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

Reading vocabulary - This refers to all the words an individual can recognize when reading a text.
Listening vocabulary - It refers to all the words an individual can recognize when listening to speech.
Writing vocabulary - This includes all the words an individual can employ in writing.
Speaking vocabulary - This refers to all the words an individual can use in speech.
Lexicon also refers to a reference book containing an alphabetical list of words with information about them and can also refer to the mental faculty or power of vocal communication. According to McCarthy the role that mental lexicon plays in speech perception and production is a major topic in the field of psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics.¹⁵
We can divide words on the basis of relations between their meanings into groups:
- synonyms – words with the same or nearly the same meaning: small X little
- antonyms – words with opposite meanings: short X long
- hypernymy – words with more general or superordinate meaning to other words: colour is a hypernym of black, yellow, green etc.
- hyponymy – words which are subordinate to word with more genera meaning: rose, lily, tulip are hyponymy of flowers
- meronymy – words which are semantically part of something:
nose, eyes, lips are meronymy of a face
- holonymy – words which are wholes that other words are parts of: body is a holonym of arm, leg, waist etc.
- homonyms – words with the same spelling (called homographs) or pronunciation (called homophones) but with a different meaning: short – small distance X short – not patient to X two X too
- polysemes – words with multiple different but closely related meanings: fair = reasonable (person, idea or amount), pleasant (person), pale (hair or skin), beautiful, average, quite good, quite large etc.¹⁶
branch = of a tree, a family, a river, a bank, science etc.
The knowing of vocabulary does not mean only knowing of word in isolation. It also means to know the words that tend to co-occur, which is another type of relation between vocabulary items, called collocation.¹⁷ This is defined as a word or phrase which is frequently used with another word or phrase; the combination is often difficult to guess. Using collocations helps to sound English naturally and improves style of written and spoken language.¹⁸
The form
A word can have several forms that are changed by addition of grammatical or lexical affixes to the root. Pupils need to know, for example, that a suffix “s” attached to a verb marks the 3rd person in the singular and the present simple while attached to a noun marks the plural form. But it is not the rule vice versa - 3rd person and plural are not always created by the suffix “s”. There are some exceptions that are formed irregularly such as one mouse – two mice or you can – she can. Other things that are useful to know are which affixes can be attached to the particular word or the meaning of the particular affixes. This can help learners to guess the meaning of the whole word because every affix has lexical or semantic role. I offer a few examples for illustration.
e.g. · the prefix ir- is used to express negation, lack or the opposite of the adjective to which is attached or of a new word that is formed from the adjective: regular/ly X irregular/ly, as well as other prefixes such as im-, in-, un- etc.: perfect X imperfect, correct X incorrect, happy X unhappy – the prefix un- can be joined also to nouns, adverbs or verbs: able X unable
- the suffixes –ment, -ion/-tion are used to form a noun mostly from verbs: develop – development, relate – relation
- the suffixes -ful and -less mark adjectives; the first one means ‘with’, the second one is its opposite and means ‘without’: useful X useless etc.
The spelling and the pronunciation
The server en.wikipedia.org defines proper spelling as “the writing of word or words with all necessary letters and diacritics present in an accepted standard order”. It is important to know the right spelling because it is a representation of the spoken word and it remains unchanged for a long time. The pronunciation refers to the spoken language; it is the way in which a word is spoken. There are many dialects in English and the number of speech sounds varies from one to another. Three following are accepted as standard accents: ‘Received Pronunciation’ for the UK, ‘General American’ for the USA and ‘General Australian’ for Australia. Each of them has a bit different number of sounds that are transcribed by the ‘International Phonetic Alphabet’. The vowels are more important for distinguishing between the regional accents and therefore each of them has their own list of vowels while the consonants are common for all three standard accents. A British variation is preferred at schools in both, the spelling and the pronunciation.¹⁹
Contrary to any language, most of English words are not pronounced as they are written, which is mostly the stumbling block for the beginners in learning of English vocabulary. Moreover, I met pupils who even did not endeavour to learn the correct spelling or pronunciation. It is enough for them to learn the spelling for the written test and a kind of pronunciation for oral testing because teachers are often satisfied when pupils learn ‘at least’ the meaning. This is clearly wrong attitude of both sides – the teachers’ and pupils’ – and it is needed to be changed. Wrong spelling or pronunciation can cause misunderstanding (e.g. affect /ə´fekt/ = to influence, to pretend X effect /I´fekt/ = the result, the use, to achieve; or to be unable /_n’eIbl/ = not to be able X to enable /I’ neIbl/ = to make able).