Abbreviations in legal language 1

February, 2002 – January, 2012

Lecturers
Students

Law

Autonomous learning
Classroom Context

Hungarian

Hungarian

B2

Activity/task

Vocabulary

Writing
Reading

This teaching resource is available on a website for learners of Hungarian as a Foreign Language. There are teaching resources, listening activities, texts, task sheets with exercises available here. They are organized according to type and language knowledge. The content is produced by highly qualified professionals who are teachers or lecturers of several foreign languages and Hungarian as a foreign language having expertise in the field. This task sheet is a simple matching exercise of commonly used abbreviations of contracts, legal documents and text from several areas of law. This exercise supports knowledge building procedures of different types of learners.

This task sheet is ideal both for practising and assessing the special vocabulary of law from different areas. The vocabulary is pre-taught; then the task sheet can be used for deepening the knowledge. As the sheet is mainly used matching as instruction, it gives confidence to the students. I think the vocabulary of law is to be taught first from either a dictionary or a special reading containing these abbreviations; then the task sheets can used to drill the new vocabulary items.
A warmer activity could be to provide learners with example texts in which these abbreviations are contextualized. This lead-in exercise supports the meaning making mechanism of the learners, and lets them predict what topic of law to be activated in their background knowledge. Then the task sheet can be used both for individual or collaborative work.

The special legal abbreviations listed in at a thematically random collection. As learners have previous knowledge on these terms, they can build on this knowledge when integrating new knowledge. This way of learning supports skills of analysis and global learning: learners have to activate different fields of knowledge.
A warmer task could be to provide learners with example texts in which these abbreviations are contextualized. This lead-in exercise supports the meaning making mechanism of the learners, and lets them predict what topic of law to be activated in their background knowledge. Then the task sheet can be used both for individual or collaborative work.