Vocabulary teaching techniques

2

Размещено на http://www.allbest.ru/

Vocabulary teaching techniques

Aysun Kayaaltэ Selahattin

Department of English Language Ahmet Yasavi University, Turkestan City, Kazakhstan e-mail: aysunkylt@gmail.com

Student: Ayan Utebayeva Islamovna

First, it is to clarify the meaning of vocabulary. Vocabulary is a very important part of language learning as Coady and Huckin emphasize: 'Vocabulary is central to language and of critical importance to the typical language learners'. It contains the knowledge of words and meanings, which we also can describe as dictionary meaning. Vocabulary teaching seems to be easy from outside, but it is mostly difficult for students because students have also to know how the learnt vocabulary fits into context. Hague (1987) says `vocabulary is by far the most sizable and unmanageable component in the learning of any language, whether for a foreign or one's mother tongue because of thousands of different meanings'. Here we understand that it is not quite easy.

Human beings use language to express their ideas, feelings and thoughts. If a language is composed of vocabulary we can say that we use vocabulary to express ourselves. The well-known English linguist Wilkins (1974) says: `People could describe few things without grammar, but they could express nothing without vocabulary.' This sentence says a lot about the importance of vocabulary teaching in foreign language learning.Numerous types of approaches, techniques, exercises and practice have been introduced about vocabulary (Hatch & Brown, 1995).

The purpose of the study is about vocabulary teaching in foreign language and about old and modern teaching techniques because as Lofti Ghazal states:'Thus, students need training in vocabulary learning strategies they need most.'(84)

a) What is Vocabulary learning?

b) What are the Vocabulary learning methods in foreign language?

Vocabulary Teaching in the Last Decade

The story of vocabulary teaching started with the Grammar-translation method in the 19th century. Before starting a new unit in a classic textbook the students are expected to memorize a bilingual vocabulary list, which contains the target language and its meaning in the mother tongue and the students have to translate text from one language to the other. No attention is paid to pronunciation. So the main purpose of a language learning does not fulfill with this technique.

Bakers (1972) says: `The Grammar-Translation method lost its importance in the beginning of the 20th century when linguists introduces the Direct Method.' In this method more attention was paid to train students in communication rather than just memorizing vocabulary as Kruse summarized in 1979 the five aids to learning vocabulary using: prefixes, suffixes, roots, pictures, diagrams, charts; clues of definition; and inference clues from discourse. The students should be able to speak the target language at the end of the course. Pronunciation is also an important aspect in this teaching method. It asserts that vocabulary can only be learned through interactions in the classroom. By this reason vocabulary learning happens from simple to more complex interactions. Vocabulary is more important in this method than grammar learning, however the behavioristic perspective is also seen in this method, because errors are not tolerated and students had to pronounce the words correctly to avoid fossilization. The vocabularies are chosen from daily life words. Language learning is regarded as a habit. `Behaviorists believe that language acquisition is the result of habit formation (Lightbown&Spada, 9).So students learn by repeating the words. Ying he states in his academic paper: `Behaviorism concerns the connection between the target language and the learners. This connection begins when the learner receives the linguistic input from the target language, no matter whether it is verbal or nonverbal' (20-21). This explanation can be also be regarded as the definition of teaching vocabulary in the last decade.

Modern Techniques in Language Teaching

There is an interest to the question of how to teach vocabulary in the last century. Researchers always seek for new techniques to be more effective, because it today's world it is not enough to learn only one foreign language.Sheelah M. Sweeny (1994) says: 'People especially multi-linguals are preferred in many jobs.' So, students want to learn many languages as possible in the years of high school or university. There are three techniques in the current status of vocabulary teaching in a modern way. vocabulary teaching techniques

The first one is explicit and implicit vocabulary teaching. As the name suggests explicit teaching method is that the teacher gives the new item or vocabulary to be learnt, he/she presents its meaning and the students make practices with the new vocabulary and they are expected to develop this vocabulary in communication. However, in the implicit way, also called incidental, the students are expected to find out the meaning of a vocabulary by themselves through listening or reading.Meara argues that incidental learning is product of learning and it is not like the intentional learning which is designed by teachers or students.(3726-3728)

The implicit way of teaching vocabulary is often discussed because it has some advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that students acquire the meaning of the word by him/herself, so it will last long. Disadvantage of this technique is that it costs a lot of time for the teacher and also for the student. Also some students can infer a wrong meaning while learning or listening.

The second way of modern teaching technique is Lexical Approach. Lewis says `Language consists not of traditional grammar and vocabulary, but often of multi-word prefabricated chunks' (Lewis, 1993). Here Lewis mentions that vocabulary learning is not such east as it seems, because there are thousands of words in a language. Lewis suggests to learn vocabulary in chunks to make connections between vocabularies and to understand conversations because chunks also include idioms. Students need a lot of help from the teacher in this technique. Furthermore another linguist adds: "It is our ability to use lexical phrases that helps us to speak with fluency. This prefabricated speech has both the advantages of more efficient retrieval and of permitting speakers (and learners) to direct their attention to the larger structure of the discourse, rather than keeping it narrowly focused on individual words as they are produced" (Nattinger and DeCarrico 1992).

The last one is the research based approach. `Both teachers and students should be involved in the selection of words for study.'(Sweeny) In this technique the teacher chooses the text according to the interest of the student and he/she pays attention to the appropriate vocabulary choice. Reading skill is very important in this technique as Ruddell and Shearer suggests: `It elevates their metacognition while reading and increases their awareness of words and the way language works.'(Ruddell& Shearer, 2002). One activity for research-based is to guess and then to check the guess on the web or in the dictionary. In such activities like guessing from the context, teachers can see what learners are performing. (Porte, 1988) `The small amount of research on such teaching indicates that it has a strong effect on vocabulary learning'. (Paul Nation) The learnt item is in this way more permanent.

Importance to vocabulary started with the grammar-translation method and it improved itself within the years, even though there is not a best way of vocabulary teaching in my opinion. To be a successful teacher or student, the teacher has to use all of the techniques according to the subject in an appropriate way. For example, if a foreign language learner has a text with medical explanations, it would not help to let the student to try to imply the meaning of the text with incidental learning technique, because it would be nonsense.

REFERENCES

1. Wilkins, D. A. 1974. Second-Language Learning and Teaching, London: Edward Arnold.

2. Lewis, M. 1993. The Lexical Approach. Hove: Language Teaching Publications

3. Hague, S.A.1987. Vocabulary Instruction: What L2 can learn from L1. Foreign Language Annals, 203.

4. Nattinger, James R. and DeCarrico Jeanette S. (1992). Lexical Phrases and Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

5. Ruddell, M. R., & Shearer, B. A. (2002). “Extraordinary,” “tremendous,” “exhilarating,” “magnificent”: Middle school at risk students become avid word learners with the Vocabulary Self-Collection Strategy (VSS). Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 352-363

6. Sheelah M. Sweeny, Ph.D., Committee Co-Chair.Research-based Practices in Vocabulary Instruction.Prepared by the Studies & Research Committee of the Massachusetts Reading Association August 2011, 2.

7. Coady and Huckin. 1997. Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition: a Rationale for Pedagogy. UK: Cambridge University Press.

8. Kruse, A.F.1979. Vocabulary in Context. ELT Journal, 207-213. 09.01.2016 from http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/ Norris, W. E. (1971). Advanced Reading: Goals, Techniques, and Procedures. English Teaching Forum.

9. Lightbown, M.P.&Spada, N.(1999). How Languages are Learned. Oxford. ; Oxford

10. University Press.

11. He, Ying. 2010. A Study of L2 Vocabulary Learning Strategies.Kristianstad University Press.

12. Meara, P. (1994).Second Language Acquisition: Lexis.[ In ] Asher, R. E. (Ed.), The

13. Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

14. Hatch, E., & Brown, C. (1995). Vocabulary, semantics, and language education, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

15. Ghazal, Lofti. Learning Vocabulary in EFL Contexts through Vocabulary Learning Strategies.Novitas Royal Research on Youth and Language. Vol.:1(2), 84-91

16. Porte, G. (1988). Poor language learners and their strategies for dealing with new vocabulary. ELT Journal, 42 (3), 167-71.

17. Nation, Paul. Teaching Vocabulary. Victoria University of Wellington, New Zeeland. Asian EFL Journal.

Размещено на Allbest.ru