‘Matching and Grid Activities’ EAL Strategy: Explanation and Rationale

Language is built on connections.

When learning a new word, we must learn its meaning.

The connection between physical sound and mental association is inherent.

If a newcomer to English were taught how to speak a series of words with great accuracy they would remain, nonetheless, completely inept at communication unless they were also taught the meaning of these words.

Language is a representation of things ‘out there’ in the physical world and things known only to us as internal experiences.

(Like, for example, the feeling of toothache. While other people can tell us they also get toothache, they do not get ‘our’ toothache. We have to tell them when we have it. Otherwise, they cannot know. And vice versa.)

Regardless of which category a word falls into, its meaning must be learnt in conjunction with its sound and, quite likely, its spelling.

These three things need to match up correctly in our minds.

Learners need to be able to identify relationships between words and meanings.

Matching and grid activities provide a useful way to help them to do this.

Matching and Grid Activities: Example One

When teaching new vocabulary, provide EAL learners with an A4 sheet, split in half.

In the top half, place the new words. In the bottom half, place pictures representing each word.

Ask your learners to match up the pictures and the words.

When they’ve finished, discuss how they went about the task and how they made their decisions.

This is a matching game.

One designed to both check learner understanding and to give learners practice in recalling the connection between words and images.

If the process of recall is completed correctly, we can have confidence that learners are successfully embedding new vocabulary.

If they get things wrong, we have revealed this early and can teach away from it, helping ensure the errors aren’t compounded.

Matching and Grid Activities: Example Two

Create a grid with three columns:

• Word
• Meaning
• Picture

Choose a series of words you want your EAL learners to focus on.

For each word, complete one of the columns.

Ask your learners to fill in the gaps.

This is another example of matching. Here, learners must complete each match by filling in the gaps.

Depending on the level your EAL learners are at, they might be able to do this independently, with the help of a dictionary or peer, or in conjunction with you.

You can tweak the activity to make it easier or more difficult.

To make it easier, complete two of the columns, either for all the words or just for some of the words. Learners then have less work to do and more clues to help them in the task.

To make it harder, add a fourth column. There are lots of possibilities for what this might be.

For example:

• A sentence that includes the word.
• A synonym for the word.
• The opposite of the word.

You can vary the level of difficulty based on your assessment of your learner’s English language level.

Matching and Grid Activities: Example Three

Give your EAL learners a series of images.

Ask them to match each image to the most relevant word in their first language.

When they have done this, ask them to use a bilingual dictionary to look up the English equivalents.

Finally, when learners have done this for all the words, invite them to create a mini-glossary using the images, the English words, and their first language equivalents.

This strategy involves two rounds of matching and three lots of active practice (the third being when learners create the mini-glossary).