DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING VOCABULARY

Learning vocabulary is a very important part of learning a language. Themore 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.The
vocabulary we know can be divided into two groups - passive vocabulary and
activevocabulary. Passive vocabulary contains all the words that you understand
when you reador listen, but which you do not use (or cannot remember) in your own
writing andspeaking. Active vocabulary is all the words you understand, plus all the
words that youcan use yourself.Special problems involved in vocabulary
understanding, such as polyse , the wordsidiomatic usage, false congnates and
distinction between homophones, can also be solved by the context and the
dictionary.Usually the first things you learn about a new English word are what it
means and itstranslation in your own language. But there are other things you need
to find out beforeyou can say that you know a word like a native speaker does. For
example, you have tolearn: how it is spelled, how it is pronounced, how it is
inflected (i.e. how it changes if itis a verb, noun or adjective), other grammar
information about it, how it collocates (i.e.what other words are often used with
it).Learning vocabulary seems to be one of the easiest things about learning
alanguage, but it's also one of the hardest things to do, especially when you have
reached acertain level. Learning vocabulary needs practice and time and in our
days time is a problem. We can face some difficulties, such as:

deciding which words are worthlearning

. There are a lot of words in English compared with many other languages, and itis
impossible to know them all - even native speakers frequently meet words they
havenever seen before in their reading. Another problem can

be how to organize ourvocabulary

. Most people find that it's useful to organise the vocabulary they write downin some
way, either to break the words/phrases into groups for learning, to
showrelationships between similar words, or to make it easier to find a particular
word. Hereare some ways of classifying your vocabulary that you might consider:
according toalphabetical order; the order in which you found the words; topics;
situations; 'families' of similar word meanings; frequency of occurrence.

Remembering vocabulary

(Vocabularylearning has largely been construed as a memory problem) seems to be

another difficultyfor vocabulaty learners. One of the biggest problems with
vocabulary learning is thatwhats learned today is often forgotten tomorrow. Here
are some suggested methods for reducing the 'forgetting problem':

a) Learn words repeatedly, with increasing intervals between learningsessions.

We all know that if learning is not repeated, we will forget the words we
havelearned. But research in Psychology shows that we do not forget things
gradually.Instead, most of our forgetting occurs within 20 minutes after we have
first 'learned'something. More is forgotten within one hour, and still more within 8
hours - but after 8hours, the rate of forgetting stays surprisingly steady.

b) Have the words you want to learn with you wherever you go

, so that you canuse any dead time, e.g. travelling to and from university. Word
cards or vocabularynotebooks are useful.

c) Set aside a regular time for vocabulary learning or memorising

e.g. just before you go to bed, or when travelling to and from university.

d) Spend more time on the words that you find difficult.

Often, when learningvocabulary, people create a list with the target words on one
side and meanings on theother, and go down the list from the first word to the last,
trying to memorise eachone. This method can have two problems: firstly, the words
at the top of the list tendto be remembered better than those further down; and
secondly, time is wasted goingover words that the learner has already learned. One
way of overcoming these problems is to spend more time on the words that you find
difficult. A simple way of doing this is to delete the words you know from the list. If
you

sort

in Word, you canalso change the order of the list, so that its not the same every
time. An alternative isto post words onto a wall or board, and take them down when
you know them.It isessential that the learner to evaluate his vocabulary learning.
It's very important for most learners to have an idea of whether they're making
progress or not. Finding thatyou are actually making progress can be a big help to
your confidence.Every day you hear or read many new English words. You also find
them inyour dictionary when you are translating from your own language. You cant
possiblylearn all these new words, so your first problem is to

decide which ones to concentrateon.

Here are some suggestions:

learn the words that are important to the subjects you are studying

learn the words that you read or hear again and again

learn the words that you know you will often want to use yourself

do not learn words that are rare or not useful (your teacher can help you with
this)Once we have chosen which words to learn, next we have to decide how are we
going tolearn them. Here are a few ideas:

write the words in a notebook (with their translations or definitions)

write the words and definitions on small cardssay the words many times (if you
have an electronic dictionary you can hear how the

word is pronounced) put the words into different groups (you could use a graphic
organiser)

write them in a file for use with a computer program

make associations (in pictures or with other words)

ask someone to test you

use the words in your own speaking or writing

Some students put a tick or cross in their dictionary next to every word they look
up. Thenext time they turn to a page with a marked word, they quickly check to see
if theyremember the meaning of that word. In all of the above ways, we are doing
somethingwith the words. Its usually not enough to just read through a list of words
with their definitions or translations and try to remember them. Most students find
that theymemorise words better if they do something with them. Even better is to
try and learn theword in a typical combination with other words. Learning that

to apologize

means

to say sorry

is a good start, but it's much better to learn a whole expression containing the
word,e.g.

He apologized for being late

. Not only is this often easier to remember, but we arealso learning some very
important information on how the word is used. The way welearned very many of
the words in ourr own language was by meeting them in the booksand magazines
we read. The context of a new word in a sentence or story was oftenenough for us
to guess the meaning. Meeting the word again and again in our readinghelped us
learn it for use in our own speaking and writing. Doing lots of extra reading for
pleasure - both fiction and non-fiction - is an excellent way to learn new English
words,too. But choose books that you find quite easy to read. Difficult stories or
texts that youstruggle to understand will not help you to develop your vocabulary
the natural way.Being able to remember one meaning of a list of words within a
week or two is easy,developing a functional lexicon that contains morphological,
semantic, syntactic, pragmatic, and emotional connections needs a gradual process
that takes much more timeand effort.The importance of learning
vocabulary:Increasing your vocabulary allows you to use more descriptive words to
better

communicate your thoughts.Understanding the meaning of more words will allow

you to better understand

information that you are reading or listening to (comprehension), thus increasing

your retention.Having a larger vocabulary to call upon will help your verbal
communication flow

and allow you to start eliminating noises such as, "umm" and "uhh".Being able to
use more colorful words in speaking to others will allow you to project

 a more intelligent image.It is well known that people who have a strong English
vocabulary receive more attentionand respect from their peers, colleagues,
subordinates and authority figures? This is because speaking with a strong
vocabulary indicates that you take yourself seriously.Language and the way we use
words conveys intelligence and authority. A person who isa mathematical genius or
an expert software developer may be highly respected for technical skills, but if the
words that come out of mouth consist of a poor vocabulary, itwill, unfortunately,
communicate a lack of intelligenc