Etymology of Modern English Vocabulary. Content Introduction

Aim of the work: With respect to the field of vocabulary acquisition, which is rather wide-ranging ², I had to confine myself to some of its aspects. In general, in vocabulary study the following four questions are asked:
1) which words should be learned?,
2) how should new words be introduced?,
3) how should recently learned words be consolidated?
4) how should a receptive vocabulary be transformed into a productive vocabulary?
Selection and grading of vocabulary (the first question) has already received relatively much attention, so I focused on the problem how words should be learned. In this paper I will mainly deal with the second question regarding the so-called semantisation of vocabulary and incidentally with the third question (the consolidation of vocabulary). [1]
The second question is in fact crucial, because a successful semantisation is a necessary condition for consolidation and may, in fact, bring about a certain retention of the new vocabulary. With respect to the transformation of receptive into productive vocabulary a solid receptive base may be considered as a necessary (albeit not sufficient) condition for productive use of the language³.
So I focused my research on the semantisation of new vocabulary; I will now argue why I narrowed it down to presenting words in text. In the first place a distinction should be made between the about thousand most frequent words in a language which account for a large proportion of the tokens occurring in any text, and the less frequent words. Teaching the most frequent words is relatively easy and may, indeed, be dealt with in a number of different ways, e.g. by means of small reading and listening texts, pictures, real objects, miming and elements of the Total Physical Response method (in this method pupils learn through acting in reaction to different commands.
Subject of the work: The real problems start, however, with me
far greater amount of less frequent words which for a reasonable command of a foreign language should be acquired as well. For a systematic development of such a large vocabulary both extensive and intensive reading seem to offer the best possibilities.
Against presenting isolated words or words in isolated sentences - which is still a rathercommon practice in schools - a number of theoretical arguments may be put forward:
1) If the words are presented as isolated elements, there is no point of support, no
"cognitive hold" for them in the learners' memory, so despite sometimes
considerable learning effort, they are quickly forgotten again.
2) If the words are presented in thematically or especially in alphabetically ordered
word lists, pupils will often suffer from interference. This not only hampers
learning, but can be decidedly harmful, since unlearning is far more difficult than
learning.
3) Isolated words do not present a linguistic reality, as the meaning of a word is in
most cases partly defined by me context.
4) Isolated words or words in isolated sentences do not present a psychological reality, because they do not carry a message. For this reason they cannot evoke emotions or involvement in the learner, a factor which plays an often underestimated, but yet important part in long-term acquisition.