15 a word as a minimum free form; a free form which is not a phrase.
Vocabulary is one of the important elements in a language. If someone does not know the basic vocabulary in a certain language, it will be difficult for
him to communicate with people and understand the language in written and oral. Wallace 1982: 9 states that learning foreign language is merely learning its
vocabulary. It is the basic for communication Kranshen, 1983: 155. Vocabulary is also important in acquisition process. Carol 1971: 1 in Mckeown’s book
1987: 1 believes that the acquisition of vocabulary learning mostly occurs during the years of schooling.
“Although a considerable amount of vocabulary learning is associated with primary language learning in the early years, the
acquisition of most of the vocabulary characteristic of an educated adult occurs during the years of schooling, and in fact, one of the primary tasks
of the school, as far as language learning is concerned, is to teach vocabulary.”
Due to that, teaching vocabulary could never be neglected in teaching language.
a. Aspects of Vocabulary Learning
Learning vocabulary is not easy. It needs time and ways to learn. The vocabulary learning, as stated by Lado, covers three aspects, namely form,
meaning, and distribution 1978: 277-279.
1 Form
The form of words, in most of languages, has three components: sound segment, stress, and pitch. The latest is for Thai and Chinese. In English, the
word big is made up by three significant sound segments big and the stress is on the first syllable. If we change one of the sound segment b into p, it will
16 be pig. Another example, the word present adjective consists of six sound
segments preznt and the stress is on the first syllable. If we change the stress on the second syllable, it will be prizent, which is the word present verb.
2 Meaning
To be successful in using vocabulary in communication process, someone should know the meaning which attached to the vocabulary used itself. The
problem which may rise is that word meaning is not always the same in one situation to another. In addition, meaning is also different from one culture to
the other cultures. For example, as Lado explains 1987, people in Europe did not know the meaning of word corn in the sense of maize and potatoes until
the American brought them to Europe by ships. Another example is Eskimos who know different kinds of snow and have different words to call them.
People who experience the snow do not have as many meanings as Eskimos have. These meanings, as Lado emphasizes, are important for someone who
translate a text from one language to another. Further, as Lado 1987 adds, there are classifications of word meanings.
Those classifications can be seen from the forms they are attached to. There are three classifications of meanings in English. The first classification is lexical
meaning, the second is morphological meaning, and the third is syntactic meaning. A lexical meaning is the meaning which attaches to the words as the
words themselves. For instance, the meaning “a building for a human habitation” is called lexical one when it is attached to the word house.
17 Meanwhile, a morphological meaning is meaning which is attached to a
bound morpheme. For example, the meaning plural which is attached to a bound morpheme –s s in words doors, pens, dogs, etc. Whereas the meaning
“plural” that attaches to the plural words is lexical meaning. In addition, a syntactic meaning is the meaning that is attached to word arrangement in a
sentence. For instance, the meaning “question” is attached to a word arrangement in the sentence “Are you fine?”. But the meaning “question” that
is attached to the word question is a lexical meaning. However, these classifications are not the same in every language. Different languages have
different classifications of meaning. It is possible that in one language it is a lexical meaning, but in another language it is a morphological meaning. Hence,
in this study the writer wanted to emphasize on lexical meaning. In addition, Lado states 1987 that it is important to consider the
frequency of meanings of a word. Because an English word often has many meanings, we should think of the meanings which are frequently used by the
speakers. For example, the word get in the context We do not want to overdo the thing and get six months
. The meaning of the word get is “suffer imprisonment by way of punishment”. The people would not know what the
word get means here because it is not frequently used. 3
Distribution Words distribution deals with the habit of restriction in distribution. The
restriction is including the restriction in grammatical for instance, the word
18 water
, which can be a noun and a verb, restriction in geography, restriction in social class, and restriction in style of speaking and writing as in prose.
The focus of this study is on the vocabulary meaning, especially the meaning in context. What is meant by vocabulary in context here is vocabulary
which is appropriately and accurately used in certain situations. For example, the use of the word bar in the following context of situations the meanings are
taken from 7
th
Edition of Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary 2005. •
Bar for drinks food means “a place where we can buy and drink
alcoholic and other drinks” •
Bar for chocolate and soap means “a piece of something with straight
sides” •
Bar for electricity means “a piece of metal with wire wrapped around it
that becomes red and hot when electricity is passed through it” Knowing the meaning in context is necessary for the language learners so that
they will be able to decide what words they should use in certain situations and able to communicate the words they intend to.
b. Learning Vocabulary
