Teaching emotional vocabulary synonyms through ESL listening activities

ESL Lesson Plan

Fill in Ears for Feelings

It is important for language learners to augment their vocabulary in order to become more fluent in the language that they are learning. Part of this process is hearing new words and assimilating them into their already existing word banks. This is the ultimate goal of this listening activity. The following lessons aims to help fine tune students' listening skills, while also augmenting their English vocabulary resources by teaching synonyms of basic emotion words.

This lesson is meant for learners with some basic experience in English. They have already had lessons in basic grammatical structures of sentences in present tense and have some knowledge of basic vocabulary words. Thus, they would be considered intermediate learners, who already have a basic grasp on English but need more experience to immerse them into fluency. The lesson aims to teach the students more complicated synonyms for basic emotion words, like happy and sad so that they can better understand conversations and respond in English on a more advanced level. The lesson uses secondary teaching strategies to augment primary learning skills (Rifkin, 2003). Essentially, secondary strategies use flash cards and visual tools to help strengthen the skills learned through primary lessons that focus on grammar through worksheets (Powers, 2015).

Classroom Activities

2. Listening Activity

For each of the words on the color wheel, there are cards which have the definition of the word and a picture of a face with the expression of that particular emotion. The teacher will lead the students in a listening activity where he or she reads each card for each emotion on the color wheel while showing the students the cards. The teacher will begin with the simplest form of the emotion, for instance happy. Then he or she will move into the more complicated synonyms of the word, like giddy and jolly, reading each definition out loud to the students while showing them the cards that hold the definitions. The students will be encouraged to read along, looking at the pictures as well as the words written on the cards. Each of the emotional categories will be read out loud in this manner. For each card, the students will then repeat the definition after the teacher.

3. Post-Listening Activity

This is where the students are expected to then show that they have understood what they heard. Students will be expected to synthesize what they have learned once they hear the words repeated again. For this part of the activity, the color wheel will be removed from the students' sight so that they have to rely solely on their memory and their experiences of hearing the words during the listening activity. The teacher will pass out hand outs that have the five major emotional categories in a table.

Happy

Sad

Angry

Surprised

Disgusted

Then, the teacher will say out loud each of the words that was on the color wheel. Along with saying the word three times, the teacher will write the word on the board in order to provide the correct spelling and question number associated with each word. Students will be responsible for correctly placing each emotion word in its correct category out of the five categories provided on the sheet. This part of the lesson serves as a way for the students to test how well they listened to the definitions of the words they just heard (Rifkin, 2003). It will help solidify their knowledge while also pinpointing any areas that they still need to work on in order to ensure that they have a comprehensive understanding of the emotion words being presented throughout the activity.

Happy

Sad

Angry

Surprised / Afraid

Disgusted

Content

Grief

Cranky

Startled

Distaste

Jolly

Hurt

Irritated

Apprehensive

Disbelief

Satisfied

Disappointed

Aggravated

Unsure

Distracted

Giddy

Distraught

Upset

Concerned

Enthusiastic

Depressed

Frustrated

Worried

Overjoyed

Despair

Irate

Terrified

Thrilled

Disappointed

Apathetic

Awed

Exuberant

Distain

Hysterical

Bitter

Frantic

Enraged

Confused

Loathing

Anxious

Once the evaluation activity is complete, the teacher will go through the exercise so that students can correct their work. He or she will start at the beginning, saying the word and then telling the students which category the word actually belongs in. Each student will correct his or her own work, marking any words wrong that they put in the wrong category. For all the words that were missed, the student will be responsible for using it in a sentence in the following time period after the evaluation activity. This will be at the end of class. Thus, after the teacher has corrected all of the words, students will stand up in front of the class one by one and tell which words they have placed in the wrong category. After each wrong word, they will use it in a sentence of their choosing. The teacher will prompt the student to first create a sentence using the basic synonym, like happy. Then, the student will repeat the same sentence but replacing the basic emotion word with the more complicated synonym that was misplaced during the evaluation activity. By asking the students to use the incorrect words in a sentence, the lesson is again adding another layer of learning (McDonough et al., 2013). Actually using words in sentence contexts helps strengthen student understanding and synthesis of the words. Additionally, starting with an easier synonym helps connect the harder, more complicated word to the new word being learned in the learning exercise.