Developing vocabulary strategies for adult learners of english

DEVELOPING VOCABULARY STRATEGIES FOR ADULT LEARNERS OF ENGLISH

Jizzakh State Pedagogical University
Foreign language and literature
2nd year
Kobayeva Surayyo Askarali kizi
my supervisor: Doctor of Philosophy in Philology,
PhD. Mukhitdinova Nazira Batirkhanovna

Annotation: The article deal with important information about teaching and learning vocabulary. Moreover, examples of special strategies in improving vocabulary learning for English learners, interactive methods were given.
Key words: subskills, phonological, productive, active, students age, convention, lexical networks.
As we all know teaching and learning vocabulary is a very important objective in learning foreign language. According to psychologists, human beings learn the life experiences by words, because thoughts are made by words. Word is a central unit of a language: language first of all is the system of words. Without a sufficient vocabulary, students cannot communicate effectively and express ideas. Having a limited vocabulary is also a barrier that prevents students from learning a foreign language. If learners do not know how to expand their vocabulary, they gradually lose interest in learning. The necessity of vocabulary enrichment is pointed out in curriculum. Fortunately, for students and teachers, the most vocabulary growth takes place through incidental learning, that is through exposure to comprehensible language in reading, listening, speaking, audios and videos and so on[1].
It is necessary to study both theoretical and practical approaches to teaching vocabulary. Thus, knowing the vocabulary selecting criteria is significant for an effective learning. The main practical aim of teaching vocabulary in the primary
and secondary schools is to develop the learners’ vocabulary subskills as a basic omponent of all language and communicative activities. One should realize that the terms “vocabulary” and “words” are not the same. Learning a new language is basically a matter of learning the vocabulary of that language. Not being able to find the words you need to express is the most frustrating experience in speaking
another language. Without doubt vocabulary is not the only thing you have to know about the language. Other levels of language (grammar, phonetic, phonological, and stylistic) are also important. Nevertheless it is possible to have good knowledge of how the language system works and yet not be able to communicate in it; whereas if we have the vocabulary we need assimilate to
communicate. Anyone who learns a new language is likely to recognize more words than he/she can produce. It is difficult to produce a word correctly. It is necessary to pronounce or spell it in the right way, to use it in the correct grammatical form, to use it appropriately to the context. It may therefore be important for a teacher to decide which words are appropriate and relevant for students age and stage. What words can form the ‘productive’ or ‘active’ vocabulary? The teacher also should decide which words she/he wishes her/his students merely to recognize[2]. In other words, what words are considered as
the ‘receptive’ or ‘passive’ vocabulary. The production of words (while speaking or writing) in the target language takes much greater efforts from the learner. Of course, in productive vocabulary, the learner has an advantage to choose the word he wishes to use.
Vocabulary can be defined, roughly, as the words we have to teach in a foreign language class. However, a new item of the vocabulary may occur not in the form of a single word: for example, pen-holder and merry-go-round, which are made up of two or three words but express a single idea. There are also many -word idioms such as take the bull by the horns, where the meaning of the phrase
cannot be deduced from the analysis of the component words. A useful convention would be to cover all such cases as vocabulary «items» rather than «words». It is also called mental lexicon that is «vocabulary in mind». It consists of the smallest independent meaningful units of speech. These units of speech are called words. The words have the word forms and meanings assigned to them. Words in the mental lexicon create lexical networks. Once activated, a lexical item stimulates the spreading of other associated lexical items, which in its turn causes the activation of a bigger network. Mental lexicon is stored in our memory and it is the process of mapping the meanings in the mind and putting these memory traces into some word groups. Mental lexicon performs the functions of word storage, retrieval, comprehension and use. The storage of words in the mental lexicon is the result of a person’s cognitive processes in real-world situations[3]. As a result of cognitive processes, the words make up the situation sets (associated with a particular situation, objects, phenomena or processes), semantic sets (associated with a concept) and collocation sets (associated with other words by habitual everyday use).
The process of development of vocabulary subskills in the English classrooms proposes three stages. Stage I is related to the presentation of a new vocabulary. The aim is to introduce a new word and disclose the meaning of each
word. Ways and techniques to convey the meaning of a word are:
Direct way. It is time to deal with the matters, first, how to work on a new
word. There are 2 ways: 1) a word in isolation; 2) via the context
The second, how to work on an isolated word:
- when you deal with proper names, geographical names;
- sometimes you can give some words to develop the language nguessing abilities (the first word is given in the context, the rest
– in isolation: a runner - in the context; a jumper - will be easily
guessed);
- when teaching the students to work with a dictionary. The work on a new word in the context is more widely used, in particular, in a phrase, in a situation, in a story, in question-answer form, in a talk. It leads to better assimilation of new words.

• 
  Stage II - drilling, its aim is to create or form the stereotypes of usage of a new word.
  
• 
  Stage III - situational (communicative practice) aimed to developing or improving the vocabulary subskills in the aspect of using vocabulary in the speech.
  

People can communicate using 400-500 words. An educated person uses 3000-5000 words to express his ideas in the written andspoken forms of speech. A person should know more than 3000- 5000 words for reading and listening. Famous writers and poets use 20-25 thousand words in their works. Many language teaching programmes aspire to teach only about 2000 words. Are the remaining words learnt from a dictionary? Definitely not. If the meanings have not been supplied by outside sources, as it were, then where have they been found?
The answer is, of course, that we guess the meanings of the words by hearing them used in a certain situafion or by reading them in a certain context and guessing their meaning from the context[4]. In connection with the matter of guessing importance in the communicative activity (during reading or listening) it is necessary to discuss some ways to learn words in the context in detail. Infering the word meaning from the context allows the student to infer or guess the meaning from the context or illustrations.
REFERENCES:

1. 
   J.J. Jalolov, G.T, Makhkamova, Sh.S. Ashurov. English Language Teaching Methodology (theory and practice) Toshkent - «Fan va texnologiya» - 2015
   
2. 
   Мильруд Р.П., Максимова И.Р.Современные концептуальные принципы коммуникативного обучения иностранным языкам // Иностранные языки в школе. — М., 2000. - №4, - С. 9-15, 111
   
3. 
   Urp. A Course in Language Teaching. Practice and theory. -Cambridge; CUP, 2003. -Pp. 82-90. 113
   
4. 
   Millrood R.P. English Teaching Methodology. -M .:Drofa. 2007 -P 93-94 116