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History of a Word

-- MoodyComp1

Lexical Dictionary

A type of vocabulary experiment where students contribute words and definitions that are specific to fields of interest. The purpose is to keep the definitions precise and show them that all fields (from literature to plumbing to skateboarding) have "languages" that must be learned before one can truly communicate within that field. BrianMcallister

Vocab every day...(Usually from a random, left-over GRE handbook)

There were many times, in my past classes, when I would spend a large portion of class time discussing anecdotes as an opening for a paper only to realize that the majority of my students had not a clue what I was talking about.

THEREFORE.

Every day ENC 1101: 131 and 035 spends 10 minutes going over vocabulary words. The words are all related to the day's task or discussion and after 7 minutes of flipping through dictionary (which is a mandatory book in my class) pages, we discuss the words. I have my students figure out why those words were chosen and how they might be applied to today's lesson. For example: today we discusssed peer reviews and writing a narrative peer review response. Vocabulary words were: Indifferent, Narrative, Constructive, Venerate, Criticism.

This way, I knew the blank look on their faces was not from a lack of understanding vocabulary. TaylorjoyMitchell

VocabularyBuilder

The above link goes to my list of select prefixes and suffixes, along with some practice vocabulary words. We had the students guess the definitions of the words, and then went over the right and wrong answers. The link at the top is very helpful for a more in-depth list. Following the class, I sent the students to the vocabulary website and had them use at least five words in a blog. - CaitlinFahey

DescriptiveWords

To help my class with writing their Descriptive Essays, I made a 'Mini-Master List' of 45 descriptive words from the GRE Master List that I could see my students actually using. Since there are 44 students in my combined class, I had them break up into groups of five or six and gave each group a set of five descriptive words. For each word, I asked the groups to define it (in a few words), write three synonyms, and use it in a descriptive sentence. If they did not know what the word meant, I asked them questions like 'what does it make you think of?' 'What other words are similar to it?' Usually they could figure the word out pretty quickly after answering these questions.

After about fifteen minutes, most of the groups were done; so, I had the groups write two of their descriptive sentences on the board and I went over other possible meanings for the words, as well as ways to make the sentences even more descriptive. Since each group only worked with five out of the 45 words, aside from those written on the board by other groups, I’ve posted the ‘Mini-Master List’ on Blackboard and invited the students to scroll through the words if they were having trouble describing something. Likewise, I’ll be adding to the list after reading their papers, in case they’ve used words that I feel would be helpful in later drafts or to other classes. --SuzanneDesmond

OED

Go to Oxford English Dictionary to research your name. If this link does not work; click on the USF Libraries at the top of your welcome to BlackBoard page. Under the heading Electronic Resources Click on Databases/Newspapers and type in OED. It will bring you to the OED home page. In the right hand corner is a box that asks "find a word" and type your name in the box and hit go. TaylorjoyMitchell