Nature of Vocabulary Learning

able to know that a word is written correctly or incorrectly. It is about how the word looks like and also about how the word is like when it is pronounced. Still according to Nation 1990, it is also the knowledge about whether a word is a singular noun or plural noun. It is related to knowing about the word forms. Yet, sometimes they do not know that it is the plural form of ‘child’ that they tend to add –s so that it becomes ‘childrens’. If they do this, it means their receptive knowledge has not been fully developed yet. Further, according Nation as quoted in Richards Renandya 2002: p. 271 also suggests that guessing from context should be encouraged. It is because students are likely to remember the usage of certain words longer than when they only rely on a single definition of those words. For instance, students know what the word ‘children’ mean. Carter and Nunan 2001 also highlights similar thing that it is not enough only to memorize. There is now a general measure of agreement that ‘knowing’ a word involves knowing: its spoken and written context of use; its patterns with word of related meaning as well as with its collocational partners; its syntactic, pragmatic and discoursal patterns Carter Nunan: 2001: p.43. Vocabulary in this study is not a separated part of English learning. It is not like the era when the vocabulary is isolated from the real context. The ones given in IPALL exercises are based on the themes that students learn. It is meant to enrich their vocabulary and help them to be able to communicate properly. In a research reported written by Larrotta 2011 entitled Second Language Vocabulary Learning and Teaching, one participant mentioned, “I don’t feel nervous when I recognize most of the words...I have learnt that it is important to know how to use the word not just learn the meaning.” Being able to use vocabulary in various contexts is an inseparable part of vocabulary learning. Meaning is not enough because learning vocabulary meaning only is not a guarantee that students are able to use the words in real communication.

6. Lived Experience

As this study aims to seek the meaning of lived experiences, it is necessary to understand the meaning of lived experience or what it is about. Dilthey 1985: p. 59 as quoted in Manen 1990: p.36 argues that “lived experience is to the soul what breath is to the body: ‘Just as our body needs to breathe, our soul requires the fulfillment and expansion of its existence in the reverberations of emotional life’…is the breathing of meaning.” If lived experience is associated with breath, then it is very important to one’s life. It is important as everything which has happened has given certain meaning which others may not understand how significant it is to the one who has experienced it. Understanding meaning of certain things can be enlightening to someone. They have been at the time when they have found values which they have not found before. Some other definitions and the nature of experience are also stated by other experts. Palmer 1994 states, ‘Experience,’ “says Gadamer, is a matter of multisided disillusionment based on expectation, only in this way is experienced acquired…every experience runs counter to expectation if it really deserves the name experience.” The statement actually attempts to say that people may have their own expectation about what life should be like. However, life events have another way to show how things are actually like. These life events are what are experienced by people which are able to bring them to really see the nature of