Vocabulary

Vocabulary

◈ INTRODUCTION

 

■ Language pedagogy has viewed and treated vocabulary in very different ways over the years. In the grammar-translation approach, which was codified by Karl Plötz in the 1880s (Kelly, 1969), and in the reading approach of the 1930s, word lists were a core element of the language curriculum.

 

 

 

■ In current naturalistic and communicative approaches, there is a widely shared assumption that vocabulary will be learned automatically and indirectly without any explicit formal instruction, merely through exposure to and practice with the target language.

 

 

 

■ Research in second and foreign language vocabulary acquisition (for an overview see Coady, 1993) indicates that formal instruction is beneficial and suggests a mixed approach to vocabulary instruction in which basic or core vocabulary is explicitly taught along with strategies that will allow learners to deal effectively with less frequent vocabulary that they encounter in context so that such vocabulary can be learned when needed.