7 Personal organizing: The probability of a new word will be increased based on the learners’ character in communication and personal
activity in their life. 8 Imaging: It is easier to remember a new word with visualization rather
than not display it with any picture. An abstract work also can be displayed with an image.
9 Mnemonic: Mnemonic might be helpful for storage information in long-term memory when students lack a relevant knowledge base
about the topic they are studying. Mnemonics may provide visual imagery or verbal elaborations that serve as cues for recalling
information that is low in imagery or in meaningfulness. Students can generate their own mnemonic devices or their teachers can provide
them with mnemonic materials. 10 Motivation: The words will not be remembered only by strong
motivation. The unmotivated learners surprisingly can remember the words if they must be face a task occasionally.
11 Attention: Improving vocabulary without any certain attention is impossible. The students have to pay attention to the topic that they
have learnt so they can understand and input it to their long-term memory.
Based on it, we can predict how long vocabulary stays in our brain. Thornburry divides working of our memory to be three parts. First, short-term
store is brain capacity that vocabulary stays in there just few second. Second, vocabulary stays in there just for a while is working memory. Last, long-term
store is brain capacity that vocabulary stays in there durable over time by many activities can do.
4. Teaching Vocabulary
The purpose of teaching vocabulary is to help the students bring the meaning from word sign, signal and symbol. To achieve the goal of teaching
vocabulary, the students must be taught many things about words and their
meaning as well as the words themselves. In teaching vocabulary, there are several principles for the teachers as consideration. The principles are:
a. Aims: Before the teacher start vocabulary teaching-learning activity, there are several aims that must be understood, such as the how many
vocabulary that should be reached by the students and what kinds of vocabulary will be taught. For example: Mr. Andrew is an English teacher
at 8 grades, today he teaches about transportation at his class. He has prepared about the transportation and listed what the students must be
learnt at class. b. Quantity: The numbers of vocabulary that will be taught may have to
decide by the teacher and the teacher also has to choose how many words that the students have learnt. For example: Mrs. Ann will teach English
class at 7 grade students about animal. She determines that the students must be mastered 30 kinds of animal after the teaching-learning process.
c. Need: The teacher must be concern to the vocabulary words chosen that will be taught to the students because it must be related to the aims of
teaching.
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The teacher has to carefully choice the words that will be learnt by the students based on their grade, the words supposed to be not too easy
or too hard to remember by the students. d. Frequent exposure and repetition: The teacher should have made sure the
students already remember the word that lately taught by repeating the word before move to the new word. After the teaching-learning process, it
is necessary for the teacher to check the students about the words that they have learnt, if the students can understand and remember the word, the
teacher can go on to the next material. e. Meaningful presentation: Meaningful presentation means that the word
will never get ambiguity by the students and the students can understand it clearly even the word presented in its denotation. Ambiguity is when the
meaning of a word, phrase, or sentence is uncertain. There could be more than one meaning. One example word of ambiguity is Sarah gave a bath to
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Ibid., p. 28.
her dog wearing a pink t-shirt. Is the dog Sarah who wearing the pink t- shirt? The teacher should clear those sentences and explain it to the
students. f. Situation presentation: According to the situation, the students should
learn words in any situation that are appropriate. The words choices can be presented variously based on formal and informal situation; how close we
know the person and with whom we were speak to.
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For example, let us pretend you are in a dinner party and you need to leave for an urgent
phone call. If you were eating with your manager , you might say, “Would
you please excuse me for a moment?” or “Excuse me”. However, with friends, you might say, “One sec” or “I’ll be back.” So, you leave the table
and answer your phone call; if it’s your customer or boss, you could begin with, “Good Evening, how are you doing tonight?” But if it were your
close friend you might say, “What’s good with you, my brother from another mother”
From the principles above in teaching process, the teacher should be able to identify who the students are, what their needs are, and how the teacher
should teach in a simple and interesting way. Different age of students indicate that they have different needs and interest. In teaching vocabulary, the teacher
must be able to select the words that will be given to the students, according to the curriculum and the goal of teaching.
5. Learning Vocabulary
Hatch and Brown describe five essential steps in vocabulary learning based on research into learners’ strategies:
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a. Having sources for encountering new words: to enrich the new words, the students can learn it from many resources. Those resources are watching
foreign language movie, listening target language song, talking with native speakers, textbooks, word lists, dictionaries, etc.
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Ibid., p. 30.
13
Evelyn Hatch and Cherryl Brown, Vocabulary, Semantic, and Language Education, Cambridge University press, 1995, pp. 372-391.
b. Getting a clear image: the students can create a picture in their mind when we learn a new word, it also called mental picture. Mental picture can be
visual, auditory or both of them. We can make this mental picture relate with a new word with other foreign language or we can using phonetic
script with similar sound. c. Learning the meaning of words: We also can learn a word by recognize the
meaning of the words and ask it to the native speaker, context guessing, or creating a mental image of meaning.
d. Making a strong memory connection between the forms and meaning of the words: Between word form and the meaning we can make a strong
linkage in the memory, we can apply it become memory strategy usage –
as long as it used. e. Using the words; in example sentences, collocations, various contexts,
conversations, etc.: of course we have to often practice the words to make a sentences, collocation, text, conversation, etc. if we want the word stay
longer in our brain storage. Learning of words is a process that continues, but that change in nature as
it continues.
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Looking at the five steps, we can see that each ‘steps’ is in fact something that needs to happen over and over again, so each time something
new is learnt or remembered.
6. The Problem Face in Teaching Learning Vocabulary
