It’s about Learning a Foreign Language

In learning a foreign language with an aim to be able to communicate in that language, we need to know certain amount of vocabulary of that foreign language. For example, if we want to be able to communicate in English that has around 54,000 word families, at least we have to know around 2,000-3,000 word families as the basic comprehension. However, those 2,000-3,000 word families should belong to productive vocabulary; means that we can produce that vocabulary in communication. So, in the process of vocabulary learning, we need to know at least 4,000-6,000 word families as receptive vocabulary in order to understand a text, whether it is a written or spoken text. It is due to the productive vocabulary is usually a half of the receptive vocabulary. However, knowing enough vocabulary is not enough to be able to communicate in a foreign language because we still have to apply the vocabulary in the four language skills; listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Moreover, we also have to learn its grammar to make sure that we can communicate well without causing any misunderstanding.

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Summary of some chapters in the book entitled “Vocabulary: Description, Acquisition and Pedagogy”