The impact of using wordlists in the language classroom on students’ vocabulary acquisition

Abstract

Vocabulary has always been an area of interest for many researchers since words represent “the building block upon which knowledge of the second language can be built” and without them people cannot convey the intended meaning (Abrudan, 2010). Nation (1988) emphasised if teachers want to help their learners to deal with unknown words, it would be better to spend more time on vocabulary learning strategies rather than spending time on individual words. However, Schmitt in Schmitt and McCarthy (1997:200) stated that among vocabulary learning strategies only ‘guessing from context’ and ‘key word method’ have been investigated in depth. Therefore, there is need for more research on vocabulary learning whose pedagogical implications may contribute to the field of second language learning. Considering the above-mentioned issues, vocabulary is a worthwhile field to investigate. Hence, this paper aims at proposing a framework for vocabulary teaching strategy in English as a foreign language context.