Formulation of the Problem

6 c A list of a foreign language textbook of the words and phrases taught or used 1 According to Hornby, vocabulary is: 2 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”. 3 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.