236331

T.Vepreva

Northern Arctic Federal University, Arkhangelsk

Strategies for teaching vocabulary in ESP

Vocabulary plays a very important role in a language acquisition. A lot of psychologists and methodologists prove this fact by their sayings. According to Jim Rohn [Jim-Rohn quotes]

“Vocabulary enables us to interpret and to express. If you have a limited vocabulary, you will also have a limited vision and a limited future”. Dellar H. and Hocking D. [in Thornbury, 2007:13] add

“If you spend most of your time studying grammar, your English will not improve very much. You will see most improvement if you learn more words and expressions”.

It is rather difficult to communicate without knowing grammar, but you can hardly ever do it without words. Moreover, word knowledge is a key to future success. People who can express themselves exactly and with appropriate words are more likely to make a positive impression on their employers, colleagues and clients. That is why vocabulary development and the skills to acquire new vocabulary are essential components of the education we provide to students of nonlinguistic specialties of Northern Arctic Federal University.

For a long time one of the main ways of teaching vocabulary in ESP used to be learning the lists of specialized words and reading and translating the texts. Nowadays, with the appearance and a wide spread of modern technologies and the necessity to encourage autonomy, they need to be revised.

To know a word is not simply to know its definition. It implies knowing its pronunciation, spelling, grammatical form, its core and additional meanings, associations and collocations. It would be unrealistic to teach everything the first time it is presented to learners, so it should be done systematically.

We cannot teach all of the words that our learners need to know. To be communicatively successful learners must acquire new words on their own by listening and reading authentic sources and literature. We should help our students become better learners of vocabulary by teaching different techniques and word-learning strategies they can use to continue learning outside the classroom.

The first strategy that helps learners to understand the meaning of new words is the use of word parts. Many English words are borrowed from other languages, such as Greek, Latin and French. Knowing the meaning of Greek and Latin roots, or frequently used prefixes and suffixes will encourage learners to induce the meanings of unknown words.

A second word-learning strategy is the use of context. As a rule, a text provides enough information to support understanding of a new word. To determine its meaning the learners should consider not only the unknown word but also all the words around it. It should be noted though that this strategy is an effective one among learners with a higher level of language comprehension.

The next word-learning strategy is the use of dictionaries. Dictionaries can be extremely useful, especially when learners are motivated to understand the meaning of an unknown word. Modern electronic dictionaries with multimedia annotations offer a further option for learners, they can easily find not only the core and additional meanings of a word, its collocations, synonyms, antonyms but listen to its pronunciation, read examples and explore its origin. The ability to use this strategy optimizes the process of learning and saves learners’ time.

The last but not the least strategy is asking for help. It implies teaching our learners paraphrasing, trying to express their needs even if they do not remember or know the word.

All these word-learning strategies should empower our students to acquire new words independently and throughout their lives.

References

1.Jim-Rohn quotes. Retrieved March 5, 2013 from http://www.quotationcollection.com/author/Jim-Rohn/quotes

2.Thornbury, S. (2007). How to Teach Vocabulary. Harlow: Pearson Educated Limited.