverse activities which aim to get students internalising the new items and the grammar associated with them. Here are some ideas:

1. Drill the contextualised examples.
2. Get students to email their contextualised examples to you at the end of each day. That way, they will recap the language and you will be able to send back an email with any corrections if necessary.
3. For revision (receptive level): Read out sentences and ask students to recall when they were met in the classroom / who said them.
4. For revision (productive level): Dictate the sentences to your students.
5. For revision (productive level): Use the sentences for a running dictation.
6. For revision (productive level): Ask students to translate the sentences into their own language. Then ask them to translate them back into English from memory.
7. For revision (productive level): Ask students to illustrate the sentences. Then use the illustrations as flashcards - students are shown an image and have to produce (either say or write down) the corresponding language. This can be turned into a team game.
8. For revision (production level): Ask students to use the sentences to make gap-fill exercises for each other.