The Importance Of Awareness In Language Learning

According to Farrell (2009) research has indicated that people store words semantically, not alphabetically like in a dictionary; that the more we use a word, the easier it is to remember; and that we will remember faster the word we have more recently used. Many times we as teachers suggest that our students read as much as they can so they can expand their vocabularies. We can hope this will happen and sometimes it does, but we have an important role to play in motivating our students to enlarge their vocabulary banks by intervening directly and teaching them how to do this. Many teachers try to accomplish this by getting their students to memorize word lists or look at synonyms and antonyms of a word and then doing fill-in-the-blank exercises connected to these memorized words. These efforts may be useful, but recent research has indicated that ELLs acquire vocabulary more effectively when they are directly involved in constructing the meaning of a word rather than memorize

So, Words are the building blocks of a language since they label objects, actions, ideas without which people can’t convey the intended meaning. A prominent role of vocabulary knowledge in second or foreign language learning has been recently recognized by theorists and researchers in the field. Accordingly, numerous types of approaches, techniques, exercises, and practice have been introduced into the field to teach vocabulary. It has been suggested that teaching vocabulary should not only consist of the teaching of specific words but also aim at equipping learners with strategies necessary to expand their vocabulary knowledge. Words serve different purposes when reading, writing and speaking. A reader needs to recognize words and assign meaning to them; a writer and speaker must choose words to convey ideas. A person with limited vocabulary will have difficulty in expressing and understanding