Chapter 1 the study of collocations

2.4.1  Vocabulary as a Language Sub-skill  
 
 
Interest in L2 vocabulary development has been expressed by two 
sources: those linguists and language practitioners who saw vocabulary as a 
component of one of the four major language skills, i.e. reading, and those who 
 
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saw vocabulary as an independent aspect of language development, equal in 
importance and status to grammar. 
 
L2 vocabulary development is viewed as a necessary subcomponent of 
the development of reading skills because L2 learners need very well 
developed vocabularies in order to read authentic selections (Dubin 1989).  
However, according to Dubin, ESL learners do not have time to undertake 
separate vocabulary building courses, and furthermore, teaching vocabulary 
items which are not embedded in some meaningful context, such as a stretch of 
text, does not seem to help learners, and therefore vocabulary should be taught 
through unedited text. 
 
Krashen's view on vocabulary acquisition is that vocabulary is acquired 
in the same way that the rest of the language is acquired (Krashen 1989).  In the 
skill-building view, vocabulary learning "involves learning words one at a time, 
by deliberate study" (Krashen 1989:440) and comprehensible input in the form 
of reading and listening to stories is the way to successful vocabulary 
development.  Krashen concludes that explicit teaching of vocabulary is not so 
effective and "in addition, many vocabulary teaching methods are at best 
boring, and are at worst painful" (Krashen 1989:450).  Thus, successful 
vocabulary development can only occur through the development of reading 
and listening skills.    
 
Along the same lines Fox (1987) suggests an approach to vocabulary 
development based on the assumption that  "developing vocabulary and 
reading skills takes time and extensive practice" (Fox 1987:310).  According to 
 
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this approach, reading simplified texts followed by more complex ones results 
in a gradual development of L2 vocabulary.  Fox also expresses the need for 
research on rates of acquiring receptive vocabulary.   
 
Oral translation was also suggested as an adequate exercise to build 
vocabulary (Heltai 1989) as it makes students devote attention to vocabulary, 
and encourages them to extend their vocabulary into new areas, for example 
synonymic sets, collocations and idioms (Heltai 1989:292).  However, such an 
approach can be made possible only under the condition that all the students 
and the teacher share the same mother tongue.  Other L2 vocabulary teaching 
suggestions include the teaching of new words through a "meaningful learning 
approach", i.e. teaching the etymology of a word, as opposed to other 
techniques such as rote memorisation of words, especially with intermediate 
and advanced L2 learners (Pierson 1989:57).  
 
The above studies express an 'interest' in vocabulary acquisition mainly 
due to fact that language practitioners realised that the development of reading 
skills was impeded because of the lack of adequate vocabulary.  The 
suggestions given for vocabulary development are not the product of research 
in the development of L2 vocabulary, but ways of circumventing the problem 
of inadequate vocabulary in order to develop reading skills.