Vocabullary

 Kosa Kata

Vocabulary acquisition is part of the psychology of second-language learning that has received short shrift from applied linguistics, and has been very largely neglected by recent developments in research. This neglect is all the more striking in that learners themselves readily admit that they experience considerable difficulty with vocabulary, and once they have got over the initial stages of acquiring their second language, most learners identify the acquisition of vocabulary as their greatest single source of problems.

This article is an attempt to redress this neglect. It summarises the current work being done on vocabulary acquisition, and draws attention to a number of studies carried out by experimental psychologists which majfehave implications for the development of vocabulary in a second language.

 The article ends with a number of questions which have not beeji investigated in any depth, but which seem to me to be worth looking at more closely.

The best developed and most systematic work in the field is to be found in attempts to justify the selection of vocabulary items for inclusion in courses and examinations on the basis of frequency counts and similar objective measures. This work is too well-known to need discussion here. Good summaries can be found in Bongers 1947; Mackey 1965; and Syracuse University Research Corporation 1973.