Please click here if you wish to be added to our mailing list for the newsletter or special bulletins; fill out the feedback form indicating your interest 

COMPANIONS:  AN AID OR A SNAG? 

All material can be either of the two things suggested in the title depending on the uses to which we put it. In this article Marisa Constandinides suggests ways in which companions can be useful aids to language learning.

The term companion does not refer to a young lady accompanying a richer or more elderly one on her travels or during her lonely hours , but is locally used to describe all these publications containing lists of all the new lexical items in each unit of a main coursebook. These lists are always accompanied by an explanation in Greek and/ or English, notes on pronunciation and the grammar points of the unit. The role of companions, then, seems to be that of a glossary or mini-dictionary plus grammar reference sourcebook.

There is a great variety on the market, so I assume that this must be one of the most lucrative publishing ventures and the quality of the information also varies. Some are better than others and teachers should read/study them carefully before making a choice considering the quality of definitions, whether or not examples are given, whether and how pronunciation is shown, what grammatical explanations are offered, always considering of course the age and level of their students.

WHY DO GREEK TEACHERS NEED COMPANIONS? 
Companions are unique to Greece. In no other country in the world where foreign languages are taught will you find books of this type produced or published, nor do teachers or students ever express a need for them. Why Greek teachers should feel this need is beyond the scope of this article which aims to look at how companions are currently used and how, once the decision has been made to adopt them, they could be put to best effect in the classroom. 

HOW COMPANIONS ARE ( MOSTLY ) USED 
Here is what happens in most of the classes I have observed where companions are being used: both teacher and students open the companion, the teacher reads the new words aloud in English along with the Greek Translation or English equivalent while students listen/ read passively. This may happen either before or after the text has been read aloud by the teacher and/ or students. 

Sometimes the teacher will use the companion word list to dictate words to the class, or to dictate the Greek translation expecting the students to write the English equivalent. It follows, of course, that setting words for homework study, dictation purposes is also done through the companion. 

DISADVANTAGES OF THIS APPROACH 

• Students are not actively involved in discovering meaning for themselves, therefore, their chances of recall and assimilation are reduced.
• Students are “robbed” of valuable linguistic input in terms of Teacher language, i.e the language of definitions, examples, as well as revised items like synonyms and antonyms.
• Exposure to the written form of the word occurs too early, particularly significant for beginner/ elementary levels where learners have not formed any conscious or subconscious rules about how. English words are pronounced. The mismatch, on the other hand, of English spelling against the actual pronunciation of words may result in students sightreading words and mispronouncing them.
• Phonological transcripts of words may be useful to the more advanced students but also too heavy a load for the beginning or elementary student who has not yet mastered the alphabetical code of the target language and whose reading skills are not fully developed.
• Teaching vocabulary from the lists- as opposed to creating memorable and meaningful associations through the use of visuals, mime, objects, topic areas, or situations –encouraged the ‘isolated item approach’ . This again reduces the learner’s chances of attaching new words to existing meaning networks resulting in poor recall.
• In classrooms where the learning of new vocabulary is limited to memorization of this sort and use activities of various kinds through speaking, listening, writing are not included, the learner may ‘know’ the word, i.e. the meaning, without being able to use it correctly and appropriately.
• Teachers themselves do not develop valuable teaching skills of providing correct and appropriate language samples to their students, realistic and natural contexts in which these items might occur.
• All items tend to be pretaught or ‘explained and students miss valuable opportunities of learning to guess meaning for themselves, in other words, students move from being teacher-dependent to being companion-dependent now and dictionary-dependent later.

PROPOSED APPROACH TO THE USE OF COMPANIONS 
Not all teachers, I hope, use companions in this way. It is for those teachers, however, who do not have a lot of classroom experience or, simply because they have not thought the matter through that I would like to suggest a few ideas and techniques for use in the classroom. 

My personal view is that in an ideal world companions should not be felt to be necessary. But this is not an ideal world, granted, and there will be teachers, students and parents who feel more secure by having access to this material. 

Here is how I see companions used to best effect.   

1. As reference/revision material for home study.

The first role/ function of companions should be that of reference material only, an aid to home study  when revising for a test, when a pupil is absent and needs to study on his/her own material they have ‘missed’. 

2. As class aids for revision/use/consolidation activities.

Companions can be put to many interesting uses in class activities AFTER vocabulary has been presented by the teacher through various other means (e.g. mime, pictures, demonstration, teaching examples, definitions, etc. ) or has been guessed by the students in the context of a reading/ listening activity through tasks set by the teacher.

        E.g.

• Students search the text for synonyms of words in a list given by the teacher.
• Students try to guess the meaning of words on their own and say what clues from the surrounding context helped them understand it.

The main responsibility for presentation, either through pre-teaching or through word search tasks, however, lies with the teacher and the ‘list reading’ approach should be avoided. 

The activities that follow can make active use of the companion as a follow-up to vocabulary presentation through the other means suggested above. 

SUGGESTED CLASS ACTIVITIES 

1) Synonyms-Opposites race: Write a list of words already known to the students on the board and ask your class to look through a page of the companion quickly and provide the synonyms or opposites. 

2) Categorizing & Copying: Ask the students to search through the word lists for one or more units and copy all the words that fit certain categories:   

       e.g.    FOOD, CLOTHES, ROOMS, FURNITURE, TRAVEL, SPORT 

3) Odd-Man-Out sets: After you have played the game Odd-Man-Out a few times, ask your class to prepare some odd-man-out sets in teams so that they play against another team. Put an example like this on the board: 

                             shoe-sock-sandal-shirt 

4) Student-made crosswords: Students revising make an easy crossword and check companion for help with definitions or examples. 

5) Student-made board games: Students designing a board game to check another group on known vocabulary prepare cards with definitions, gap-fills or synonyms which will be used as question cards by the opposing group during the game. 

6) Wordwathcing: Students make multiple definitions of known words to trick an opposing team 

e.g What is a HABITAT?         a. a famous shop?  

                                             b. a bad habit?

                                             c. the home of an animal?

                                             d. an exotic bird?  

7) Spelling bees: Groups select ‘difficult’ words to use against an opposing team in a spelling bee game. 

8) Picture dictionaries: Younger learners use the companion to create a picture dictionary of their own, i.e. they enter the words in topic areas and draw their own pictures, stick magazine pictures, product labels, small objects (e.g. a pin, a dried flower ) or even parts of objects (e.g. a matchbox top) to illustrate their entries. 

9) Storytelling competition:  The teacher, a student or a group, assign random selection of words to everyone, i.e. the fifth word on every page. These words are studied by pairs/ groups or teams, and each one has to create a story in which these come in naturally. Best story wins! 

10) Dialogue improvisation: Each group is assigned 3-4 words from a page which they study and then have to incorporate in an improvised conversation/ role play. The rest of the class has to spot the words, situation and topic. 

11) Creative dictation/ improvisation: Each group selects six to eight words which they dictate to another group. This group must then cooperate and make up a little story or conversation in which all these words are used.  

12) Word competition: A word is chosen randomly by the teacher. Pupils have to hunt through their companion as quickly as possible and jot down as many words as they can which begin/ end in the same letter.

13) How many words can you make? A long word is chosen and students try to make  as many other words as they can out of the letters of this word,

e.g. elephant will yield words like: 

ant   pan     net    leap    halt    ale    pen      neat    late  

ate   peal     nap   lee     hate   hat    than     pat   plant   etc

14) Word accosiation game: A word is chosen randomly by the teacher or a student. The class in pairs/ groups/ or individually, hunt through the pages of the companion and try to find other words that they associate with this word. The teacher is the final judge in this game where the pupils can create any associations they like but should justify them, and the winner(s) are those who produce the longest list of acceptable associations. 

This is just a handful of ideas. I feel sure that the creative teachers will soon start developing their own for other types of class activity related to other skills as well, like writing and listening. Let ma note that all the activities above can be used without having a companion- naturally!!! The pages of the coursebook and the workbook can be used to similar, if not better effect. 

If you have got the impression that I do not like companions, you are probably right. Often however, teachers have to abide by the directives of the superiors and this article aims to give you ideas for making the most out of what might otherwise prove to be a hindrance in terms of your students’ vocabulary acquisition skills. 

About the author 

Marisa Constandinides is a teacher, teacher educator and DOS of CELT Athens, a teacher development centre in Athens.