VIETTESOL INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION 2025

Vocabulary taught in isolation often fails to stick. In our teaching across public secondary schools and English centres, we have observed that students, especially teenagers, struggle to retain and apply new vocabulary when learning from disconnected word lists. They need engaging and sustainable ways to develop lexical competence for both academic and everyday communication. This interactive workshop introduces two powerful, classroom-tested strategies that foster long-term vocabulary retention by embedding new words in meaningful contexts: Story-Based Input and Collocation Clusters. These approaches are grounded in research on contextualized and meaningful vocabulary learning (Nation, 2001; Schmitt, 2008), which shows that words are better retained when taught within rich, communicative contexts. With Story-Based Input, vocabulary is brought to life through engaging narratives, helping students infer meaning, strengthen memory through imagery, and use new words naturally. Meanwhile, Collocation Clusters enable students to internalize natural word combinations—an essential skill for fluent speaking and writing. We implemented these strategies over a full academic year with secondary-level learners at Hoa Hieu 1 Secondary School and Olympia English Center. Results showed a 35% improvement in vocabulary retention and 82% of students reporting greater confidence in vocabulary use. Workshop participants will experience both techniques through hands-on activities, analyze authentic student work, and leave with practical tools for immediate classroom application.