Types of Vocabulary Vocabulary

16 Wagner 2007:9 suggests that degrees of knowledge about a word can be represented on a continuum: 1. No knowledge. 2. General sense such as knowing mendacious as a negative connotation. 3. Narrow, context-bound knowledge, such as knowing that a radiant bride is a beautiful and happy, but unable to describe an individual in a different context as radiant. 4. Having knowlegde of a word but not being able to recall it readily enough to use it in appropriate situation. 5. Rich, decontextualized knowledge of a word meaning, its relationship to other words and it extension to metaphorical uses, such as understanding what someone is doing when they are devouring a book. Knowing a word implies knowing many things about the word: its literal meaning, its various connotations, its spelling, derivations, collocations, frequency, pronunciation, the kind of syntactic constructions into which it enters, the morphological options it offers and a rich variety of semantic associates such as synonyms, antonyms, homonyms. It means that knowing a word, we have to be sure that we know the words grammatically, syntactically, phonologically, morphologically and semantically. For example, a learner who knows the word ‘written’ will know that its past tense form and its past participle form. The learner would know that ‘written’ is spelled with double ‘t’. The learner will also know when and how to use the various auxiliary verbs appropriately. The learner would know that writing is a verb that is used in the present continuous tense and 17 that writing can also serve as a noun: e.g. the writing is on the wall. The learner would be aware of the various synonyms of writing such as compose, drop a line, record, scribe and draft and also know that its collocations are subject to syntactic modifications such as write effectively and effective writing. The learner will also be able to use the word within various registers. There are some aspects of knowing a word for students to know. And the aspects they should be proficient depends upon what language skill is required; what is the main goal of their vocabulary learning; what communication situations a language learner is dealing with, and what level of a language learner’s education is: beginner, intermediate, or advanced. For example, young learners do not need to deal with register, morphology, syntax, or collocation since these are too complicated for them whereas advanced learners have to do so if expecting excellence in vocabulary learning. In fact, teaching vocabulary is more of a complex matter. Besides knowing the form of the word, learners also need to be familiar with its grammar. Learners need to know e.g. irregular forms of verbs or plural nouns, the position of adjectives etc. Another aspect in teaching vocabulary is the word formation. Learners should know how to change a word form and when to use it gerund, the past form. Teaching the meaning includes mainly connecting a word with its equivalent in the real world. It is called denotation. Apart from denotation, connotation of the word associations and feelings, which arise when the word is heard should be taught. The denotation of a word or prhase is its explicit or direct meaning. For