Creative English vocabulary teaching in Italian primary schools: playing around on the interactive whiteboard

Vocabulary teaching is one of the most important components of any language class. In the last few decades, there has been an increasing interest towards vocabulary teaching due to the emergence of new approaches to language teaching, which are much more ‘word-centred’. When teaching vocabulary in a foreign language, a series of fundamental features should be included, such as word formation, denotations, connotations, idioms and metaphors, synonyms, antonyms and hyponyms, and collocations among others. Finally, vocabulary needs to be contextualized in order to be properly and successfully used and, therefore, the use of authentic material proves very effective in this respect. As vocabulary implies a cognitive function of remembering, teachers need to find the best way to teach new words and to make sure that students will remember and easily retrieve them in the subsequent lessons. Research has shown how vocabulary is stored in the mind in a highly organised and complex web-like system, the so-called ‘mental lexicon’. The mental lexicon can be defined as a mental dictionary containing all the information on how words are stored, classified, and organised in terms of meaning, form, collocation, syntactic properties and cultural background, among others. Visual aids, such as flashcards, seem to be one of the most important teaching tools to help better association and remembering of new words, especially at lower levels of proficiency. However, in a technologically advanced world, the role of information and communication technology (ICT) in teaching can help increase motivation, thus facilitating teaching and learning techniques. More specifically, this paper focuses on the use of the interactive whiteboard (IWB) in primary school teaching. The increasing interest towards the use of the IWB in school teaching forms part of several initiatives within the Italian education system aimed at promoting and developing the use of ICT in teaching and learning. whiteboards are instructional tools that allow computer images to be displayed onto a board using a digital projector. IWBs allow teachers to manipulate any element on the board by simply using their finger as a mouse, directly on the screen. Manipulation lies in the possibility to drag, click, and copy any item on the board to serve different purposes. Furthermore, teachers also have the possibility to handwrite notes, which can be transformed into text and saved. IWBs can prove to be very efficient and powerful instructional tools in the classroom as they promote interactivity, creativity, as well as collaboration by providing an opportunity to integrate any media content into the lesson. IWBs can provide both teachers and students alike with a wide range of learning approaches to suit different levels of proficiency as well as different learning styles. The potential of the IWB in vocabulary teaching, in particular, should not be underestimated and, as such, this research area demands further Interactive investigation. This study explores the results of using the IWB to teach English vocabulary to primary school pupils. This experimental study represents part of a larger, ongoing research project on the validity and feasibility of using the IWB as a means of enhancing young learners’ engagement and appreciation for the English language in an increasingly globalized, multilingual, and technologically advanced world. In the section dealing with the analysis of results, several issues will be discussed, such as advantages and disadvantages of using the IWB and how the IWB influences students’ learning (motivation, performance, active participation, and so on). Teachers’ opinions will also be included to assess the feasibility of teaching vocabulary through the IWB