completely, they should be recycled systematically to help strengthen the retaining process.
Vocabulary acquisition is processed by immersing the learners in certain kind of exposure over a period of time. Those exposures will affect the learners
when they are dealing with English. Some occurrence such as when the learners of L2 feel like they have seen a particular word in a text or hear the words in
certain conversation showed that they are in the process of vocabulary acquisition.
d. Vocabulary Size and Vocabulary to be Learnt
Thornbury 2002: 21 states that to be able to join conversation in daily communication, learners should know at least 2000 words. These are words that
used in dictionary for language learners which native speaker usually used in daily communication. He also states that knowing 2000 words make the readers
understand nearly nine out of ten words in most of written text. In relation to the reading comprehension, the first 2000 high frequency
words serve 80 of words in English text. Understanding all of those words makes the learners considerably to be described as having a good degree of
comprehension of a text. In learning English for General purposes, the learners need to understand the most frequent 2000 words of English to have a good
reading comprehension of a text. However, in reading academic texts, the learners need to understand 1000 more words from the most frequent words of academic
texts Nation in Hiebert and Kamil, 2005. The words that they should know include word families in which a base word and all of its derivation and inflection
is count as one Cameron, 2001. Regarding those vast amounts of vocabulary,
Cobb 1999 states that generally foreign language learners do not have enough time to learn those words incidentally.
Regarding with EFL context, Richard and Renandya 2002: 256 say that 4,500 target words identified in Cambridge English Lexicon Hindmarsh, 1980
are needed to be taught to the school learners. For the learners in tertiary education studies, 3000-5000 words are suggested.
National Reading Panel Report 2000 does not mention about which vocabulary to be learnt by the students in connection to reading comprehension. It
means that the words that should be taught in the syllabus remain a question. However some researchers have investigated some variables that should be
considered in determining which word should be taught to the learners. Related to the syllabus of learning vocabulary, Thornbury 2002: 14
suggests that lexical syllabus may be put into consideration. This syllabus is developed based on the frequency degree of the words in spoken and written
forms. The other syllabus that can be highlighted is the use of lexical chunk as the basis of its development. Lexical chunk or multi-unit words is group of words that
fixed or semi-fixed function in meaningful unit. Both of this syllabus help develop a new science in vocabulary syllabus which is called corpus linguistic.
According to Bennett 2010 a corpus is basically a collection of text that stored in the computer which can be gathered from spoken and written text. The
important point is that the language in the corpus has to be natural. McCarten 2007: 2-3 argues that essentially there are some information that corpus about
vocabulary can give us which are as mentioned below.
1 frequency: which words and expressions are most frequent and which are rare
2 differences in speaking and writing: which vocabulary is more often spoken and which is more often written
3 contexts of use: the situations in which people use certain vocabulary 4 collocation: which words are often used together
5 grammatical patterns: how words and grammar combine to form patterns
6 strategic use of vocabulary: which words and expressions used to organize
and manage discourse
Concerning with reading academic text, Grabe and Stiller in Celce- Murcia eds, 2001 describe the ways to choose the words to be learnt. The words
should be categorized as follow. 1 + + : critical for comprehending the text and useful in other setting
2 + - : necessary for comprehending but not particularly useful in other context 3 - - : not necessary for comprehending the text nor in other context
The words in category + + and + - should be taught to the learners in direct instruction while those in category - - should be omitted. They suggest that
it will be efficient to use not too many words at one time since presenting a large number of vocabularies at one time is not an effective teaching strategy.
e. Knowing a Word
Knowing a word is essential to understand vocabulary. It is likely the main purpose of learning vocabulary. To be able to know a word there are some
aspects that should be concerned by the learners. They have to understand what is meant by knowing a word and the characteristics of knowing a word.
According to Thornbury 2002: 15, “At the most basic level, knowing a word involves knowing its form and meaning”. He adds that the form of a word is
not enough to make the learners know about its meaning, they need to know its dictionary meaning. After the learners know the dictionary meaning of the word,
