Vocabulary Mastery Types of Vocabulary

1998:161, there are some techniques that teachers may use in teaching vocabulary namely: a. Realia One way of presenting vocabularies is to bring the things they represent into the classroom. It means that by bringing realia into classroom. Words like ruler, books, pens, bags, etc, can obviously be presented in this way. The teacher holds up the object, says the word, and then gets the students to repeat it. b. Pictures Bringing the ruler into the classroom is not a problem, but bringing a car into the classroom will be different. One solution is by using pictures. Pictures can be used to explain the meaning of vocabulary items. They can be board drawings, wall pictures and charts, flashcards, magazines pictures, and any other non- technical visual representation. c. Mime, action, and gestures Explaining the meaning of words by using realia or pictures is sometimes impossible to do. For example, concepts like running or standing will be better if they are explained through action. d. Contrast As everybody knows that how words exist because of their relation and this can be used to teach meaning. The teacher can present the meaning of empty by contrasting it with full, cold by contrasting it with hot, big by contrasting it with small. The teacher may present these concepts with pictures or mime, and drawing attention to the contrast in meaning the teacher ensures students’ understanding. e. Enumeration Another sense relation is the relation of general and specific words. We can use this to introduce meaning. For example, we can say clothes and explain this by enumerating or listing various items of clothes. Other examples are vegetables and animals.

2.3.6. Problems in teaching and learning vocabulary

Teaching vocabulary is not easy to do. It is clearly more than just presenting new words. Vocabulary itself will make the students confused. As every body knows that English vocabulary given to the students is exactly something new, it leads the students to find difficulties in remembering and grasping them. Roger 2001: 43 states that how easy or difficult a vocabulary item is depends on a number of factors as follows: a. Similarity to L1 The difficulty of vocabulary items often depends on how similar the item is in form and meaning to the students’ first language. There are many examples of these n European languages: someone described as sensible in English will be understood to be sensitive by many Europeans and if you say you are embarrassed to a Spanish speaker, they may well think you are expecting a baby. However, words, which are similar in the first language and English, may be misleading rather than helpful. b. Similarity to English words already known