Types of Vocabularies

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Introduction

Vocabulary is an interesting topic to study. A person's vocabulary in his own language has a strong relationship to general intelligence and to reading comprehension. When students acquire new vocabulary in English language, they are acquiring building blocks of language. Words are abstract symbols that we are able to manipulate without actually having present the things that they represent. This situation makes possible communication with others on countless topics, both familiar to and far removed from our existence. Without vocabulary, most oral and written communication would be impossible.

Types of Vocabularies

There are four different types of vocabularies: listening, speaking, reading and writing. In this section of this work I will try to show how and when students develop their vocabulary during the learning English language.

Ø Listening Vocabulary.

The listening vocabulary is composed of those words a person understands when he or she hears them spoken. It is possible for a word to be in a person's listening vocabulary and not in his or her speaking, reading, or writing vocabulary. For many students, the listening vocabulary exceeds each of the other vocabularies by a large margin. Listening develops in a student before speaking, reading and writing and may serve as a readiness agent for the other areas. When a child at his or her first lessons of foreign language begins to recognize that the word “pen” means the same like in Russian language “ðó÷êà”, the child will respond without mistake when the teacher shows him/her the pen and asks “What is it?”. Later the child will feel confident enough of the word to use it to communicate with others orally. Still later, reading and writing of the word are likely to develop.

Ø Speaking Vocabulary.

The speaking vocabulary is composed of those words a person can use orally to communicate information to others. Since speaking vocabularies are generally based on listening vocabularies, they are generally smaller than the listening vocabularies. Most students, even people in their own language understand many words that they never use in their speech.

Ø Reading Vocabulary.

The reading vocabulary is composed of the words that a student recognizes and understands when they are seen in print. A word may be in a student's listening and speaking vocabularies and still not be in his or her reading vocabulary for at least two reasons. First, this occur because the child has not yet learned the sound/symbol relations that are needed to read that word, even though there is a regular sound/symbol association involved. For example, a child at the first stages of studying English language may understand the word “clock” when he or she hears it and may be able to use the word when speaking, but, because the child has not learned the ck blend or some other part of the word, he or she may not be able to read the word “clock” yet. Another reason a word may not be in a person's reading vocabulary is that the word doesn't fit a regular sound/symbol association pattern. For example, a child may have used word “daughter” before, may understand the word when it is spoken, and may be able to use the word orally, and still not be able to recognize it in print because the sound/symbol associations are not regular in English.

Ø Writing Vocabulary.

The writing vocabulary is composed of words that a student can use accurately in written form, in his or her written communications. Most students have fewer words in their writing vocabularies than in their listening, speaking and reading vocabularies. Using a word in writing requires more than just understanding it when it is heard (listening vocabulary) or read (reading vocabulary). Just as speaking the word does, writing the work requires the ability to recall the word and its meaning and to place it in meaningful relationships to other words, but writing requires one additional step - encoding the word into printed symbols. Writing vocabulary therefore takes somewhat longer to acquire. In addition, the permanence of the written word, as opposed to the spoken word, and its openness to close scrutiny make students unwilling to use in writing any words that they are not sure they have under complete control. Students writing themes, for example, often have excellent descriptive words in mind to use, but opt for easier words because they are more sure of either their spellings or meanings.

Vocabulary Building

Vocabulary instruction is a complex area. Teachers must choose words to teach on the lessons and techniques for more effective way of teaching these words.

Choosing Words to Teach.

Regardless of whether you are concerned with developing listening, speaking, reading or writing vocabulary, or even all of these vocabularies, teacher must choose the terms on which teacher plan to focus instruction. The terms that teacher choose should be high-utility words for the grade level of students with which teacher are working. They may be chosen from words needed to deal with the basal reader lessons or content area textbook material. It makes sense to teach words that easier to learn first and then to follow up with the harder ones. Words that have concrete referents are easier to learn than are abstract words. Words that can be tied into the students' experiences are easier than ones that cannot. Structure words, such as what or thought, are generally harder to learn than are nouns or verbs.

Just because a word appears for the first time in a basal reader the assumption cannot be made that the children don't know the word. Preliminary discussion about the lesson to assess and/or build background and to build motivation often reveals that a “new” word is already known and therefore needs no further class attention. On the other hand, some words that have been previously presented may not have been learned by the children. Teachers should be alert for this possibility also and be ready to work with words other than the “new” words that require attention. Paying attention to difficult words from previous lessons which may require reteaching or elaboration in new contexts should be standard procedure.

Techniques for Teaching.

Vocabulary development techniques should actively involve the learner as much as possible. Students understand and retain better those things that they have experienced most directly and have been involved in analyzing and discussing. Encouraging use in spoken and written language of the vocabulary terms that are receiving attention is therefore a good idea.

One active method of learning word meanings is through conversations with the teacher and other students about a topic to which the words are related.

Some specific techniques for teaching vocabulary are described below. They are not meant to be used in isolation, but in combinations that allow the students to manipulate the words being studied in a variety ways. These techniques may be used in conjunction with development of basal reader vocabulary, general vocabulary knowledge, or content area vocabulary.

Ø Categorization.

One of the most effective ways to work with words and word meanings is to place the words into categories. By seeing the relationships among many familiar words and the new words, children are able to build connections between new information and prior knowledge. Arranging words in categories is also one way to develop the thinking skill of classifying.

Teachers can use a children's game like “Animals” or “Vegetables”, in which one person thinks of an item and the others try to identify it by first determining the general category and then asking questions about it that can be answering by “YES” or “NO”. If the item is not identified in a specified number of questions, the questioner had lost, the other player identifies the item and then thinks of another item, and the game begins again. This game might be played in the classroom with new vocabulary terms being interspersed with familiar words.

Plastic miniatures of people, animals, vehicles and buildings can also be used for the children as the basis for classification activities. The teacher may place the items on a table in an arrangement such that all of the items except one could fit into a common category, such as “people”. The children are asked to find and remove the item that does not fit and to tell why the chose that item in Russian or Kazakh language. The items may also be grouped into classifications such as living and nonliving, movable and stationary and so on. The teacher should lead the children to discuss reasons for grouping that they develop, pointing out common characteristics.

At first the teacher may designate the categories into which items must be placed, but eventually the children need to come up with the categories independently. This same sequence could be used with word lists in reading.

The teacher may also provide a category, without providing items to place within the category, and let the children suggest appropriate items. For example, teacher asks children to suggest things that grow from the list given below: hair, animal, street, today, child, window, cat, etc.

Also teacher can use this kind of game that can be enjoyable for children and can promote vocabulary development at the same time. In the activity a word is written vertically on the left side of the paper as shown in the table below. Categories are placed in a row across the top of the page. The children are challenged to use reference books or dictionaries to help them fill in the resulting grid with words for each category that start with each letter on the left.

Ø Semantic Feature Analysis.

This semantic feature analysis is another good way to conduct word study. In it a number of words are categorized in relationship to several characteristics. For instance, musical instruments might be located under such classifications as string, woodwind, brass, percussion, mouthpiece, bow and others, as shown below. The more features that are considered, the more knowledge the children have to display about the target words in order to complete the chart. If enough features are included along the top of the chart, no two items will have exactly the same pattern of pluses and minuses. In the charter below, for example, timpani and snare drum have the same pattern, but the addition of snares to the list of features would differentiate the two items. Similarly, trumpet and trombone have the same pattern, but the addition of slide to the list of features would change the pattern.

Ranking words on one feature is one activity related to semantic feature analysis. For example, words such as none, some, many and all could be ranked on the basis of amount. Synonyms are words that mean close to the same thing, rather than exactly the same thing. Ranking the synonyms on one feature is a helpful activity. For example, the words smell, odor and stench might be rated according to intensity.

Ø Making Analogies.

Making analogies is a good way to learn about the words, as well as to develop thinking skills related to classifying, comparing and contrasting. Young children will start learning the skill necessary for making analogies when they engage in categorization activities, for successful analogy construction requires the recognition of the relationships among words. With young children the teacher may say “A sock goes on your foot like what goes on your hand?” The children are led to see that both relationships are the same type. Gradually the analogies come to be stated as “Sock is to foot as ________ is to hand.” Analogies can be developed on the basis of a multitude of possible relationships: synonym, antonym, homonym, member-organization, etc. Older students can be introduced to the symbols related to analogies, as the analogies become “Sock-foot, ____ - hand” Children enjoy competing to complete such analogies and also creating analogies of their own. Such activities require the use of higher-order thinking skills.

Structural Analysis.

Structural analysis involves learning to recognize common word parts, such as prefixes, suffixes, endings, parts of compound words and parts of contractions, and associating meaning with these word parts. Knowledge of structural analysis gives students a powerful tool in learning the meanings of new words that they encounter. It also enables them to develop skill in analytical thinking as they learn how to understand and use parts of words.

Prefixes and suffixes are common word parts that influence the meanings of the words of which they are a part. Prefixes are group of letters attached to the beginnings of words that modify the meanings of the words (e.g. tie-untie). Suffixes are groups of letters added to the endings of words that may change their meanings or parts of speech (e.g. act-action).

Endings are letters or groups of letters added to the endings of words that may change the tense (e.g. look - looked) or person (e.g. go - goes) of the verb, the number (e.g. girl - girls), case (e.g. Jack - Jack's), gender of the noun (e.g. host-hostess), or degree of the adjective (e.g. big - bigger).

Compound words are words made up of two or more smaller words that combine to produce a new meaning (e.g. houseboat). Sometimes compound nouns consist of two separate nouns, like in word “police officer” (ïîëèöåéñêèé).

Contractions are formed by joining two words together, leaving out one or more letters and replacing them with the apostrophe (e.g. he would - he'd). Some children have trouble differentiating between contractions and possessives, which are also formed with apostrophes. They should be told to substitute the two words from which the contractions would have been formed for the word in the sentences. The result is nonsense when the word was actually possessive.

Teaching prefixes and suffixes by presenting lists of the word parts and their meanings is not a good practice. The word parts will be learned best if they are taught in the context of words for which the children can see some in their school activities.

In working with endings, emphasizing the effects that the endings have on words is important also. First graders may benefit from a practice activity such as shown in this exercise. Teacher asks children to put each word under the correct heading.

Words: tree, toys, birds, hat, bees, book.

After the children have completed the written activity, the teacher should lead a discussion about the endings of the words in the second column. Children can be asked to produce the singular forms of these words for comparison.

Another ending practice activity is shown in the following exercise. Teacher asks children place the words “big, bigger, biggest” under the correct pictures.

__________ ______________ ______________

Ø Use of the Dictionary.

Use of the dictionary is another approach to vocabulary development that should be overlooked. Dictionary skills need to be deliberately taught, so that students can use them independently when the need arises. It is very important to learn how to use the dictionary, because when students look up words in the dictionary, they often do not fully use the information that is found. If they need only on pronunciation of the word, the phonetic respelling and the pronunciation key hold the information sought. If they are seeking info about meaning, however, they need to be led to use some info that they may have been ignoring. For example, in addition to the lists of translation and meanings that the students expect to find in the dictionary, the are part-of-speech labels, sometimes represented by abbreviations that have to be looked up in the list of abbreviations located elsewhere in the dictionary. There may also be special forms of words with varying endings; indications of language of origin, along with the meanings of the words in those languages; a picture that represents the word; or a sentence that shows the word meaning in the context. All of these features can be helpful in the exploration of word meaning. Pictures that show the word's meaning are very helpful to children who have difficulty visualizing the meanings of printed terms, and sample sentences with the word in context often help them to apply the definition more accurately.

The teacher should discuss the definitions with the children, making sure that they realize that a word may have many different meanings, only one of which will make sense in the context in which they have heard or seen it. Each definition, or at least each definition of the word that is listed under the appropriate part of speech, must be read carefully and tested to see if it would make sense in the context under consideration. Children too often try to force the first definition listed to fit any context that they find, ignoring others that would fit more exactly.

Some activities that can involve students in vocabulary building through use of the dictionary are shown below:

1. Write a list of questions that must be answered by looking the key word up in the dictionary. Some examples follow:

a. Can you drink out of a bluebottle? Why or why not?

b. Can you eat a damson? Why or why not?

c. Is excelsior good for a stomachache? Why or why not?

2. Have the students look up a word in the dictionary and write the meaning that fits each of several contexts provided. As example of some contexts that could be used for the word “act” follows:

a. They left the theater before the first act was over.

b. Don't act like you have never been taught any manners.

c. I wish I could act that part the way Jane did.

d. Taking them in was an act of mercy.

3. Let students search their dictionaries for words that they don't know, but would like to learn. Let each one read definition of a chosen word to the class, and let the class members guess the word from the meaning. If the word if not guessed on the basis of the first meaning read, let the student continue to read meanings until the word is guessed or the definitions are exhausted. Then hold a class discussion of the word, its various definitions, and possible uses of the word in context. A variation of this activity can be carried out with the teacher choosing all of the words to be discussed and the students competing to see who can guess each one first.

1. Construction Word Webs.

The construction of word webs is a good way to examine many characteristics of words and their meanings and relationships with other words. Suppose the students were preparing to read a story about a circus. Exploring the term “circus” before the reading begins will bring out the things the children already know about the circus and will meaningfully relate things that they know with things that other children know. The discussion that accompanies building the web is good preparation for reading the story. After reading a web can be expanded based on added information.

Words related to the circus will probably be suggested in rather random order, but the teacher can write them on the board with related ideas close together and later ask the students for a category name for each group of ideas. For example, the teacher developing a web above had to ask “What is a word that describes popcorn, soft drinks and chocolate?”

This way of leaning new words is more effective than just write them on the blackboard with translation. Also teacher can give this task to read a new story and make a web of new words at home.

2. Work Bank Building.

Word bank building is a good individual vocabulary development activity. With this activity students write words that they want to add to their meaning vocabularies on the small cards. These word cards will have the word, its phonetic respelling if pronunciation is difficult, translation or definition, a synonym, possibly a picture illustrating the word or a sentence using it in context, and a personal example related to the word.

After a number of word cards have been accumulated in a student's word bank, the teacher may use the word bank cards in classroom activities that he or she plans. For example, the teacher may ask each student to locate in his or her word bank all of the words that describe things, all of the words that name things, all of the words that show the action and so on.

3. Word Play,

Word play is an enjoyable way to promote vocabulary growth. Word play may include use of different games, like crossword puzzles, hidden-word puzzles, scrambled-word puzzles, games based on traditional games.

Crossword puzzles are enjoyable activities, and teacher can construct crossword puzzles to fit any set of words that is being studied.

To make the hidden-word puzzle emphasize meaning, give only definitions of or synonyms for the words that the children are seeking, rather than telling them the words themselves. When they find a word, they circle the word and put the number of the definition or synonym in the circle.

Scramble-word puzzles are also motivational devices. After scrambling the words, definitions of the words to be unscrambled should be provided to reinforce the importance of meaning in the activity.

4. Odd One Out.

This game is also very interesting for children. Teacher gives a list of 3 or 4 words where children have to find a word out of the list. For example, in following list of words tea, milk, salad, fruit juice the word salad is out, because other words represent what we can drink, but salad is what we eat.

vocabulary categorization semantic feature

Special Types of Vocabulary Terms

Some words and phrases have special attributes that make them particularly interesting to study. Synonyms, antonyms, homonym, multiple-meaning words, words borrowed from other languages, abbreviations, acronyms can all be the basis for meaningful lessons. Knowledge of these types of words and phrases can make understanding spoken and written language easier and can enhance usage in personal speaking and writing activities.

5. Synonyms.

Knowledge of synonyms can increase a person's range of understanding when listening and reading, and it can make his or her spoken and written language more varied, interesting and exact. Although synonyms may have almost identical meanings at times, in most cases there are fine distinctions among the exact meanings of synonyms. A person may be pleased to be referred to as “slender”, but make take offence at being called “thin”, which is one synonym. Both “thin” and “slender” mean “not thick”, but “thin” implies a lack of fullness, whereas “slender” implies a graceful leanness. Carefully choosing synonyms, therefore, may make it possible to flatter, rather than insult people or to give a positive, rather than a negative, slant to what you are saying.

Playing a game called “Varied Verbs” can help children work on the fine distinctions in meaning among verbs that are listed as synonyms. For example, Webster's New World Thesaurus list “march” , “amble”, “saunter” as synonyms for “walk”. Children can act out the meanings of these verbs and the class can discuss the differences among the ways of walking. Students can clarify the meanings of the separate words while they are adding to the repertoires of words that they can use to express themselves more exactly in speaking and writing.

Use of the dictionaries and thesaurus to promote understanding of synonyms can be effective. Children can look up words in these sources and discuss in class the information presented by them, calling attention to fine differences in word meanings, even when the words are very close in meaning. They can construct sample sentences to highlight the differences. For example, word “fried” is listed as a synonym to “heated” in Webster's New World Thesaurus. A sentence such as the following could show how the meanings differ somewhat: “Since the potatoes had been fried earlier, I didn't feel that they needed to be fried again, so I just heated them in the oven.” The teacher should think through some of these small differentiations and first explain them to the children as a model for the activity, and then let the children try to come up with similar differentiations for other words.

6. Antonyms.

Antonyms are words pair that have opposite meanings, such as up and down. Knowledge of antonyms can make speech and written communications clearer and more exact. This knowledge can also help an individual use context clues involving contrast to best effect when listening to oral communications or when reading. Students sometimes have some difficulty in differentiating between a word that has a meaning that is opposite from that of the another word and a word that simply has a meaning that is different from that of the other word. For example, when asked for an antonym for “hot”, they may say “warm” rather than “cold”. Quite a bit of instructional attention may be necessary to develop the idea that “hot” and “cold” represent extremes on the scale of temperature, whereas “warm” lies somewhere in between and is commonly thought to be the opposite of “cool”, another term that does not designate an extreme.

Playing a game called “Opposites” is good for developing meanings of antonyms. The teacher writes pairs of antonyms on word cards ad gives one card to each of a pair of students. The students act out the words on their cards simultaneously, while the children in the class try to identify the antonym pair involved. The pair can be as simple as “high” and “low” or as hard as “rude” and “polite”. The difficulty can be varied to fit the specific class.

As was true with synonyms, use of the dictionaries and thesaurus can be helpful in lessons concerning antonyms. Students can rewrite sentences, producing opposite meanings by changing single words. Debates on the accuracy of the outcomes can be arbitrated through use of the dictionary or thesaurus.

7. Homonyms.

Homonyms are sets of words the sound alike, but have a different spellings and different meanings, for example, “pear”, “pair” and “pare”. Homonyms may cause special decoding problems for some children in reading, since they have to learn that two or three different spellings result in the same pronunciation; however, these different spellings may actually have an overall positive effect on the reading act because the different spelling cue different meanings for the children. Homonyms cause many problems for students in writing also. Recalling the correct spelling for the particular usage appears to be very difficult for many students and incorrect choices abound in writing samples.

Students need to be encouraged to use the dictionary to decide on the spelling for the particular homonym that they wish to use. Activities in which the students replace incorrect homonyms in passages may encourage them to be aware of the need to check their own writing.

8. Multiple-Meaning Words.

Words that have more than one meaning can cause difficulties in understanding to both listeners and readers.

Very common words are often the ones that have the most different meanings associated them. For example, the word “run” has a different meaning in each of the following sentences:

1. I will run around the track for 15 minutes every day.

2. Let the water run until it gets hot.

3. There was a run on the bank when people heard about the arrest of the employee.

4. Mark had a run of bad luck.

5. They sold out the entire print run of the booklet.

There are only a few of the possibilities for using this word “run” in different context.

Young children and even older children have difficulty using the context when less familiar meanings of multiple-meanings words are found in sentences. This could either be because the don't know the particular meanings involved or because they fail to attend the important context clues. Students need to be exposed to different meanings associated with the same word, and they need to be helped to use context clues effectively.

Brainstorming about multiple-meaning words can be a worthwhile activity, especially among gifted learners, who tens to have more meanings collected for the words in their vocabularies. The teacher can put a word on the blackboard and have children give as many different meanings as they can for it. The teacher can then write the different meanings on the board, surrounding the word, as in shown below. The children can discuss each meaning given and make sentences fitting each meaning.

âåñíà ïðûæîê

êëþ÷, ðîäíèê ïðóæèíà

Another good technique to use when brainstorming about multiple-meaning words is to have the children come to the blackboard and illustrate the different meanings of the chosen word. They could even illustrate the meanings on large sheets of paper that could become murals in the classroom.

Students need to learn to use dictionary to decide on the meanings for multiple-meaning words that fit the particular situations in which the word are found. In order to do this, the children must look up the word, read each definition, and decide if that meaning fit to context in which the word was found. They need help in seeing that some of the definitions will not make sense in the given context and that a search for an appropriate definition, not just any definitions, is necessary. They can take a list of dictionary definitions for a given word and a number of occurrences of that word in context and match each context example to a definition that makes sense.

9. Abbreviations.

Abbreviations are shortened forms of words, generally ending with a period. Teachers need to lead children to see that some of the original letters are left out of words to form abbreviations. The children can discuss with the teacher why it is often convenient to abbreviate a word instead of writing it out completely. Common abbreviations, such as Mr., Mrs., Dr., am and pm, can be introduced and discussed. The children can practice using these abbreviations in writing assignments requiring the use of such specific terms. The teacher may also conduct activities in which the students are asked to match the words with their abbreviations.

10. Acronyms.

Acronyms are words that are formed from the first letters or initial syllables of a series of words in a term. For example, NATO stands for “North Atlantic Treaty Organization”, TOEFL stands for “Test of English as a Foreign Language” and radar stands for “radio detecting and ranging”. Radar has been in use for so long that most people think of it as just a regular word and don't realize its origin. Students may understand acronyms better if they construct pronounceable acronyms for fictitious organizations in which the acronyms say something about the organization, just as is true of many actual organizations, for example, there is a MADD organization in United States of America that stands for “Mothers Against Drunk Driving”. This activity is a good one to stimulate creative thinking.

11. Words borrowed form other languages.

English language has borrowed many terms from other languages. Because many of these words are not pronounced the way that they look, they often cause reading difficulties for students. In these case teacher can just show how they are read and from what language these words came from. Even in Russian language there are many borrowed words from other languages, like we don't say “ýëåêòðîííàÿ ïî÷òà” we just say “e-mail”.

Conclusion

In my assignment I tied to show how teacher could help children to develop their speech through the learning new words. I believe that the most effective way for learning and studying foreign language is method of games, because it is very important to arise the interest in students to learn the language. And at the age of 6 or 7 years these unusual ways of teaching would be very interesting for children, not the old and boring classes that we had some years ago, like reading and memorizing new words.

The vocabulary knowledge can be evaluated by different kinds of tests, that evaluating the reading, listening, writing and speaking vocabulary.

Literature

1. An Introduction to Teaching the Language Arts - Elinor P. Ross and Betty D. Roe.

2. Reading Instructions for Today - Jana M. Mason, Kathryn H. Au.

3. Teaching English as a foreign language - Carol Smith.

4. Language Teaching - Robert G. Mead.

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