Figure 2.1. Diagram of Knowing a Word by Harmer 1991
Related to vocabulary in academic reading, the learners should know about the word’s meaning in context, the word’s part of speech, its pronunciation
and its parts August: 2009, Grabe and Stiller: 2001.
f. Kinds of Vocabulary
Vocabulary knowledge is used to deal with different forms and purposes. Based on its form, Hiebert and Kamil 2005: 3 propose that vocabulary comes in
two forms which are oral and print vocabulary. Oral vocabulary is the set of words for which we know the meanings when we speak or read orally. Print
vocabulary consists of those words for which the meaning is known when we write or read silently. At the beginning readers, the words that they know are
mainly oral vocabulary, then as they learn to read, print vocabulary plays greater role to understand the text rather than oral vocabulary.
Beside the oral vocabulary and print vocabulary, some researchers Hiebert and Kamil, 2005; Nation, 2001; and Corson, 1997 state that vocabulary
comes in productive and receptive vocabulary. Productive vocabulary is the set of words that an individual can use when writing or speaking. Corson 1997 calls
this as motivated vocabulary. They are words that are well-known, familiar, and used frequently especially in daily communication. Receptive is that set of words
for which an individual can assign meanings when listening or reading. Corson 1997 calls this as unmotivated vocabulary. The words included are those that
rarely known and used by the learners. He adds that unmotivated vocabulary divided into two which are 1 words that the learners know imperfectly, and 2
words that not needed in daily communication. Webb’s 2009 concludes that receptive learning lead to larger learning
development in receptive meaning while productive learning have a good impact on both receptive and productive form, and in-depth productive knowledge. Both
of them can be used in learning process. However teachers may use receptive learning tasks to save time.
In addition, Hoffman 1993: 232 distinguishes vocabulary into two categories which are the core vocabulary and the peripheral vocabulary. The core
vocabulary is vocabulary that contains the words used every day. The peripheral vocabulary is the vocabulary that is used only frequently and in certain occasion.
Another classification is made by Nation 2001 as presented below who puts vocabulary in the non-fiction texts into 4 categories:
1 High Frequency Words : this vocabulary constitute 80 of the running words in the text
2 Academic Words: this vocabulary cover 10 of the general academic text 3 Technical Words: this vocabulary made up about 5 of academic text
4 Low Frequency Words: this vocabulary cover 5 of running words in the text
Beck, McKeown, and Kucan 2002 classify vocabulary into three classes. They classification are presented as follow.
1 Tier One words Tier One words are the words that used in everyday speech usually
learned in the early grades. Although average native speaker do not consider them as a challenge, English language learners of any age have to give careful attention
to them. 2 Tier Two words
Tier Two words usually refer to as general academic words. These words are more likely to appear in written texts than in speech. They appear in all sorts
of texts: informational texts i.e., relative, vary, formulate, specificity, and accumulate, technical texts i.e., calibrate, itemize, periphery, and literary texts
i.e., misfortune, dignified, faltered, unabashedly. Tier Two words often saying relatively simple things in subtle or precise ways. Since Tier Two words are found
across many types of texts, they are highly generalizable.
