To clarify the statement above, Penny Ur also gives some comments concerning with the ways of presenting the meaning of new items:
25
a. Concise definition as in a dictionary: often a superordinate with qualification, for example: a cat is an animal which...
b. Detailed description of appearance, qualities.... c. Examples hyponyms
d. Illustration picture, object e. Demonstration acting, mime
f. Context story or sentence in which the items occur g. Synonyms
h. Opposites or antonyms i. Translation
j. Associated ideas, collocations No matter how many experts classifying the ways of presenting the
meaning of new items, the learners also need to review and practice words with which they are already familiar. Finally, in increasing their vocabularies,
learners also need to be trained to become independent learners, by becoming effective word recorders.
5. Techniques in Teaching Vocabulary
Generally, as a beginner, to understand the meaning of sentence is not easy as to understand word by word. Learners need something fun and
25
Penny Ur., op. cit., p. 63
entertain to make them easy to access the vocabulary. They need to be trained to record vocabulary and be presented with strategies for reviewing them. If it
is not often practiced, automatically it will reduce or lose. Learning vocabulary requires more than a dictionary. Vocabulary is a
cultural phenomenon as well as a linguistic one. Learners must learn the social meanings of words in a foreign language, not just the equivalent word in their
native tongue. Learners’ success in learning vocabulary depends on a certain extent on the number of senses used in the classroom. One reason that learners
need encouragement through various sensory activities is that in most cases, foreign language learners already have “satisfactory” words in their own
language for the vocabulary they are trying to learn in the classroom. Therefore, the foreign language learner needs some sort of motivation to make
her desire to learn foreign words. According Virginia French Allen, there are three techniques which can be used for teaching vocabulary:
1 Alphabetical order: even for a list of new words alphabetizing way be appropriate in helping students to find a word.
2 Showing the meaning of words through pictures, explanations in mother tongue, and definitions in simple English.
3 Drawing attention to meanings before drilling words.
26
26
Virginia French Allen, Techniques in Teaching Vocabulary, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983, p. 10-14
As part of her emphasis on the necessity for sensory experiences while learning vocabulary, that not all classroom time should be spent on
pronouncing words, interactive activities related to vocabulary are important and even essential.
There are some other techniques for teaching vocabulary: 1. say the word clearly and write it on the board
2. get the class to repeat the word in chorus 3. translate the word into student’s own language
4. ask the student to translate the word 5. draw as picture to show what the word means
6. give an English example to show the word is used 7. ask question by using the new word
27
When learners have learned various words, the next step is how they can access them quickly in the daily use. In this case, it needs a variety of
presenting vocabulary building activities to encourage learners in memorizing the vocabulary.
According to James Coady and Thomas Huckin, vocabulary can be taught in two ways so that it can be readily accessed, there are:
a. Fluency activities that provide a well-beaten path to an item Its have certain characteristics: 1 They may involve
processing quite a lot of language. 2 They make limited demands on the language user; that is, they involve material that does not contain
much unfamiliar language or many unfamiliar ideas. 3 They involve rehearsal of the task through preparation, planning, or repetition. 4
They involve some encouragement for the learner to reach a high rate of performance which requires that the activities reach a high level of
automaticity.
27
Adrian Doff, Teach English: A Training Course for Teachers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, p. 11
Fluency techniques can be based either on texts provided by the teacher or on material prepared by the learners. Using texts
provided by the teacher allows the teacher focus on particular vocabulary.
b. Richness activities that aim to increase the number of associations attached to a word can be of two types: those that establish
syntagmatic relationships and those that establish paradigmatic relationships .
1 Syntagmatic relationships are those that associate a word with
other words that can typically precede or follow it. For example, the word fuel can be preceded by words like cost as in the cost of
fuel. Activities can be used to develop these relationships include the following:
a Collocation activities. A typical collocation activity gets
learners to match collocates with given items. b Semantic mapping. Semantic mapping involve drawing a
diagram of relationships between words according to their use in a particular text.
c Dictation and related activities. The nature of the dictation activity is that it focuses learners’ attention on the collocational
relationships within dictated phrases. 2 Paradigmatic relationships are those associate a word with others
of related meaning.
28
B. Letterland
1. Definition of Letterland
In terms of teaching and learning process, letterland is highly sophisticated teaching techniques that combine stories with the pictograms of
28
James Coady and Thomas Huckin, Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 248
