Teaching vocabulary

Abstract

Deliberately teaching vocabulary is one of the least efficient ways of developing learners= vocabulary knowledge but nonetheless it is an important part of a well-balanced vocabulary programme. The main problem with vocabulary teaching is that only a few words and a small part of what is required to know a word can be dealt with at any one time. This limitation also applies to incidental learning from listening or reading, but it is much easier to arrange for large amounts of independent listening and reading than it is to arrange for large amounts of teaching. Teaching can effectively deal with only a small amount of information about a word at a time. The more complex the information is, the more likely the learners are to misinterpret it.