Table of contents introduction Chapter I: Vocabulary as a base of acquiring language skills

1.2. Differences between general and private vocabulary system


What is a word?
A word is a unit of a language that carries a meaning and consists typically of a root and zero or more affixes. Words can be combined to create phrases, clauses and sentences. They are separated by spaces in the written language. A word consisting of two or more roots joined together is called a compound (e.g. a record player, a classroom, a second-hand).
Each word belongs to one or more of eight different word classes: nouns (apple), adjectives (green), pronouns (you), verbs (to write), adverbs (here), prepositions (before), conjunctions (while) and interjections (hey).
What is vocabulary?
According to the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, a noun “vocabulary” has two definitions:
- all the words known and used by a particular person
- all the words which exist in a particular language or subject
We divide the knowledge of vocabulary known by a particular person into two groups:
- receptive / passive vocabulary – it is defined as the set of all words that are understood at reading or listening but not used in the spoken or written expressions
- productive / active vocabulary – it is the set of all words that are not only understood, but also used meaningfully when creating new sentences.¹³
The passive vocabulary is naturally bigger than the active one. The more often we meet a particular word and the more often we use it the sooner it becomes an item in our active vocabulary.
Vocabulary can basically be defined “as the words we teach in the foreign language” which the teacher has to introduce and explain to the students. One needs to be aware of the fact that new vocabulary does not mean that only one new word is being introduced to the students because often multi-word idioms or single ideas which consist of more than one word are introduced. Therefore, “a useful convention is to cover all such cases by talking about vocabulary items rather than words”. The teacher needs to present the vocabulary in a way that students can easily understand how to use the new words. In addition to that the learner`s individual strategies for learning and using vocabulary need to be taken in to consideration.
There is a variety of aspects that need to be taken into account when talking about vocabulary in the EFL classroom. These are the form, its grammar, collocation, different aspects of meaning and the word formation.
The form of new vocabulary is really important which means in detail its pronunciation and its spelling. In order to learn new words, you need to know “what a word sounds like (its pronunciation) and what it looks like (its spelling)”. The pronunciation of a word is “the way in which language is spoken” or “the way a person speaks the words of language”. In order to be understood by a native speaker of English you need to pronounce the words the right way. The spelling is “to name or write the letters of a word in their correct order”. That is where most mistakes occur because a lot of students know how to pronounce a word correctly but they often seem to confuse its spelling.
The next important point concerning vocabulary is grammar and with it grammatical rules which are “rules in a language for changing the form of words and combining them into sentences”. It is the person`s knowledge and use of the language in certain situations and how to use it in grammatical contexts.
Another important point that defines vocabulary is the collocation of words which is a part combination of words. To collocate words means to combine words that regularly used together in a language. When you introduce a word like conclusion, for example, you as a teacher need to tell your students that they cannot say make a conclusion but come to a conclusion.
It is time to talk about the different aspects of meaning which are denotation, connotation and appropriateness. Denotation means that something is a sign or a symbol of something, furthermore that it indicates something. The meaning of a word is “what it refers to in the real world”. The connotation of a word is “an idea suggested or implied by a word in addition to its main meaning”. This means that every word has a main meaning but it can still have various connotations and a student can associate different things with one word. Appropriateness of a word means that a speaker should think about the words he uses before he says them and he should ask himself whether they are suitable or acceptable in this context or not. If they are not, he needs to find words that fit or that are correct. The words have to express exactly what a speaker once to say.
The very last point is the word formation which is the way in which words are put together and into the right order in a sentence. This means that word can be broken down into their single components which do have single meanings as well but a different meaning when they are being put together. It is the teachers choose whether to teach, prefixes and suffixes or not, for example, un- or –able like it is used in unable.
Graves defines vocabulary as the entire stock of words belonging to a branch of knowledge or known by an individual. He also states that the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, which includes words and expressions. Krashen extends Graves’ definition further by stating that lexicon organizes the mental vocabulary in a speaker’s mind. An individual’s mental lexicon is that person’s knowledge of vocabulary. Miller states that vocabulary is a set of words that are the basic building blocks used in the generation and understanding of sentences.
According to Gardener vocabulary is not only confined to the meaning of words but also includes how vocabulary in a language is structured: how people use and store words and how they learn words and the relationship between words, phrases, categories of words and phrases.
Cummins¹⁴ states that there are different types of vocabulary: