The Vocabulary Diet: Book 3

Introduction (p. v)

The Vocabulary Diet is a three book series of reproducible lessons designed to increase an intermediate/advanced level ESL student’s vocabulary. Each book contains thirty units, with five words featured in each unit. Every unit is two pages long, and a complete answer key has been included for each lesson. The Vocabulary Diet is effective not only because it allows students to be presented with the new vocabulary items in a variety of exercises and in many contexts but it also works because the opportunity for repeated exposure is built in and because students are required to consider and manipulate the new words in several different ways.

Words chosen for inclusion and the units in The Vocabulary Diet are not graded. The words are not grouped because of any similarity of meaning. The words included were chosen at random based on the author’s belief that being able to use them will enhance a learner’s ability to speak effectively. When using The Vocabulary Diet it is recommended that every student has access to a dictionary and a thesaurus. Teachers should determine, taking their students’ language level into consideration, whether new vocabulary words should be looked up in the dictionary before proceeding to the actual lessons in the book.

Every unit in The Vocabulary Diet begins with three sample sentences for each word being studied. The students are then given five possible meanings for each word and by working with context clues the students must determine the word that is the most suitable definition. Next the students are given a fill-in-the-blanks exercise. Five sentences are given with the student’s responsibitlity being to place the correct vocabulary word in the correct sentence. Following this is a synonym matching exercise. The five vocabulary words are given along with a list of five other words. The vocabulary word must be matched with its closest synonym.

There is a sentence building exercise. Single words or groups of words, including the vocabulary words, are given and the students must arrange the scrambled words to form proper sentences. Finally, there is a word elimination exercise. Students are given five potential synonyms for the vocabulary words being studied. Only three of the words are true synonyms. The students must identify which two words are not synonyms. Repetition is the key to successful vocabulary learning. The Vocabulary Diet provides that repetition. A good teacher will not cease reinforcing new vocabulary with what is presented on these pages. Get your students to use their new words by creating their own sentences. Get your students to pretend they are reporters and to go out and survey English speakers to see if the native speakers can come up with definitions or synonyms for the vocabulary words. The Vocabulary Diet aims to make learning an enjoyable and fruitful experience for your students.