Importance Of Teaching Vocabulary

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Introduction Teaching vocabulary is a key factor when learning a foreign language. However, there are many teachers who do not teach vocabulary, or who just introduce it to students by repeating or reading it in the lesson. The main goals of my work are to emphasize the importance of teaching vocabulary and to introduce ways and techniques of presenting vocabulary in the classroom. The first section will define the meaning of vocabulary, and explain why it is essential for students to learn new vocabulary, and the second section will present the way of presenting it in classrooms. 1. Vocabulary in general 1.1 Definition of vocabulary According to Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, the word vocabulary means ‘all the…show more content…
However, a new item of vocabulary may be more than a single word: for example, post office and mother-in-law, which are made up of two or three words but express a single idea. There are also a multi-word idioms such as call it a day, where the meaning of the phrase cannot be deduced from an analysis of the component words. A useful convention is to cover all such cases by talking about vocabulary ‘items’ rather than ‘words’. (Ur, 1991, 60) 1.2 The importance of vocabulary As I already mentioned, most teachers focus the process of learning a new language only on explaining grammatical rules and giving less importance to vocabulary. Teaching a foreign language is not only a matter of presenting grammatical structures. Students need more than a set of rules in order to communicate effectively. ‘Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.’ This is how the linguist David Wilkins summed up the importance of vocabulary learning. His view is echoed in this advice to students from a recent coursebook (Dellar H and Hocking D, Innovations, LTP): ‘If you spend most of your time studying grammar, your English will not improve very much. You will see most improvement if you learn more words and expressions. You can say very little with grammar, but you can say almost anything with words!’ (Thornbury, 2002,…show more content…
According to Thornbury 2002, non visual, verbal means of clarifying meaning include: - providing an example situation - giving several example sentences - giving synonyms,antonyms,or superordinate terms - giving a full definition. This verbal explanation may take a little longer than translation, or visuals or mime, the advantages are that the learners are getting extra ‘free’ listening practice and that by being made to work a little harder to get to the meaning of a word, they are more cognitively engaged. (Thornbury 2002, 81) 2.2.4 Highlighting the form As it is said in Thornbury 2002, highlighting the spoken form of a word is very important. This means drawing learners’ attention to the way the word sounds. The words are stored according to their syllable structure and stress. There are a number of ways of highlighting the spoken form of the word. These are: (Thornbury 2002, 85) - listening drills - oral drills - boardwork 2.2.5 Involving the learner Learners need to be actively involved in the learning of words. (Thornbury 2002, 30). In order to involve them the teachers use: (Thornbury 2002,

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