Teaching English vocabulary

Teaching English vocabulary

Acquiring English language might present a challenging task to learners because of its largest vocabulary. There are 500,000 words without technical and scientific terms in the Oxford English Dictionary (Coelho, 2004). One useful strategy in learning vocabulary is mastering a great deal of high- frequency words, which are the most common words used for reading and writing. According to Nation and Waring (1997) English learners need a receptive vocabulary of 3,000 to 5,000 word families and a productive vocabulary of 2,000 to 3,000 word families. Coelho (2004) argues there are no people who know all the words in English. There are more than 100,000 words in the Standard Reference Dictionary, most of which are low- frequency or subject- specific words. He defines that only about 2,000 to 3,000 high- frequency words are enough to become fluent.

According to Nation (2001), teachers should focus more on high- frequency words than low- frequency words, because knowledge of high- frequency words allows students to understand and produce English Tse P. & Hyland K. (2009) declare that high frequency words are included in the General Service List of the most widely useful 2,000 word families in English. This list was developed and published by Michael West in 1953. In addition to developing students’ general vocabulary Schmitt (2000) claims that second-language learners  wishing to operate in academic environments in English should master the Academic Word List. Averil Coxhead at the School of Linguistics and Applied Language at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand created this word list. It includes the 570 most frequency words used in academic texts across a wide range of topics.

However, even if learners know a great deal of high frequency words, they constantly meet new words. Therefore, the ability to guess the meaning from context without referring to a dictionary is one of the best techniques in vocabulary acquisition. In order to understand the meaning of the unfamiliar word, learners should know the strategy that involves four steps. Step 1.Establish the part of speech of the word.Step2.Pay attention to the immediate grammar.Step3.Look at the wider context.Step4.Guess the word and check the guess. The best way of checking is the analysis of the parts of a word. Generally, words can be broken into their prefixes, roots and suffixes. If learners know the meanings of prefixes and roots most of which are especially valuable and stable in meaning, they will be able to determine the meanings of the words. However, guessing the meaning of unknown words is helpful if learners know 60-70% of surrounding vocabulary in a reading passage (Clarke and Nation, 1980). Whereas Hirsh and Nation (1992) have estimated and asserted “95% coverage of text is needed to gain an adequate comprehension and to guess unknown words from context”.

Besides the ability to guess the meaning of unknown words, Thornbury (2006) claims that teachers should train their students to be good vocabulary learners arousing their interest in learning of the new words and help them to organize vocabulary learning- e.g. keep a record, use dictionaries and use various strategies to memorize new words. Keeping records or word notebooks is an important technique in vocabulary learning, because new words always need repeating and conscious studying. Students can keep vocabulary notebooks by their own preferred method, which might become their personal dictionaries. Learners also need to be able to use bilingual and monolingual dictionaries, and find the words in the alphabetical order speedily and accurately. Dictionaries are helpful because they contain the grammar and pronunciation information, headwords and definitions of the target words. Harmer (2008) declares that there should be organized dictionary activities in the classroom for all levels of English students. These training activities help students to become successful dictionary users at the elementary levels and independent explorers and discovers of the new language items at the advanced level.

Moreover, many researchers and linguists insist on the significance of extensive reading as an effective technique for vocabulary growth. Krashen (2004) asserts that reading for pleasure is not only the best source of vocabulary acquisition, but also improves writing skills and style, spelling and grammatical competence. Teachers and parents should provide regular time, friendly environment and light reading to learners such as comic books, graphic novels, magazines and teens romances. Nation (2001) claims that learners acquire new words through extensive reading or in different contexts incidentally, whereas intentional vocabulary , which is pre- planned by teachers and acquired by students during the lesson, is a traditional and important strategy in vocabulary learning.

Using games and game- like approaches in the lesson, is the best way to enhance vocabulary learning. Thornbury (2006) also claims that quick and interesting games not only consolidate the words, but also keep the children’s interest and wake up even unmotivated students.

Finally, teacher enthusiasm plays a great role in developing students’ positive attitude toward vocabulary learners. Teachers generate students’ interest when they bring to class interesting and curious words.

References

Coelho, E., & Rivers, D. (2004). Adding English: A guide to teaching in multilingual classrooms. Pippin.

Coxhead, A. (1998). An academic word list (Vol. 18). School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, Victoria University of Wellington.

Harmer, J. (2008). How to teach English. ELT journal, 62(3), 313-316.

Krashen, S. (2004). The case for narrow reading. Language Magazine, 3(5), 17-19.

Nation, I. S. (2001). Learning vocabulary in another language. Ernst Klett Sprachen.

Nation, P., & Waring, R. (1997). Vocabulary size, text coverage and word lists. Vocabulary: Description, acquisition and pedagogy, 14, 6-19.

Schmitt N. (2000). Key concepts in ELT. ELT Journal, 54 (4), Oxford University Press

Thornbury, S. (2006). How to teach vocabulary. Pearson Education India.

Tse, P., & Hyland, K. (2009). Discipline and gender: Constructing rhetorical identity in book reviews (pp. 105-121). Palgrave Macmillan Ltd..

West, M., & West, M. P. (Eds.). (1953). A general service list of English words: with semantic frequencies and a supplementary word-list for the writing of popular science and technology. Addison-Wesley Longman Limited.