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ecial notes on vocabular
o
vocabulary quizzes? Of course, we have to understand the words in orde
la
For one thing, we have come to un
p
a text which surround the unknown words, and also the no
The familiar aspects of the linguis
associative links. This
recall their meanings by mentally associating them with the context in which they were first seen. 
Another thing that we have come to understand is that no course can possibly teach all the words that 
learners h
s
what happens next? Accord
would mean havin
Putting it another way, in a given
constructed for language learning purposes) most of the words would not be found in a list of the 3000 most 
frequent words in English. Nearly one-half of the words in the text would occur in that text only once. Clearly, 
it would be an enormous burden to have to learn all the new words in every new written text. 
In the light of these observations, there are
vocabulary: 
1. Memorizing vocabulary by means of lists or other devices which divorce the words from their context is 
of limited value. 
2. It is mo
f
to give the meaning
or through translation into the 
d
l that you have to avoid translation entirely, but try as much as possible to use English for definitions. This 
l make it easier for your students to begin using an all-English dictionary at intermediate and higher levels 
language proficiency. 
C
th

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questioning and discussion which you do to make sure that your students have adequate background 
formation for understanding the text. 
should 
e alert to the fact that authors frequently define words which they expect their readers not to know. 
w energy, feeling hungry, getting sleepy, and waking up. 
ll these clues taken together can supply enough of the meaning of "circadian" to make it unnecessary to 
fer to the dictionary. 
egular practice in guessing the meaning of unfamiliar words will gradually increase your students' skill and 
is acceptable as long as the sentence as a whole 
understandable. 
Insisting on a precise, dictionary-like definition or a native-tongue translation of every word in a text is likely 
to have one of two undesirable results. Some of your students may simply give up after a page or two, 
frustrated by having to thumb the dictionary for every unfamiliar word. On the other hand, the more 
persistent ones may bash through to the end of the text. However, their comprehension of the text as a 
whole may not be much better than if they had simply ignored the unknown words. This is because their 
readin
g the text only sentence by sentence. 
They 
he conceptual structure of the whole discourse, while 
worryi
 
 Samp
ercises 
Vocab
tion within each type. One type 
focuses on the meanings of words and the other deals with the forms of words and the contexts in which 
they occur. Some of the variations of the first type are exercises to practice the skill of guessing the 
meanings of unfamiliar words, exercises on synonyms and antonyms, and exercises on words which are in 
the same semantic field. 
Exercises which teach the skill of inferring unknown words are set up in such a way that students are made 
aware of the clues that they are using to guess the meanings. In the following exercise, for example, the 
att
he various definitions which the author supplies for the underlined 
techni
Dir
which defines the underlined technical terms. The 
firs
e with its associated plants and animals] forms a [large ecosystem] called a biome
in
In addition to the explicitly taught key words, pick out five to ten additional words which are slightly less 
important and guide your students to guess at the meanings. In guessing at the meaning of unfamiliar 
words, they should learn to use the meanings of known words in the surrounding parts of the text, as well as 
the additional help which may be provided by grammatical clues such as word parts (prefixes, roots, 
suffixes) and the order of words in sentences. They should learn to draw on background information, that is, 
the knowledge which they already have about the subject matter of the text. Last but not least, they
b
Suppose your students meet the word "circadian" in a reading selection on a biological topic. Through 
careful questioning, you can prompt them to guess at its meaning. (Don't look it up; see if you can guess it 
yourself.) Here is a sentence in which the word might appear: 
One of the biological clocks which scientists have studied is the 24-hour circadian cycle of body activity. 
Note that the word ends in "-an," a suffix which, in either this form or the variant "-ian," is often found on 
adjectives and nouns (e.g., urban, pedestrian, egalitarian). Next, note that the word occurs just before the 
noun "cycle." This is a position where adjectives are often found. The words "clock" and "cycle," and 
especially "24-hour" indicate that "circadian" has some connection with time, probably a daily cycle. Your 
students may already have read or heard about biological clocks elsewhere, and they probably have noticed 
that they themselves have daily cycles of peak or lo
A
re
R
confidence. Your questions can guide them to notice the lexical and grammatical clues and prompt them to 
call on their existing knowledge of the subject matter. It is important not to insist on a precise, tight definition 
of the word. A little vagueness in the meaning of one word
is
g speed will have slowed to the point that they are processin
will have lost sight of the discourse map, t
ng about the less significant details. 
le types of vocabulary ex
ulary exercises fall into two very general types, with lots of varia
ention of the students is focussed on t
cal terms. 
ections: Put square brackets around the information 
t answer has been done for you. 
1. [A major climat
. 

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2. The tundra is a vast water-soaked region, with permanently frozen ground several feet down, and with 
ext
. The taiga
ensive bogs in summer. 
3
is the northern coniferous forest. 
. Temperate deciduous
4
forests, such as those of the Eastern United States, are dominated by 
deciduous trees-oaks, hickories, elms, chestnuts, and maples. 
. Grasslands are drier regions. They are variously termed prairies, plains, pampas, steppes
5
, and velds. 
[Da
, Inc., 1974.] 
In ma
is to supply another word which has the same (or 
opposite) meaning. More sophisticated exercises point up the fact that there may be no such thing as a true 
synonym or true antonym. Taking the case of synonyms, the words "progeny," "issue," "offspring," "children," 
and "k
only a moment's reflection will show that 
they d
h they are likely to occur. Would you 
xpect to read "He died without kids" in a legal context? Would the brave crew of a sinking passenger liner 
ges to studying words in terms of the 
emantic fields to which they belong. The first is that the associative links among the words makes it easier 
ntrast and compare words of similar meaning. 
rb in 
the correct column. 
heat
alf-fill 
ta from Stanley L. Weinberg. Biology. Allyn and Bacon
ny exercises on synonyms and antonyms the task
ids" could be said to have the same general meaning. Yet
iffer in formality, in connotation, in the kinds of contexts in whic
e
call out "Women and progeny first"? 
Another meaning-oriented type of vocabulary exercise treats words which belong to the same semantic field: 
names of foods, ways of preparing food, sports and the equipment used to play them, adjectives describing 
emotions, and thousands of other examples. There are two advanta
s
to recall them. The second is that it is possible to co
The following exercise from a textbook for medical technicians points up the differences in meaning of 
several verbs which are often found in laboratory procedures involving liquids. 
Directions: Look at the following verbs. All 21 verbs have a place in the table below. Write each ve
pour away
h
fill
boil 
dilute
agi te
add 
ta
cool
bathe
rinse 
wash
sha
off 
ke
invert
pour 
deliver
steep
freeze 
warm
stir
soak