Kinds of Vocabulary INTRODUCTION

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E. Kinds of Vocabulary

There are several kinds of vocabulary according to several expertises: According to the basis of frequency, vocabulary can be divided into two kinds; there are high frequency vocabulary and low frequency vocabulary. 1. High frequency vocabulary consists of words that are used very often in normal language, use in all four skills and across the full range of situation of use. High frequency vocabulary consists of 2000 word families, which are about 87 of the running words in formal written text and more than 95 of the words in informal spoken texts. 2. The low frequency vocabulary on the other hand, covers only small proportion of the running words of a continuous text, it means that low frequency vocabulary is rarely, used in common activity of English language. This group includes well over 100.000 word families. 13 Furthermore, Evelyn Hatch and Charly Brown classify the vocabulary into active and passive. 14 1. Active Vocabulary Productive Vocabulary Active vocabulary is word which the students understand, can pronounce correctly, and uses constructively in speaking and writing. It refers to put item which the learner can use appropriately in speaking or writing, and it is also called as productive vocabulary, although in fact it is more difficult to put into practice, its means that to use the productive vocabulary, the students must know how to pronounce it well, they must familiar with collocation and understand the connotation meaning of the word. This type is often used in speaking and writing skill. 2. Passive Vocabulary Receptive Vocabulary Passive Vocabulary is words that recognize and understand when they occur in a context, but which the students cannot produce correctly by themselves. 13 Paul Nation, New Ways of Teaching Vocabulary New York: Teacher of English to Speaker ofAnother LanguageTESOL Inc, 1994, p.3 14 Jo Ann Aebersold and Mary Lee Field, From Reader to Reading Teacher, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 139 11 It refers to language items that can be recognized and understood in the context of reading or listening and also called as receptive vocabulary. Fries said vocabulary consists of two, namely; function and content word. 1. The function words are a closed class, we cannot add to the preposition or auxiliaries or modals or any structure word of language. 2. The content words, on the other hand, can be added to any times as new scientific advances make new words and communication about new inventions necessary. 15

F. Principles in Teaching Vocabulary