Vocabulary is a set of lexemes, including single words, compound words and idioms.

      “Vocabulary is the building material of a language”—Stalin

There is no vocabulary, there will be no language. Although we need only 1% of English vocabulary. Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed. How we teach vocabulary is therefore central to the process of language teaching. A teacher’s challenge is not only to provide the right stimulus and content to accelerate the learners’ exposure to new language and new senses of words that they already know. But also to do so in ways that aid the retention of these items.

Learning English vocabulary is a quite hard task. Lots of people have got rid of English learning because of English vocabulary. Why?

—Because

(1) each word is no relationship with the references;

(2) its spelling is random there is no reason to tell; and

(3) it’s quite hard to remember but easy to forget. 

(1) Forms of the word

- Pronunciation

- Spelling

(2) Grammatical properties

- Grammatical category

- Possible and impossible structures

- Idiosyncratic grammatical information

- Word building

(3) Lexical properties

- Collocations

- Appropriateness

(4) Meaning

- General meanings

- Specific meanings

Therefore, knowing a word means its spoken and written forms, its grammatical and lexical properties and its meaning.

- sense relations (e.g. synonyms, antonyms, homonyms)

- rules of word formation (e.g. common prefixes and suffixes)

- collocations and idioms

- connotation and denotation

- strategies for learning (e.g. notebooks, dictionary use).

(1) Semantic field/lexical field: words in a vocabulary are interrelated in meaning and can form a system (a field). This system of words is not stable but changing all the time (depending on needs), e.g. color system, animal, food, vegetable, fruit…

(2) Paradigmatic relation: are those into which a linguistic unit enters through being contrasted or substitutable in a particular environment, with other similar units.

(3) Syntagmatic relations—are those that a unit contracts by virtue of its co-occurrence with similar units, e.g. 

 “Red” and “yellow” are in paradigmatic relation to each other, but each is a syntagmatic relation with “Pen”.

(1) Relation of sense

(a) hyponymy—a sense relations that the meaning of a lexicons in general includes the other lexicons (X is kind/type of Y), e.g.

(b) Synonymy—sameness of meaning, e.g.

(c) Meronymy—X is the part of Y, e.g.

(d) Antonymy—opposite of meaning/synonymy

. Complementarity—the items being complementary to each other, strictly those belong to the set of incompatible terms but with one specific characteristic –that they are members of two-term sets instead of multiple-term sets, e.g.   

Male-female   true-false   alive-dead

. Gradable antonyms—within two extremes, there are postray scale, but they are variable, changeable. All of them are adjectives. And they may be seen in terms of degrees of the quality involved. (There are often intermediate terms), e.g.

                      wide-narrow   old-young   

big-small      hot-warm-cool-cold 

. Directional Oppositions—texical opposites, indicate opposite directions, e.g.  

up-down   north-south  come-go

* Autipodes—indicate opposite extremes, e.g.

     top-bottom    peak-foot     head-toe     black-white

cradle-grave   always-never  all-none     start-finish

* Reversives—including all the verbs which denote motion and change in opposite direction, e.g.

cover-uncover   appear-disappear   do-undo

lessen-shorten   lock-unlock        assent-dessent

* Conversives—relational opposites with pairs of words which exhibit the  reversal of a relationship between items (or arguments), e.g.

(1) Root, base, stem

Latin roots:  cent—one hundred.

           century—a period of 100 years.

“truth” is the base form of all its derivatives truthful,, truthfulness, truthfully, untruth, untruthful, untruthfulness, untruthfully.

short (root/stem) + -ly (suffix) + shortly

(2) Prefixation, suffixation, conversion, compounding

conversion e.g. hit—v. to give a blow.

                 n. blow

(1) Focus on the most useful vocabulary first. Teaching useful vocabulary before less useful vocabulary gives learners the best return for their learning effort;

(2) Focus on the vocabulary in the most appropriate way. The most important vocabulary learning strategies of using word parts, guessing from context, using word cards, and using dictionaries;

(3) Give attention to the high frequency words across the four strands of a course. High frequency vocabulary should be met and used in communicating messages in listening, speaking, reading and writing. It should also be fluently accessible for receptive and productive use;

(4) Encourage learners to reflect on and take responsibility for learning. Taking this responsibility requires (1) knowledge of what to learn and the range of options for learning vocabulary, (2) skill in choosing the best options, and (3) the ability to monitor and evaluate progress with those options;

(5) Teaching vocabulary explicitly through a range of activity types

- Vocabulary is well-contextualized;

- To use the opportunities created by the students’ own queries or attempts to use vocabulary;

- To allocate time in every lesson to some kind of vocabulary work and to build a checklist of the areas to be covered;

(6) Developing resources for vocabulary teaching. Extra-curriculum reading material, vocabulary corpus, new video tape and other multimedia source can be utilized fully to help learning.

- Frequency: Most learners knew the words that appeared many times, but they did not know half of the words that appeared only once or twice.

- Pronunciation: A fair amount of pronunciation practice of new words can help learners acquire the correct stress pattern of syllables.

- Contextualization: Presenting words in the context of a text will provide support and reduce interference. 

- Depth of processing: Input can become intake if there is a depth of processing as a learner moves from surface-level activity based on the sound and visual image of a word to a deeper level of meaning, and at the same time relates the word to existing knowledge.

- Building word networks: Learners should simply be encouraged in non-specific ways to actively build their own associations for new words and thereby extend the networks of the mental lexicon.

As learners develop their vocabulary knowledge, they acquire not only new words but also new meanings associated with words they have already learned.

(1) Say the word clearly and write it on the board

(2) Get the class to repeat the word in chorus.

(3) Translate the word into the Ss’ own language.

(4) Ask Ss to translate the word.

(5) Draw a picture to show what the word means.

(6) Give an English example to show how the word is used.

(7) Ask questions using the new word.

(8) Tell a story by using some new words

(9) Teach words by using gestures

（1） Labeling

（2）Spot the difference

（3） Describe and draw

（4） Play a game

（5） Use word series

（6） Word bingo

（7） Word association

（8） Find synonyms and antonyms

（9） Categories

（10） Using word net-work

（11） Using the internet resources for more ideas

（12） Chants and singing

（13） Utilize Corpus

Cook, V. Second language learning and language teaching (4th ed.) [M]. Edward Arnold Ltd, 2008.

Gairns, R. & Redman, S. Working with Words: A guide to teaching and learning vocabulary [M]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Hedge, T. Teaching and learning in the language classroom [M]. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2002.

Nation, I. S. P. Learning and teaching vocabulary: Collected writings [M]. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2010.

Nunan, D. Practical English language teaching [M]. Beijing: Tsinghua University Press, 2013.

O’keeffe, A. Vocabulary Instruction. In Burns, A & J. C. Richards (ed.) The Cambridge guide to pedagogy and practice in second language teaching [A]. CUP, 2012: 236-45.

Q1: Why do we say “it is difficult to remember English words but it is easy to forget them”?

Q2: When you teach students the meaning of a word, what do you mean by “meaning” and how do you teach it?

Q3: Which inspiration do you have from the relation and formation of a word? 

Q4: How many techniques for teaching new words? How to review old words?