Vocabulary is one of the materials studied by students of all level of schools in Indonesia. Vocabulary is more than a list of words, and although the size of one’s vocabulary matters, it knows how to use it which matters most. In other hand, vocabulary has well known as the knowledge of words and word meanings. Thus, it can be stated that we use vocabulary to refer to the kind of words that students must know to read text with comprehension.
According to Nation Vocabulary, there are two kinds of vocabulary, namely productive/active vocabulary and receptive/passive vocabulary. Student understands well, can pronounce correctly and use those words in speaking and writing, we call it active vocabulary. On the other hand, student can recognize and understand when they are reading or listening someone, but they do not use the words in speaking or in writing, we call it passive vocabulary.
The Partnership for Reading has used the following three levels to describe students’ knowledge for word meanings.
a. Unknown: The word is completely unfamiliar and its meaning is unknown.
b. Acquainted: The word is somewhat familiar; the student has some idea of its basic meaning.
c. Established: The word is very familiar; the student can immediately recognize its meaning and use the word correctly.
Important of Vocabulary
Vocabulary is the basic component for students who want mastering language. They will easy to learn and practice that language if they have enough vocabulary. Contrary, students cannot write a word or make sentence without it. Developing a good vocabulary will help student to improve their speaking, listening, writing and reading skills.
According to Dian Novitasari vocabulary is very useful to understand other people idea and explain easily. The others advantages from vocabulary are:
a. By creating language-rich learning environments where interesting, unusual, useful, emotional, controversial, and difficult words are noticed and celebrated, students become more attuned to language and accustomed to using sophisticated and academic language.
b. Learning new vocabulary through context also helps the student understand the word’s correct usage and prevents students from making sentences from dictionary.
Those advantages show us about the correlation between vocabulary and students ability to build communication use certain language. In the same case, Thomburrystated, “Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed”. In other word, even without grammar listener will be able to understand what are speaker mean, without vocabulary speaker cannot express their idea and listeners cannot understand what speaker mean. The more words we know the easier for us to make communication.
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