Using bilingual glossaries to teach new vocabulary items.

Hello dear colleagues,

Let me share with you some activities I have just tried successfully with my students. Actually, they were about teaching new vocabulary items related to Food, drinks and cooking utensils. From my past years experience, I noticed that students liked this unit so much and they expressed curiosity and enthusiasm to know more about the mentioned above items. They used to ask me for words translation as they have very few resources if none at all. To face these constraints and satisfy their curiosity, I created a 2 page bilingual glossary encompassing the maximum “cooking” jargon. Actually, this idea was inspired by the Oxford English Arabic Picture Dictionary. So I gave students copies of this glossary, which served as a vocabulary resource for the lesson. They were happy to keep the copies for their own use later on. Below is a detailed description of that lesson steps.

Objectives: Students will

• acquire new vocabulary items related to Food, drinks, cooking utensils and practice them in meaningful context as in their everyday life
• talk about their favourite dishes and describe the process of making them.

Materials:

• Copies of the glossary encompassing English Arabic word lists related to: vegetables, fruits, spices, kitchen utensils, drinks and some key action verbs.
• Copies of recipes with pictures and phrases describing the process.

References:

• The Oxford English Arabic picture Dictionary. Norma Shapiro and Jayme Adelson Goldstein
• English for everyday activities. A picture process dictionary. Lawrence J. Zwier.

Time: 45 minutes.

Steps of the lesson:

1. Students are shown some pictures of some food and drink items to determine what they already know.
2. Students are given the copies of the bilingual glossary and asked the following questions to make them go through the glossary and get familiar with the new items and their pronunciation:
   
   - Which vegetables do you eat raw / cooked?
   - Which fruits are sold in the summer / winter in Ouarzazate?
   - What kitchen utensils do you use in making Spaghetti / Tajine …?
3. Students are given copies of some dishes‘ recipes with pictured actions .Then they are asked to work in pairs, read the process and complete the following information :
   Ingredients :
   spices :
   Used utensils :
   Method/ Process
4. When they have completed the task, some volunteers come up to the front of the class. One reading out the recipe while the second miming the actions.
5. As a follow up activity, students are asked to describe some local dishes their way.

To conclude, students were so much excited during this lesson and were happy to get copies of the glossary . I think it will be beneficial to apply the same technique while dealing with the next topics.