Vocabulary Aspects to Achieve Reading Comprehension

Vocabulary Aspects to Achieve Reading Comprehension

Arinda Dwi Lestari (932201612)

(Cencendul@gmail,com)

STAIN Kediri

Abstract: This paper is about some explanation of vocabulary aspects to achieve good reading comprehension in learning English as second language. To understand the content of text, some aspects in vocabulary influence in the word meaning. They are word families, synonym and antonym, multi-word units, and collocation. Word familes is used to know the size of the vocabulary the learners got by count them. While some another aspects should be known because they are often found in the reading text. Knowing some of the aspects in vocabulary is intended to achieve good comprehension in reading text easily.

Key Word: Reading Comprehension, Vocabulary aspects

Introduction

To be an experter language, students is expected to have many skills.. In English,  there has many skill such as vocabulary, grammar, speaking, listening and also includes reading.  According to David Nunan (2003, p. 68)  reading is “ a fluent process to build a meaning from text”. This process is fluent to combaining some information from the text and background knowledge. Fluent here means “as ability to read at appropriate rate” (David Nunan, 2000). Besides, David Nunan (2003, p. 68) also states that meaning does not  depend in the reader nor does it depend in the text, but their background knowledge integrates with the text to create the meaning. So reading is a process to understand the meaning or content of the text.

The goal of reading activity is to achieve comprehension about the message of the text.  To achieve comprehension or understand the content of the text the leraners must to get larger vocabularies. Without know the meaning, the learners is imposible to understand the content of the text. In Cambridge dictionary defines vocabulary as “all the words known and used by a particular person”. It means that vocabulary always used in language, and each person have different vocabulary in use. In voocabulay certain has relationship with reading comprehension because the large vocabulary depends of how much the learners read.  According to F. A. Adeniyi (2001, p. 1) if “they have little vocabulary means that they little in reading. So read literature as much as possible increase the vocabulary the learners got.

There are two kinds of readers. They are poor reader and good readers. The learner is called as poor reader when they doesn’t understand or can’t comprehend the contain of the text. While the learner called as good reader when they can achieve comprehension in reading activity. So it means that the good reader has longer size vocabulary than poor reader.

This article aims to discus some aspects in vocabulary to get good comprehension in reading. To achieve this aim, it is also describes how to count the word  to measure the vocabulary which the learners got by understand about word families and knowing the some another aspect of word such as synonym and antonym, multi-word units, collocation and so on. So, they are important to the learners to know them first to  count words easily.

1.How many words do native speakers know?

“A large vocabulary size is seen as being something valuable” (Paul Nation and Robert Waring, 2011)  . Teachers of English as a second language may be interested in measures of native speakers' vocabulary size because its can provide some indication of the size of the learning  second language learners. According to Scott Thornbury, (2002, p. 20) says that “native speaker will probably have vocabulary around 20.000 words”. In addition Paul and Robert Waring (2011) states that we should expect that native speakers will add roughly 1000 word families a year to their vocabulary size. That means that a five year old beginning school will have a vocabulary of around 4000 to 5000 word families. A university graduate will have a vocabulary of around 20,000 word families (Goulden, Nation and Read, 1990).

2.Understand Word family 

According to I.S.P. Nation(2001) in David Nunan (2003, p.131). The way of counting words is to count running word and count different forms or types. To count running word is counting each word and even if the same word form occurs again it is counted again. While to count different forms or types means count word family. Word family  such as walk, walks, walked, walking as one word family. So students can use one of the way to count words.

The teacher must know how much vocabulary do student know before. It’s important to count the new vocabulary students got when they read a text or book. According I.S.P. Nation ( 2001) in David Nunan (2003, p. 137) says that to know vocabulary size, “teacher can gives the students a short test”. Students is asked put a check net to each word for which students know the meaning. It is estimated the average native speaker with a university education knows at least 20,000 word families. A second language learner would need around 5,000 words and preferably 10,000 words. So at each stage of learning, learners get the return for their learning effort.

Example word families from the first 1000 most frequently used words of English.

AgentAgree

Agenciesagreeddisagree

Agencyagreesdisagreeable

Agentsagreeingdisagreed

Agreementdisagreeing

disagreement

disagrees

After understand word family, learners also need to know the other aspects in vocabulary. This is because when the learners read a text they will finds another aspects that influence content in the text. When the learners do not know them, it is usually can be problem in comprehend the reading text.

3.Synonym and antonym 

Synonym and antonym are important to be known. Because in the text students often finds some words that have same meaning as another word and opposite meaning to another (Oxford, 2011, p16 and 450). For some words as old, ancient, antique, aged, elderly are all synonyms. All of them called synonym because they have similar meaning. While for the words which have opposite meaning  such as old and new. According to Scott Thornbury, (2002 p. 6) “Synonym and antonyms have a useful defining function”.  Besides, both of them also need to achieve comprehension in reading activity. 

 The teacher need to know about students vocabulary size, teacher also need to  think of word study as synonymous with “spelling practice,” Then the leraners also need to know about word work that consists of more than helping students understand how to put words together to create meaning. With some preparation and extension, these same lessons will enable students to take words apart and decipher unknown words in a text. Students need to be able to identify types of words, word parts, and chunks that represent meaning in order to decode a word.

4.Multi-word units

Multi-word units is called lexical chunks. According to Crabbe and Nation, (1991) in (David Nunan 2003 p. 131) to be fluency as native speaker, the learners should be learn groups of words as units. In addition group of word, such as bits and pieces, do up, and look for can function as a meaningful units with a fixed or semi-fixed form and called multi-word units (Scott Thornbury, 2002 p. 6). Then, from the word bits and pieces, do up and look for, all of them can be counted as single lexems. So multi-word units is one of the important thing to achieve reading comprehension.

5.Collocation

Collocation are words that are located together. According to  Scott Thornbury, (2002 p. 6)  states that collocation is word couple up to form compounds and how they  hunt in packs in the shape of multi-word units called collocation. While McIntosh, Ben and Richard (2009, p.v) in Goudarzi, Zahra and M. Raouf Moini ( 2012, p. 427) define collocations as “the way words combine in a language to produce natural  sounding speech and writing”.  For example I did a cup of coffee. native speakers will understand that you mean: I made a cup of coffee. It can be concluded that  understanding collocation is important to help the learner achieves fluency. And there are four categories in collocation, they are Free combinations, Restricted collocations, Figurative idioms, Pure idioms (Goudarzi, Zahra and M. Raouf Moini ( 2012, p. 427). Hussein,( 1990) says that language learners need to gain collocation competence in order to become language proficient in Goudarzi, Zahra and M. Raouf Moini ( 2012, p. 427).

6.Using dictionary 

Unfimiliar Vocabulary will be difficult to achieve the comprehension in reading activity. When the students learn in the classroom, they will ask the teacher of something that they do not know yet, especially vocabulary. But if they learns outside the classroom, they can not ask the teacher so they will use a dictionary. For some students, dictionary is very usefull to finds the meaning of unfamiliar vocabulary. According to F. A. Adeniyi (2001, p. 1) says that  good use of dictionary would be able to “continue learning outside the classroom”. It gives occasion for the learners to study English wherever. There are key skills involved in using dictionary  effectifely( Scott Thornbury, 2003 p. 151). So in using dictionary the students can learns engish easily to understand the vocabulary in reading text.

Conclusion

From all the discussion above, we can see that, for achieve the comprehension in reading activity, knowledge of vocabulary is needed to help them understand the content of the text. Before that, they should to know that everyone has different target in how many word they must got. Besides, in vocabulary also contains some aspects that need to be known by the learners such us, word family, synonym and antonym, collocation and so on. This is because in reading activity, some people will finds new vocabulary  that unfamiliar. When they finds some words unfamiliar, they can asks the teacher or find them in the  dictionary. So it can be concluded that knows the vocabulary is essential to achieve good comprehension in reading.

Refrences

Adeniyi, F. A. (2005) Developing Reading Comprehension Skills Among Secondary School Students Through Teacher Designed Vocabulary Context and The Use of Dictionary.  Ilorin Journal of Education. Vol 24. 1-6.

Bauer, Laurie and Paul Nation. (1993). Word Families. International Journal of Lexicography, Vol. 6 No. 4. 1-27.

Goudarzi, Zahra and M. Raouf Moini. 2012. The Effect of Input Enhancement of Collocations in Reading on Collocation Learning and Retention of EFL Learners. Iran: Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education Vol. 5, No. 3. 247-259.

Goulden, R., Nation, P., and Read, J. (1990.) How large can a receptive vocabulary be? Applied Linguistics, 11, 341-363.

Nunan, David. 2003. Practical English Language Teaching. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Nation, Paul and Robert Waring. Vocabulary Size, Text Coverage  and Word Lists. Japan. 2011.

Oxford Learner’s Pocket Dictionary. 2009. New York: Oxford Dictionary Press. 

Thornbury, Scott. 2002. How to Teach Vocabulary. England: Pearson Education Limited.