Word Part Strategy is an aspect of Vocabulary acquisition

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

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DECLARATION

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTII

DECLARATIONIII

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION1

Background of the study1

Vocabulary Acquisition2

Problem statement4

Purpose of the Study5

Significance of the study6

Research Question7

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW9

Overview: Word Association9

Significance of understanding word associations10

Word Families13

Word Frequency/Word Type14

Word Strategy16

Word Parts17

Understanding word knowledge18

Strategies for learning vocabulary20

The Academic Word List (AWL)24

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY27

Material28

Subjects28

Procedure28

Target affixes28

Pre-test29

Brief lecture about word-formation rules29

Tests29

Analysis30

REFERENCES31

APPENDICES35

Pre-test35

Outline of the Lecture36

Test A38

Test B40

Interview Questions42

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

Background of the study

Vocabulary acquisition is generally a developmental process, meaning that each new word learned improves and strengthens vocabulary acquisition. However, studies on native speakers' vocabularies suggest that second language learners need to know a very large number of words (Nation, 2000; Laufer & Hulstijn, 2010). Hence, teachers of English as a second language are interested in the size of the vocabulary of native English speakers in providing an indication of how many words second language learners need to learn (Nation &Waring,).

Indeed, research about the origin of English words and analysis of word forms in a corpus, shows that word parts are very common and important aspects of English (Nation 2001). Consequently, acquiring knowledge of words and their referents is the building block of language (Becker, Dixon,&Anderson 1980). One advantage aimed at systematically learning derivational affixes, is the likelihood that the learner can synthesize related words.For instance, it is logical to synthesize the meanings of words within a word family by associating unfamiliar words with familiar words. Effectively developing this skill to infer unfamiliar words from familiar words is one of the key foundations of vocabulary acquisition.In other words, it yields knowledge of the general understanding of words in word families. For instance, knowing the headword diverse may involve knowing its family members, that is: diversification, diversified, diversifies, diversify diversifying, diversity and diversely.

Thus, by overcoming the learning burden of derived words, learners are able to pay attention to word parts that allow them to make full use of the word families they know, and also contribute towards remembering new complex words (Nation, p.100). In this respect, research on the word parts strategies suggest that gaining knowledge of affixes and roots can be used to support comprehension of unfamiliar words by relating the words to words that are known, or to prefixes and suffixesthat are known. This can be used as a way of checking whether an unfamiliar word has been successfully guessed from context (Nation, 2001). On the contrary, without word knowledge, the ability of a learner to comprehend teachings and communicate newly acquired concepts acquisition is severely restricted (Becker, Dixon, &Anderson 1980).

The ability to use the appropriate forms ...