The Importance of Vocabulary

1 Classes are taught in the students’ mother tongue, with little active use of the target language. 2 Vocabulary is taught in the form of isolated word lists. 3 Elaborate explanation of grammar is always provided. 4 Vocabulary is based on reading texts, and they are taught through their equivalents in the source language, and through memorization. 5 Much attention in teaching a language is paid to the sentence and translating it into and out of the target language. 6 Little attention is paid to the content of texts. 7 Drills are exercises in translating disconnected sentences from the target language into the mother tongue, and vice versa. 8 Grammar is taught deductively. 2. The Reform Movement The reform movement was estabilished to against the Gramar Translation Method. It believes that learners should learn more about sentences rather than words. Sentences is the unit of language, not the words. Although language is made up of words, people do not speak in words, but in sentences. The reformers emphasized on: 1 Primacy of spoken language and phonetic training. 2 Fluency and accuracy in pronuncing a connected passages. 3 Maintain association between a stream of speech and the referents outside the world. 4 Avoiding lists of separated words and isolated sentences. 3. The Reading MethodSituational Language Teaching The Reading Method was established in around 1920 in United States, and the Situational Language Teaching was established around 1930 in Great Britain. The Reading Method was aimed primarily to improve reading skill by improving vocabulary skill. Vocabulary acquisition and practice is central in this method. It is considered as the primary thing in learning a language. This method emphasized on mastering as many high-frequency vocabulary as possible to be able to learn a language. In line with that, vocabulary is also a central issue in Situational Language Teaching. People who support this method believes that language should be taught by practicing basic structure in meaningful-based situation activities. A priority was placed on developing appropriate vocabulary content in a course. 4. Audio-Lingual Method This method was developed during the World War II in the United States. At that time, there was a need for people to learn foreign language rapidly for military purpose. This method is developed based on the principles of behaviour psychology. It has several characteristics as follow: 1 New material is presented in the form of dialogue. 2 Based on the principle that language learning is habit formation, the method fosters dependence on mimicry, memorization of set phrases and over-learning. 3 Structures are sequenced and taught one at a time. Structural patterns are taught using repetitive drills. 4 Little or no grammatical explanations are provided; grammar is taught inductively. 5 Skills are sequenced: listening, speaking, reading and writing are developed in order. 6 Vocabulary is strictly limited and learned in context. 7 There is abundant use of language laboratories, tapes and visual aids. 8 There is an extended pre-reading period at the beginning of the course and a repetition on the language mode done as accurately and quickly as possible. 5. Community Language Teaching This language learning method was developed by Charles Curran in the 1970 and well known as the counselling learning. Teacher’s role is as counsellor knower, and students’ role is as client learner. This method has several characteristics as follow: 1 Native language is permitted among the students. 2 Translation will be provided by the teacher. 3 Students apply the target language independently when they feel enough to do so.