Purpose of Teaching Vocabulary to Students

Purposes for Teaching Vocabulary 

One reason teachers are concerned about teaching vocabulary is to facilitate the comprehension of a text that students will be assigned to read. If students do not know the meaning of many of the words that they will encounter in a text, their comprehension of that selection is likely to be compromised. When the purpose of vocabulary instruction is to facilitate the comprehension of a selection, it is obvious that this instruction must take place as an introduction before the reading of the selection.
As a rule, new words in narrative selections are not as critical to the overall understanding of the selection as are new words in informational selections. Before guiding students’ reading of a particular narrative, teachers should determine if there are any new words that represent concepts that are critical to understanding the selection and which are not adequately defined in context. If there are, then these words should be presented and discussed before the students read. While a “narrow” or superficial treatment often is sufficient for these, on other occasions it is necessary to develop “deep” understandings.
Informational selections usually carry a higher load of new words than narratives, and the meanings of these new words are quite often important for understanding the selection. Some authors of informational texts make it a point to use artificially enhanced contexts to facilitate word learning. If new words are defined appropriately in the selection, they may not need to be discussed beforehand. However, it is important to keep in mind the research finding that in naturally occurring contexts, it is more difficult to use contexts for word meanings in informational texts as compared to narrative texts. Thus new words which are critical to an understanding of the major topic or theme should be introduced and discussed prior to reading because the exploration of these prerequisite terms and concepts will establish a strong foundation for subsequent learning.
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A second major reason for teaching the meaning of words is to increase the number of words that students know and can use in a variety of educational, social, and eventually work-related areas. These are very likely to be what we have termed Level II words. To increase the number of words the students learn, it is often helpful to teach these words in morphological or semantic clusters.
Morphological clusters refer to what Nagy calls “the word formation process.” These clusters will often build around a base or root word. For example, if a teacher were teaching the word arm not as a body part but as a verb meaning “to provide with a weapon,” then it would probably be useful to teach the morphologically related words: arms noun), armed (adjective as in armed guard), disarm, rearm, unarm, armor, armory, armament, etc.
Semantic clusters refer to words that are related in meaning or relate to the same field of study. Teaching words in semantic clusters is particularly effective since vocabulary expansion involves not just the acquisition of the meaning of individual words but also learning the relationships among words and how these words relate to each other.
Avery effective way to present semantically related words is to build word webs around some central concept. For example, after reading the selection Akiak, a story about dog sled racing in Alaska, it would be appropriate to build a word web of “cold weather words.”
What Are The Problems In Learning Vocabulary?

Some students got difficulties in learning vocabulary. Firstly, the students get difficulties in pronouncing words correctly. Pronouncing the words correctly is an important part in teaching vocabulary because incorrect pronunciation will influence the meaning of the words. Moreover, by pronouncing the words correctly, it can help the students remember the word longer and identify it more readily when they hear or see it. In introducing new words, the teacher should pronounce every new word, correctly and carefully, and then repeat it in chorus by the class or by individual pupils. In fact, the students still get difficulties in pronouncing the words correctly. There are many real cases related to the students’ mispronunciation, namely:
a) The students tend to pronounce the letters of the words. It can be seen when the students are pronouncing words such as tongue, stomach, armpit etc. The problem is caused not only by the differences in pronunciation system between the target language and mother tongue (Bahasa) but also the teaching technique errors. In introducing the words, the teacher tends to use written form first than oral.
b) The students add the vocal sound when they find consonant cluster which does not appear in Bahasa. For examples is when they pronounce the words such as arm, school, student, study, etc.
c) The students replace the consonant sound which is difficult to pronounce with the nearest sound. It happens when the students have to pronounce the word which ends in consonant sound. For example the word orange, the last sound / d / is pronounced by the sound / ç /, so it becomes / oriç /.
Secondly, the students get difficulties in remembering and grasping the meaning of the words often appears when they do the exercises. They cannot do the exercise perfectly. Most of them fill the wrong answers. The mistake is caused by translation method in teaching vocabulary. The teacher taught vocabulary mostly by translating at the beginning of the lesson or translating of the material containing new words or glossaries at the end. Therefore, it can be determined that the error in this case was to confuse translation with language use, and to assume that putting across the meaning was the whole of teaching vocabulary. Moreover, the teacher never used self-defining context, definition in the target language, opposites, pictures, and dramatization as a number ways to put across the meaning of a new word to a class.
Thirdly, the students’ attention and motivation in learning vocabulary are decreasing. The students do not pay attention to the teacher’s explanation. They are also easy to get bored in having the lesson. It can be seen from the responses in doing some exercises and practices. They easily give up when they get difficult exercise and the teacher never used games, dialogues, song, and dramatization as interesting ways in delivering material.

Thus, it can be predicted that the factors are: 

1. The teacher is not creative to use media as aids of teaching. Dealing with teaching foreign language to children, the teacher should involve the sense and include movement and in most activities. It means, the teacher needs some pictures and objects to be used as media in teaching.
2. The teacher only gives a little time to practice in pronouncing the words correctly, whereas a little time to practice cannot create accurate pronunciation, especially for the beginners.
3. The technique of the teaching vocabulary that the teacher uses seems ineffective for the students. It does not give the students great motivation to learn. In other words, students are passive in learning vocabulary.

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