Nature of Vocabulary Vocabulary

can give bad influences in the teaching – learning process of a language. Furthermore, mastering vocabulary well is important for the language learner. Vocabulary mastery is a gradual process. To reach out the good vocabulary mastery someone needs to follow the process. It can be defined as through knowledge of the words of a language. The learners’ vocabulary mastery is indicated by their ability in producing and understanding the words in their daily life. Further Krasen and Terrel 1983 stated that vocabulary mastery is also very important for the acquisition process. Acquisition depends significantly in the comprehensible input. The comprehensibility is dependent directly on the ability to recognize the meaning of the key elements in the utterance. Cameron 2001: 74 stated that learning word is not something that is done and finished yet. To master vocabulary is to learn new words, meaning, to increase vocabulary. The learning includes the pronunciation, the meaning, the spelling, the usage, and the part of speech of the words. She also adds that learning words is a cycle process of meeting new words and initial learning, followed by meeting those words repeatedly, each time extending knowledge of what the words mean and how they are used in the foreign language. This means that every time learners meet those familiar words again, they directly improve their knowledge about the words. Vocabulary mastery of course relates to what kinds of words learners have to master. According to Nation 2001 “The most important group of the words is the high frequency words of the language ”. These words occur very frequently in all kinds of uses of the language. They are needed in formal and informal uses of the language. He also added that the high frequency words have the following characteristics: 1 each high frequency words occur very often; 2 the high frequency words are useful. They are also important for both receptive and productive use, for both oral and written and for both formal and informal use, 3 the high frequency words make up a very large proportion of the running words in all kinds of texts and language use; 4 they are a relatively small group of words 2,000 that could be covered in a school teaching program over three to five years. Mastering vocabulary is one of the learners’ needs in order to understand the language. In English teaching – learning process, mastering vocabulary well can help the students to understand the lesson. For junior high school students, they are expected to master at least the first 1,000 of high frequency words. In addition, according to Nation 2001: 13 the high frequency words is very important because these words cover a very large proportion of the running words in both spoken and written texts. In brief, vocabulary mastery can be defined as a number of vocabulary words in a language which contains information about its meaning, form and usage in context of communication. It is the basic knowledge that the students should master first before mastering English.