Have you ever explained a new word only to find that your student still looks puzzled? Chances are, it’s not because you’re bad at explaining things. Your explanation probably just didn’t "click" with the student.

For example, in Chinese, there’s a version of the word “why” that dictionaries translate as “Why bother...?”. I had known it for a while and could understand it in context, but couldn’t figure out when to use it.

Finally, I decided to ask the internet. Some native speakers kindly wrote example sentences for me. This one has stuck with me to this day: “Why bother learning Chinese? It’s such a ridiculously difficult language!”

When I saw that sentence, a light bulb flashed on in my head. Because I could relate to the hopelessness of learning Chinese, I realized what this word actually meant (“Why are you doing this to yourself?”) and suddenly many other contexts began popping into my head.

So when we explain new words, we want to make sure we put them in contexts familiar to the student. But what contexts should we use?

Students’ Interests and Jobs

During the student’s self-introduction, we usually learn about their hobbies, jobs, and interests. We can tailor our explanations and example sentences to these contexts.

For example, let’s say the student asks you about the word “pass.” If they like playing basketball, you can make the sentence, “I passed the ball to my teammate.” If your student is a doctor, you can make the sentence, “The nurse passed the scissors to the surgeon.” If your student likes watching movies, you can make the sentence, “I passed the popcorn to my mom.”

If the student has trouble understanding what impressive means, you can make sentences like:

• “This basketball player is very impressive; he scored a triple-double in the last three games!”
• “This doctor is impressive. He’s not only a great doctor, but can also talk to his patients in many languages.”
• “This director is really impressive! His last five movies went through the roof with the ticket sales!”

You can always search online to find out how to use the word in a specific context. (For example, I personally don’t know much about what makes a director impressive, so I looked up “impressive directors” when making that last sentence.)

Language-Learning

Language-learning (especially how hard it is!) is another context that all our students can relate to. Let’s say your student asks you about the word, frustrating. You can make sentences like “Learning vocabulary is so frustrating. I’ll look up a new word and then forget it immediately!”

Now let’s try with some words that may seem harder to relate to language-learning.

• barely → “A tourist asked me for directions today, and I barely understood what he was saying.”
• a while → You can make a sentence like, “I’ve been learning English for a while, but I still can’t speak it.”

(Feel free to make sentences about the joys of learning a language also!)

Tutoring

All of our students are also familiar with tutoring, so applying new words to tutoring-related contexts can also help them understand the word better.

For example, let’s say your student wants to know how to use the word encourage. You can tell a story like, “The student asked the teacher for advice on learning vocabulary. The teacher encouraged them to make sentences with the new words.”

For the word intimidated, you can make a sentence like, “I felt intimidated when I started taking lessons online.”

Now let’s try some words that seem unrelated to tutoring:

• unfounded → “I was so scared that tutors would judge my English. But after taking a few lessons, I realized that my fears were unfounded.”
• feel like → “When I take lessons with tutors from different countries, I feel like I’m traveling!”, can help your student understand the phrase better.

Pet Peeves

Pet peeves are things that someone finds particularly annoying. My biggest pet peeve is mosquitoes, and recently I’ve found it helpful to Google new vocabulary that goes along with the word mosquito.

For example, I Googled “mosquito” and a Chinese word that roughly translates to “stubborn” and got the results like, “stubborn insect infestations” and “a stubborn mosquito that won’t leave my room” and the word has stuck with me ever since.

So it can be helpful to tailor example sentences to students’ pet peeves!

Current Events

Finally, another context that may be familiar to your students is current events.

Maybe your student learned the word plummeted in the context of prices plummeting but they still don’t quite understand how to use it and ask, “Can you use this word in other contexts?” Since there are always some scandals surrounding the celebrities, you can use the latest one and say that “their popularity plummeted.”

And even if your student hasn’t heard of the scandal you’re talking about, this example should still make sense to them. So if you can’t connect a word to the student’s interests, language-learning, or tutoring, you can use current events as inspiration for your example sentences.

📌 Takeaways

As we’ve discussed, applying new vocabulary to the following contexts helps them better understand the words and figure out how to use them:

• job and interests
• the pains (and joys!) of language-learning
• tutoring
• pet peeves
• current events

Which of these do you think you’ll try? What other contexts can you think of?