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Hello and welcome to 'hi5english'
your guide to teaching English as a Second Language to young and very young learners
and today we're going to talk about the very important part of our job
which is how to introduce vocabulary
and we will discuss a very simple technique
that I use in the beginning of pretty much every class
and for the purposes of this demonstration
let's just assume
that children who you're presenting this vocabulary to
they are not familiar with the words in English
but they know them in their native language
before we start
I would like to tell you 2 simple principles
that I use when I introduce vocabulary
and first principle is
we go from concrete to abstract
we go from objects to pictures
or we go from nouns to other parts of the speech
the reason we go from concrete to abstract
is because objects are very easy to touch
and, as you know, children learn through so-called muscular memory
which means they recognize objects when they touch them
rule #1: we do everything from concrete to abstract
and there is a very simple rule #2
which is we introduce all vocabulary in isolation
we introduce objects one-by-one
and we isolate them from each other where it's possible
sometimes it's not possible but most of the time it is
right now I'm going to do a very quick demonstration
of what I do to introduce new vocabulary to children
this is how we introduce it
normally, I have a bag with me
and then I take one object out of it
I show it to them and then I say nothing
the reson I keep quiet for just a little bit is
because I want to make sure that they know the name of this object in their language
in this case, it's milk
when I show it to them
normally there are couple of children or, maybe, all of them
that will say the name of this object in their language
in my case, it's Chinese
I wait, then I say, "Yes!"
point at it
and say, "Milk"
and that's it
it's that simple
you take an object, wait and then say, "Milk"
and normally they repeat, "Milk"
then you put it away
the next one
wait
they say it in their language
and you say, "Juice"
and they repeat, "Juice"
and the last one
cookies
and they repeat, "Cookies"
this is a very first technique
on how to introduce new vocabulary to children
if you have any questions, leave them in the comment section below
and I'll see you in the next episode of 'hi5english'
and we'll talk more about different techniques
of practising vocabulary
and making children to remember it
that's it for today
goodbye and I'll see you in the next episode