Nistry of higher education,science and innovations of the republic of uzbekistan denau institute of entrepreneurship and pedagogy philology faculty

How does successful vocabulary acquisition take place?

For successful vocabulary acquisition to occur, students require a considerable amount of exposure to new words. The process of acquisition should follow a similar path to first language vocabulary acquisition: through context, associations, and constant exposure.
Students must be provided with opportunities for using vocabulary in memorable and meaningful situations. Selecting vocabulary learning activities should be guided by key factors such as how often the words are likely to be encountered and how necessary they are for producing effective communication.
Learning new words involves building up vocabulary from repertoire - that is, relating new words to previously acquired language. Try to imagine building blocks and stacking one layer over the other to consolidate vocabulary and build a strong foundation for future communication.
Teaching vocabulary should also take flexibility and creativity into account. The teacher should avoid approaching words as isolated and independent objects and preferably expose students to the way they are used in sentences and how they can group with other words to form collocations. As an example, apart from simply working out the meaning of the word 'go', it would also be effective to associate it with the preposition 'to' and present it as 'go to' - preferably in a sentence.
With lessons that focus on the receptive skills of reading and listening, it is useful to identify which words are most likely to be unfamiliar to students and do some pre-teaching. The idea is to make sure the students find the activity not only interesting but also meaningful and comprehensible. After students have read or listened to a text, the new vocabulary can be reinforced in other ways such as using flashcards or asking students to use the words in short writing or speaking activities.

Vocabulary learning needs according to proficiency level

Students' level of proficiency is another key consideration when approaching vocabulary learning activities.
Beginners benefit through direct vocabulary teaching as it fosters quick expansion in the number of words they know. Relevant activities might include using flashcards and illustrated handouts along with other memorisation strategies. This is a stage of early development, so it is important that the teacher also focuses on building confidence and a sense of self-accomplishment.
The approach with intermediate students should focus on expanding on already acquired vocabulary. For instance, students can explore the fact that the same word can have multiple meanings. This might involve students discovering how many different contexts they can use words like 'head' or 'park' for example. In addition, it is also valuable for intermediate students to work with affixes such as in-, un-, -less, -ly, and word families as in 'beauty, 'beautiful' and 'beautifully' as a way of expanding vocabulary range.
To build learner autonomy, encourage students to use their imagination so they can come up with their own ways of memorizing words based on their repertoire to consolidate the way they link new words to familiar ones.
Advanced students sometimes become frustrated because they feel that their vocabulary learning has plateaued. This often happens because they may already be familiar with the most frequent general words in the language. Therefore, consider increasing their exposure to academic vocabulary, which is likely to be far less familiar, but more likely to be encountered in future academic and professional life.