How Does Em Teach English Vocabulary? Real Classroom Techniques for Elicitation, & Speaking – S01E33

How can English teachers introduce, elicit and recycle vocabulary without simply giving students a list of words to memorise?In this episode of How to English TEFL Podcast, Em demonstrates one of the ways she teaches vocabulary, with Gav taking the role of the learner. Starting with a natural conversation about restaurants, she gradually builds a story and uses definitions, clues, first letters, gestures and questions to help Gav retrieve useful language for himself.Rather than presenting vocabulary in isolation, Em organises the language around a real-life situation: arriving at a restaurant, reading the menu, ordering food and drinks, talking about meals and dealing with common situations. Gav explains how this logical sequence helped him visualise the experience and remember the vocabulary.Drawing on Gav and Em’s 40+ years of combined English-teaching experience, they explore how teachers can make vocabulary lessons more engaging, memorable and communicative.They discuss how to:elicit vocabulary instead of immediately giving learners the answerorganise new language around a clear contextuse stories to keep students actively listeninggive clues without making learners feel pressuredaccept several possible answers rather than insisting on one “perfect” wordrecord and recycle vocabulary during the lessonmove from elicitation into personalised speaking practiceadapt the technique for one-to-one lessons and groupsuse real menus and restaurant role-playsadd functional language such as requests and offersbalance teacher talk with meaningful student participationuse performance, personality and humour to make language more memorableEm also reflects on something she has learned from experience: elicitation can become counterproductive if the teacher keeps pushing for one particular word. Sometimes several answers are perfectly good English, so the teacher needs to recognise useful learner language rather than simply waiting for the word on the lesson plan.The result is a practical look inside an experienced teacher’s classroom thinking — from the initial conversation and vocabulary presentation through to recycling, speaking practice and real-life role-play.🎧 Support How to English TEFL Podcast:https://ko-fi.com/howtoenglishpod📚 Free TEFL articles, teaching ideas, activities and episode resources you can use in your lessons:https://www.howtoenglishpod.com/Chapters & Timestamps00:00 – Welcome to How to English TEFL Podcast01:00 – From “How Gav Teaches” to “How Em Teaches”02:00 – Starting a vocabulary lesson with natural conversation03:00 – Building the restaurant context05:00 – Turning a story into an elicitation activity06:00 – Eliciting restaurant vocabulary: cutlery and more07:00 – Teaching “bland” through clues and context08:00 – Eliciting condiments and related vocabulary09:00 – Describing wine: dry, sweet and sparkling10:00 – Reviewing recently introduced vocabulary11:00 – Expanding vocabulary: plate, dish and food language12:00 – Categorising meat and food vocabulary13:00 – Game, venison, pheasant and quail14:00 – Napkin, serviette and choosing words for the situation15:00 – Courses, drinks and restaurant vocabulary16:00 – Still, sparkling and tap water17:00 – Why elicitation helps learners retrieve vocabulary18:00 – Why vocabulary needs a logical context and sequence19:00 – Turning coursebook material into a real conversation20:00 – Recording, reviewing and recycling new vocabulary21:00 – Moving from vocabulary input to freer speaking22:00 – Why teaching can involve performance and animation23:00 – Does this activity give students enough speaking time?24:00 – When elicitation becomes too demanding25:00 – Turning the activity into a full 60-minute lesson26:00 – Authentic menus, functional language and restaurant role-play27:00 – Final reflections and teaching takeaways