Significance of the Study

1. The Definition of Vocabulary

There are many definitions can be found about vocabulary from some experts, but the writer only choose several of them which are important to discuss. According to Laurie Bauer, vocabulary is the words concern of the original of the words e.g. cable from Arabic word of habl or cartoon from Italian word of cartone, the change of the words e.g. verb + ion becomes noun: act + ion = action or verb + ive becomes adjective: collect + ive = collective, the relation of the word e.g. hyponym: apple-fruit, car-vehicle, cow-animal and the application of the word in daily life. All of us have been using word to know what someone desires and to express our desire to others since we were about a year old. 3 It is explains that vocabulary is truly the main component of language that will help us to communicate well although in several situations we will need another component like meaning, pronunciation and grammar put together in use. Penny Ur said the words that are taught in foreign language defined as vocabulary. 4 In other words, Ur illustrated if we teach a new words in a foreign language that is a vocabulary. For example, today SDN 07 Pagi will learn English about stationeries. Stationeries include paper, pencil, pen, ruler, eraser, book, table, etc. Those words about stationeries are called vocabulary. Moreover, Hatch and Brown described vocabulary is a tool that have been using by someone to communicate with other people. 5 In this sense, vocabulary is an important part for the individual person to share their idea or their willingness to the others. From all the definitions given above, we know that some experts have difference ideas in giving the definition of vocabulary, because every person has different ways in expressing and showing their ideas. However, it can be concluded from those definition above that vocabulary is a set of words which 3 Laurie Bauer, Vocabulary, Routledge: London and New York, 1998, p. VIII. 4 Penny Ur, A Course in Language Teaching Practice and Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 60. 5 Evelyn Hatch and Cheryl Brown, Vocabulary, Semantic and Language Education, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 1. used in a language and the user knows it. Thus, vocabulary is one of the components of a language where there is no language without words. From these statements, vocabulary mastery and development of the student is important in language teaching beside grammar and pronunciation to reach the goal of English learning and teaching itself.

2. Types of Vocabulary

Harmer 6 and Jo Ann Aeborsold 7 distinguish two types of vocabulary; active vocabulary and passive vocabulary. a. Active vocabulary is the words that have been learned and used by the students in their daily life to interact with others. The learners can use this appropriately in speaking or writing and it is also called as productive vocabulary. To use the productive vocabulary, the students must know how to pronounce it well, able to use grammar of the target language and also must be familiar and understanding the meaning of the word. In fact, the active vocabulary is more difficult to practice. This type is often used in speaking and writing. b. Passive vocabulary refers to all words that the students can be recognized and understood them when they interacted with others. The learners can use it appropriately in listening or reading and it is also called as receptive vocabulary. It means that passive vocabulary is all of the words heard or read by the students. Hearing the vocabulary used prompts the students to recall its meaning. In other words, you are being made to recall it. Another opinion came from Nelson Brooks; vocabulary is divided into three, namely: a. Little or empty words: Little or empty words belong to grammatical category and it has only grammatical meaning. Grammatical meaning cannot stand alone but is always associated with other words or even the 6 Jeremy Harmer, The Practice of English Language Teaching New Edition New York: Longman Publishing, 1991, p. 159 7 Jo Ann Aeborsold and Mary Lee Field, From Reader to Reading Teacher, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 139 whole sentences. The example of little or empty words: a, an, these, but, although and the. b. Content words: Content words are words that have the content or meaningful word. It can be expected to find its meaning in the dictionary. They are also called open-class words. Open classes accept the addition of new morphemes such as compounding, derivation, and inflection. The example of content words: nouns Nicky, class, tree, adjectives red, old, small, verbs look, sit, sing, and adverbs frequently, very, also. c. Cluster of words such as verb that convey special concept when used with given pronoun or preposition. 8 The writer called it idiom. Idiom is a short group of words which are often used together and have particular meaning or an expression that has a representative, or sometimes exact meaning. The examples: - This is a piece of cake = A task will be easy. - It takes two to tango = Actions or communications need more than one person Based on frequency and range vocabulary often occurs in the language, it can be divided into four levels as follow 9 : a. High frequency words: High frequency words are the 2000-3000 most frequent word families. The first priority is in vocabulary learning because these words in account for 80 or more of the running words in any written or spoken text. We might not exactly remember using high frequency words because those are appear most commonly in everyday usage. High frequency words are used so often that our brains even have their own place for them. The example of high frequency words are I, and, the, that, not and is. b. Low frequency words: Low frequency words are all the rest of the word families which of these words are known or are worth learning depend on 8 Nelson Brooks, Language and Language Learning, New York: Harcourt, Brace World Inc, 1964, p. 182. 9 I. S. P. Nation, Teaching Vocabulary: Strategies and Techniques, New York: Heinle and Heinle Publisher, 2008. pp. 7-12.