For any foreign language learner it is essential to enrich their vocabulary. Holly B. Lane and Stephani A. Allan, who are the authors of the article "The Vocabulary Rich classroom: Modeling Sophisticated Word Use to Promote Word Consciousness and Vocabulary Growth" are deeply conveyed that one of the ways to awake word consciousness in students is to ask them to model new words.
In order to show that their ideas are true and effective, the authors give examples of two classes, where children learned new words and started to use them skillfully in their everyday life. Although the mentioned above examples are related to children of different age, it still proves that the technique is rather effective and valid for people of any age.
The role of vocabulary is often underestimated. However, it is crucial to understand both for students and their parents that vocabulary is one of the keys to successful education. It is impossible for the student to succeed in reading, if his or her vocabulary is rather poor. Correspondingly, poor reading skills lead to a gap in education. If no attempts is made, the gap will only grow with the flow of time. Elleman, Lindo, Morphy and Compton underline the necessity of vocabulary instructions: "Vocabulary instruction is particularly critical for students with reading difficulties, as their improvements in comprehension as a result of vocabulary instruction are even greater than for students without reading difficulties" (cited in Lane and Allan, p.3).
Now, when the role of vocabulary is well understood, it is necessary to say a few words about the level of vocabulary knowledge. It is extremely important to know words not only superficially, but understand the variety of their meanings and be able to use them in everyday life. Vocabulary knowledge should be not only wide, but deep as well. All the words, which a person knows, can be divided into several groups. An interesting classification of the words was given by Kamil and Hiebert, who divided vocabulary into oral, print, receptive and productive groups. According to their point of view, it is essential to pay a lot of attention to the receptive group of words. Quite often it happens so that we do not pay enough attention to the words, which we hear, but do not understand their meaning. It is one of the biggest mistakes of all students.
It should be understood that responsibility of vocabulary knowledge lies not only on students, but on the teachers as well. It is crucial to attract attention of the students to specific words, which are worth learning. Indeed, it is rather difficult to learn all the new words, that is why those words, which are regularly used by adults, should be of priority. It is highly recommended to teach and learn vocabulary in such a way, which will allow not only to broaden vocabulary, but to acquire deep and conscious knowledge, make use of new words, be able to link them to your previous knowledge.
In order to succeed in such a hard task, it is highly recommended to follow such rules as reading a lot, using words learning techniques, be word conscious. An ability to make connections between prior knowledge of students and new words is of great importance. In the majority of cases this is responsibility of the teacher.
References
Lane, H.B., Allan, S.A. (2010). " The Vocabulary Rich classroom: Modeling Sophisticated Word Use to Promote Word Consciousness and Vocabulary Growth." The Reading Teacher, 63(5), pp. 362–370. International Reading Association. Retrieved March 22, 2013.
