understanding and interpreting the culture of which it is part. It is important, therefore, for students to develop the ability to interpret
texts from perspectives other than their own. Some of the activities suggested by O’Dell 1997 to deal with sociocultural context are the
following: 1 asking students to compare words and expressions used in various English; 2 speaking context with those used in their own
L1 context; 3 students comment on the sociocultural associations of lexis in a given text; 4 students write glosses for text; 5 students
research a given set of items with sociocultural associations; 6 quizzes focusing on sociocultural lexical items; 7 true or false questions; 8
explaining newspaper headlines, adverts, and graffiti.
3. The Importance of Vocabulary
Vocabulary is crucial for getting meaning from a written or oral text and the very basic knowledge to study language. It plays important roles to
support other language skills. In every lesson, teacher has to introduce new words and ask the students to practice them, making clear the meanings and
the ways in which each can be used. It means that vocabulary has important role in English teaching including reading, speaking, listening, and writing.
Nation 1993: p.6 says if a learner has sufficient vocabulary then another component is easy. It means that vocabulary knowledge is only one
component of language skills, but vocabulary knowledge enables to improve the language use.
Teaching the meaning of individual words, however, will not ensure that learners can read a text with understanding. “Words enter into meaningful
relations with other words around them….” Sinclair 1996: p.76. To understand a text, learners need to now words, and knowing a word involves
knowing: its spoken and written contexts of use, its patterns with words of related meaning….. Carter, 2001: 43.
Based on Stahl 2005, vocabulary knowledge is knowledge; the knowledge of a word not only implies as definition, but also implies how that
word fits into the world. Vocabulary knowledge is not something that can ever be fully mastered. It is something that expands and depends over the course of
a life time. Instruction in vocabulary involves far more than looking up words in a dictionary and using the words in a sentence. Vocabulary is acquired
incidentally through indirect exposure to words and intentionally through explicit instruction in specific words and word-learning strategies
http:www.readingrokets.Org. There are some reasons why vocabulary is taught as proposed by Nation
1990: 2. The reasons are because of: 1 the considerable research about vocabulary informing that vocabulary related to useful words can give the
learners useful skill, especially speaking; 2 the small vocabulary of the learners; 3 the importance of vocabulary in language learning. The learners
feel that many of their difficulties in receptive and productive language use are the result of an inadequate vocabulary.
From the explanations above, it can be concluded that vocabulary is very important in language learning to support other language skills. The skills are
listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
4. Technique in Teaching Vocabulary
