Difficulties in Learning Vocabulary

DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING VOCABULARY

Learning vocabulary is a very important part of learning a language. The more words you know, the more you will be able to understand what you hear and read; and the better you will be able to say what you want to when speaking or writing. The vocabulary we know can be divided into two groups - passive vocabulary and active vocabulary. Passive vocabulary contains all the words that you understand when you read or listen, but which you do not use (or cannot remember) in your own writing and speaking. Active vocabulary is all the words you understand, plus all the words that you can use yourself. Special problems involved in vocabulary understanding, such as polyse , the word’s idiomatic usage, false congnates and distinction between homophones, can also be solved by the context and the dictionary. Usually the first things you learn about a new English word are what it means and its translation in your own language. But there are other things you need to find out before you can say that you know a word like a native speaker does. For example, you have to learn: how it is spelled, how it is pronounced, how it is inflected (i.e. how it changes if it is a verb, noun or adjective), other grammar information about it, how it collocates (i.e. what other words are often used with it). Learning vocabulary seems to be one of the easiest things about learning a language, but it's also one of the hardest things to do, especially when you have reached a certain level. Learning vocabulary needs practice and time and in our days time is a problem. We can face some difficulties, such as: deciding which words are worth learning. There are a lot of words in English compared with many other languages, and it is impossible to know them all - even native speakers frequently meet words they have never seen before in their reading. Another problem can be how to organize our vocabulary. Most people find that it's useful to organise the vocabulary they write down in some way, either to break the words/phrases into groups for learning, to show relationships between similar words, or to make it easier to find a particular word. Here are some ways of classifying your vocabulary that you might consider: according to alphabetical order; the order in which you found the words; topics; situations; 'families' of similar word meanings; frequency of occurrence.Remembering vocabulary(Vocabulary learning has largely been construed as a memory problem) seems to be another difficulty for vocabulaty learners. One of the biggest problems with vocabulary learning is that what’s ‘learned’ today is often forgotten tomorrow. Here are some suggested methods for reducing the 'forgetting problem': a) Learn words repeatedly, with increasing intervals between learning sessions. We all know that if learning is not repeated, we will forget the words we have learned. But research in Psychology shows that we do not forget things gradually. Instead, most of our forgetting occurs within 20 minutes after we have first 'learned' something. More is forgotten within one hour, and still more within 8 hours - but after 8 hours, the rate of forgetting stays surprisingly steady.

b) Have the words you want to learn with you wherever you go, so that you can use any ‘dead’ time, e.g. travelling to and from university. Word cards or vocabulary notebooks are useful. c) Set aside a regular time for vocabulary learning or memorising — e.g. just before you go to bed, or when travelling to and from university. d) Spend more time on the words that you find difficult. Often, when learning vocabulary, people create a list with the target words on one side and meanings on the other, and go down the list from the first word to the last, trying to memorise each one. This method can have two problems: firstly, the words at the top of the list tend to be remembered better than those further down; and secondly, time is wasted going over words that the learner has already learned. One way of overcoming these problems is to spend more time on the words that you find difficult. A simple way of doing this is to delete the words you know from the list. If you sort in Word, you can also change the order of the list, so that it’s not the same every time. An alternative is to post words onto a wall or board, and take them down when you know them.It is essential that the learner to evaluate his vocabulary learning. It's very important for most learners to have an idea of whether they're making progress or not. Finding that you are actually making progress can be a big help to your confidence. Every day you hear or read many new English words. You also find them in your dictionary when you are translating from your own language. You can’t possibly learn all these new words, so your first problem is to decide which ones to concentrate on. Here are some suggestions: • • • •

learn the words that are important to the subjects you are studying learn the words that you read or hear again and again learn the words that you know you will often want to use yourself do not learn words that are rare or not useful (your teacher can help you with this)

Once we have chosen which words to learn, next we have to decide how are we going to learn them. Here are a few ideas: • •

write the words in a notebook (with their translations or definitions) write the words and definitions on small cards

 say the words many times (if you have an electronic dictionary you can hear how the word is pronounced)  put the words into different groups (you could use a graphic organiser)  write them in a file for use with a computer program  make associations (in pictures or with other words)  ask someone to test you  use the words in your own speaking or writing

Some students put a tick or cross in their dictionary next to every word they look up. The next time they turn to a page with a marked word, they quickly check to see if they remember the meaning of that word. In all of the above ways, we are doing something with the words. It’s usually not enough to just read through a list of words with their definitions or translations and try to remember them. Most students find that they memorise words better if they do something with them. Even better is to try and learn the word in a typical combination with other words. Learning that to apologize means to say sorry is a good start, but it's much better to learn a whole expression containing the word, e.g. He apologized for being late. Not only is this often easier to remember, but we are also learning some very important information on how the word is used. The way we learned very many of the words in ourr own language was by meeting them in the books and magazines we read. The context of a new word in a sentence or story was often enough for us to guess the meaning. Meeting the word again and again in our reading helped us learn it for use in our own speaking and writing. Doing lots of extra reading for pleasure - both fiction and non-fiction - is an excellent way to learn new English words, too. But choose books that you find quite easy to read. Difficult stories or texts that you struggle to understand will not help you to develop your vocabulary the natural way. Being able to remember one meaning of a list of words within a week or two is easy, developing a functional lexicon that contains morphological, semantic, syntactic, pragmatic, and emotional connections needs a gradual process that takes much more time and effort. The importance of learning vocabulary:  Increasing your vocabulary allows you to use more descriptive words to better communicate your thoughts.  Understanding the meaning of more words will allow you to better understand information that you are reading or listening to (comprehension), thus increasing your retention.  Having a larger vocabulary to call upon will help your verbal communication flow and allow you to start eliminating noises such as, "umm" and "uhh".  Being able to use more colorful words in speaking to others will allow you to project a more intelligent image. It is well known that people who have a strong English vocabulary receive more attention and respect from their peers, colleagues, subordinates and authority figures? This is because speaking with a strong vocabulary indicates that you take yourself seriously. Language and the way we use words conveys intelligence and authority. A person who is a mathematical genius or an expert software developer may be highly respected for technical skills, but if the words that come out of mouth consist of a poor vocabulary, it will, unfortunately, communicate a lack of intelligence.