Vocabulary

Definition of Vocabulary

According to Tarigan, vocabularies are words that not easy change and it is difficult to adopt from the other language. It is indicates that in teaching or learning English vocabulary should uses an appropriate method.In English dictionary, Jhon M. Echols and Hasan Shadily say that is means that all of the word which registered.

Good (1959:642) defines that vocabulary as the words having meaning when heard or seen even though not produced by the individual himself to communicate with others is the words that considered essential for minimal use of a language.

Gove (1966: 56) states that vocabulary is a sum of words of a language that employed by individual, group, or work in relation to a subject.

According to Richards (2002:255), vocabulary is the core component of language proficiency and provides much of the basis for how well learnersspeak, listen, read, and write.

Vocabulary is one of the language components that can affect macroskills. Some definition of vocabulary is proposed by some experts. Nunan(1999: 101) states that vocabulary is a list of target language words.Furthermore, Jackson and Amvela (2000: 11) say that the terms vocabulary,lexis, and lexicon are synonymous. In addition, Richards and Schmidt (2002:580) state that vocabulary is a set of lexeme, including single words,compound words, and idioms.

Hornby stated that vocabulary is the total number of words in a language; all the wordsknown to a person or used in a particular book, subject, etc; a list of wordswith their meaning, especially one that accompanies a textbook (1995: 1331). Those definitions show that vocabulary is the first element thatthe English learners should learn in order to master English well besides theother English components and skills.

The vocabulary of language always changes and grows. As life becomemore complex, people devise or borrow new words to describe man’sactivities. No one knows exact numbers of words in the English vocabularytoday. From the interpretation above, we can conclude that vocabulary is thecore component of language proficiency that consists of a set of lexeme,including single words, compound words, idioms; provides much of the basisfor how well learners speak, read, listen,and write; and has similarities withthe term “lexis‟ and “lexicon‟.

In language learning, vocabulary takes place in building the languageproficiency. The objective of the vocabulary mastery is to make the studentshave a good language proficiency in the language skills. It depends on thequality and quantity of the vocabulary that they have mastered. The richer thevocabulary that can be mastered by the students, they will get the better skillthat can be reached in using language.

Talking about vocabulary, Lehr, Osborn, and Hiebertin Kamil andHiebert, (2005: 2-3) define vocabulary as knowledge of words and wordsmeaning in both oral and print language and in productive and receptiveforms. More specifically, they use it to refer to “the kind of word that studentsmust know to read increasingly demanding text with comprehension.”

Harmer (1991: 158) summarizes that knowing a word (vocabulary)means knowing about meaning, word use, word formation, and wordgrammar.

Word meaning is also governed by metaphors and idioms, e.g., theword hiss refers to the noise of snake and to someone’s threat to others. Incollocation, a word goes with each other, such as, headache, earache, and soon. In addition, style and register is applied by differentiating the language tobe used by someone either in a formal or informal context, for example hello(formal) and hi (informal).

Moreover, word formation may also create word meaning vy seeingthem on their grammatical contexts. It means that we look at how the suffixesand the prefixes work (im-, or in-) such as in imperfect and perfect,inappropriate and appropriate.

The last is about word grammar which is employed by distinguishingthe use of words based on the use of certain grammatical patterns such asnoun, verb, adjective,adverb, etc. For example:

My sister  went to Berlin last week

N                 V         Adv   Adv

Learning vocabulary is not only learning about the words or new vocabulary, but also about how to use the vocabulary into correct usage. What is meant by the meaning of a word is determined by the context where it is formed and also determined by its relation to other words. The word book sometimes means the kind of thing you read from, but it can also mean a number of other things. The example of the second context is vegetableswhich has general meaning whereas carrot is more specific.

Furthermore, Hammer (1991:151-161) says that teaching vocabulary is clearly more than just presenting new words. This may, of course have its place but there are other issues too. However, not all vocabulary can be learned through interaction and discovery techniques. Thus statement implies that learning vocabulary cannot always be done through interaction and discovery techniques for the beginners. The reason is that, in doing such as technique, the learners are demanded to have an adequate number of vocabularies. It means that the students need to memorize and recall many vocabularies that have been mastered before.

Meanwhile, according to Cameron (2001), vocabulary is not simply about learning words, but it is actually much more than that. It is also about learning chunks and finding words inside them. From the definitions above, it can be concluded that vocabulary is the knowledge of words and word meanings. It is about the words in language used to express meaning. Therefore, learning vocabulary is a crucial matter in developing their English.

Kinds of Vocabulary

According to Nation (2001), there are two kinds of vocabulary. They are perceptive and productive vocabulary. Receptive vocabulary refers to the words that native speakers and foreign learners recognize and understand but hardly ever use, it is used passively in either listening or reading. Productive vocabulary is utilized actively either in speaking or writing. One’s listening vocabulary is generally larger than his speaking vocabulary while his reading vocabulary is relatively larger than his writing vocabulary. Therefore it can be concluded that vocabulary can be presented in four units.They are reading vocabulary, listening vocabulary, writing vocabulary, and speaking vocabulary.

William D. Ramey (2009) describes each of the vocabulary as below: 

1.         Reading Vocabulary

A  person’s  reading  vocabulary  is  all  the  words  he  or  she  can recognize when reading. This is the largest type of vocabulary simply because it includes the other three.

2.         Listening Vocabulary

A person’s listening vocabulary is all  the  words  he  or  she  can recognize when listening to speech. This vocabulary is aided in size by context and tone of voice.

3.         Writing Vocabulary

A  person’s  writing  vocabulary  is  all  the  words  he  or  she  can recognize when writing. This is the largest type of vocabulary because it includes the whole words.

4.         Speaking Vocabulary

A person’s speaking vocabulary is all the words he or she can use in speech. Due to the spontaneous nature of the speaking vocabulary, words are often misused. This misuse – though slight and unintentional – may be compensated by facial expressions, tone of voice, or hand gestures. Based  on  the  quotations  above,  it  can  be  known  that there  are categories or types of vocabulary such as function word, substitute words, word, and content words.

            Harmer (1991: 159) divides vocabulary into two types:

       a). Active vocabulary refers to vocabulary that has been learned by the students. They are expected to be able to use it.

b). Passive vocabulary refers to words which students will recognize when they meet them, but they probably not are able to produce it.

Good (1959:642) adds the third kind of vocabulary. It is reserved on potential vocabulary that consist of words that the individual does not know but they interpret them form their context or by reason of his background knowledge.

Schil (1967:57) states that there are three kinds of vocabulary, namely:

       a)        Active vocabulary refers to words that we use frequently in speaking.

       b)        Reserved vocabulary refers to words that we know but rarely used in speaking.

c)        Productive vocabulary refers to words that we use vaguely but we are not sure their meaning. We never use them either in speaking or writing. We know that because we have seen them previously.

            According to basis frequency, vocabulary divided into two kinds; there are high frequency vocabulary and low frequency vocabulary.

a). High frequency vocabulary consists of words that are used very often in normal language, used in all four skill and across the full range of situation of use. High frequency vocabulary consists of 2000 word families which are about 87% of the running words in formal written text and more than 95% of the words in informal spoken text.

b). Low frequency vocabulary on the other hands, covers only small proportion of the running words of a continuous text, it means that low frequency vocabulary is rarely used in common activity of English language. This group includes well over 100.000 word families.

In relation to kinds of vocabulary, Nation (2001) states that there are four kinds of vocabulary in the text:

1) High frequency words. These words are almost 80% of the runningwords in the text;

2) Academic words. Typically, these words make up about 9% of therunning words in the text;

3) Technical words. These words make up about 5% of the runningwords in the text;

4) Low frequency words. These are the words of moderate frequency thatdid not manage to get into the high frequency list. They make up over5% of the words in an academic text.