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2. Kinds of Vocabulary
The writer found several kinds of vocabulary according to some writers. Fries said that vocabulary classified into four groups:
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1. Function Words those words which although some of them may have also full-word meaning content, primarily or largely operate as means of
expressing relations of grammatical structure. These include auxiliaries, prepositions, conjunctions, interrogative, particles and miscellaneous
group consisting of the words for degree, for generalizing, the articles, etc.
2. Substitute word, such as the personal pronouns: they, we, I, you, he, she, it, their, our, my, your, his, her, its, them, us, me, him, her, mine, ours, yours,
theirs, the indefinites, any one body thing where; and the negative, none, nobodythingwhere; quantity or number: each, both, all, some,
any, few, several, much, one, ones, two, etc. Other substitutes include: do yes I do, think, say, tell, seem, appear, hope, believe, fear, guess and the
word so.
3. The third consist of those that are distributed in use according to such grammatical matters as the presence or absence of a negative: some I have
some, any I don ’t have any, too, either, already, yet, etc.
4. Content words which divided into three classes, the first is the words for things such as dictionary, pen, pencil, paper, bag, etc. Second, the words
for action such as: write, read, type, walk, etc. Third, the word for qualities: cold, long, true, false. These words become the largest and the
meaning can be looked up in the dictionary.
According to Nation, vocabulary can be divided into two kinds, which are high frequency vocabulary and low frequency vocabulary:
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a. High frequency vocabulary consists of words that are used very often in normal language, use in all four skills and across the full range of
situation of use. High frequency vocabulary consists of 2000 word families, which are about 87 of the running words in formal written
text and more than 95 of the words in informal spoken texts.
b. The low frequency vocabulary other hand, covers only small proportion of the running words of a continuous text, it means that low frequency
vocabulary is rarely used in a common activity of English language. This group includes well over 100.000 word families.
Haycraft in Hatch and Brown book’s Vocabulary, Semantic, and
Language Education divide vocabulary into receptive and productive
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Charles C. Fries, Teaching and Learning English as a Foreign Language Ann Harbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1970, pp. 38-53.
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Paul Nation, New Ways of Teaching Vocabulary USA : Teacher of English to Speaker of Another LanguagesTESOL Inc, 1994 , p.3
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vocabulary.
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Receptive vocabulary is words that the student recognizes and understands when they occur in a context, but which they cannot produce
correctly, Productive vocabulary is words which the student understands, can pronounce correctly and use constructively in speaking and writing.
“Vocabulary is divided into two, namely; function words and content words. The function words are closed class; we cannot add to the
preposition or auxiliaries or modals or any structure word of the language. The content words, on the other hand can be added to any time a new
scientific advances make new words and communication about new
inventions necessary.”
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Jo Ann Aebersold classifies vocabulary into active and passive vocabulary:
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a. Active vocabulary refers to items which the learner can use appropriately in speaking or writing ad it is also called as productive
vocabulary, although, in fact, it is more difficult to put into practice. It means that to use the productive vocabulary, students must know how to
pronounce it well, they must know and be able to use grammar of the target language, they also must familiar with collocation and understand
the connotation meaning of the word. This type is often used in speaking and writing skills.
b. Passive vocabulary refers to language items that can be recognized and understood in the context of reading or listening, and it also called as
receptive vocabulary. According to some definitions above about kinds of vocabulary, it is
known that vocabulary is a complexs thing, despite vocabulary is simple thing when we see it, but actually it has many kinds of vocabulary which is labeled by
one name, such as function word, content word, active and passive vocabulary that we have to know as a person who study English language.
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Evelyn Hatch and Cherryl Brown, Vocabulary,Semantic,and language Education Cambridge : Cambridge University, 1995, p. 370.
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Mary Finocchiaro and Michael Bonomo, The Foreign Language Learner: A Guide for Teachers New York: Regent Publishing Company Inc., 1973. p. 86
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Jo Ann Aebersold and Mary Lee Field, From Reader to Reading Teacher New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 139.
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B. Teaching and Learning Vocabulary
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