ELT365 · Day 158 — Pre-Teaching Vocabulary: What to Select

Idea — Pre-teach only the words that block comprehension of the task, not every unknown word. Over-pre-teaching removes the productive struggle that builds incidental vocabulary.

Example — For a gist task on climate change, pre-teach “drought” — it blocks the main idea. Leave “meteorological” — learners can infer it from context.

Try — Read your text; identify two genuinely blocking words. Pre-teach those, elicit the rest from context during or after the task.

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