Teach Vocabulary with the 'Diglot Weave' Story Method
How to teach vocabulary more effectively, and have more fun.
Teaching vocabulary is hard.
There are just so many new words and chunks of language to learn! Students get bored, and it's tough to keep our students engaged while they learn new lexis.
A professor called Robbins Burling also thought so, and in 1968, he proposed a new 'outlandish' way to teach vocabulary. He added words he wanted students to learn into stories in his students’ first language.
Mixing the two languages to create stories this way is called a ‘diglot weave’.
Over time researchers have tested this method of mixing languages: in 2007, 2013, 2014 and 2018. They found that it works better than (or at least as well as) traditional methods (even spaced repetition!).
Let's look at why diglot weave stories work and how to create your own.
Why do diglot weave stories work?
Before we look at some diglot weave examples - why (and how) do these stories work?
Diglot weave stories use your students’ L1, with target vocabulary replaced with L2 (yes, using L1 in class is fine). This is done in a structured way, introducing new language slowly so it’s not overwhelming. It’s also done so that students can understand the meaning of the new words from context.
There are several reasons diglot weave stories work so effectively for language learning. First, stories are fun! Students pay more attention to engaging stories than to lists of vocabulary they're told to memorise for a test. And attention is critical for learning.
Second, learning from context helps memory. It shows a real-life use for the new words and embeds it in a scenario which makes it easy to remember. Paul Nation showed that teaching vocabulary embedded in a story is more effective than teaching vocabulary in a lexical set. (A lexical set would be several words in the same category, like colours).
Diglot weave story examples
Here's the start of a diglot weave story from an educator and researcher called Robert Blair. He learned of the diglot weave method and used it to teach Spanish to young learners:
The Broken Window— La Ventana Rota, A Cuento about a Smashed Ventana
“Would you like me to tell you un cuento? Oquei, let me tell you un cuento about some naughty muchachos—some muchachos y some muchachas— who were playing with a ball in la calle near una casa. In this dibujo you can see la casa. Mi cuento concerns estos muchachos, la pelota that they are playing with, y una glass ventana on la segunda story de la casa."
This story is quite dense with new vocabulary - 11 items in a short paragraph. I would imagine that it isn’t the learners’ first Spanish lesson or the first time they’ve heard some of these words.
Here's an example I've created for younger, lower-level learners. This version is for English speakers learning Chinese. I’ve used pinyin instead of characters for ease of reading.
Little Red Riding Hood, Xiǎo Hóng Mào
“Once upon a time, there was a little girl called Little Red Riding Hood, Xiǎo Hóng Mào. Xiǎo Hóng Mào lived with her mother. One day, her mā ma asked Xiǎo Hóng Mào to deliver homemade cookies to her old grandmother. Her old lǎo lao loved to eat homemade bǐng gān!
Xiǎo Hóng Mào’s old lǎo lao lived in the big forest. Xiǎo Hóng Mào started walking on the road through the big shù lín. Along the road in the dà shù lín, she met a dà grey wolf who asked where she was going. Xiǎo Hóng Mào told the dà huī wolf she was going to visit her lǎo lao who lived in the dà shù lín. The dà huī wolf smelled Xiǎo Hóng Mào’s homemade bǐng gān, and realised he was hungry!
Dà huī láng decided to eat the homemade bǐng gān and Xiǎo Hóng Mào’s lǎo lao. So he ran to lǎo lao's house as fast as he could. Dà huī láng knocked on the door, and when lǎo lao answered, he swallowed her in one big gulp!
Xiǎo Hóng Mào soon arrived and knocked on the door. Dà huī láng pretended to be lǎo lao by wearing her clothes and answered the door, but Xiǎo Hóng Mào recognised him and ran away. Xiǎo Hóng Mào saw a woodcutter and told him what had happened, and the woodcutter saved old lǎo lao by cutting open the dà huī láng’s stomach.
From then on, Xiǎo Hóng Mào was always careful when she walked through the dà shù lín to visit her old lǎo lao and give her homemade bǐng gān, and she never talked to another dà huī láng again. The end.”
You can see that the story gradually replaces words with the L2 equivalent in a structured way. It’s challenging for students, but possible. You can notice adjectives before words can act as place markers and remind students of the word (e.g. “old lǎo lao”). You can support students in other ways, too (see next section).
But how can you create or adapt a story that’s perfect for your students?
Let’s deconstruct the principles behind creating an effective story.
How to create a diglot weave story
It's not that difficult to make a diglot weave story, but there are a few principles that you should follow.
Choose or adapt an interesting story.
Make sure you choose a story your learners will find interesting! An engaging story is essential to keeping your students’ attention and, therefore, their learning.
Don’t add too many new words.
As a rule of thumb, aim for 5-7 new words for a short story. Exactly how many will depend on your students, the story, and the target words. If students have met the words before, add a few more. If they’ve never been exposed to any of the target lexis, reduce the number for the first telling.
Make sure the meaning is obvious.
The meaning of any new words you introduce should be easily understandable. You can provide extra support if you think learners will struggle or if the words are ambiguous.
To give support you can do some or all of these:
Make sure the context is clear.
Repeat the word throughout the story.
Use body language.
While you’re telling the story.
Use flashcards.
The story you've prepared should do most of the work, but it's always good to be prepared. If you think that students still aren't sure, pause the story and ask if they can translate the new word into their L1!
Top tip: although collocation makes a word obvious to you, your learners might not have the same collocation in their L1.
Add support as necessary.
Sometimes it’s not the meaning of the word that students struggle with, but the speed at which they hear all the new words. So if you can see they start having trouble with processing speed as the new words start to add up, give more support.
How? You could slow down how fast you tell the story. You might add an extra repetition or two (or three). Start using body language consistently or even flashing flashcards!
Plan ahead.
You could spend time making a story, only to use it once... Or you could develop a story over time!
When you adapt or create your story, think ahead to the next few lessons. Can you include the vocabulary you'll be teaching in the next lesson or two? The first time you tell the story it'll be in the learners’ L1, but over time you can switch more of the vocabulary.
You could use the same story, or break the story into parts and turn it into a serialised story. Students love regular storytime!
L1 to L2, or known L2 to new L2?
You'll have seen that in these examples, we're using English to teach another language. But suppose you're teaching English to Chinese speakers, and you don’t speak Chinese, what then? Or what if you have students all with different L1s?
If you have a local teaching assistant, ask for their help to read the story.
Or, learn the story in the students’ L1 - they’ll be so proud of you!
Or, if they have a high enough level, you can use an L2-graded story that they can understand, but mixed with new L2 vocabulary that they don't know.
For higher-level learners, you may want to introduce phrases, expressions and chunks of language rather than individual words.
Don’t forget storytelling technique.
Don't forget to add the drama. I love sitting in a circle on the floor with my young learners and telling stories using different voices, large body language actions, expressive faces and props. But that's just me - however you tell a story, do everything you can to make it fun.
Test it with a colleague.
After you've written a diglot weave, test it out on your colleagues who teach classes of a similar level. It's easy to miss an error or not realise you've introduced too many new words.
What the diglot weave method isn't
I hope you’re having fun with diglot weaves. Whenever I talk about them, I get questions similar questions. To anticipate them, here’s a short list of what a diglot weave isn’t:
It’s not a graded reader.
Although the story is graded, and the vocabulary is deliberately chosen, the story will be mostly in the students’ L1. A graded reader will be a text entirely in L2.
It's not Krashen’s ‘Input Hypothesis’.
Krashen's i+1 concept is that learning is best when the language students study is slightly above what they can already do. Generally, this would be reading an authentic text where students already know 95% or more of the words and grammar.
Reading a text that's fractionally above your level is great for learning, but it's not the diglot weave. A diglot weave is a more deliberately structured text. Although, admittedly, if you're using stories with L2 to teach new L2 words (see above), it will look a lot like an i+1 text. It could be said that it follows the guiding principle behind i+1, not the practice.
It's not interlanguage.
Interlanguage is a learner’s temporary version of L2 thats influenced by their L1 and their current knowledge of L2. It's a mixture of languages. In a diglot weave, the languages are kept distinct from each other, and it's only the vocabulary which changes.
It's not codeswitching.
Codeswitching is when people with two or more languages in common switch between those languages in a conversation.
The frequency and quantity of switching vary - it might just be the occasional word or phrase that's switched, or it might be an extended part of the discussion.
The difference is the spontaneity and structure.
A diglot weave story has been structured to support a learner. It will target specific vocabulary, and the quantity of the target language will also be minimal - a handful of new words, rather than a word the other person assumes you know.
It’s not the lexical approach.
Although it does share many similarities.
Diglot weave stories and the lexical approach both emphasise learning vocabulary and chunks of language, and focus on language in context.
They differ in that the lexical approach encourages authentic texts, whereas diglot weave is happy to use authentic and teacher-created stories. The lexical approach also encourages all kinds of authentic materials, not just stories. Although, it is possible to apply the diglot weave to any kind of material… it’s just not as much fun.
Diglot weave challenges
There are two disadvantages of the diglot weave:
1. There's almost no pre-made material.
There are very few stories or diglot weave material any most common languages (the ones I could find are at the end, but they’re not ideal - or free).
Also, those that I have found seem a bit random - there's no logical progression of vocabulary learned by level or topic (i.e. none that follow a curriculum). I’m sure it’d be faster to make your own stories and recycle them.
2. Making diglot weave stories can take a lot of time.
Anyone can quickly substitute a few nouns in a story into the target language. But doing so in a way that's scaffolded, that follows the principles of 'graspability', repetition and levelling, takes time.
3. It helps to know some of the students' L1.
But it isn't essential, as we've seen above, you can tell a story to learners that uses L2 they already know and introduce L2 that they don't. But the lexical approach also emphasizes
The diglot weave outside the classroom
I remember reading 'A Clockwork Orange', by Anthony Burgess, and marvelling that by the end of the book, I knew around 200 of the slang words that he'd created for his characters. Some of them were new, some based on Russian.
This gives the whole book a diglot weave effect, as the reader easily picks up the meaning of the slang from context. Interestingly, the author, Anthony Burgess, was also a linguist. Here's an example from the book:
“‘Oh I shall go home. Back to my pee and em.’
‘Your — ?’ He didn’t get _nadsat_-talk at all, so I said:
‘To my parents in the dear old flatblock.'”
Whereas if you create a diglot weave with too many new words, you end up with something like Lewis Carrol's Jabberwocky - you get the gist of the meaning but can't define exactly what each word means:
"He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought."
Not that Jabberwocky isn't good - but it just doesn't work as a diglot weave (it isn’t meant to!).
Learning resources (untested!)
Over time I've found some resources that use the diglot weave technique, but most are aimed towards learners rather than teachers. Unfortunately, almost all are subscription-based (why is everything a subscription these days?!).
Of these, I've only used one, Toucan (the free version gives you an idea if you’ll like it).
Toucan - a Chrome browser extension that changes words into your target language while you browse the web. You can use it for free, to begin with. Subscription-based.
Weeve - a learning language app/books. Subscription-based.
Prisma Text - language blended books. Subscription-based.
Language Mixing books - a series of teach-yourself language books (and e‑books)
One Third Stories - simple stories for young learners that start in one language and end in another. Subscription-based.
Are there any others you know?
Good luck using the diglot weave method in your lessons, let me know how it goes!
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This is interesting and inspiring, thank you so much!
I'm trudging through a Tefl course - it's much harder going than I expected - and this technique is fun and obviously effective.
I'm going to try this with my four year old niece - her L1 is Spanish, which I'm learning, so excellent for both of us.
OMG! Thank you so much. This is a game changer! My Ukrainian pre-beginner learners have really been struggling with vocabulary and I can’t wait to try this method. I just used ChatGPT to create a short story about making borsch.
Only one question: I could not prevent the chat bot from inserting the English translation of the Ukrainian food words parenthetically after each lexical item. This is not how you describe the procedure, and I am curious about your thoughts on having translations embedded in the story.