Significant of the Study
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c A list of a foreign language textbook of the words and phrases taught
or used
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According to Hornby, vocabulary is:
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a. All the words that a person knows or uses
b. All the words in a particular language
c. The words that people use when they are talking about particular subject
d. A list of words with their meaning, especially in a book for learning foreign
language.
The writer observes that this definition is different from the definition before. The writer summarizes that vocabulary is all the words that a person knows
and uses in a language with their meanings. In this definition the writer get complete meaning.
Mastery of a language is taken to mean the ability to use or even to understand all the words of the language, then none of us can be said to have
mastered his own native language. In other words, we know the word for those areas of life or some fields with which we have had some experience.
However, none of us can know all the “words” of our language. Knowledge of new words and new meaning keep increasing as we grow
older and we are often very conscious of this growth and change. As we all may know, vocabulary is very important to improve our knowledge. We can
find all information that we want by understanding our reading. As the English teachers, we can give our student some ways to make them interested
in mastering their vocabulary. We do not much time just for looking up the difficult word in dictionary.
Schmitt Broadly defined “We must consider what we mean by vocabulary. The first idea that probably springs to mind is words, a
formulation that is admirably adequate for the layperson”.
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1
Philip Babvock Gove, Webster’s Third New International Dictionary Massachusetts:
Heinle Publisher, 1996, p. 2560.
2
AS Hornby, Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English, Sixth Edition,
London: Oxford University Press, 2000, p.1447
3
Norbert Schmitt, Vocabulary in Language Teaching, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, p.1.
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Acquiring vocabulary is a very important tool to master a language. It is impossible to learn a language without vocabulary, as Zimmerman said:
Vocabulary is central to language and of critical importance to the typical language learner.
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Murc ia said that “Vocabulary can be defined, roughly, as the words we
teach in the foreign language.”
5
In other references by Richards and Renandya, it is stated that vocabulary is a core component of language and provides much of the basic for how well
learners speak, listen, read and write.
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From the previous definitions above, it has come into the conclusion that vocabulary is a set of words known to a person or other entity, or that are parts
of a specific language. Vocabulary gives a big even the biggest contribution in learning new language.
However, learning vocabulary is not an easy thing especially. The students often face difficulties in memorizing and using the word in a
sentence. That is why teachers should encourage themselves to be creative in selecting the approach and the method of teaching English in order to make it
easier and fun in learning a new vocabulary.