IMPORTANCE OF TEACHING VOCABULARY

In learning a foreign language, vocabulary plays an important role. It is one element that links the four skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing all together. In order to communicate well in a foreign language, students should acquire an adequate number of words and should know how to use them accurately.

The acquisition of vocabulary occupies a key position in learning a foreign language. Nevertheless, vocabulary has not been systematically taught in the English classroom and therefore lexical aspects have been undervalued and subordinated to the study of grammatical structures. It is now realized that teaching vocabulary is not just the teaching of correct spelling and pronunciation. More importance should be given to fluency and appropriateness. In fact, the learner will slowly develop her/his understanding of the whole range of meanings in different contexts and will be able to use the new word accurately in course of time. And many teachers of English would be glad to get a fairly wide range of possibilities in order to improve and reinforce lexical competence. Lexical competence is an important aspect in English Language Teaching – ELT.
However, language-teaching people often differentiate between the teaching of skills (like listening, speaking, reading and writing) as against the teaching of content areas like grammar and vocabulary or lexis. Vocabulary can be defined as a set of lexemes, including single words, compound words and idioms. If language is compared with a building, vocabulary takes the place of bricks (or building blocks) that are joined by the cement of the structural elements of grammar. Everybody would agree that words are essential components when learning a foreign language. One of the main principles in EFL is that the number of words will delimit the understanding of a foreign language. No text comprehension is possible, either in one’s native language or in a foreign language, without understanding the text’s vocabulary.
But when we teach the students they consider the teacher’s explanation for meaning or definition, pronunciation, spelling and grammatical functions boring. In this case, language learners have nothing to do in a vocabulary learning section but to listen to their teacher. Second, students only think of vocabulary learning as knowing the primary meaning of new words. Therefore, they ignore all other functions of the words. Third, students usually only acquire new vocabulary through new words in their textbooks or when given by teachers during classroom lessons. For example, learners find many new words in a text and then ask the teacher to explain the meanings and usages. Forth, many learners do not want to take risks in applying what they have learnt. Students may recognize a word in a written or spoken form and think that they already ‘know the word’, but they may not be able to use that word properly in different contexts or pronounce it correctly.
Teaching vocabulary in foreign language classes has always been a challenge, even for brilliant teachers. Vocabulary is very important, as it is basic unit of communication. If learners do not recognise the meaning of keywords they will be unable to participate in the conversation, even if they know the morphology and syntax. On the other hand, grammar is equally important in teaching, and therefore, it is not the case to substitute grammar teaching with vocabulary teaching, but that both should be present in teaching a foreign language.
Some linguists insist that the lexical approach is not simply a shift of emphasis from grammar to vocabulary teaching, as ‘language consists not of traditional grammar and vocabulary, but often of multi-word prefabricated chunks’.Chunks include collocations, fixed and semi-fixed expressions and idioms, and according to him, occupy a crucial role in facilitating language production, being the key to fluency.
An explanation for native speakers’ fluency is that vocabulary is not stored only as individual words, but also as parts of phrases and larger chunks, which can be retrieved from memory as a whole, reducing processing difficulties. On the other hand, learners who only learn individual words will need a lot more time and effort to express themselves.
Consequently, it is essential to make students aware of chunks, giving them opportunities to identify, organise and record these. Identifying chunks is not always easy, and at least in the beginning, students need a lot of guidance.
Most learners with ‘good vocabularies’ have problems with fluency because their ‘collocational competence’ is very limited, and especially from Intermediate level, teachers should aim at increasing the students’ collocational competence with the vocabulary they have already got.
The idea of what it is to ‘know’ a word is also enriched with the collocational component. Being able to use a word involves mastering its collocational range and restrict.

J.Atamyradova The instructor of Turkmen State University named after Magtumguly”The importance of teaching vocabulary “