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CHAPTER II THEORETICAL REVIEW
A. The Review of Vocabulary
1. The Definition of Vocabulary
Hatch and Brown 1995,p.1 state that vocabulary is a list of set of words for a particular language or a list or set of words that individual speakers of a
language might use. Similarly, Burns and Browman 1975, p.295 define vocabulary as the stock of words used by person, class or profession. The other
definition, vocabulary refers to the sum of words used by, understood by, or at the command of particular person of group
www.en.wikipedia.orgwiki . It
means vocabulary is all words of particular language which is understood and used by the speaker of the language.
Vocabulary has association with the meaning. Hornby 1995 states vocabulary is a list of words with their meaning. Similarly, McWhorter 1989,
p.311 says that vocabulary means the ability to recognize individual words and to associate meaning with the particular combination of letter that form a word.
It means vocabulary is the skill in recognizing words and its meaning. From the definition above, it can be concluded that vocabulary is all
words with its meaning that usually used by speakers of particular language.
2. The Aspect of Vocabulary
In teaching vocabulary, the teacher should concern on the aspect of vocabulary that need to be taught. Ur 1996, p.60 mentions many aspects of
vocabulary that is need to be taught to the students. They are as follow: a. Form: Pronunciation and spelling
The learner has to know what a word sounds like its pronunciation and what is look like its spelling. In teaching the teacher needs to make sure
that both the aspects are accurately presented and learned.
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The grammar of new item will need to be taught if this is not obviously covered by the general grammatical rules. An item may have an
unpredictable change of form in certain grammatical context of may have some idiosyncratic way of connecting with other word in sentence. It is
important to provide learners with this information at the same time as we teach the base form. For example, when teaching a noun, it might also need
to present its plural form, if irregular mousemice, or draw learners’ attention to the fact that it has no plural at all advice, information.
c. Collocation The collocation is particular combination of words by placing or arranging
words together. Collocation makes a particular combination sound “right” or “wrong” in a given context. Some words may be having same meaning but
they are not uncertainly can be combined with same word. For example, the word throw and toss. Both the words throw and toss have the same meaning.
In a context we say throw a ball and toss a coin, but it is odd if we say throw a coin and toss a ball.
d. Aspect of meaning 1: denotation, connotation, and appropriateness A word sometimes has two meaning when it is applied in a context or uses in
daily communication. They are denotation and connotation meaning. Denotation is often sort of definition that it is given in dictionary. For
example, dog denotes a kind of animal; more specifically, a common, domestic carnivorous mammal. Connotation meaning is association, or
positive or negative feeling it evokes, which or may not be indicated in a dictionary definition. For example, the word dog, as understood by British
people has positive connotation of friendship and loyalty; whereas the in Arabic, dog has negative associations of dirt and inferiority. The other aspect
of meaning that often needs to be taught is whether a particular item is appropriate one to use in a certain context or not. It is useful for learner to
know that a certain word is very common, or relatively rare or taboo in polite 8
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suitable for formal than informal discourse, or belongs to certain dialect. e. Aspect of meaning 2: Meaning relationship
The aspect needed to be taught is meaning relationship that is how the meaning of one item related to the meaning of others. These meaning
relationships are namely: a Synonyms: item that mean the same or nearly same.
b Antonyms: item that mean the opposite. c Hyponyms: item that serves as specific examples of general concept.
d Co-hyponyms: other item that are “same kind of thing”. e Super-ordinates: general concept that “cover” specific items.
f Translation: words or expression in the learner mother tongue that are more or less equivalent in meaning to the item being taught..
f. Word formation
A new item of vocabulary may be more than a single word but express a single idea. Some vocabulary items are built by combining words two
nouns, or a gerund and noun and etc. For example swimming pool, bookstore, follow up. How these words are put together or how some certain
words are formed is useful information to be known by the students perhaps mainly for more advanced learner.
3. The Importance of Vocabulary
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