UNIT 9.

FOCUS ON TEACHING VOCABULARY

8.1. Introduction
• Vocabulary is an indispensable part of language learning and teaching.
• It is one of the most critical aspects of teaching and learning a foreign language.
• Vocabulary is the key to enrich foreign language/target language knowledge.
• The main idea is that students learn material vocabulary through reading material
and through direct instruction in the classroom, as well as through meaningful tasks
they are required to accomplish.
Teaching vocabulary to English language learners is an important part of students'
language development, but making the most of vocabulary instruction requires
careful planning and memorization.
Learners, in their turn, need not only to learn a lot of words, but to remember
them. In fact, learning is remembering.
Unlike the learning of grammar, which is essentially a rule-based system, vocabulary
knowledge is largely a question of accumulating individual items. Researchers into the
workings of memory customarily distinguish between the following systems: the
short-term store, working memory, and long-term memory.
 UNIT 9. FOCUS ON TEACHING VOCABULARY
• The short-term store (STS) is the brain's capacity to hold a limited number of items of
information for periods of time up to a few seconds. It is the kind of memory that is involved
in holding a telephone number for as long as it takes to be able to dial it. Or to repeat a word
that you've just heard the teacher‘s modeling. But successful vocabulary learning clearly
involves more than simply holding words in minds for a few seconds.
• Focussing on words long enough to perform operations on them is the function of
working memory (WM). Many cognitive tasks such as reasoning, learning and understanding
depend on working memory. It can be thought of as a kind of work bench, where information
is first placed, studied and moved about before being filed away for later retrieval. The
information that is being manipulated can come from external sources via the senses, or it
can be 'downloaded' from the long-term memory - or both. Material remains in working
memory for about twenty seconds.
• Long-term memory (LTM) can be thought of as a kind of filing system. Unlike working
memory, which has a limited capacity and no permanent content, long-term memory has an
enormous capacity, and its contents are durable over time. However, the fact that learners
can retain new vocabulary items the length of a lesson (i.e. beyond the few seconds' duration
of the short-term store) but have forgotten them by the next lesson suggests that long-term
memory is not always as long-term as we would wish. Rather, it occupies a continuum from
'the quickly forgotten' to 'the never forgotten'.
The great challenge for language learners is to transform material from the quickly
forgotten to the never forgotten.
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8.2 Types of Vocabulary

It is admitted that vocabulary can be divided into two large categories: active and passive vocabulary.
 Active vocabulary consists of those words over which one can use in his/her speech and writing. The
person knows the meaning of those words accurately. It refers to the productive side of language and
consists of the words one uses confidently because s/he understands their meanings and usage. In order
to give the proficiency in spoken and written language, words must continuously be added to the active
vocabulary of the students. Active vocabulary of a language calls for:
 The use of right word in right place.
 The spontaneous recall of words.
 Grammatical accuracy i.e., use of correct tenses, inflections and word order.
 In speech, fluency and ability to reproduce correct sounds, pronunciation, intonation, rhythm etc.
 Passive Vocabulary consists of those words, meaning of which can be understood when they appear in
speech or writing of others but which we cannot use in our own speech and writing because we are not
fully conversant with them. The person does not know the precise meaning of a particular word and s/he
does not make use of those words in communication. Sometimes we can understand the meaning only to
a certain extent depending on the contest. Passive vocabulary refers to the receptive side of language.
Passive vocabulary calls for:
 A recognition of vocabulary in speech or writing.
 An acquaintance with major grammatical items or forms.
 The skill of stimulating rapidly the sense of large word groups.
    It is observed that an undergraduate student has 3000 to 5000 active vocabulary whereas the same student
has 5000 to 10,000 passive vocabulary.
            A good communicator tries to turn passive vocabulary into active vocabulary. It is obvious that words
from passive vocabulary shift to active vocabulary after some years. There is no hard and fast rule of
acquiring active vocabulary. The one and only requirement is the student’s enthusiasm and effort with
some proper directions.
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There is a distinction between using and understanding vocabulary, so there are several
types of vocabulary:
 Meaning/oral vocabulary- connected with listening and speaking;
 Literate/written vocabulary – connected with reading and writing;
 Receptive vocabulary- connected with listening and reading (understanding the material
when listening an reading);
 Expressive vocabulary – connected with speaking and writing, it is the vocabulary that
people use to express themselves.
Teaching vocabulary has never been considered as something simple. The aspects that
need to be taken into consideration are connected with
a) receptive vocabulary which involves:
 The ability to recognize the word when it is heard or read, its structure (root, stem,
affixes), to use the word in a variety of contexts.
 The knowledge about: the meaning of the word, the semantic relations with other
words, the correct grammar use, the word frequency.
b) productive vocabulary which includes the ability to: pronounce the words correctly,
write it correctly, to reconstruct it, to use it in different/new contexts with its
appropriate meaning, to produce synonyms and antonyms for it, to decide upon its
suitability with respect to the style and register, fit for a specific context.
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Educators often consider four types of vocabulary: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. 
Listening Vocabulary - refers to the words we hear and comprehend. The listener is able to
link the words being spoken to their meaning. This level of understanding is aided by word
context, intonation and, if there is visual contact with the speaker, by gestures and facial
expressions. In our adulthood, most of us can identify and comprehend almost 50000 words.

Speaking vocabulary refers to the words we speak. Our speaking vocabulary is restricted.
Most of the adults use almost 5000 to 10000 words for communication (for conversation and
giving instructions). The number of words used in this case is far less than listening vocabulary,
the reason being the level of comfort in usage.

Reading vocabulary - refers to the words we recognize when we read any text. We read and
understand many words, but we do not use them in speaking vocabulary. If a person is a reader
then this type of vocabulary happens to be the second largest vocabulary. Needless to say,
vocabulary grows with reading.

Writing vocabulary - represents those words which we regain while writing to express
ourselves. It is very easy to explain ourselves verbally by using facial expressions and
modulation of voice, but using the same words for communicating the same concept or
thought through writing is not that easy. Our writing vocabulary is intensely affected by the
words we can spell.
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8.3 Useful Principles for Teaching Vocabulary
• Teach vocabulary in an explicit, systematic way
Teachers choose the vocabulary that students need to know in order to support their reading
development and content area learning. Also, they plan repeated exposures to ensure
mastery. When introducing new vocabulary student-friendly definitions for words
important to the task at hand are provided.
• Teach vocabulary thematically
The vocabulary is organized around a common theme, and reading materials that reinforce
that vocabulary in context.
• Teach vocabulary by focusing on common root words and affixes to expand word
knowledge.
Learning about roots, prefixes, and suffixes is a great way to reinforce and expand ELLs'
understanding of English words. Breaking the words down into smaller pieces makes
unfamiliar words more comprehensible.
• Capitalize on cognates
Students are taught to make the connection between words that are the same or similar in
English and in their primary language. This is an easy way to improve both vocabulary and
reading comprehension.
• Preview, preview, preview!
Before reading, students look through essential vocabulary and preview the content. They
"walk" through the book or chapter, looking at the pictures and demonstrating how the
previewed vocabulary is used in context since vocabulary is learned best through
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• Teach vocabulary specific to content
Content-specific words include words such as 'photosynthesis', 'revolution', 'metaphor', and words with
multiple meanings such as 'party', 'mouse', 'table', etc. A student's maximum level of reading
comprehension is determined by knowledge of words. Teachers focus on key words that students will need
to comprehend texts, learn the content in those texts, and pass tests.
• Knowing a word means:
 the ability to define a word;
 the ability to decode and spell that word;
 having the ability to recognize it in its spoken and written forms;
 knowing its different meanings;
 knowing its part of speech [eg. A noun, a verb];
 being able to pronounce it properly;
 being able to use it correctly within a sentence in an appropriate grammatical form;
 for technical words, recognizing it in context;
 being able to recognize different types of English e.g boot/trunk, lift/elevator [British/American].
• Teach signal words and directional words in order to build a student's academic vocabulary
Teachers help ELLs learn how to recognize, understand, and use signal and directional words.
Signal words are sometimes called "transition" words and "signal" relationships between clauses. They include
cause and effect words ("therefore" and "because"), comparison and contrast words ("despite" and
"while", and time sequence words ("then and "before").
Directional words describe a language function students need to perform, such as "explain", "compare",
"inform", "contrast", "persuade," "justify", etc.
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• Differentiate between different kinds of academic vocabulary and usage
Teachers also help ELLs understand how to recognize and when to use different kinds
of academic vocabulary (content-specific words, signal words, etc.) by making clear
and specific distinctions between the different kinds of academic words students
need to know for a specific topic.
• Teach students how to use context clues to discover word meaning
Students are shown how to determine more meaning based on the rest of the
sentence or surrounding paragraphs.
• Give students multiple opportunities to work with vocabulary
This includes connecting vocabulary to personal experience, allowing students to use
their primary language to make associations, using cognates, practicing speaking,
reading and writing, using artwork to represent words, in addition to techniques
such as Total Physical Response (TPR), which allows students to show what they
know by acting it out.
• Teach students to actively engage with vocabulary as they read
Underlining, highlighting, making notes, and listing unknown vocabulary words are
just a few strategies that foster comprehension by helping ELLs actively engage
with text.
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• What a student may need to know about an item

1. What it means. It is vital to get across the meaning of the item clearly and to ensure that students have
understood correctly with checking questions.
2. The form. Students need to know if it is a verb / a noun / an adjective etc. to be able to use it effectively.
3. How it is pronounced/spelt. This can be particularly problematic for learners of English because there is
often no clear relation between how a word is written and how it is pronounced. It is very important to
use the phonemic script in such cases so the students have a clear written record of the pronunciation.
Teachers can also drill words that you think will cause pronunciation problems and highlight the word
stresses.
4. If it follows any unpredictable grammatical patterns. For example, man-men / information (uncountable)
and if the word is followed by a particular preposition (e.g. depend on).
5. The connotations that the item may have. Bachelor is a neutral/positive word whereas spinster conjures
a more negative image.
6. The situations when the word is or is not used.
• Is it formal/neutral/informal? For example, spectacles/glasses/specs.
• Is it used mainly in speech or in writing? To sum up is usually written whereas mind you is spoken.
• Is it outdated? Wireless instead of radio.
7. How the word is related to others For example, synonyms, antonyms, lexical sets.
8. Collocation or the way that words occur together. Teachers describe things 'in great detail' not 'in big
detail' and to ask a question you 'raise your hand' you don't 'lift your hand'. It is important to highlight this
to students to prevent mistakes in usage later.
9. What the affixes (the prefixes and suffixes) may indicate about the meaning For example, substandard
`sub` meaning under. This is particularly useful at a higher level.
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• Learners need to learn both the meaning and the form of a new word.
Both these aspects should be presented in close conjunction.
• The number of new words presented should not overstretch the learners'
capacity to remember them.
• Nor should the presentation extend so far into the lesson that no time is
available to put the words to work.
• Course books tend to operate on the principle that a vocabulary
presentation should include at least about a dozen items.
• There is then the choice of the sequence of presentation, either: meaning
first, then form, or vice-versa.
There is an argument that presenting the meaning first creates a need for the
form, making the presentation both more efficient and more memorable.
On the other hand, 'form first' presentation works best when the words are
presented in some kind of context, so that the learners can work out the
meaning for themselves.
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The next set of choices relates to the means of presentation - whether to present the meaning through:
– Translation
Traditionally, it has been the most widely used means of presenting the meaning of a word. It has the
advantage of being the most direct route towards meaning - assuming that there is a close match
between the target word and its equivalent. It is therefore very economical, and especially suitable for
dealing with incidental vocabulary that may crop up in a lesson.
However, it may mean that learners fail to develop an independent lexicon, with the effect that they
always access foreign words by means of their mother tongue equivalents, rather than directly. Also,
because learners don't have to work very hard to access the meaning, it may mean that the word is less
memorable. A case of 'no pain, no gain'.
– Real things (realia)
An alternative to translation - is to somehow illustrate or demonstrate them. This can be done either by
using real objects (realia) or pictures or mime. The use of realia, pictures and demonstration was a
defining technique of the Direct Method. The Direct Method developed as a reaction to such highly
intellectual approaches to language learning as Grammar-Translation.
– Actions / gesture
Such an approach is especially appropriate if teaching beginners, and with mixed nationality classes,
where translation is not an option.
It is also a technique that has been reclaimed by practitioners of Total Physical Response (TPR), a method
that promotes initial immersion in a high quantity of comprehensible input.
A TPR lesson typically involves the teacher demonstrating actions, using real objects, and then getting the
learners to perform the same or similar actions in response to commands.
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8.4 Vocabulary learning techniques
There are a variety of language learning strategies that may have the potential to facilitate language
learning through the use of different techniques. Teachers can teach vocabulary directly or indirectly.
Using a variety of effective methods will increase the student's ability to learn new words.
• Showing pictures or using audio-visual aids
Language teachers should have the mastery over the skill of drawing so as to teach vocabulary. Students
should produce some pictures of animals, birds, fruits, vegetables etc. The teacher can also use some
other audio-visual aids to teach vocabulary properly.
• Showing real objects or models
The objects which the teacher can easily bring in the classroom should be shown to the students. For
example, stick, stone, maps, clock etc.
• Miming or performing an action
To teach some words, the teacher can actually perform the action like walking, writing, laughing etc. in the
class.
• By framing illustrative sentences
These sentences should be such that meaning of the words flashes from the context clear as crystal. For
example, the train left the station at 7.55. I could not catch it. I missed the train. It should be always kept
in mind that this type of sentences should be simple in structure.
• By associating with other words
The teacher should try to associate a new word with the word that is already known to the students. This
can be done by asking and giving examples of synonyms and antonyms. Making references to a
Thesaurus is a useful method, too.
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• Identifying the lexical set:
The ability to identify the lexical set is very essential in teaching vocabulary. For
example, accelerator, breaks are the words of the some lexical set.
• Breaking words into component units:
The meaning of words should be explained by breaking words down into their
component units and providing the meaning of each unit separately, and then
giving the combined root + affix meaning. For instance, words such as ‘inject’,
‘eject’, and ‘deject’ could be explained as follows:
Inject = in (inside) + ject (throw) = to insert, as in ‘inject a syringe’.
Eject = e (away) + ject (throw) = to throw out, as in ‘eject oneself from an airplane’.
Deject = de (down) + ject (throw)= to throw down’ to make low in spirits.
• Matching tasks
They involve first recognizing words and then pairing them with - for example - a
visual representation, a translation, a synonym, an antonym, a definition, or a
collocate.
• Sorting activities
They require learners to sort words into different categories. The categories can
either be given, or guessed,
eg. Put these adjectives into two groups - positive and negative.
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• Use of production tasks
Tasks that are productive are those in which the learners are required to incorporate the newly
studied words into some kind of speaking or writing activity. These can be classified as being
of two main types: 1. completion - of sentences and texts 2. creation - of sentences and texts
• Exposure of different contexts
Learners should be exposed to different kinds of contexts in which a word may be used, to ensure
its proper usage. One context does not ensure mastery of the word.
• To give some importance on word-formation
The teacher should teach the different affixes (prefixes and suffixes) and their functions should be
taught in order to give proper interpretation of a new word. Words can be grouped into
clusters on the basis of their affixes. Knowing the meaning of a prefix or a suffix will help
learners to understand the meaning of a word.
• Crossword puzzles
They help in studying vocabulary. Almost all the English newspapers have crossword puzzles. The
teacher should produce adequate crossword puzzles for the sake of teaching vocabulary. This
is a useful tool in building one’s vocabulary.
• Word games
Sometimes the teacher should conduct some word games among the students in the classroom.
This will help the students a lot because the process of learning vocabulary becomes an
entertaining work.
• Giving equivalents in mother-tongue
Most of the students may not be acquainted with all the terms in the target language. But those
terms can be taught through the medium of their mother-tongue.
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• Encourage the students to use a dictionary

It is always beneficial to use a monolingual dictionary. To get a wide exposure to the language, it
is an essential act which the students should be advised to perform.
• Create Word Map
Word maps are graphic organizers that help students learn new words by associating it with its
antonyms, synonyms, writing their own definition or using the word in their own
sentence. Word map activities allows students to think about vocabulary in several ways, and
further make connections with each word in relation to other words they already know.
• Use Music for Memorization
Music has always been a great tool to help with memorization. Catchy beats and hooks often
make vocabulary retention easier. It allows students to memorize at their own pace.
• Personalized Lists
Students can be empowered to build their own vocabulary lists. Students will come across new
words they don’t know every day in readings and discussions across the content areas. When
students pick out their own vocabulary words, not only will they be more motivated to learn
them, but it allows the vocabulary lists to be personalized to each student, too.
• Use Context Clues
The teacher provides reading passages or sentences with new vocabulary words embedded in
them. Students then attempt to guess the definitions. Teaching vocabulary through context
clues encourages critical thinking skills and helps them make connections to the word,
ultimately helping them remember its meaning.
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• Sentence and text creation tasks

They require learners to create the contexts for given words. Here are some typical task
instructions:
 Use each of these words to make a sentence which clearly shows the meaning of the word.
 Choose six words from the list and write a sentence using each one.
 Use each of these words to write a true sentence about yourself or someone you know.
 Write a short narrative (or dialogue) which includes at least five words from the list.
Tasks such as these lead naturally into speaking activities - either reading aloud or performing
dialogues to the class, or comparing and explaining sentences in pairs or small groups. These
activities involve many of the processes that serve to promote retention in long-term
memory, such as rehearsal, repetition and explanation.
• Teaching lexical chunks. There are different types of chunks and different degrees of
'chunkiness'. Of all types, the following are the most important for teaching purposes:
 collocations - widely travelled; rich and famous; make do with; set the table;
 phrasal verbs - get up; log on; run out of; go on about;
 idioms and sayings - get cold feet; as old as the hills; mind your own business; takes one to
know one;
 sentence frames - would you mind if... ?; the thing is ...; I'd... if I were you; what really gets
me is ... ' social formulae — such as see you later; have a nice day; yours; sincerely
 discourse markers — such as frankly speaking; on the other hand; I take your point; once
upon a time; to cut a long story short...
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Summing these up, it means that teaching vocabulary should include:
 teaching the form/spelling of words;
 their pronunciation;
 word meanings(s);
 changes of meaning;
 transfer of meaning;
 enlargement/narrowing of meaning;
 teaching that form and meaning go together;
 teaching lexical sets and word fields;
 the way in which words are used in different situations and context, as well.
An important attention should be given to the process of recycling vocabulary from time to
time. Through the way they are organized, textbooks help the teacher in this respect.
Teaching vocabulary also involves the teacher offering information and training in decoding
meaning. This implies attention given to the context (the entire non-verbal environment
which is linguistically relevant for communication purposes) and the co-text (the linguistic
environment proper; the items in the text which play a role in specifying the meaning of a
given lexical item) in which word is used; this is why the study of vocabulary cannot be
separated from the study of phonetics and grammar.
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Knowing words also means mastering of their
• Denotative meaning
Denotation means” the objective, impersonal meaning of a word. This
meaning is the one that has been fixed in the language of the whole
people, and it forms part of whole system of the conventional signs that
enables people to understand each other; it also appeals to the intellect
and represents the cognitive or communicative aspect of meaning.
For example, the word rose stands for a flower; grammatically, it is a noun.
Denotation is neutral, as far as the attitude of the speaker is concerned;
it simply conveys the informational load of the respective word.
• Connotative meaning
Connotation means “the subjective, personal and emotive <extra-
meaning> of a word”; it is what the word suggests or implies.
Connotations represent the field of associations, suggestions, the
emotional overtones the speaker usually associates with each individual
use of words.
For example, the word rose may denote beauty, delicacy or love.
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The abilities to learn vocabulary are closely linked with the students’ ability of handling their
first language, their previous language experience, as well as the learning strategies that they
use.
The teacher’s responsibility is to:
Provide
• Authentic material as basis for learning;
• Frequent repetition of the vocabulary already taught;
• Regular and systematic practice;
• Different contexts in a which a word may be used;
Help
• Students organize the material when storing it, so that they be successful when they retrieve
it;
• Students turn their passive vocabulary into an active one;
• Students expand their vocabulary knowledge as often as possible;
Develop students’ motivation for learning new vocabulary, as basis for the production stage;
Encourage students’ acquisition of vocabulary and its use;
Use attractive, flexible and various strategies that allow for learning new words;
Foster guided discovery of new lexical material and even of independent learning;
Adapt the material to the students’ age and power of learning;
Make sure that vocabulary is acquired through comprehension, association and integration of
the new material with already learned one;
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8.5 Stages of introducing vocabulary
Lead-in stage
Before listening to texts or reading them, students are introduced to the new vocabulary
they are going to learn, it happens during pre-reading/listening stage. The new words may
be introduced by means of several techniques that can be visual, verbal, non - verbal.
• Visual includes: using pictures, photos, drawings, illustrations; using pictograms (the
teacher draws on the blackboard and it renders the meaning); flash-cards, handouts,
diagrams, word trees, charts, comic strips, using realia (the teacher brings different
objects)
• Verbal techniques include: explanations, semantically related words (synonyms, antonyms,
homonyms), translation, vocabulary games, word-building, matching.
• Non-verbal techniques include gesturing and miming.
During the work with the text.
The technique is the following: text books are opened, students read the text and relate
what they have understood. The new ways are introduced in different ways: guessing
from the context, offering the definition of the new word, word analysis technique (roots,
affixes), use of antonyms/synonyms, substitution, matching words with definitions, writing
word lists, making connections, finding out differences, collocation identification,
translation.
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During the students' work with dictionary.
It is important to offer students the possibilities to discover meanings of
words by themselves/through independent work. This is why the
dictionary becomes a useful tool in the classroom. Students need to be
taught some preliminary things related to the way in which a dictionary
is organized and to the work with it.
Thus, the procedure becomes the following; the students identify the new
word; the teacher helps them indentify its root form; the students read
the word again and try to establish its grammatical function in the
context it is used (Is it a noun/verb/adjective or adverb?); then, they look
the word up in the dictionary and find the meaning which is appropriate
to the respective context. Students also need to check its pronunciation.
Exercises in teaching vocabulary are of different types. Some of them
based on the students’ recognizing words and structures, while others
are based on producing/practicing language structures.
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Students show comprehension of vocabulary when they appropriately:

• underline required words or word classes;
• match pictures with words;
• recognize the structure of words;
• can offer synonyms, antonyms, homonyms;
• use prefixes and suffixes to build new words from already given ones;
• fill in blanks with words;
• construct oral or written discourse;
• re-arrange words in correct order;
• summarize longer texts;
• paraphrase texts;
• fill in grids and diagrams;
• group/classify/list words according to criteria;
• replace certain words by others and make all the necessary changes
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These strategies help students to enhance their memory. Research into memory has proved that people
do not store words in their brain in alphabetical order, words that are somehow related join together in
groups. This means that it is better to teach lexical sets in which words are related in several ways:
• By topic – animals, plants, jobs, transport, music;
• Similarity of meaning (monkey, ape, gorilla);
• In pairs - ( brave, courageous)
• Antonyms- old/new,
• Scales – boiling, hot, warm,
• Activity or process – steps in making a cake.
Also, knowledge of vocabulary implies the acquisition of information of different types:
• of style (level of formality, e.g. slang, colloquial, formal/informal, neutral, ironic, poetic etc.;
• of registers – varieties of language defined by the topic (lang. of medicine, engineering, etc);
• dialects – refer to differences in geographical variation (American English, British, etc);
• collocation- specific word combinations;
• morphology- knowing the form of a word and its possible derivations;
• semantics- knowing what the word means and its connotations;
• polysemy- knowing the different, meanings associated with a word;
In other words, words should pass from the short-term memory to long-term memory, so the
repetition of words and the frequent occurrence of the respective word is a very important strategy.
 
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8.6 What makes a word difficult?

Easiest of all are those that are more or less identical, both in meaning and form, to their
equivalents. When this is due to the fact that they derive from a common origin, they are
called cognates. Thus Catalan vocabulari, French vocabulaire, Italian vocabolario and English
vocabulary are all cognates and relatively easily transferable from one language to the other.
The global spread of English has also meant that many English words have been borrowed by
other languages. Examples of such loanwords in Japanese are shanpu (shampoo), shoppingu
(shopping), and sunakku (snack). Cognates and loan words provide a useful 'way in' to the
vocabulary of English, and are worth exploiting. However, there are a number of traps for
new players, in the form of false friends.
Other factors that make some words more difficult than others are:
Pronunciation
• Words that are difficult to pronounce are more difficult to learn. Potentially difficult words
will typically be those that contain sounds that are unfamiliar to some groups of learners.
Many learners find that words with clusters of consonants, such as strength or crisps or
breakfast, are also problematic.
Spelling
• Sound-spelling mismatches are likely to be the cause of errors, either of pronunciation or of
spelling, and can contribute to a word's difficulty. Words that contain silent letters are
particularly problematic: foreign, listen, headache, climbing, bored, honest, cupboard,
muscle, etc.
 UNIT 9. FOCUS ON TEACHING VOCABULARY

Length and complexity

Long words seem to be no more difficult to learn than short ones. But, as a rule of
thumb, high frequency words tend to be short in English, and therefore the
learner is likely to meet them more often, a factor favouring their 'learnability'.
Also, variable stress in polysyllabic words - such as in word families like
necessary, necessity and necessarily - can add to their difficulty.
Grammar
Also problematic is the grammar associated with the word, especially if this differs
from that of its equivalent. Remembering whether a verb like enjoy, love, or
hope is followed by an infinitive (to swim] or an -ing form (swimming) can add to
its difficulty. And the grammar of phrasal verbs is particularly troublesome: some
phrasal verbs are separable (she looked the word up) but others are not (she
looked after the children).
Meaning:
When two words overlap in meaning, learners are likely to confuse them. Make
and do are a case in point: you make breakfast and make an appointment, but
you do the housework and do a questionnaire. Words with multiple meanings,
such as since and still, can also be troublesome for learners.