Vocabulary Teaching and TESOL: A Need for Reevaluation of Existing Assumptions

Abstract

Vocabulary instruction in TESOL has been traditionally relegated to secondary status in favor of an emphasis on the teaching of syntactic structures. According to the traditional theories, vocabulary acquisition has also been seen as a means to improve reading and listening comprehension and not as a skill vital in its own right. These traditional views are challenged in this paper as being inappropriate for ESL programs on the university level. Massive vocabulary instruction should begin as soon as possible and the status of lexical knowledge should be given greater emphasis in TESOL programs. Relevant lexical items that are within the student's syntactic knowledge should be selected and immediately integrated into the classroom setting. Repetition of vocabulary items in a natural linguistic context will aid the students in dealing with multiple meanings and th& sociolinguistic contexts of words and phrases. In short, the author argues for a new emphasis on vocabulary instruction in TESOL programs.