Helping with vocabulary
- Check if your mentee has a ‘new vocabulary’ notebook from school (Love to Learn can provide one if not).
- Keep vocabulary lists in themes.
- Reading, hearing and using words in context is best.
- Always ask your mentee to explain key words to you in their own words.
- Focus on synonyms: when they use a word like “big”, what other words could they use instead?
- Have a look at the general service word list (of most common English words), and for more advanced students, the academic word list – how many do they know the meaning and spelling of?
- Make sure L2L have provided a thesaurus and a dictionary if they don’t already have one.
- Does your mentee read in their home language? If so check whether they have a dictionary in that language as well.
- Recap on last week’s vocabulary – do mini test, recycle it in a different task.
Helping with spelling
- Your mentee may have regular spelling tests – if they do, try to find out when these are – you could test them on the week’s words in advance, or go over the ones he/she didn’t get right.
- Make sure they know what the words they are learning mean.
- Look at the correct spelling, cover, write and then check.
- Always focus on the letters or group of letters that are not right – most letters in a word are mostly right, they may have one “sound” wrong.
- Use a whiteboard to practise as it is easier to have a go if you can rub it out.
- Do “odd one out” exercises to get them to spot the right one.
- Gapfill sentences where they have to use the right word.
- Always collect words in groups of similar patterns.
- Never try to learn There / Their together!
- Match words to meanings
