flexible

Complete Sentences Improve Learning

Viewing words in sentence examples expedites learning because the sentence creates semantic and grammatical settings the student can link to the target word. In addition, by seeing the same phrase in varied examples, students will learn the various uses and meanings of each word quicker than singular learning of vocab. Learning words through example sentences also gives practice to learners by using words in a conversational style instead of simply learning the meaning without any context. Finally, example sentences give words phrasal positioning. Some words can only be placed in certain grammatical locations within the sentence. This can help students learn what the word's category is and thus refine its meaning since grammatical parts of speech (e.g., noun, verb, adjective) are universal.

Focus on Idiomatic Phrases for ESL Students

Idiomatic phrases are word sequences that are formed by words that have unrelated meanings in other contexts, which explains why idiomatic phrases are arduous to master. Consider the idiom "it’s raining cats and dogs". A literal translation would imply that there are animals dropping out of the sky. But in this scenario, it's a way to convey that it's heavily raining. When you use idioms, it communicates that a word is adequately mastered to be used in a symbolic context. Still, it is important to gain an understanding of idiomatic phrases for a language as it will help with further understanding of the language and promote learning of vocabulary words.