Master programe in Language Teaching
Dr.  Fajardo   UPTC   2013
       Bijan  Nassiri

                                                 Vocaulary (3)   further information

Learning a language is necessitated knowing a lot of vocabularies because the more words we know, the more we will be able to understand what we hear and read; and the better we will be able to say what we want to when speaking and writing. Moreover to communicate with people in a foreign language everybody needs to know sufficient vocabulary because they are essencial part of understanding a language.

                                                        How to learn words

By experience learning vocabulary by itself will not be a suitable manner to learn if there is not continuing way   in order to use it. Once we have chosen the words to learn, we next have to decide how we are going to learn them:

* write the words and definitions on small cards
* write the words in a notebook
* put the words in a different groups
* making short sentences with words
* use the words in our own speaking and writing
learning words or vocabularies won't be enough if we learn them through a list. it would be better to learn them in the context and even better to create new sentences with them in various forms. For instance, learning that "to appologize" means to say sorry is a good start, but it's much better to learn a whole expression containing the word, e.g. I 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.


                                            Learning vocabulary by reading


The way we learned very many of the words in our own language was by meeting them in the books or 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 we learn it for use in our own speaking and writing. Doing lots of extra reading for pleasure both fiction or non - fiction is an excellent way to learn new english words,too. But choose books that we find quite easy to read. Difficult stories or texts that we struggle to understand will not help us to develop our vocabulary the natural way. To learn new words from reading we have to read a lot.


                                       passive and active vocabulary


The vocabulary we know can be divided into two groups - passive vocabulary and active vocabulary. passive vocabulary contains all the words that we understand when we read or listen, but which we do not use or can not remember in our writing or speaking. Active vocabulary is all the words  we understand, plus all the words that we can use ourselves.

* how it is spelled
* how it is pronounced
* how it is inflected ( how it changes if it is a verb, noun, or adjective)
* grammar information about it
* how it collocates ( what other words are often used with it)

It is believed that native speakers learn the words by hearing them again and again. This is the best way for us to learn them, too.

                           Dear colleagues, be familiar with the following idioms.

He jumped out of his skin.     (shock or fright)    
He lost his head.         (panic or rage)
He got it off his chest.   (relief or confession)
I don't see eye to eye with him.   (disagreement)
I'm on my last legs.      (exhausion)