Syaidati Ifdari : A Brief Description Of How To Enrich And Use Learner’s English Vocabulary, 2009. USU Repository © 2009
CHAPTER II THE ENGLISH VOCABULARY
2.1 English Vocabulary
In learning English, of course we must learn a lot of English vocabularies. How many words are there in English? The question is unanswerable because
according to Bauer 1998:13, “English keeps getting new words and probably in excess of 500 per years are
deemed worthy of listing in mayor dictionaries. If all possible technical words are included, it seems likely that the total member of word of English exceeds one
million”.
English vocabulary has a remarkable range, flexibility, and adaptability. English seems to have far more words in its core vocabulary than other language.
All this tell you about how many words you know and how many you need to know. Sometimes, we know how many words have to know when we are reading,
writing, hear them. We simply need to understand them. Clearly, we need to spend most time learning the words and we would like to able to use.
In English vocabulary, there are some common words. The very common words in English are article a, an, the preposition to, at, in, etc demonstrative
this, these, etc pronoun I, you, she, he, etc auxiliary verb am, have, can, etc. Beside that, we can find many words in an English-English dictionary; we will
find thousands of entries. Each word in the listing is called an entry. Each entry begins with the correct spelling of the word. After the spelling, we will find the
pronunciation. After the pronunciation, we will find the part of speech. The part of
Syaidati Ifdari : A Brief Description Of How To Enrich And Use Learner’s English Vocabulary, 2009. USU Repository © 2009
speech is very important to know function and position of the word in a sentence. A common system to indicate the part of speech for an entry is:
- A noun n is the name of person, place, thing or feeling. A word is a noun
if we can say “the….’ or ‘a….’. For example, boy is a noun. It is possible to say “the boy” or “a boy”. Other example of noun is girl, school, room,
cat, pencil, etc.
- A pronoun pron is a word that we use to replace or rename a noun. For
example of pronouns are I, you, he, me, us, and them.
- A verb v is a word that shows action or being. A verb is word that we can conjugate. Conjugate means to change the form of the verb depending
on the noun or pronoun. For example: eat is a verb. It is possible to say, “I eat, you eat, he eats”. Other examples of verbs are: see, go, and run.
- An adjective adj is a word that describes a nouns or pronoun. A word is
an adjective if we can use it in front of a noun. For example, good is an adjective. It is possible to say “the good boy” or “the good cars”. Other
example of an adjective are: bad, tall, short, important, possible, and rainy.
- An adverb is a word that tells how, when, or where. Here some example:
He drives his car slowly. “Slowly” tell how he drives I called her yesterday. “Yesterday” tell when I called
He went there after lunch. “There” tell where he went Other examples of adverbs are quickly, really, always, now, then, and
here.
Syaidati Ifdari : A Brief Description Of How To Enrich And Use Learner’s English Vocabulary, 2009. USU Repository © 2009
- A preposition is a word that shows the relation of noun or pronoun to a verb, and adjective, or another noun or pronoun. For example of
prepositions are at, in, with, under, and near.
- A conjunction is a word that connects words, groups of words, or
sentences. Examples of conjunction are and, or, because, and however.
All of statement above is the first lesson to introduce about English. Then we learn about structure language in English, because it is different with our
language. English language has also idiomatic expression. This idiom language is
one of difficult part in learning English, because we must memorize to master idiom. Idiom is a group of words with a meaning that is different from the
individual words Lou, 2007:1. For example; never mind, call down. Therefore,
English vocabulary is thing that we must master to improve our ability English.
2.2. The Importance of Enriching Vocabulary
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