Literature Review On Teaching And Learning English Vocabulary

Literature Review on Teaching and Learning English Vocabulary

“Perhaps the greatest tools we can give students for succeeding, not only in their education but more generally in life, is a large, rich vocabulary and the skills for using these words.”

(Pikulski & Templeton, 2004: 1)

1.1. The Definition of Vocabulary

Every person from early age has to learn how to speak or communicate in different ways to achieve various goals and express himself or herself in order to associate with other humans. That is why learning a first language is essential for communication and learning a second language is important and beneficial for expansion of communication abilities, development of knowledge of other cultures, widening one`s opportunities, and growth of understanding of the world and its different societies. “Language is a fundamental part of total human behaviour” (Brown, 2007: 26), therefore, teaching and learning a language is essential for humans and their societies. It is not only a means of understanding each other, but as social humans depend, in all social activities, on the use of language. “Language is one of the most uniquely human capacities that our species possesses, and one that is involved in all others, including consciousness, sociality and culture” (Ortega, 2009:1). Through language, we communicate about realities and imagined things, about emotions and desires, as well as about intentions and factual events. According to Richards (2002:255), vocabulary is the core component of language proficiency and provides much of the basis for how well learners speak, listen, read, and write.

We know that all normally developed people can use the language they grew up with in any field and for any purpose. But it is worth noting that many people can do the same things in a language other than their own, many will manage to attain native-like levels in a foreign language, while other will only reach the basic conversational level; nonetheless a vast majority will learn languages after they learned their first. The question is: How do people learn a second/ third/ etc. language? Well, scholars in the field clearly show that there is a multitude of ways to learn an additional language, and the factors influencing the learning process vary from age, social status, cross linguistic influences, linguistic environment to phenomena such as foreign language aptitude, motivation and individual differences.

Amongst the variety of ways and situations through which a person can learn an additional language is of course the institutionalized process, namely the schools. In schools, there is a ‘liberty without freedom,’ if I may call it so, as teachers, regardless of how enthusiastic they are, need to adapt their teaching techniques to the national curriculum, as well as to the human resources they have.

When asked what people consider vocabulary to be, the general answers point towards words of a language, i.e. everyone connects vocabulary to words. A few researchers have viewed word and vocabulary in a comparative way. Richards (1992) define the term word as “the smallest of the linguistic units which can occur on its own in speech or writing: (406), but vocabulary, as “a set of lexemes which includes single words, compound words and idioms” (400). Besides, word is defined as “ sound or combination of sounds forming a unit of the grammar or vocabulary of a language”, whereas vocabulary as “ the total number of words which make up a language; and a range of words known to, or used by a person” (Hornby, 1995: 985). While Burns and Broman (1975) define vocabulary as ”the stock of words, which is used by a person, class or profession” (295), Neuman and Dwyer (2009) label it as “words we must know to communicate effectively; words in speaking (expressive vocabulary) and words in listening (receptive vocabulary)”(385). Gardner (2009) states that vocabulary is not only confined to the meaning of words but also includes how vocabulary in a language is structured, how people use and store words and how they learn words, and the relationship between words, phrases, categories of words and phrases.

However, some authors suggest more complex definitions about vocabulary. Nation (2001) suggests that vocabulary knowledge implies knowing a word in the spoken form and the spoken form can be recognized and understood in and out of context rather than guessed. Henriksen (1996) also states that vocabulary knowledge is often defined as precise comprehension, which is operationalised as the ability to translate the lexical items into L1, the ability to find the right definition in a multiple-choice task, or the ability to give a target language paraphrase. This means that vocabulary knowledge requires the ability to react to words that students do not need to think about. The words just come into students` minds to be used in an effective and natural way. So, when students have knowledge of a word they do not take much time to think about the word, they just have to use the word naturally and appropriately.

In short, what the definitions above about vocabulary have in common is the fact that vocabulary knowledge requires not only word meanings knowledge, but it requires the usage of the words in the appropriate context and in a natural way and also includes the relationship between new words acquired and the ones already known. Therefore, teachers should use strategies that teach the meaning of words in context and help students associate the new vocabulary learned with what they already knew, and help them memorise the words and their meanings.

When we want to describe words, we see that a word can be represented in any number of ways, such as single words, set phrases, phrasal verbs, and idioms.

1. These single word units include not only more items but more frequently used items, those words that most people think of first, such as: animals: dog, monkey; countries England, Germany; descriptions: happy, amazing; actions in the past: went, lived, etc. Despite the name, however, this group also includes multi-word vocabulary, for example, the words ice storm, traffic-light and thunderstorm, tablecloth, homework. Still, it is worth saying the vocabulary of any language is more than just words taken singularly. In this case, Ur (1996) states:

Vocabulary can be defined, roughly, as the words we teach in the foreign language. However, a new item of vocabulary may be more than just 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. A useful convention is to cover all such cases by talking about vocabulary items rather than words (60).

2. Set phrases consist of more than one word and do not usually change. For example, in the set phrase all of a sudden, we cannot say most of a sudden or in other words, we cannot say in other terms or with other words. Other set phrases must be worded in a certain order even though rearranging the ordering would not really affect the meaning. English conventions have locked these phrases into only one possible ordering, e.g. raining dogs and cats, up and down, head to toe, to and fro, ladies and gentlemen.

3. Phrasal verbs consist of two or three words, the first word is always a verb and the second is a preposition or particle/ adverb, and if there is a third word, it is usually a preposition. Many verbs can be adequate as the verb in a phrasal verb, but common ones include: put, take, make, call, go, come, and get. For example, put away, put off, come back, come down with, etc. Understanding phrasal verbs is problematic for EFL students for four reasons. First, they are extremely common in English, as they occur in Germanic languages, but not in Romance languages. EFL students cannot function without knowing a large number of phrasal verbs, so they must learn the meaning of the more frequent ones. Secondly, knowing the parts of the phrasal verb does not equal knowing the whole phrasal verb, so they are rarely transparent. Consider these examples that have call as a base:

We called on the Jones family last Saturday. – visit

The reunion was called off because not enough people could attend. – cancel

We had to call in a plumber because our drain was clogged. – get someone to come and do something

You better call back Tom, he`s called twice already. – return a phone call.

A third difficulty of phrasal verbs is that they are often reduced in conversation, thus, they are not only hard to comprehend semantically, but are simply hard to hear. Consider the conversation:

John: What did you think of the test?

Anne: I thought it was kind of tough, especially the last part.

John: Yeah, it was. Did you come up with a good answer for the essay question?

Anne: At first, no, but then I started writing down a few things, and then the answer just sort of took off.

An EFL student would have a hard time hearing the pieces of each of these phrasal verbs. In think of, the word of is greatly reduced as is with in come up with. In the example took off, the two words get run together so that they sound much more like `to cough` than took and off. If the student has actually been able to hear the phrasal verb and caught all the pieces, then he/ she still faces the semantic challenge of what does it mean. And this is further complicated in conversation because it keeps flowing as the student is still trying to decipher the phrasal verb, and more phrasal verbs are bombarding him/ her.

The fourth problem of phrasal verbs is the particle or preposition. This part is critical to meaning because it is what differentiates put off (postpone) from put on (get dressed).

Thornbury (2002: 125) suggests that “ phrasal verbs are best learned on item-by-item basis, and preferably in short contexts that demonstrate their syntactic behaviour”, so they should be acquired like of the lexis by providing meaningful context, exposure, and recycling. Teachers are advised to construct fill-in-the-blanks exercises, which can enable students to memorize such verbs faster and more accurately.

4. Idioms and idiomatic language are some of the most interesting and creative vocabulary terms to learn in any language. An idiom is an expression in which all the words do not have their literal meanings, their sense is rather figurative or metaphoric. It is estimated that there are over 10,000 idioms in English, some relatively recent and some that have been used for more than 2,000 years (Brenner, 2011). Most linguists admit that idioms provide vivid descriptions and expressions that are more powerful and effective than literal or nonidiomatic language. However, idioms constitute a difficult area of foreign language learning and teaching because they are conventionalized expressions whose overall meaning cannot be determined from the meaning of their constituent parts. Hence, an idiomatic expression like let the cat out of the bag is composed of several words (let/ the/ cat/ out/ of/ the/ bag) whose individual meanings do not seem to contribute to the meaning of the idiom as a whole (reveal a secret). Still, idioms are a colorful and fascinating aspect of English; they are commonly used in all types of languages, informal and formal, spoken and written. Learners` language skills will increase rapidly if learner can understand and use them confidently and correctly (Cambridge Idioms Dictionary, 2010: vi).

According to McCarthy & O`Dell (2002) idioms are connected with the themes of animals, the sea, sports, parts of the body, food and drink, colours, names of people and places, sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. We use idioms to describe physical appearance, character and personality, work and success, health and illness. Many idioms are formed from work and technology, some come from a time when people worked on the land, and other idioms refer to farm animals, for example, I need to recharge my batteries, the black sheep of the family, take the bull by the horns. Some idioms are formed from rural life, transport, from literature and history, for example, strike while the iron is hot, the goose that laid the golden eggs, the streets are paved with gold. Idioms came from the Bible, Shakespeare`s words, from feelings and emotions, for example, the salt of the earth, ships that pass in the night, in high spirits, give him a black look, it was love at first sight.

If we examine the meaning of idioms and phrasal verbs, we notice that they are like collocations because they include words that go together. So, collocations are often idiomatic. Jimmie Hill said”…in a sense, all collocations are idiomatic and all phrasal verbs and idioms are collocations or contain collocations” (cited in Lewis Michael. 2000: 51)

Although words can appear as single items, which are combined in a sentence, they can also occur in two or more item groups. They often combine with each other in ways, which native speakers recognize immediately, but which others find strange. According to the Oxford Collocation Dictionary (2000: vii), a collocation is “the habitual juxtaposition of a particular word with another word or words with a frequency greater than a chance”. Collocation refers to a group of two or more words that usually go together, it is the way in which words co-occur, combinations, which have come to be seen as normal or acceptable. For example, make tea- I made a cup of tea for breakfast or do homework- I did all my homework yesterday or heavy rain, strong coffee. Unlike grammatical constructions, there are no rules for the formation of collocations. What determines what words go together is usage over time. McCarthy and O`Dell (2005: 12) state that “there are many types of collocations” since there are nine parts of speech: noun, adjective, adverb, verb, preposition, conjunction, article, pronoun and interjection. The first five parts could be combined to compose collocations, e.g. adjective + noun: bright colour; adverb = adjective: happily married; verb + adverb: smiled proudly; verb + noun: submit a report; noun + noun: a sense of pride, etc.

Nation (2008) stated that collocation knowledge “allow us to say and write things like a native speaker” (117), and “allows beginner learners to make productive use of the language without having to know a lot of vocabulary and grammar” (118). Furthermore, collocation study allows students to use language they already know. Woolard (2000) emphasized that “learning more vocabulary is not just learning new words, it is often learning familiar words in new combinations” (31).

Were we to look at recent studies, the scholastic trend is to envisage vocabulary as single words, but also lexical chunks which although comprised of more than just one word are perceived by the learner as single units. The expression Multi-Word Units is used to refer to words that are considered as a single unit. As claimed by Thornbury (2002: 6) Multi-Word Units are “called simply lexical chunks”. They include idioms such as kick the bucket, phrasal verbs like: give up; fixed phrases such as up to now, of course; and semi-fixed phrases like a friend of mine. Alali and Schmitt (2012) named these lexical chunks formulaic sequences and their importance in language seems central thus teachers should pay special attention to them when teaching vocabulary (Lewis, 1993).

Without establishing a strong vocabulary base first, comprehension and use of a language will not be achieved. In addition, the student should be able to recognize words, and know their meaning as well. Thus, when a student is effectively able to recognize and use a word in different contexts, speak, write, pronounce the word well, he/ she has the knowledge and meaning of that word.

To sum up, we can easily say that the vocabulary of a language is represented and characterised by its very words, being either single orthographic words, or multi-word items such as phrases or chunks of language, which denote one meaning in the minds of the learners. Languages contain huge numbers of words, and although nobody can learn all of these words, learning the amount of vocabulary a native speaker knows is still an amazing fact. Moreover, the learning process is not an all-or-nothing process in which a word is suddenly and completely available for use. Our knowledge of individual words grew over time, both in our ability to use them receptively or productively.

1.2. Types of vocabulary

In teaching and learning vocabulary, it is essential to distinguish between different types of vocabulary, because they need different focus and treatment, and will be given priorities and emphasis in teaching and learning according to students` different aims of learning.

When we learn our native language, we usually learn to listen first, then to speak, to read, and finally to write. Languages are generally taught and assessed in terms of the four skills, and they are related to each other in two ways: the direction of communication – in or out, and the method of communication – spoken or written. Input of communication is sometimes called reception, and output is called production. All language learners will need to develop their skills in each of these areas and language classes should incorporate activities related to all these skills.

Figure 1: The Four Language Skills

In order to understand how vocabulary items work or relate to the four language skills, it will be helpful to make clear first by grouping the skills into two pairs, and there are two ways in doing so: First, listening and speaking are the skills necessary in oral communication, and they can be grouped together. Reading and writing can be grouped together since they are the skills necessary in written communication. Alternatively, we can group listening and reading together, since they both are used to understand language, which was produced by other people. To this extent, listening and reading are known as receptive skills, and speaking and writing as productive skills.

There are four categories of vocabulary learning. Listening vocabulary refers to all the words students can recognize when listening to speech. Speaking vocabulary refers to all the words an individual can use in speech. Reading vocabulary refers to all the words an individual can recognize when reading a text. Writing vocabulary includes all the words an individual can employ in writing.

Pikulski and Templeton (2004: 2) have produced a diagram that may make a better understanding of the relationship between vocabulary and the four language skills.

Figure 2, proposed by Pikulski and Templeton, demonstrates that vocabulary items play a dominant part in learning to communicate effectively while listening, speaking, reading and writing. Vocabulary items in the diagram below can be classified in terms of types, meanings, and functions. Based on the diagram, vocabulary is categorized into four main groups as meaning/ oral vocabulary, literate/ written vocabulary, receptive vocabulary, and productive vocabulary.

Figure 2: Vocabulary and the four language skills

1. Meaning/ Oral vocabulary refers to words language students use in order to understand what they hear in speech, and words they use when they speak. This involves both receptive and productive vocabulary. For listening, if they lack meaning/ oral knowledge, they would have difficulties in what they are hearing in authentic situations or from authentic texts. That is why, they probably miss the point of what they are listening. For speaking, Nation (1990: 93) suggests that in order to speak English, it is necessary to have a large vocabulary, and Pikulski and Templeton (2004: 3) affirm that language learners who have large speaking vocabulary generally tend to have large listening, reading, and writing vocabulary, and vice versa.

2. Literate/Written vocabulary refers to words students use in order to understand what they read, and words used in writing. This, again, includes both receptive and productive vocabulary. When one reads, he/she needs a number of vocabulary items to understand the text he/ she is reading. Likewise, when one writes, he/ she needs a number of vocabulary items to produce his/ her ideas in the writing texts.

3. Receptive vocabulary concerns words students use in order to understand what they hear in speech, and words used to understand what they read. It is generally acknowledged that students need receptive vocabulary for their listening and reading. The better one`s vocabulary knowledge, the easier one would find it to understand the conversation or a large amount of reading. However, comparing vocabulary learning from listening to vocabulary learning from reading, Read (2000: 47) points out that the former has received much less attention than the latter.

Based on vocabulary and reading, Nation and Coady (1988: 98) point out that vocabulary is likely to be a predominant causal factor for reading comprehension, and Laufer (1997: 20) emphasizes that no text comprehension is possible, either in one`s native language or in a foreign language, without understanding the text`s vocabulary. Similarly, Rubin (1993: 1) stresses, “A good vocabulary and good reading go hand in hand. Unless language learners know the meaning of words, they will have difficulties in understanding what is read. And the more one reads, the more words one will add to one`s vocabulary”. That is to say, a rich vocabulary is essential to successful listening and reading comprehension.

4. Productive vocabulary involves words students use or express their thoughts and ideas in speaking and writing. Since both speaking and writing are productive skills, Nandy (1994: i) highlights:

An extensive vocabulary, besides empowering us to give expression to a wide range of thoughts, also enables us to vary our forms of expression, and so make our speech or our writing more pleasing to hear or more interesting to read. No one can ever become an effective speaker or a ready writer if he does not have at his command a wide vocabulary to which he is continually adding.

In terms of vocabulary and the written text, Schmitt (2000: 155) indicates that vocabulary knowledge is indispensable since the text involves the use of difficult words to convey more complicated ideas than the spoken one.

Nation (2001: 358-360), defines receptive items as those that “involve going from the form of a word to its meaning” (359) and they reflect the way we deal with words in reading or listening. In the receptive use of words, we see or hear a word and recall its meaning. In this process, the words form acts as a stimulus for the meaning. On the other hand, productive items “involves going from the meaning to the word form” (359) and involve a similar processing of words as in writing or speaking, where we think of the message first and then search for the words that will convey this message best. The word`s meaning acts as a stimulus for the form.

It is generally believed that words are known receptively first and only after intentional or incidental learning become available for productive use. Therefore, vocabulary knowledge should be regarded as a continuum on which a word grows from receptive to productive status and students gradually acquire vocabulary knowledge. Henriksen (1996) suggests a model of vocabulary development acquisition based on three hierarchical stages: the first stage is partial-precise continuum. In this stage the student begins to recognize the words used by the teacher or while reading a text, but he/she does not know their meanings and how to use them. The receptive-productive continuum is the second level. In this level as the student moves along he/ she begins to understand word meanings and they know hoe to use them in some contexts; the student begins to have a precise understanding of the words. The third stage is depth-of-knowledge continuum. In this stage students finally understand words in different contexts and they use those words as well. This is to say that this stage measures how well a word is known.

Although little is known till now about the transfer from receptive to productive knowledge, it is generally believed that students` receptive vocabulary size is much larger than their productive vocabulary size. Receptive vocabulary leads to productive vocabulary, that is, receptive vocabulary is the first contact students have with the vocabulary items, which makes the method of instruction very important. So, teachers should recognize the relevance of vocabulary instruction in order for students to help develop their receptive vocabulary to productive vocabulary.

On the basis of its application, vocabulary is divided into two types: active vocabulary and passive vocabulary. Harmer (1991) distinguishes between these two types of vocabulary: the former refers to the vocabulary that students have been taught or learnt -and which they are expected to be able to use – whilst the latter refers to the words which the students will recognize when they meet them but which they will probably not able to produce. The majority of English learners find writing more difficult than reading, and speaking more difficult than listening. English speakers can understand more than they can use in everyday conversation, so the number of words that students understand will always be bigger than the number of words that they can use during conversation. Active vocabulary refers to the productive side of language, and consists of those words which one can use in his/ her speech and writing, as he/ she knows the meaning of those words accurately. In order to give the proficiency in spoken and written language, words must continuously be added to the active vocabulary of the students. Active vocabulary of a language calls for:

the use of the right word in the right place

the spontaneous recall of words

grammatical accuracy, i.e. use of correct tenses, inflections and word order

in speech, fluency and ability to reproduce correct sounds, pronunciation, intonation, rhythm, etc.

Passive vocabulary refers to the receptive side of language, and calls for:

a recognition of vocabulary in speech or writing

an acquaintance with major grammatical items or forms.

In summary, in dealing with the four language skills, it is essential for a language learner to have enough vocabulary: 2,000 word families for basic conversation; 2,000-3,000 for productive speaking and writing; 3,500-5,000 for reading authentic texts; 10,000for challenging university textbooks, and 15,000 to 20,000 to equal an educated native speaker of English. All aspects of language interrelate, and students should be given the opportunity to simultaneously use all the four language skills in meaningful, functional, and cooperative activities, which are centered around topics that build upon students` knowledge. Expanding the vocabulary is one of the main goals of vocabulary learning since a language learner with rich, large vocabulary will achieve success both inside and outside language classroom as well as in their social life.

1.3. What does knowing a word involve?

Central to the communicative process stands the use of language: it is our ability to `speak our minds`, and the words that carry thought to another mind, that is the core of communication (Aichison, 2003: 5). Words, therefore, act as vehicles to make language between people possible, words keep relationships.

Knowing a word implies knowing many things about the word: its literal meaning, its various connotations, its spelling, derivations, collocations, frequency, pronunciation, the sort of syntactic constructions into which it enters, the morphological options it offers and a rich variety of semantic associates such as synonyms, antonyms, homonyms. (Nagy and Scott, 2000). For example, a student who knows the word write will know that its past tense is wrote and its past participle is written. The student would know that written is spelled with double t, and he/ she will also know when and how to use the various auxiliary verbs appropriately. The student would know that writing is a verb that is used in the present continuous tense and that writing can also serve as a noun: e.g. the writing is on the wall. The student would be aware of the various synonyms of writing such as compose, drop a line, record, and also know that its collocations are subject to syntactic modifications such as effective writing or write effectively. Knowing a word requires conscious and explicit learning mechanisms whereas using a word involves mostly implicit learning and memory (Ellis, 1994).

Ellis and Sinclair (1989: 28) propose that knowing a word mean:

to understand it when it is written and/ or spoken

to recall it when we need it

to use it with the correct meaning

to use it in a grammatically correct way

to pronounce it correctly

to know which other words we can use with it

to spell it correctly

to use it in the right situation

to know if it has positive or negative associations.

Ur (1996: 60-62) suggests that knowing a word concerns knowing: word form (pronunciation and spelling); grammar; collocation; aspects of meaning (denotation, connotation, appropriateness, and meaning relationships), and word formation.

Figure 3: Knowing a word

With regard to aspects of knowing a word, many researchers have proposed some elements or aspects of knowing a word. Richards (1985:177-182) states that:

Knowing a word means knowing the degree of probability of encountering that word in speech or print. For many words we also `know` the sort of words most likely to be found associated with the words.

Knowing a word implies knowing the limitations imposed on the use of the word according to variations of functions and situations.

Knowing a word means knowing the syntactic behaviour associated with the word.

Knowing a word entails knowledge of the underlying form of a word and the derivations that can be made from it.

Knowing a word involves knowledge of the network of associations between that word and other words in the language.

Knowing a word means knowing the semantic value of a word.

Knowing a word means knowing many of the different meanings associated with a word.

The concept of a word can be defined in various ways, but three significant aspects teachers need to be aware of and focus on are form, meaning, and use. According to Nation (2005: 583-585), the form of a word involves its pronunciation (spoken form), spelling (written form), and any word parts that make up this particular item (such as prefix, root, and suffix).

1. An important factor in teaching/ learning words is focusing on intelligible pronunciation. Gilbert (2008) states that “English language learners tend to ignore stress when they learn vocabulary. And failure to learn the stress of new words often leads to an inability to recognize those words in spoken form” (14). Without learning correct pronunciation of words and phrases, students can easily be misunderstood when speaking or can misunderstand the messages others are trying to convey to them. When learning new words, there are several pronunciation features that should be incorporated in the learning process, like word stress, vowel and consonant sounds, and word endings. When learning word combinations, like phrasal verbs, collocations, and idioms, understanding pronunciation features such as thought groups, rhythm, linking, and intonation is essential. Teaching pronunciation in association with teaching vocabulary is essential for second language acquisition in terms of improving students` speaking and listening skills and communicative competence. By concentration on pronunciation, we make our students aware of how sounds are formed, how words are stressed and what intonation patterns exist. This has a double benefit: first, it helps them become intelligible speakers of English, and second, it improves their own comprehension of spoken English.

2. Spelling is a code that uses letter sequences to represent specific words that have an associated pronunciation and meaning within the mental dictionary. Three kinds of codes contribute to spelling: a phonological code – coding and awareness of sounds in spoken words, an orthographic code – coding and awareness of letters in written words, and a morphological code – word parts at the beginning of words that modify shade of meaning and at the end of words that mark tense, number, and part of speech. For example, the word jumped has five small sounds (phonemes) in it: /j/, /u/, /m/, /p/, and /t/. However, it has six letters – that is because the last two letters correspond to a word part (morpheme) that marks the past tense but corresponds to a single sound (Stahl & Nagy, 2005). Still, English spelling is a particular obstacle to non-native speakers. This is due to the fact that during the course of history, it has been influenced by numerous languages, especially by German, Latin, French and the Scandinavian languages. It was already noted over 400 years ago that English used more letters than necessary to spell many of its words, and during the 17th century numerous redundant letters were removed, the standard spelling tending to prefer one of the shorter forms among the alternatives previously in use. After the 17th century this process of simplification of English spelling slowed down, thanks to the standardizing influence of printing and the spread of dictionaries. The American lexicographer Noah Webster took the process of simplification a step further in the early 19th century, his dictionary recommended some distinctive spellings, such as traveling, defense (Br. Eng. travelling, defence).

However, since the English spelling and English pronunciation often do not correspond to each other, knowing the phonemic script helps students to work out the pronunciation of the new words which they find in a text without the assistance of a teacher or another English speaker.

3. Teaching word parts can help students to recognise words, decode words quickly and accurately, and understand the meaning of words. “Knowing some common prefixes and suffixes (affixes), base words, and root words can help students learn the meanings of many new words” (Ambruster, Lehr, & Osborn, 2001: 6). For example, if students learn just the four most common prefixes in English: un-, re-, dis-, in-, they will have important clues about the meaning of almost two thirds of all English words that have prefixes. Prefixes are relatively easy to learn because they have clear meanings, they are usually spelled the same way from word to word, and they always occur at the beginning of words. Some prefixes create words that mean the opposite of the base word; others pertain to time, place or location, or indicate number or quantity. One study has shown that a set of 20 prefixes and 14 roots, and knowing how to use them, will unlock the meaning of over 100,000 words.

Learning suffixes can be more challenging than learning prefixes, because some suffixes have more abstract meanings than prefixes. For example, learning that the suffix –ness means the state or quality of might not help students figure out the meaning of kindness. Although words like geologist and independent can often be figured out from context, decomposing such words into known parts, like geo-logist, in-dependent, etc not only makes the words themselves more memorable, but, in combination with sentence context, may be a useful strategy in determining the meaning of unknown words. Some suffixes have a specific meaning, such as –ful (full of whatever the root says, such as hopeful) and –or (a person who does what the root says, such as inventor). Other suffixes change a word`s part of speech. For example, by adding a suffix, the verb argue can be made into the noun argument, the adverb arguably, or the adjective argumentative. Still other suffixes change a verb`s tense, such as changing the present tense of laugh to the past tense, laughed. A word can consist of a root only, a root with a prefix, a root with a suffix, or a root with both a prefix and a suffix. Regardless of how many parts there are, they always appear in this order: prefix, root, suffix.

Meaning encompasses the way that form and meaning work together, in other words, the concept and what items it refers to, and the associations that come to mind when people think about a specific word or expression. Harmer (1996) stated that a word meaning can be defined by its relationship to other words. For example, if we explain the meaning of sad by saying that it is the opposite of happy, and we understand that expensive is the opposite of cheap, such antonyms reinforce the meaning of every word in the two pairs. Words also have synonyms that mean exactly or nearly the same as each other. For example, evil and bad, clever and intelligent are nearly synonymous. Another relationship, which defines the meaning of words to each other, is that of hyponymy, where words like carrot, tomato, potato, cucumber, etc. are all hyponyms of the word vegetables, which is a hyponym of other items in the food family. Therefore, parts of a word`s meaning concerns its relations with other words, not only synonyms and antonyms, but also into the vocabulary hierarchy.

Use, Nation noted, involves the grammatical functions of the word or phrase, collocations that go with it, and finally any constraints on its use, in terms of frequency, level. When teachers teach vocabulary to build students` knowledge of words and phrases, helping them learn these different components assists them in enhancing their English vocabulary knowledge and use.

One should also know the denotation and connotation of a word in order to know the negative or positive meanings that occur in the word. A word`s denotation is its dictionary definition, while its connotations include all the thoughts, emotional associations, and feelings that word evokes in people`s minds – positive, negative, or neutral. So, words have different connotations, depending on the context they occur. For example, in the sentences:

The young boy looked at the film star.

The young boy gazed at the film star.

The young boy gaped at the film star, gazed and gaped have a denotation similar to look, but have shades of meaning that may be less familiar. If we look up the dictionary definitions, we find out that look means to employ one`s sight, gaze- to look steadily, intently, and gape- to stare wonderingly or stupidly. The context of film star gives the words special meaning, since a person in the presence of a film star might be either pleased and admiring or awkward and dumbfounded. The connotations of the underlined words are: looked, neutral, gazed, positive, and gaped, negative.

A word can be either a single syllable, i.e. dog, eye, or a sequence of two or more syllables, i.e. about, window (two syllables), lemonade (three syllables) or hypothetical (five syllables). When a word has more than one syllable, one of these is stressed in relation to other syllables in the word, while other syllables are said to be unstressed. For example, in window the first syllable is stressed and the second unstressed, while in about the first syllable is unstressed and the second is stressed.

Each word has a family that shares with it the same root; this family is the result of the addition of suffixes after the root of a word to get new words that are called `inflections` (Thornbury, 2002:4). But when the new words are the result of adding affixes like: the `s` of the plural or the `ed` of the past, they are called `derivatives`. Thus the inflexions and derivatives are the consequences of affixation. New words could also be formed by adding prefixes to the root of the word, and are also called derivatives. In the following diagram, it is illustrated the process of affixation of the root `use` as follows:

Figure 4: Diagram of the Process of Affixation of the Root `Use`

The diagram above indicates that the process of affixation includes inflexions and derivatives. Adding the affixes `s` and `ed` respectively results in the inflexions `uses` and `used`; also, the addition of the prefix `re` results in the derivative `reuse` while the addition of the suffixes `ful` and `less` results in the derivatives `useful` and `useless` respectively. Of course, there are other inflexions by adding `ing`, etc. and other derivatives exist by adding `mis`, `able` etc. but generally we can say that affixation leads to specifying a word`s family. Consequently, the words included in the family of the root `use` are indicated in the following diagram:

Figure 5: Word family

Eichholz and Barbe (1961) developed their vocabulary acquisition construct with the guiding principle of word acquisition in which “words cannot be classified as either known or unknown. Any word in an individual`s vocabulary may be placed along a continuum whose extreme poles are known and unknown but which has intermediate stages of knowing”(2). Zimmerman (1997) used a four knowledge scale to assess levels of word knowledge:

a) I do not know the word.

b) I have seen the word before but I am not sure of the meaning.

c) I understand the word when I see it or hear it, but I do nor use it in my own speaking or writing.

d) I can use the word in a sentence.

In summary, knowing a word involves many aspects. Knowing word form concerns how the word sounds, how it is spelt, and the grammatical changes that can be made to it. Knowing word meanings is not just knowing its dictionary meanings, it also means knowing how it relates to other word commonly associated with it – its collocations – as well as its connotation, register, etc. knowing word use involves knowing its patterns of occurrence with other words, and its particular types of language use. Besides, the aspects of knowing a word also involve both receptive and productive knowledge that are used in language skills. Regarding vocabulary learning, it is certain that learning vocabulary words mean learning the form, the meaning, and the use of the new words.

1.4. The Importance of Vocabulary in Learning English

When learning a new language, the primary scope of many of the learners is to be able to communicate in this language. Some may say that body language suffices for survival purposes, but I prefer to believe that for any educated learner, relying merely on gestures is not acceptable, and the acquisition of good-size vocabulary is a vital skill in the foreign language learning process.

Vocabulary is a key component both in the teaching and the learning process and should benefit from much attention, because without adequate vocabulary students are unlikely to be able to understand the teacher or each other, and are even likely to be able to express or utter their thoughts, ideas or wishes. Vocabulary is the main tool for the students in their attempt to use English effectively. When confronted with a native English speaker, when reading a text or when watching a movie without subtitle, when listening to a favourite English song or when writing a letter, students will always need to operate with words.

It is common sense that people use language to communicate; language means words. Thus many scholars have tried to investigate how many words, how much vocabulary should one possess in order to enable communication. Studies show that a large size of vocabulary is needed, but it all depends on learner`s goals and aspirations. (Nation, 1993). Vocabulary size differs of course, from native-speaker level to second language learner level; namely, second language learners, fortunately, are not required and do not need to achieve native-like vocabulary sizes in order to be fluent in a foreign language, but rather, they simply need to acquire the amount of words that would enable them to attain the various forms of communication in the desired second language (Schmitt, 2010:7). Furthermore, the multitude of tests established and carried out by researchers in the field on the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and language proficiency come to prove once more “that language ability is to quite a large extent a function of vocabulary size” (Alderson, 2005: 88).

So the question is: Just how much importance is given to the efficient teaching of vocabulary inside the teaching institutions? In our schools, there has always been a sort of competition between grammar and vocabulary, which one is most important, which one should have more teaching/ learning time allocated, which one is a more successful way towards the acquisition of a new language.

Allen (1983: 5) indicates that in the best classes, neither grammar nor vocabulary is neglected, but vocabulary is more essential and should be taught before grammar. Likewise, Flower (2000: 5) states, “ Words are the most important things students must learn. Grammar is important, but vocabulary is much more important”. This is consistent with Lewis (1993: 115) who also views the importance of vocabulary as the center of language teaching and learning since language consists of “grammaticalised lexis, not lexicalised grammar” and “grammar, as structure, is subordinate to lexis”. These scholars see that the words are preceded by grammar. This confirms what we know from our own experience that one can understand others even if they pronounce words badly, and make grammatical mistakes, but without the mediation of words, communication is rather impossible. Vocabulary seems to be the key to language learning, and thus, is accepted to be more important than grammar.

The teaching techniques and methods have varied so much over the time, but the importance of vocabulary has been clearly established. In 1972, David Wilkins was already stating that “there is not much value in being able to produce grammatical sentences if one has not got the vocabulary that is needed to convey what one wishes to say…While without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed” (111-112). Harmer (1991: 153) asserts that choosing words carefully in certain situations is more important than choosing grammatical structures because language learners cannot use structures correctly if they do not have enough vocabulary knowledge.

On the same note, is worth telling the personal experience of Keith Folse, who is a second language teacher with an impressive teaching experience. Trying to verify the validity of the idea that vocabulary is less important than grammar or other areas in the study of another language, he tells the real story where he tried to buy flour in Japan without knowing the word flour in Japanese. He knew several grammatically correct ways for asking; he even managed to describe flour as pre-bread, but nothing did the trick, and he saw himself forced to leave the shop without the desired ingredient.

Folse (2004) contends that vocabulary acquisition is probably the most common activity undergone by learners in their whole experience of learning the new language. Brown (2001) states that “Words are basic building blocks of language; in fact, survival level communication can take place quite intelligibly when people simply string words together –without applying any grammatical rules at all! So, if we`re interested in being communicative, words are among the first priorities” (p 377). Gass and Selinker (2001) base their theory according to which vocabulary is the most important language component for learners on the fact that the large corpora of errors persistently show that the lexical errors are the most common among second language learners. Norbert Schmitt (2010), one of the current leading voices in the field of vocabulary, speaks about the crucial importance of vocabulary, stating that

One thing that all of the partners involved in the learning process (students, teachers, materials writers, and researchers) can agree upon is that learning vocabulary is an essential part of mastering a second language. The importance of vocabulary is highlighted by the oft-repeated observation that learners carry around dictionaries and not grammar books (4).

If we look back in the past, we discover that for a long period, English used teaching approaches like the direct method and audiolingualism, which emphasized the importance of grammatical structures. Since the accent was on grammar, very few words were introduced and most often the vocabulary was limited to the grammar structures taught.

By the beginning of the 1970s the focus turned from the direct method and audiolingualism to the communicative approach, which emphasized the importance of teaching vocabulary. Many words began being introduced during the lessons; there were different speaking activities, students were encouraged to express themselves as much as possible. Nowadays, the English syllabus is organized around both vocabulary and grammar structures.

It has been established now that vocabulary is an essential aspect of language learning, but at the same time it has been noticed that vocabulary is not a passive and dormant element, but rather an active and dynamic one. By improving your vocabulary and increasing your vocabulary size, any learner is actually impacting in a positive way over his/her general language proficiency.

Regarding vocabulary in communication, it is apparent that vocabulary is basic in learning to communicate effectively while listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Lewis (1993: iii) views the importance of vocabulary as being a basic for daily communication. He indicates that if language learners do not recognize the meanings of the key words used by those who address them, they will be unable to participate in the conversation, even if they know the morphology and syntax. Richard`s preface in Schmitt`s “Vocabulary in Language Teaching” (2000: xi) indicates that vocabulary is central to communicative competence and to the acquisition of a second language. Vocabulary and lexical items are at the core of learning and communication. No amount of grammatical or other type of linguistic knowledge can be employed in communication without the mediation of vocabulary because vocabulary is shown to focus much more than knowledge of single words.

McCarthy (1990: iix) also points out the importance of vocabulary, “No matter how well the student learns grammar, no matter how successfully the sounds of L2 are mastered, without words to express a wide range of meanings, communication in an L2 just cannot happen in any meaningful ways”. Students not only communicate in words but they also do most of their thinking in words, because words are the tools they use to think, to express ideas and feelings, as well as to analyse and explore the world around them. (Allen 1983: 5)

Paul Nation, a leading researcher in the field, observes that “vocabulary is not an end in itself. A rich vocabulary makes the skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing easier to perform” (1994:1). Following Nation`s theory according to which the four linguistic macro-skills are positively impacted by vocabulary, Beck, McKeown and Kucan (2008) state that vocabulary means “learning meanings of new words” or “words that a reader recognizes in print” (1). This theory is in fact quite straightforward, as it is quite obvious that the more words you have already in your working memory, the less hesitation about correct spelling or pronunciation, the less pauses needed in order to find the right word to say next, the less the misunderstandings caused by incomplete comprehension of what is said or heard, the less the times when dictionaries are needed for readers.

Students usually find it difficult to speak English fluently. They usually consider writing and speaking activities exhausting because they keep on using the same words and expression and their conversation is abruptly interrupted due to missing words, due to lack of vocabulary. Other students are confronted with the problem of forgetting the words immediately after their meaning has been elicited which is also a cause of the lack of vocabulary.

In order to be able to speak a foreign language properly, the students need to learn vocabulary so that they will be able to express themselves in a way that other students or native speakers of English can understand them. Therefore, vocabulary helps students with language production. Hubbard (1983) states that the more words a student knows the more precisely that student can express the exact meaning he/ she wants to. Based on this view, to communicate effectively students need to know a large number of word meanings. Vocabulary is used to determine the proficiency a student has in oral context, which means that it is an essential component to determine how much a student is able to communicate successfully. It is the teacher`s task to support the learning process of the students and to show them ways of learning vocabulary through different methods and different teaching approaches in order to communicate successfully. Students have to talk as well as listen. According to Cummins (1980), students develop oral language within the first two years of immersion in the target language; however, academic language takes about 5-7 years. Native speakers generally learn to read words they already use in speech, while EFL students need to learn what the words mean, and how to say them as they are learning to read. In order for EFL students to catch up to native speakers, they must expand their vocabulary.

The National Reading Panel (2000) concluded, “The importance of vocabulary knowledge has long been recognized in the development of reading skills. As early as 1924, researchers noted that growth in reading power relies on continuous growth in word knowledge” (4-15).

From the scholars` statements mentioned, we can see that vocabulary plays a dominant role in learning and understanding a language as well as in communicating in that language. A large, rich vocabulary gives language learners the right words to use at the right time, and also enables them to express their real thoughts, ideas, and feelings. The knowledge of word meanings and the ability to access that knowledge efficiently are recognized as important factors in reading and listening comprehension, speaking and writing.

1.5. Criteria for Selecting Words to Teach

When making decisions about content, one of the questions the language teacher will have to address is what vocabulary to teach. The teacher should be concerned about the different criteria used when designing their syllabuses and materials, the one followed in making decisions about vocabulary content in language courses, and what the objectives of these particular decisions are. Otherwise, it becomes difficult to evaluate syllabuses and materials, to understand why particular vocabulary is to be taught as well as to explain to learners why they must learn particular words (McCarthy, 1990: 79).

The themes or topics should be selected according to the learners` interests, needs and background knowledge. Sometimes, however, when the objective is spelling, pronunciation or word formation it is probably necessary to incorporate words, which do not always have to do with the topic being discussed in the unit or lesson.

Different criteria can be employed to select the particular vocabulary as follows:

a. Frequency

It seems self-evident that it is sensible to teach the most frequent words in any language before the more unusual ones are taught, as they are likely to be the most useful ones for the learners of that language. But frequency is a more complex matter than it looks, and it is unlikely that any syllabus or coursebook would want to stick to frequency lists alone (Wallace 1988: 16). Thus, Sinclair and Renouf (1991) say that the most frequent words are not necessarily the most useful ones for learners and that common sense demands that the most frequent words be supplemented by intuition: “The additional list will probably include, among other things, words relating to domestic reality, such as days of the week and kinship terms, and other common lexical sets; also further words to refer to physical sensations and personal emotions, and to use in making evaluations” (151).

Frequency based studies show that some words are much more useful than others. Nation (2001) states that there are four kinds of vocabulary words:

High –frequency words. These words are very important because they cover a very large proportion of the running words in spoken and written texts and occur in all kinds of uses of the language. They are almost 80% of the words in a text.

Academic words. Typically, these words make up about 9% of the running words in the text and they occur reasonably frequently over a wide range of academic texts. Academic vocabulary does not contain technical words but rather formal vocabulary.

Technical words. These words make up about 5% of the running words in the text, and they contain a variety of types that range from words that do not occur in other subject areas to those that have specialized meanings.

Low-frequency words. These are a very large group of words that occur very infrequently and they cover only a small proportion of any text.

The distinction between high-frequency words and low-frequency words is important because teachers need to deal with these kinds of words in quite different ways, and teachers and students need to ensure that the high-frequency words of the language are well known. Nation (1990, 1993) underlines the critical importance of developing high-frequency words, since the learner`s skill on producing the language is heavily dependant on the number of words they know. He also suggests that fluency in speaking and writing are developed where 100% of the vocabulary is already known.

Nation (1990: 19) also affirms that the words language learners need to learn also depend largely upon the vocabulary learning goal. Since the high-frequency words occur frequently in all kinds of texts, then high- frequency words must be taught. This is because they are essential for any real language use. Schmitt (2000: 142) proposes that a vocabulary about 2,000 words would be a realistic goal. If a language learner is dealing with the most kinds of academic texts, then academic vocabulary must be focused. Similarly, if a language learner is dealing with a specialized text, then technical vocabulary must be taught. Since the low-frequency words do not occur very frequently, strategies for dealing with these words must be taught and trained to learners, and teachers should start teaching first high-frequency words that are words most likely to be found in a language instead of low- frequency words that are less frequent.

b. Range

A word may be quite frequent, but a majority of its occurrences might be in just one or two texts. In this case, although its frequency might look significant, its range might be quite small. The most useful words for the learners are those which are frequent and occurs across a wide variety of texts.

Teachers who take their own texts into the classroom will often have to decide from experience, intuition, or even the use of a dictionary, which words are likely to have the most useful range.

c. Availability and expediency

Wallace (1988: 16) stated that “words may be learnt or taught because they are seen to be of special relevance to particular situations in which the learner finds himself, or might find himself”. Thus, although ‘chalk’ or ’BB’ have a very low frequency and restricted range, because they name things which the learner can see and touch, and which the teacher can use in his/ her teaching, both these words may be very helpful. The converse of this situation is where knowledge of one particular item will make others redundant as far as meaning is concerned. Thus, it may be useful to have a receptive knowledge of ‘sweater’, ‘jumper’ and ‘pullover’, foe instance, but one of these words would be sufficient for productive purposes (Gairns & Redman, 1989: 59).

The classroom will often dictate the need for certain vocabulary, without which the students may not understand their teacher, classmates or the activity they are engaged in. one of these areas is grammatical terminology. Many teachers do not wish to burden their students with too many grammatical labels, but it is also true that understanding such items can be very helpful. On one hand, the explanations given can be more succinct and, on the other hand, the student can make a more profitable use of dictionaries and grammar books. It is the teacher who, taking into account factors such as age, course duration and educational background of the students, must weigh up the possible benefits or harm using such terminology. The same would apply to phonological terminology.

d. Need or interest

It is possible for students to feel that they need or are interested in different words than those suggested by the teacher or that their needs or interests do not even coincide with those of the group or class. As teachers, our challenge is to combine the collective and the individual. In this respect, Gairns & Redman (1989: 57) suggest allowing students to select any words they wish from a text and, within a limit of time, to work on them using a dictionary, alongside conventional vocabulary work on the text. In this way the students are encouraged to recognize their own needs, and are assisted in developing their ability to pursue those needs in organized and productive ways.

Learnability

According to McCarthy (1990: 86), “The difficulty, or lack of difficulty, a word presents may override its frequency and/ or range, and decisions to bring forward or postpone the teaching of an item may be based on learnability”. Here we may include words with some spelling and phonological difficulties, difficult syntactic properties, words very close in meaning and difficult to separate, and false friends.

Beck and McKeown (2002) suggest that when evaluating words as possible candidates for instruction, teachers should consider:

How generally useful is the word?

How does the word relate to other words, to the ideas that students know or have been learning?

What does the word bring to a text or situation?

When considering which words need the most instructional attention, Beck and McKeown (2002) categorized vocabulary words into three tiers: Tier One consists of the most basic words – house, book, happy, dog, phone – rarely requiring instruction in school; Tier Two words are high-frequency words for mature language users – coincidence, admire, represent, analysis, reluctant- and instruction adds productivity to an individual`s ability, and Tier Three includes words whose frequency of use is quite low, often being limited to specific domains – peninsula, Buddhism, Reconstruction, polyglot, locution – and probably best learned when needed in a content area. Beck suggests that students will benefit the most academically by focusing instruction on the tier two words, since these appear with much higher frequency than tier three words, and are used across domains.

Flanigan and Greenwood (2007) proposed a system for middle years teachers, based on the three-tier model and suggested that middle school content teachers needed something more specific for content vocabulary. They have developed a system to help teachers organize, categorise and prioritise the many types of content words they must teach. This system takes into account the goals of the lesson, the amount of the teaching time and depth of knowledge a word would require, and when in the lesson it would be most profitable to explore a word. It involves a ‘four level framework’ as a content area teacher`s extension to the three tier system. In this framework, words are categorized as:

– Critical ‘before’ words (Level 1) – represent concepts of which students need an in-depth understanding, and are absolutely essential to understanding the passage;

– ‘Foot-in-the-door’ words (Level 2) – new label / new concept words- require a clear definition and an example sentence; new words/ familiar concepts – require a clear definition and a synonym.

– Critical ‘after’ words (Level 3) – content words are defined clearly and explicitly in the text and do not need to be fully understood before reading to understand the text.

– Words not to teach – words that students probably already know, or can infer from the surrounding content. (226-230)

1. 6. Effective Vocabulary Teaching

Some authors state that vocabulary instruction was traditionally undervalued and teachers gave little attention to techniques to help students learn vocabulary. According to Carter & McCarthy (1988), in the past, vocabulary was considered a ‘neglected aspect’ in the process of language instruction. Allen (1983) argues that for many years, vocabulary instruction was not given the recognition and attention that it deserves in the foreign language classroom. She suggests that in methodology courses so little was said about how to teach words and their meanings. Some specialists in methodology seemed to believe that the meaning of words could not be adequately taught, so it was better not to try to teach them. Many teachers began to notice that vocabulary instruction was not simple, because it was not only a matter of teaching that a certain word meant the same as a word in another language. So, teachers tended not to teach vocabulary.

Nowadays, vocabulary instruction is seen as a meaningful tool to be instructed and learned in meaningful contexts. Despite the neglected aspect of vocabulary instruction in the past, vocabulary instruction and learning have been given much attention in the classroom in the last two decades. Still, instead of giving students long list of words without any context as teachers used to do in the past, teachers are more and more concerned about effective ways to transmit knowledge of vocabulary to students (Douglas, 2000).

In addition, Carter & McCarthy (1988) state that teachers are becoming conscious of the relevance and importance of vocabulary instruction and they are conscious of their role as facilitators and guides, so teachers have given important steps to call students` attention to the importance of focus on lexical form and teachers have paid attention to successful strategies to teach vocabulary. Thus, the instruction of vocabulary has come a long way in recent years and it is becoming more prevalent.

What students learn depends not only on what they are taught but it also depends on how they are taught according to students` developmental level, and their interests and experiences. This belief requires that much closer attention should be paid to the methods and techniques chosen for vocabulary instruction. Glickman (1991) states:

Effective instruction is not a set of generic practices, but instead is a set of context-driven decisions about instruction. Effective teachers do not use the same set of practices for every lesson …Instead, what effective teachers do is constantly reflect about their work, observe whether students are learning or not, and then adjust their practice accordingly (6).

This means that there are many variables to consider when making decisions about the process of instruction and learning, and the method or technique choice can be used by teachers to create learning environments and to indicate the nature of the activities in which the teachers and students will be involved during the lesson.

Vocabulary instruction should involve many opportunities for students to use new words, to discuss words, and to compare new words with previously learned words. In recent years, researchers and teachers have had a better understanding of the relevant role played by vocabulary knowledge in a language. They have been paying attention to successful ways to instruct and increase the vocabulary knowledge whereas effective vocabulary instruction is important for effective learning. Effective vocabulary learning depends on the way vocabulary is presented.

In other words, students need vocabulary instruction that will help them acquire new word knowledge and develop strategies to enable them to increase the depth of that knowledge over time. In order to achieve these goals, there are three main approaches in which vocabulary can be presented: explicit or direct vocabulary instruction, implicit or indirect vocabulary instruction and independent vocabulary instruction.

Explicit vocabulary instruction

Many authors suggest that explicit vocabulary instruction is deductive. Curtis & Longo (2001) argue that in explicit vocabulary instruction the meaning of words is presented directly and then they can be illustrated with examples or using visual aids. Students benefit from explicit vocabulary instruction through the use of context to determine word meanings, as well as from opportunities to see and hear how words tend to be used. Additionally, according to Blachowicz (2005) explicit vocabulary should use definitional and contextual information about word meanings. National Reading Panel (2000) argues that explicit instruction of vocabulary is highly effective and it justifies this fact stating that to develop vocabulary intentionally students should be explicitly taught. Seeing vocabulary in rich contexts provided by authentic use of visual aids, rather than in isolated vocabulary drills, produces robust vocabulary learning. The use of visual aids gets students actively engaged in using and thinking about word meanings and in creating relationship among words.

Several theories address the importance of visual aids as a powerful tool to teach vocabulary explicitly. The Multiple Intelligence Theory categorizes different types of intelligence, and one of these categories is visual-spatial intelligence. According to this theory, students with strong visual-spatial intelligence are typically very good at visualizing and mentally manipulating objects. They have a strong visual memory and they have often artistically inclination (Gardner, 1983). Those with visual-spatial intelligence also have a good sense of direction and may also have very good hand-eye coordination, that is, those students think in pictures and images. This means that those students who are intelligent in visualizing pictures learn vocabulary faster and effectively. When students visualize the visual aids, they will retain with success the meaning of words faster and improve learning by associating the vocabulary with the visual aids. For this kind of students the use of visual aids is the most appropriate technique to teach vocabulary. For those students who are not so good in visualizing pictures they can hear the words. Thus, when a teacher presents vocabulary using visual aids he/ she communicates to both kinds of students.

Implicit vocabulary instruction

Some authors argue that implicit vocabulary instruction is indeductive. According to Swerling (2006), implicit vocabulary instruction encourages deducing word meanings from context, by engaging in oral language experiences at home and at school, or while reading books. Vocabulary growth occurs naturally when students read and listen to each other on a daily basis. That is, students internalize the word meanings in contexts, but incidentally.

However, Channel (1988) states that the learning of vocabulary implicitly is probably considered more efficient in intermediate and advanced students through extensive reading and listening since they are the most likely to have a powerful vocabulary knowledge when compared to beginner English students. This is to say that students can deduce word meanings from context only if they know a large number of word meanings used by the speaker or the writer. This means that this strategy cannot be suitable for beginner English students since they still do not have a large number of word meanings in order to be able to deduce unknown word meanings in a text or while listening to the teacher or someone else. Therefore, implicit vocabulary instruction used by the teacher can be effective depending on the level of the students` vocabulary knowledge. In indirect instruction, the teacher`s role is seen as a facilitator, supporter, and resource person; the teacher arranges the learning environment, provides opportunity for student involvement, and when appropriate, provides feedback to students.

3.Independent vocabulary instruction refers to instructing learners how to be independent vocabulary learners. According to Oxford (1990), learners can understand a lot of words through systematic guessing and through the use of a dictionary. One relevant strategy to listening and reading success involve the use of contextual clues. Contextual clues are the reasons for many correct guesses about the meaning of written passages. Suffixes and prefixes are useful contextual clues to foster word meanings. For example, teachers teach students that the prefix ‘un’ is the opposite of the word that it follows. So, when students read or hear the word ‘unlucky’ they should be able to draw that unlucky is the opposite of the word lucky. Similarly, teachers can teach that the suffix ‘ment’ makes that word a noun. Foe example, if students know that the word ‘to disappoint’ is a verb and when they read or hear the word ‘disappointment’ students should be able to conclude that the word is a noun and get the meaning of the mentioned word by themselves. Further, teachers must help students develop strategies for independent word learning and support them in becoming aware of when and how to implement these strategies in different situations.

The use of dictionaries can be complex and it may not result in gaining a full understanding on word meanings. Diamond (1996) affirms that to help students develop strong vocabulary knowledge requires more than having them look up words in a dictionary. Rather, students need instruction that will help them acquire new word knowledge and develop strategies to enable them to increase depth of knowledge over time. However, this does not mean that dictionaries are not important and useful aids to word learning, since they offer word meanings exemplifying typical usage, pronunciation and relationship with other words. Hence, the crucial point here is that students receive instruction in how to use what they find in dictionaries or how they can most effectively tae information from them, so that they are able to define words or translate them into students` first or second languages. Allen (1983) perceives dictionaries as ‘passports to independence”, and using them is one of the student- centered activities. (83)

According to independent vocabulary instruction the teacher can encourage and facilitate vocabulary learning by helping students learn strategies for determining the meaning of words independently. That is, teachers should instruct students to help them build their vocabulary and develop strategies to learn vocabulary on their own.

Stahl (1999) suggests that effective vocabulary instruction should include the following three components:

Definitional and contextual information about a word – To know a word, students need to see it in context and learn how its meaning relates to the words around it. An approach that includes definitions and shows how words are used in various contexts can generate a full and flexible knowledge of word meanings. When students are given several sentences that that use a word in different ways, they begin to see how a word` s meaning can change and shift depending on its context. Foe example, consider the changes of the word got, as it appears in the following sentences: Matthew got in trouble. John got rich. Anne got a cold. Sarah got a note from Andy. Although in most of these examples, got conveys the idea of receiving, the meaning is slightly different in each one. Students need to see words in different contexts in order to learn them thoroughly.

Multiple exposures to a word in different contexts – A word that is encountered once has about 10 percent chance of being learned from context. When students see a word repeatedly, they gather more and more information about it until they get an idea of what it means. Students benefit from seeing the same word several times, and word meanings are accumulated gradually. Dale and O`Rourke (1986) proposed a model of four levels of words knowledge, that should be shared with students so they can be more metacognitive (thinking about thinking) and metalinguistic (thinking about the structure of words) when learning new words:

I never saw it before.

I have heard of it, but I do not know what it means.

I recognize it in context – it has something to do with …

I know it.

Students can use the following chart as a way to become more aware of the new words they encounter:

[anonimizat] Checklist (from Texas Center for Reading and Language Arts 2002)

The more exposure students have to a word, the more likely it is for them to be able to define, comprehend, and remember it. Using and applying several examples of a word in different contexts reinforces word knowledge.

Encouragement of students` active participation in their word learning – Students remember words better when they relate new meanings to knowledge they already have. This type of active processing occurs when students work with words in the following ways: produce synonyms and antonyms; rewrite definitions; use more than one word in a sentence; create sentences that contain the new word; create stories in which they use the word; create silly questions using the word (Stahl, 1999: 31-32). These activities reinforce definitional and contextual information about the word and give students a chance to own the word for themselves. Group discussion of word meanings also helps students learn new vocabulary by having to actively participate in their own learning.

Michael Graves (2000) also states that there are four components of an effective vocabulary program: wide or extensive independent reading to expand word knowledge; instruction in specific words to enhance comprehension of texts containing those words; instruction in independent word-learning strategies, and word consciousness and word-play activities to motivate and enhance learning. The National Reading Panel (2000) identified five main methods of teaching vocabulary:

Explicit Instruction: Students are given definitions or other attributes of words to be learned.

Implicit Instruction: Students are exposed to words or given opportunities to do a great deal of reading.

Multimedia Methods: Vocabulary is taught by going beyond text to include other media such as graphic representations, hypertext, or American Sign Language that uses a haptic medium.

Capacity Methods: Practice is emphasized to increase capacity through making reading automatic.

Association Methods: Learners are encouraged to draw connections between what they do know and words they encounter that they do not know. (4-3)

Robert Marzano (2004:28-29) points out the instructional activities that help students understand new vocabulary terms that are taught directly and also remember what they have learned at a later date. These activities can be organized into six steps, as follows:

Step 1 – Explain – provide students with a description, explanation or example (not a definition) using common language, e.g. determine prior knowledge, use imagery.

Step 2 – Restate – Students restate the description, explanation or example in their own words, e.g. discuss with a partner, student record (notebook, journal).

Step 3 – Show – Students represent the term non-linguistically, e.g. draw the thing or a symbol, dramatize the term.

Step 4 – Discuss – Engage students periodically in structured vocabulary discussion that help them add to their knowledge of the terms in their vocabulary notebooks, e.g. identify synonyms or antonyms, list related words, draw an additional graphic, compare terms, classify terms.

Step 5 – Refine and reflect – Ask students to return to their notebooks to discuss and refine entries, e.g. think-pair-share about targeted terms.

Step 6 – Apply in learning games – Involve students periodically in games that allow them to play with terms, e.g. Pyramid, I have, who has, etc.

He also points out some characteristics of effective vocabulary instruction: it does not rely on definitions; students must represent their knowledge of words in linguistic and nonlinguistic ways; effective vocabulary instruction involves the gradual shaping of word meanings through multiple exposures; teaching word parts enhances students` understanding of terms; different types of words require different types of instruction; students should discuss the terms they are learning; students should play with the words, and instruction should focus on terms that have a high probability of enhancing academic success.

In its executive summary, the National Reading Panel suggests that vocabulary instruction does lead to gains in comprehension, but methods must be appropriate to the student`s age and ability.

Computer vocabulary instruction shows positive learning gains over traditional methods. Vocabulary instruction leads to gains in comprehension. Vocabulary can be learned incidentally in the context of storybook reading or from listening to the reading of others. Repeated exposure to vocabulary items is important for learning gains. The best gains were made in instruction that extended beyond single class periods and involved multiple exposures in authentic contexts beyond the classroom. Pre-instruction of vocabulary words prior to reading can facilitate both vocabulary acquisition and comprehension. The restructuring of the text materials or procedures facilitates vocabulary acquisition and comprehension, for example, substituting easy for hard words. (4-4)

In short, the teacher should help students build up and use a mental lexicon in such a way that they will be capable of storing, keeping and retrieving words when needed. He/She can call on various methods to aid students in accomplishing this task, mainly arousing motivation and attention, engaging in meaningful activities and providing many channels for learning and practicing.

To summarize, vocabulary is obviously an essential element within a language, and students should be made aware of its importance as experience shows that there is a general tendency to overemphasize grammar or functions. In addition to this, as teachers we should not only choose different strategies and types of tasks to convey meaning but, what is even more important, help learners develop different systems of organizing lexical items in order to speed up learning and facilitate the storage and retrieval of words as well as different techniques so as to allow them to become independent from the teacher and classmates, a necessary step towards learner autonomy.

1.7. Testing Vocabulary Knowledge

Although tests are not very popular among students they need to be taken regularly because teachers must learn if their students understand a language matter or not and in that case, it should be a signal for some revision of those pieces of language which were not understood well. The usual way of assessment is done through written tests or oral examinations, which are the main criteria for the final mark. Heaton (1990: 9-17) divides teacher`s reasons for testing into several categories:

Finding out about progress, which is done through so called progress tests which “look back at what students have achieved … and are the most important kinds of tests for teachers” (9). The author also claims that in progress tests student`s results should be very good, most of them should have about 80% or 90% of correct answers, otherwise the subject of the test was not mastered and the teachers should find the mistake, which may be in the content of the test or in the bad method of teaching. The author adds that “the best progress test is one which students do not recognize as a test but see as simply an enjoyable and meaningful activity” (9).

Encouraging students. Tests can also be useful in terms of showing students how they improve. Consequently, students, encouraged by their improvements, have new motivation for future studying.

Finding out about learning difficulties. Teachers can learn about students` problems with the language through tests. Such tests are called diagnostic tests and are used mainly for finding out students` difficulties. The test must be well-prepared so that it could really find out what students do not know. The best time for such a test is at the beginning of a course or a school year.

Finding out about achievement. For this we use so called achievement tests, which are tests covering a large amount of curriculum, for example, they may test whole year or even several years of study. For teachers at the elementary or secondary school, these kind of tests are very difficult to prepare, because of the big amount of curriculum covered through whole year or several years and teachers do not know what to put into the test and what not to as everything seems so important to them.

Placing students. So called placement tests are used to divide students into groups according to their level of knowledge.

Selecting students. The main aim of these tests is to find the best candidate for a position, which means that we do not measure their performance according to some criteria but we compare the candidates with one another and try to choose the best one.

Finding out about proficiency. Proficiency tests are focused on English used in a concrete area, mostly in an occupation. It implies that these tests must contain tasks which the candidate will use in his/ her future job.

Every test should fulfil some criteria to be useful, and the basic ones are validity and reliability. A test is reliable when the results do not differ at different times of doing, that is the results of the test should be more or less the same no matter if students are taking it on Monday morning or Thursday afternoon. On the other hand, every test should really test the things which are expected to be tested, for instance a test on listening about English literature should test only students` listening skills based on what they hear and not to test their real knowledge of English literature.

Ur (1991) suggests to focus on these things when creating a test: validity – check that your items really do test what they are meant to; clarity – make sure that instructions for each item are clear; do-ability – the test should be quote do-able: not too difficult, with no trick questions; marking – decide exactly how you will assess each section of the test and how weighting you will give it; interest – try to go for interesting content and tasks, in order to make the test more motivating for the learners; heterogeneity – the test should be such that lower-level students can feel that they are able to do a substantial part of the test, while the higher –level ones have a chance to show what they know (42).

Thornbury (2002) explains that the main reason for testing is that it gives us information about how well the students proceed in their learning of English. It gives a feedback to both teachers and students. In addition, when the teacher announces his/her students that a vocabulary test is coming in a period of time, they will probably start to study the vocabulary harder than before, so it will have a positive effect (129). In general, testing helps to recycle vocabulary as well as to consolidate it.

However, vocabulary testing does not have to be always marked, we can prepare a test on vocabulary, which will only revise words. The idea is to revise vocabulary from the previous lesson at the beginning of another lesson. Thornbury (2001: 130) calls it informal testing. Testing vocabulary also occurs in placement tests or diagnostic tests to find out students` level of knowledge, or in achievement tests at the end of the school year.

We can test the basic aspects of words, which are written and spoken forms as well as collocations, derivations, meaning, part of speech, relative frequency and certain register style.

According to the purpose we design the test, it can be either contextualised or de-contextualised. Contextualised test means that the vocabulary is examined through a text, whereas in de-contextualised test there are only words without any texts. If the teacher needs to test students` knowledge of spelling, he/ she can dictate words without any context. On the other hand, when we test meanings of words, we have to put them into a context. These contextualised tests can be further divided into tests that test active vocabulary or passive vocabulary. These examples are presented by Thornbury (2001).

Example of a test for passive vocabulary, where students do not have to invent any words, they just circle the right letter:

Choose the best word to complete each sentence:

1) The flight attendant asked the passengers to ______________ attention to the safety demonstration.

a. give b. devote c. pay d. lend.

2) A severe hurricane in the South Pacific has _____________ many lives.

a. claimed b. taken c. killed d. destroyed (131)

Example of a test for active vocabulary, where students have to invent the right word, which fits into the sentence:

Choose the best word to complete each sentence:

1) The flight attendant asked the passengers to ______________ attention to the safety demonstration.

2) A severe hurricane in the South Pacific has _____________ many lives. (131)

To summarize, through a well-crafted test, a teacher can find out if the student has understood or not the course that has been taught, and the students` strengths and weaknesses. Teachers can determine a student`s knowledge of word collocations, word derivations, word meanings, the frequency of a word.