TEACHING VOCABULARY

To know a word is to know much more than just its stress, spelling and
most commonly accepted meaning. It is to know its grammar: is it a verb? an
adjective? a noun? Is it followed by a gerund, an infinitive or a clause? What
is its range of meaning (e.g. head of a school, head of a bed)? its diversity of
meaning (e.g. light weight; light literature, light food)? its collocations and its
connotations (e.g. dustman vs. refuse collector; chairman vs. chairperson;
trendy vs. fashionable)?
Harmer (1991: 158) suggests that, in order to know a vocabulary item,
we must be aware of its:
meaning: many words have more than one meaning. For the noun
face, for instance, Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English lists
fourteen meanings.
use: a word may carry information about register or style. Both
Good morning and Hi are greetings, but they indicate different levels of
formality. A words meaning can also be extended in metaphor and idiom*.
formation: words change shape according to the affixes attached to
them, and also according to their function, e.g.: lie, liar, lying, lied.
grammar: nouns may be countable, uncountable; adjectives and
adverbs may have degrees of comparison, etc.
In addition to all this, as Penny Ur suggests (1996: 61), we need to
know what a lexical item sounds like and what it looks like: that is its
pronunciation and spelling. We also need to be aware of its denotation*,
connotation* and collocations*. Denotation and connotation both reflect
the meaning of an item. However, while denotation refers to the usual
dictionary definition, connotation is concerned with socio-cultural factors,
with the feelings associated with the item. For example, thin and slim
have roughly the same denotative meaning: they are the opposite of fat.
But when used to describe people, slim has favourable connotations while
thin is unflattering. Learners need to appreciate this kind of differences. To
conclude, to know a word is to be able to use it accurately in all its possible
usages.
Many of us advise our students to write new words in special
vocabulary notebooks. However, these are of little practical use unless some
indication is given of how the new lexical item is used. Words do not have
meaning in isolation. If we see the single wordbeat, for instance, we have
no way of knowing whether it is a noun meaning rhythm, an area for which
a policeman is responsible, or a verb meaning defeat. Similarly, round
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may refer to the shape of something, but it is also another name for a bullet,
a type of song and a number of drinks. Words take their meaning from the
context in which they occur. It therefore makes sense to teach new
vocabulary as part of a sentence or utterance that makes the meaning clear.
Coming to know a word is to absorb all the elements of its usage over time.
In other words, during the first few encounters with a word the students will
acquire a rough idea of what it means and the way it is used. This rough
idea will become more accurate with each new encounter of the word in
context.
The Importance of Vocabulary: Comprehension andProduction
Scrivener (1994: 73) claims that, as a means of communication,
vocabulary is much more powerful than grammar. Without a substantial
stock of vocabulary items the student will be unable to communicate much
at all.
Here are some points about teaching vocabulary, on which
theoreticians are in general agreement:
1. Like grammar, vocabulary can provide an effective vehicle for
conveying meaning.
2. Vocabulary for recognition purposes (i.e. passive vocabulary) is
acquired in significantly greater quantities than vocabulary for productive
purposes (i.e. active vocabulary). This is true for native speakers and foreign
language learners alike.
3. The vocabulary of a language reflects the semantic systems of
conceptual meaning that have developed within the culture and history of
that language. The semantic systems of English and Romanian will therefore
be different. The amount of difference between two languages depends on
the degree of divergence between the two cultures. For instance, the
semantic systems of Chinese and English will differ far more from those of
English and Romanian.
4. Vocabulary in the mother tongue is acquired unconsciously and via
active interaction with adults and other children.
5. Vocabulary is stored in the memory in different ways by different
learners. Learners own strategies for vocabulary acquisition should be
encouraged and developed so that they can continue to acquire vocabulary
independently of the teacher and the classroom.
Whatever methods are employed, we need to think in terms of active
and passive vocabulary. Active vocabulary is made up of those words the
students will be expected to use, to produce, and passive vocabulary of
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those words they will merely have to recognise/comprehend when they hear
them or see them in print. The distinction between active and passive
vocabulary assignspriority to comprehension. Comprehension should
precedeproduction. The object of a vocabulary lesson is to enhance
thedifferent strategies for comprehension and production. Thus,
whenconsidering active and passive vocabulary, three principles
areimportant to bear in mind:
(i) You need to teach any lexical item either for active productionor
passive recognition.
(ii) The memory processes involved in assimilating passivevocabulary
are less demanding than those involved in assimilating active vocabulary.
(iii) Students can easily learn passive vocabulary independently ofboth
you and the classroom.
However, as Harmer (1991: 159) warns, the distinction betweenactive
and passive vocabulary is not always clear cut, particularly atintermediate
levels and above. A word that has been active throughconstant use may slip
back into the passive store if it is not usedanymore. On the other hand, a
word that students may have in theirpassive store may become active if the
situation or context provokes its use.
Consequently, you need to spend more time on activevocabulary, with
examples and questions, but also to present passivevocabulary briefly and
allow students to guess the meaning fromcontext where possible. Not all
students will start guessingautomatically, so you may need to invest a little
time in training this skill as well.
Vocabulary is only learnt if it is understood. Nothing can be learnt
unless it can be incorporated into an existing mental picture of the way
things are, a sort of framework of perceptions and associations. Students
therefore need careful guidance about themeaning of lexical items, and
about their grammatical use, before they can place them in their internal
networks of meaning.Your decisions about what to teach will be affected
byconsiderations referring to the students, the resources and thelinguistic
components, but also by pedagogic ones, that is by thefactors that affect
how you teach, and which choice you will make.
These considerations are:
teachability/learnability
You will teach according to the level of your students, and to howeasy
is an item to put over. Even at low levels, you can teach:
i) international words (e.g. taxi, television, hotel, cinema,weekend)
ii) cognates, that is words which are similar in both form andmeaning
in the two languages (e.g. the names of many schoolsubjects like chemistry,
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geography, biology, mathematics, etc.,or verbs such as obtain, admire,

insult, form, etc.). These areobviously very easy to learn.
extendability
Some words allow the use of prefixes and suffixes; others entervarious
combinations or include the meaning of other words (theirhyponyms):
i) word families: photo -graph, -graphy, -graphic, -grapher.
ii) combinable items: hand bag, home work, guitar string
iii) cover words: (at early levels): seat for chair/stool/sofa/bench,nice
with people/weather/events, house for house/flat/home/building, etc.
concrete vs. abstract
Those words that show concrete entities will be taught before the more
subtle or abstract words, e.g.:
i) beautifulbefore responsible
ii) cant stand before not keen on
iii) Could you?/Yes of course before Would you mind ing?/Not at all.
amount (learning load)
A rough guide according to level, mood and motivation of thelearners
is:
maximum 6 for beginners
maximum 9 - 10 for intermediate
for advanced students, it is up to the students themselves.
Difficulty of concept and pronunciation, etc. will also be factors to
consider.
active production/passive recognition
This is a crucial decision which affects your entire approach.Are the
students to learn it in order to recognise it or in order to produceit?
If only to recognise, concentrate on pronunciation,spelling, context
and meaning.
If to produce, concentrate on pronunciation, spelling,context, meaning
and practice.
Writers distinguish between the acquisition and the learning of
vocabulary. Vocabulary can be acquired or picked up, throughexposure to
authentic samples of the target language. It may also beconsciously learned,
and this process may depend to a great extenton your presentation and
learner techniques. Memory is aided if the student is encouraged to make as
many cues or memory triggers aspossible when committing the vocabulary
item to memory.
These cues can take the form of:
a visual reminder such as a picture or diagram (the use of colour can
be very effective);
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 the sound and rhythm of the word (this is why repetition practiceis
helpful);
the inclusion of the item in a sentence which is bizarre
and/orpersonal;
a translation of the item in Romanian.
Most importantly, the association of one item with another itemaids
memory.Students will remember best those lexical items in which they
havean interest, or which they can associate with other words,
objects,colours and so on.
One obvious way of adding to ones vocabulary store is tosearch for words in
English which are similar to ones in Romanian.
Students should be encouraged to do this, but they should also
bewarned to watch out for false friends, that is, words which look orsound
similar but which have rather different meanings and uses. Forexample, the
English library does not mean the same as the Romanian word librrie.
Techniques in Teaching Vocabulary
The current concern in teaching vocabulary is to offer a cocktailof
techniques. Several writers suggest various mnemonics* to aid thememory
process. Others advocate grouping lexical items into variouscategories,
associating items with pictures, colours or events, and soon.Various
textbooks provide activity questions encouraging studentsto look at the way
words share affixes*, how they are arranged inlexical sets or word families,
and in phrases. Students play with words to increase their language
awareness by experimenting with homophones*, homonyms*, idiom and
imagery, collocations andcultural cues.
Other textbooks offer activities requiring students to predict
whichwords they are likely to find in a specified text, or to draw their
ownpictures as frames for learning and remembering new words. Yetothers
use pictures to stimulate vocabulary acquisition. (One suchactivity requires
the students, in groups, to study six pictures of singleitems and create a
narrative which will include all these items. Thestories are then read out to
other groups who have to guess what thesix pictures were).
There are four approaches to the teaching of vocabulary:
1. In lexical groups / sets / fields;
2. Pre-teaching: before presentation of structure;before elicited
dialogues or narratives;
before reading or listening activities;before discussion, games or role-play
activities;
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3. As it crops up (e.g. from a listening or reading text, or during

adiscussion);
4. Through students own mini-research (from dictionaries,
texts,projects, etc.).
Presenting new vocabulary.How do you present newvocabulary
items in class? Various techniques are available. Theseinclude:
definition: a simplified version of a dictionary entry
illustration: a picture or a blackboard drawing
context: using the item in a sentence
mime: acting the meaning
synonym: using a word or phrase with roughly the samemeaning
antonym: using a word or phrase with roughly the oppositemeaning
superordinate: using a more general category, of which thenew
item is a member / hyponym (e.g. chair, table, stool,wardrobe,
sofa are all hyponyms of the category furniture.Furniture is the
superordinate term.
translation: often the simplest way to present a new item is
totranslate it.
Which techniques you choose will depend upon circumstancesand type of
item being introduced.