The Importance of Vocabulary

Margaret and Isabel (2002: 1) state that vocabulary plays in people’s lives and future possibilities. It is clear that a large and rich vocabulary is the hallmark of an educated individual. Indeed, a large vocabulary repertoire facilitates becoming an educated person to the extent that vocabulary knowledge is strongly related to all skill proficiency in particular and school achievement in general.  

Nation (1997: 6) states “Vocabulary knowledge enables language use, language use enables the increase of vocabulary knowledge, knowledge of the world enables the increase of vocabulary knowledge and language use and so on”

Edward (1995: 12) states that vocabulary is one of the important factors in all language teaching. Student must continually be learning words as they learn structure and as they practice sound system. ” Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.” This is how the linguist, Wilkins summed up the importance of vocabulary learning. He said that ‘If you spend most of your time studying grammar, your English won’t improve very much. You will see most improvement if you learn more words and expressions. You can say very little with grammar but you can say almost anything with words.’ Harmer said “If language structures make up the skeleton of language, then it is vocabulary that provides the vital organs and the flesh” (1993: 153).

Chall (1983: 1) states that weak vocabulary is causing our students’ comprehension to suffer, and difficulties in comprehension are causing their vocabularies to remain weak. The more words you know, the more you will be able to understand what you hear and read; and the better you will be able to say what you want to when speaking or writing.

Especially for beginners, vocabulary mastery is the very basic knowledge to learn more about English. Zimmerman (1997: 17) states that for young learners, vocabulary is central to language and words are of the critical importance to language learning. It cannot be separated from the other language elements in the teaching and learning process because it influences the students’ ability and learning English.

 It is the experience of most language teachers that the single, biggest component of any language course is vocabulary. No matter how well the student learns grammar, no matter how successfully the sounds of a foreign language are mastered, without words to express a wide range of meanings, communication in a foreign language just cannot happen in any meaningful way (McCarthy, 1990: viii). Carlisle (1990: 72) says that helping children learn about words is one way to build linguistic awareness, which in turn fosters both language learning and literacy development.