The ministry of higher and secondary specialised education of uzbekistan

Word association: The teacher says a key word. The students then have to write down all the words they can think of connected with traveling. They have a time limit. When time is up, the person with the highest number of acceptable words is the winner.
Odd man out: The teacher writes a set of words on the blackboard and asks the students to find the “odd man out”. For example, in the set “cheese, eggs, oranges, bread, soap, and meat”, the word “soap” is the “odd man out”.






LECTURE 8. PRACTICE AND ASSESSMENT OF TEACHING VOCABULARY IN FLTM FOR ALL STAGES OF CONTINUOUS EDUCATION


Lecture outline:
1. Theoretical characterization the methods of teaching English vocabulary
2. What is vocabulary and what needs to be taught?
3. Different approaches to recognition of lexical (vocabulary) complexity.
4. The main stages of formation of the vocabulary skills.


Key words: inherent paradoxes, contradictions and controversies, facilitate learning, socio-economic factors, foundation course, curriculum, teaching vocabulary, vocabulary selecting criteria, With pronunciation: lexical meaning, means of a language, open and close vowels, voiceless and voiced consonants, with morphology, with syntax, with spelling, with stylistics, semantic approach, combinative approach, stylistic approach, frequency approach, word-building value, control method, face to face , individual, combined.


Theoretical characterization the methods of teaching English vocabulary
The teaching and learning of English is riddled with several inherent paradoxes, contradictions and controversies. A teacher can only facilitate learning. The learner is the nucleus of the whole process of instruction; and his age, previous learning experiences, aptitudes, interests, the time he devotes to the learning of a foreign language and other socio-economic factors determine the suitability of the curriculum, course materials and methods of teaching. Any instruction that does not take into consideration the imperative needs of the learners, fails to achieve the desired objectives. It is therefore obvious, that the decline in the standard of English in different countries is the consequence of inadequacies of various degrees and at various levels of their educational system.
Educationists and teachers are not clear about the specific objectives of teaching English or the methods to be adopted to make English-teaching more meaningful and effective⁴. The so-called foundation course is a misnomer, because it neither lays the foundation, nor aids in the construction of the superstructure. It is only by examining the needs of the learners according to their priorities, that general goals can be translated into more specific claims of what the language course should set out to achieve. In framing a heavily content-based syllabus, academicians seem to be acting on the assumption that teaching literature will automatically help the acquisition of language skills. Here again, we can see that the paradox persists. While the aims of teaching literary master pieces are high, the achievements continue to be low. What is the use of teaching the lofty works of Shakespeare and Milton, when our students are unable to speak or write even simple English correctly?
The term “curriculum” includes the totality of the knowledge that is expected to be imparted to the learner in a school, lyceum or college. It provides a comprehensive plan on which the entire system of learning and teaching can be based. Hence, the curriculum should plan the use of receptive and productive skills, mastery of vocabulary, and acquaintance with the culture and literature of the people who use English as their first language⁵.
Of the four language skills, vocabulary is not only one of the most difficult but also the most important. Ironically, however, the most important skill remains the most neglected and the least significant of our pedagogical concerns.
While preparing course books for study, editors should, as far as possible, choose texts so, that student's interest is immediately generated by the familiarity of the content or theme of the text. A text which is closer to the student in time, place and thought, assists in creating an atmosphere that is conducive to the learning process. This enables the learner to comprehend the text better, gain valuable insights into the creative mind, and ultimately lead him on towards creative writing itself.
We should study both theoretical and practical approaches of teaching vocabulary. Moreover, knowing the vocabulary selecting criteria is significant for an effective learning.
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. The main practical aim of teaching vocabulary in schools and secondary schools is to form the pupils’ vocabulary skills as a basic component of all the language activities. But when we speak about vocabulary we shouldn’t forget that 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. Of course vocabulary is not the whole of the language. The system of the language (its ‘grammar’ or ‘structure’) is also important: how the plural is formed, how past tense is signified and so on.
Nevertheless it is possible to have a good knowledge of how the system of a language works and yet not be able to communicate in it; whereas if we have the vocabulary we need, it is usually possible to communicate.
Anyone who learns a new language is likely to recognize more words than he can produce. It is difficult to produce a word correctly. One has to pronounce or spell it in the right way, use it in the correct grammatical form, use it appropriately with the correct words coming before and after it and so on. It may therefore be important for a teacher to decide which words she wishes the students to produce correctly. These words from the ‘productive’ or ‘active (productive)’ vocabulary. The teacher also should decide which words she wishes her students merely to recognize. These words from the ‘receptive’ or ‘passive (receptive) ’ vocabulary. Producing (speaking or writing) words in the target language makes much greater demands on the learner. Of course in productive vocabulary, the learner has an advantage in that he is able to choose which word he wishes to use: whereas in receptive vocabulary (as in listening or reading) he has to handle whatever language the speaker or writer uses.
2. What is vocabulary and what needs to be taught?
Vocabulary can be defined, roughly, as the words we teach in the foreign language. However, a new item of vocabulary may be more than 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 multi-word idioms such as take the bull by the horns, where the meaning of the phrase cannot be deduced from an analysis of the component words. A useful convention is to cover all such cases by talking about vocabulary “items” rather than “words”. It is also called mental lexicon that is “vocabulary in mind”⁶. It consists of the smallest in­dependent meaningful units of speech. These units of speech are called words. The words have word forms and meanings assigned to them. Words in mental lexicon create lexical networks. Once activated a lexical item stimulates other associated lexical items and this causes activation of a bigger network. To access mental lexicon an idea has to be mapped onto meaning and form that are stored in our memory. Mental lexicon performs the functions of word storage, retrieval, com­prehension and use. Storage of words in mental lexicon is the result of a person’s cognitive processes in real-world situations. 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).
Language is created and developed by the society, people only because of requirements of communication constantly accompanied to the labour and the whole life of peoples and its satisfaction turned out to be necessary. That is why the language as means of communication was and always remains the constant participant of all sides of society and activity of collective. Vocabulary work is inseparably connected with all the other aspects of the language:
a) With pronunciation: lexical meaning are expressed with the help of phonic means of a language: -short and long vowels (fill-feel, knit-neat):

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  open and close vowels (beg-bag)
  
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  voiceless and voiced consonants (lad-let)
  

b) With morphology:
c) With syntax,
d) With spelling: fair tale – fare tail;
e) With stylistics: father, pa, daddy, pop, old man.
By vocabulary skills we mean the ability:
- To transfer of a word from distant memory to immediate memory; (Retrieval of words from memory is done through the activation of men­tal lexicon. Activation is caused by attempts to map an idea onto the words in memory. Sometimes meaning cannot be mapped onto the words and this causes the “tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon” when the meaning needs to be expressed but the form cannot be retrieved from memory).
- To check the correctness of selection of a particular word in the given situation; (Here we may see approximation of word usage which can be hampered by the absence of the necessary word in processing memory or in the mental storage. In this case language users resort to lexical strategies such as circumlocution (putting the idea in a different way), word coinage (creating a non-existent word) and deriva­tion (forming a word from the one that is known to the language user). Another strategy is using gestures and mimicry).
- To evaluate combinability of the word chosen instantly with other vocabulary items; (A process of cognition produces the meaning, that a person is willing to communicate in the circumstances. It is necessary to consider the “word pragmatics”, i.e. to see that a word does not elicit an unwanted reaction from other participants in the communication. Using a word means recognizing certain grammar obligations. Finally, the word is accessed in memory and is produced either in graphical or oral form).
- To choose the proper paradigmatic form of the word quickly suitable for a particular structure (The use of words in both speech production and comprehension is the result of cognitive processes. It starts with the perception of the situation that makes it necessary to look for a word in the “master-file” (the main storage of words)).
What needs to be taught? The learner has to know what a word sounds like (its pronunciation) and what it looks like (its spelling). These are fairly obvious characteristics, and one or the other will be perceived by the learner when encountering the item for the first time. In teaching, we need to make sure that both these aspects are accurately presented and learned. Another point is grammar. The grammar of a new item will need to be taught if this is not obviously covered by general grammatical rules. An item may have an unpredictable change of form in certain grammatical contexts or may have some idiosyncratic way of connecting with other words in sentences; it is important to provide learners with this information at the same time as we teach the base form. When teaching a new verb, for example, we might give also its past form, if this is irregular (go, went), and we might note if it is transitive or intransitive. Similarly, when teaching a noun, we may wish to present its plural form, if irregular (foot, feet), or draw learners’ attention to the fact that it has no plural at all (advice, information).
We may present verbs such as want and enjoy together with the verb form that follows them (want+to do, enjoy+doing), or adjectives or verbs together with their following prepositions (wait for, listen to). The collocations typical of particular items are another factor that makes a particular combination sound “right” or “wrong” in a given context. So this is another piece of information about a new item which it may be worth teaching. When introducing words like decision and conclusion, for example, we may note that you take or make the one, but usually come to the other; similarly, you throw a ball but toss a coin; you may talk about someone being dead tired but it sounds odd to say * dead fatigued. Another typical feature is idiomatic word use or collocations. They often serve as instruments of individual expressive power. Collocations are also often noted in dictionaries, either by providing the whole collocation under one of the head-words, or by a note in parenthesis. Teacher should appeal learners’ attention to the differentiate features of idiomatic expressions with word combinations.
By methodological typology of the language material we mean distribution of lexical units into groups in accordance with the degree of their complexity for assimilation.