b. The Importance of Vocabulary
To be able to comprehend a text, learners need to have knowledge of vocabulary. According to Whipple in Hiebert and Kamil, 2005: 1, vocabulary is
an important aspect in reading comprehension, he says that Growth in reading power means, therefore, continuous enriching and enlarging of the reading
vocabulary and increasing clarity of discrimination in appreciation of word values. The vocabulary knowledge is so important that it will affect in the
learners’ comprehension in reading text. Davis in Hiebert and Kamil, 2005:1 described comprehension as comprised of two skills: word knowledge or
vocabulary, and reasoning. Vocabulary is a list of words and its meaning. In accordance with the
words, Hayes, Wolfer, Wolfe in Hiebert and Kamil 2005: 1 argue that, the complexity and the multiple meaning of the words are needed to be understood
according to the context in the texts. The learners expected to understand the words in texts and also to understand many new words.
Besides, Wilkins in Thornbury 2002: 13 states that “without grammar very little can be conveyed, and without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed”.
Vocabulary is the main aspect in using language. With grammar, language users may only use language a little but with vocabulary language users are able to learn
more about words and expression and therefore they can say almost anything. The relation between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension
is so tight. Biemiller in Hiebert and Kamil eds, 2005: 223 found that the correlation of written vocabulary test to reading comprehension test is so high and
effectively equivalent, even the result says that r = 0.95. He adds that although the vocabulary knowledge has an essential factor in comprehending the text, many
learners are able to read the words but fail at the level of understanding the meaning.
Moreover, National Reading Panel 2000 states that vocabulary is one of two aspects of comprehension instruction beside comprehension strategy
instruction. Furthermore, Bromley 2004: 2-3 argues that vocabulary is an asset for
the learners. Words give the learners concepts of their sounds phoneme and meaning morpheme. Vocabulary knowledge assists some roles in teaching and
learning process as mentioned below: 1 Promoting fluency
Learners who understand many words read more quickly. Fluent readers read at a faster rate, process materials more quickly, and have better
comprehension. 2 Boost comprehension
Researchers argue that vocabulary knowledge affect comprehension. It is stated that on a component of comprehension words meaning serve 74 of
comprehension Davis, 1942. 3 Improve achievement
Vocabulary knowledge assists learners’ conceptual knowledge of the text and thus academic learning become easier. Stahl Fairbanks 1986 research
shows that learners with better vocabulary knowledge score higher on achievement test.
4 Enhances thinking and communication Words are used by the language user to analyze, infer, evaluate and
reason. Large vocabulary knowledge allows language user to communicate in precise, powerful, persuasive and interesting ways.
c. The Nature of Vocabulary Acquisition
Different with listening, speaking, reading, and writing, vocabulary has its own characteristic of how it is understood by the learners. Hiebert Kamil
2005: 2 states that “vocabulary is not a developmental skill or one that can ever be fully mastered. The expansion and elaboration of vocabularies is something
that extends across a lifetime”. It is almost impossible to understand all of the vocabularies of a language because language is about words and there are so many
words that registered in certain language and even language itself is always develop and also change. The knowledge of vocabulary will be developed along
with the learner’s occurrence with the language. So, it is expected that the more the learners deal with the language the more knowledge of vocabulary that they
can learn. Schmitt 2002 proposes that an advanced language learner knows
approximately ten thousand words. There is a difficulty in understanding of how learners learn those huge amounts of words. However, vocabulary acquisition has
some essential features. First, vocabulary acquisition needs a gradual learning of different knowledge that belongs to single word its spelling, its meaning, its use,
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