Very simplified, but essentially a summary of an ESL teacher’s manual. Good work, this would be very useful for new teachers.

Not nitpicking - but if you are going to use this anywhere formally, there is a wee mistake in the part that says "limitations that your student don't want to talk about". Pretty sure it should be "students" or "doesn't".

you can take a look at these tips clearly here https://gitmind.com/app/docs/m8hxrc5d

Definitely flash cards. I'm not sure what age group your students are, but mine are absolutely loved through all age groups. You can play many games with them.

Flash cards games examples:

*Hot Seat - one player is on the "hot seat" and you lift a card behind him. Others have to describe what's on the card and the hot seat has to guess. If in a large group, split them in two groups, who guessed the word first, gets a point.

*Fly swatters - bunch of flash cards laying on the table, students standing around with fly swatters in their hands. You say the word and who swatters it first, gets the point. I never had a student who wouldn't have fun, including students over 60. Also with a few kids in class you can modify and have the cards all over the classroom.

*Guess what - you put the cards face down on the table (ideal amount is 15-20 cards, very depending on your student abilities. They also have to know the set of cards well) and create a kind of a game board (a snake? a loop?). Students get counters and throw a dice. They fall on a card and have to guess which card it is. Then the card is turned face up, everyone sees what's on it. If the student is right, they keep the card. If they are wrong, the card goes face down back on its place.

You can get very creative and figure out your own games too 💙

Gesture - physical action seems to trigger words in their brain, so you can just do the gesture and they will recall it. Eventually with enough recall they just know the word. Simon says is a good way to train them on gestures if they are younger.

Actions, everyday verbs they will use, and can relate daily

TPR and visual aides are what usually helps my students.

So I mainly teach higher levels, but I have a google document that students can edit and add any words to they like. They have to tell me that they're adding words, just so I can talk about it and clarify.

Every day, they have to write a sentence with the new words and then show me the next morning. They then turn them in to banana sentences. For example, we're learning the word cat. "I have a very lovely banana. She's so sweet and miaows loudly. I'll be a crazy banana lady if my fiance would let me" and guess what banana is in small groups.

After they've shown me the sentences, we stick good examples on the vocabulary list. I only touch it to tidy it up, correct spelling and grammar.

On Fridays, I print the vocab list. I get them to tick if they know it, cross if they don't and question mark if they're not sure. Like they know what it means by they don't know how to use it.

We then play a few quizlet games.

I tend to do the weeks topic vocabulary on a tuesday, so they spend the whole week using the same words over and over again. I also have previous week's vocab stuck on the walls.

Basically, recycle, recycle, recycle.

reading books and highlighting the collocations and later putting in a srs app such as anki

You do much more than me. I just try to understand sentences (spoken and written). If a sentence contains a new word, I need to understand the word meaning to understand the sentence meaning.

Actually, I need to understand the word's meaning in THAT sentence. Many words have more than one meaning/use. Most words have more than one translation in my NL, in different sentences.

If I see the word again, I might know the meaning or I might need to look up the NL list again. After seeing the word 3 or 4 times, I know the word.

Honestly, if it's not a language super far removed from your NL i.e Japanese when you're a native English speaker, all you really need to do is expose yourself as much as possible. If you read a lot, and I mean a LOT, there'll be little need to make any deliberate attempt to learn the words you're being exposed to. If you're speaking too, you'll active them soon enough.

That's not to say that SRS is bad, only that it won't be necessary if you're banging out 50+ pages a day from novels.

I just play games or watch movies and pick vocab from there and just review via anki.

Depending on your level, immersion.

I like clozemaster app for those little free times.

Thank you all for the very insightful tips.Since almost all of the replies suggest I just go for reading be it intensive or extensive rather than cramming with workbooks, I decided to throw my workbooks away and grab some interesting reading materials to see how my vocabulary improves.

I personally think that voracious reading with a dictionary in hand is an effective and efficient way of increasing one's vocabulary, especially because it gives you more exposure to your target language so that you'll take in not just vocabulary but also idioms, sentence structure, rhetorical strategies, cultural information, and all of the other kinds of information that you need to become fluent in a language.

However, if you're trying to learn every single word you encounter in a new text, I think that can get inefficient!

Here are a few different possible strategies to make the process more efficient:

- Don't read an article out loud twenty times. Read it once or twice. Don't worry about coming across a word and then forgetting it. If it's an important word, it will show up again and again as you keep reading.

- Consider for yourself, when you encounter a new word: do I know well the equivalent word in my native language? Is this a word I use often? Is this a word I expect to need to know for my job, or for my daily life? (For example, if you live in an English-speaking country and need to go grocery shopping, you might need to learn all the names of the fruits and vegetables you usually buy. If you don't live in an English-speaking country, this might not be as important.)

- You can also use a frequency dictionary and decide that you're only going to worry about learning a particular word if, say, it's one of the most 8000 common words in the English language.

Reading extensively is much better, but not each text 20 times in a row for god's sake. Moving on to new material will do you more good.

Worrying about what words are important or not is a waste of time. Just keep reading and you can't help but learn more words, and you'll learn them more or less in order of frequency, which is the only objective measure of importance.

Also, the idea of certain words being unimportant "for ESL learners" is a mentality that will hold you back. You are an English speaker, if a word is important enough that English speakers know it it's important for you.

At most levels, extensive reading is the most efficient thing you can do (and that's not a matter of personal opinion), but that might break down if your vocabulary is near native level already, since you will encounter unknown words much more infrequently. Narrow reading of specialized texts would be your best bet, i.e. reading only about politics/geology/gardening instead of news stories about completely unrelated topics. At a level where that's required, I don't see the need for worrying about vocab acquisition though, to be honest.
Are you asking for yourself or in general?

One of the greatest ways to improve in a target language (given limited resources) is to read thing you find easy.

https://successfulenglish.com/2010/04/better-english-at-sweet-valley/

That is what worked for me when learning French. I just read another easy french book. :) I personally like Kit Ember, who does write easy ESL romance stories.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C4GP1VQJ?binding=kindle_edition&ref=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_pc_tukn

If you are going to use the Sweet Valley Twin method (Or whatever name it goes by) the key is find something you like to read that is easy for you.

It's not much, but here are two ideas that will help a little.

1. She should use a table to make conversations using the word. For example, the word is "decade". In column 1 she writes "decade." In column 2, she writes the question, "How long did WW2 last?" In column 3, she writes the reply with the word, which I guess would be, "I don't know but it was less than one decade." Then she can use software to check that she used the word correctly. A few days later, she opens the table and "hides" the answers in column 3. Then she reads the questions and tries to answer them with the word that's provided. Later on, she shares the table with a friend, and she "hides" column 2 & 3. The friend reads out the questions and she listens and answers with the word.

2. Silly stories. Make a long list of all the words that you've studied. Use software to randomly choose 10 words. Using those words in order, describe a dream that you had. (A dream is the best option because it needs to be vaguely logical, but not very.) The only rule is that you can talk as long as you want before you use the next word on the list.

Neither of these options are perfect, but both of them will help her to use the words a bit more, and will increase the chances that she'll actually produce them when she needs them.

So all my students are in the same boat. The struggle to remember specific words in your second language is common. There are words in Korean I've learned, literally, dozens of time, and have needed 100s of times that I frequently forget. It's part of the L2 struggle and is easier if you speak your L2 frequently. It will be a consistent problem if you don't. For a Korean living in Korea it's a significant challenge.

First I always recommend any English media as a specific study time, with pauses to look at words (lower-level students will need Korean subtitles, others will need English). Music takes a bit more than a movie, and TV shows can work best but finding appropriately leveled, and interesting, content is difficult.

So for output she needs either online services, often paid but cheap, other online hobby outlets but in English (the hobby part makes both her and the participants motivated to work together), or direct contact. There's also a million free language exchanges apps out there. However, she'll probably have to wade through a lot of creeps to get to much exchange (but language exchange allows a bit more direct and thoughtful exchange about the language).

If she wants exchange in-person than I strongly recommend local exchange groups through FB or other apps (there are a few more Korean-centric ones). If she's in a smaller town then she should look at any nearby university for their foreign population/language exchange groups. Worst case it might take an hour or so in travel, if it's more then I'd work online.

Tell her to go to an "expat" boardgame night - there may be other people there who frequently use words like lexicon

My suggestion? Games. Have her find an online game she enjoys and play it. Alternatively, have her find a community of people with the same hobbybshe has. In either case, she can get practice listening and speaking in/about a topic/environment she enjoys.

If the student knows words but struggles to recall them quickly, she can try:

1️⃣ Active Practice: Speak aloud, mentally narrate daily events, and record voice notes.
2️⃣ Shadowing: Repeat phrases from English audio to improve recall speed.
3️⃣ Word Retrieval Strategies: Use synonyms, paraphrasing, or describe the missing word.
4️⃣ Simulated Conversations: Use AI chatbots, language exchange apps, or respond to TV dialogues.
5️⃣ Personal Word Bank: Note difficult words, review them, and practice before speaking.
6️⃣ Set Phrases: Learn common starters like "What I mean is…", "It’s similar to…".

Daily short practices will boost fluency! 🚀

Read article while reading you will find you don't know meaning of some words, write these words in your note book and findout meaning of the words from dictionary and write the meaning infron of words, and then memorize that words while you walking from your note book.

Extensive reading with comprehensible input. Try this https://latinum.substack.com/p/index has free intralinear English courses you might be interested

Flash cards

You can use AnkiApp and add flashcard by yourself.

Build your own vocabulary by adding new words you come across while reading, writing, or listening. Review these words daily using spaced repetition tools - apps will automatically schedule your reviews, so you don't need to select words manually. I'd recommend you to use https://mooton.app

Use pictures to make words more memorable (e.g., a photo of a smoking child for the word 'accustom').

Practice writing by using AI tools like ChatGPT or Gemini. For example, ask the AI to provide sentences in your native language, translate them into English, and get feedback from the AI.

I would suggest that you read books.

When I am learning Japanese, I like to read stuff/watch Youtube/Netflix etc., then whenever I encounter a word I don't know, I make a flashcard of the word in the spaced repetition app Anki, including the context of the original sentence. I think this really works if you are prepared to review your daily flashcards.

I think best way of improve your english , reading article , news and watching documentary. I have been reading ‘reading at work 1 and reader at work 2 ‘

I suggest learning by immersion. Check examples instead of just checking the meanings. Listen them. Spend time on the new words you’ve learned. You can use https://lengusa.com for most of the things. And I would really suggest reading a book while listening it on https://audible.com

Edit: Also check everything in context. Sometimes they mean something else completely in another context.

I share my experience on boosting English vocabulary in these two videos: All Vocabulary Learning Methods I tried (Part 1) and All Vocabulary Learning Methods I tried (Part 2).

https://www.reddit.com/r/EnglishLearning/comments/1mgwszi/comment/n6sylmt/

If you are getting bored then maybe vocab isn’t the issue but you aren’t finding things you enjoy watching or reading. Focus on that first and you will learn new vocabulary.

the learning gets easier and easier the more proficient you become and quizzes are great tools to test your proficiency.

Here is a basic level quiz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYV_7x_VLwk

which highlights some vocabulary points

The most powerful tool for building your vocabulary is reading for pleasure. This goes for your native language as well as any you’re learning.

As with other language, just speak with them. thats the best way. Expose the student to "English Speaking Enviroment". The only issue with english is its rule kinda crazy.

Watch this:

America- America
Jamaica - Jamaica

Normal Right? then watch this:

Canada - Canadian
China - Chinese
Malaya - Malay

For "and":

England - English
Poland - Polish

then we got this:

Thailand - Thai

and the worse offender (I know):
Netherlands - Dutch????!!!

I am replying to this as a parent. I started the journey around 2009ish, trying to teach my kids English. So I downloaded movies: cartoons, 3D animated, family movies Disney movies and got Malay subtitles.

At that time, it was quite difficult to get Malay subtitles (not like nowadays) so I made it myself. Download the English subtitles and then translate it to Malay using Google translate and such

I make it a point to watch with them the first time, so that they can ask any questions. I put these movies in an external drive so that they can watch it whenever

I admit it's a long process. But I'm proud to say that my kids never get less than B+ on their English test for the whole school years

So in this retrospect, using simple movies (kids, cartoon,family movies) with subtitles is a great way to teach English

Passion. Instil in them the passion of learning that they never even knew they had in the first place. For example, find out what genre of music they like and then recommend to them some songs with good lyrics.

Don't just pass it to them and preach the importance of learning the lyrics. But listen to the songs with them. Encourage them to sing along with the lyrics. It didn't matter if they understood none of the words, just get them to pronounce the words in the lyrics correctly.

Once you see improvements, explain not just the meaning of the words but also how those words work in the sentences. Explain why those expressions are unique or artistic.

The repetitive nature of a song where verses and chorus are always repeated can double as an exercise. Guided by the background music and instrument, it'll help them remember the words better.

Yes, the lesson taught here is not basic English. But if you manage to get them to understand the complete meaning of one song, these students will obtain a unique sense of achievement. From someone who didn't know a single word in English, they now have a song they fully understood and can sing along with.

When done right, they will feel more curious and open to learning other songs and benefit from their curiosity and self initiatives. This will make it easier for you to teach them basic English because now, their confidence have grown.

Don't stick to normal-boring-iron-fist methods. You will sooner bore them than not. With songs, students don't just learn the words and their meanings. But also how to express themselves in a unique and artistic way.

All the best.

Let me watch tung tung sahur