Increasing Personal Associations to Support Vocabulary Acquisition

Hello colleagues, There is a lot of interest these days in the role of vocabulary in reading comprehension. In the recently published Spring 2016 MinneTESOL Journal, teacher Patrick Randolph explains his "Head-to-Toe" approach to teaching vocabulary in the article, "Introducing Randolph’s Head-to-Toe Method of Associations for Vocabulary Acquisition to Break the Ebbinghaus Curse." Randolph's aim is to increase English learners' personal associations with new vocabulary terms to help them to retain the words they are studying.

You may be asking, as I did, "What is the "Ebbinghaus Curse"? This was a new one for me! I invite members to check out Randolph's article and share your thoughts about the author's innovative approach to teaching vocabulary.

This issue as well as past issues of the MinneTESOL Journal --all available freely online-- are chock full of other interesting articles, too.

Comments welcome!

Cheers, Susan Finn Miller

Moderator, AELL CoP