Week 3 - English Vocabulary-2(1).docx

**ENGLISH VOCABULARY** Is vocabulary usage a factor in miscommunication? Why? Vocabulary is commonly defined as "all the words known and used by a particular person." Knowing a word, however, is not as simple as merely being able to recognize or use it. There are several aspects of word knowledge...

**ENGLISH VOCABULARY** Is vocabulary usage a factor in miscommunication? Why? Vocabulary is commonly defined as "all the words known and used by a particular person." Knowing a word, however, is not as simple as merely being able to recognize or use it. There are several aspects of word knowledge that are used to measure word knowledge. **DEFINITION OF A WORD** Words can be defined in various ways, and estimates of vocabulary size differ depending on the definition used. The most common definition of a lemma (the uninflected or dictionary form; this includes walk, but not walks, walked or walking). Most of the time lemmas do not include proper nouns (names of people, places, companies, etc). Another definition often used in research of vocabulary size is that of word family. These are all the words that can be derived from a ground word (e.g. the words *effortless, effortlessly, effortful, effortfully* are all part of the word family *effort*). Estimates of vocabulary size range from as high as 200 thousand to as low as 10 thousand, depending on the definition used. **Types of Vocabulary** - **Reading Vocabulary** -- A literate person's vocabulary is all the words he or she can recognize when reading. This is generally the *largest type of vocabulary* simply because a reader tends to be exposed to more words by reading than by listening. - **Listening Vocabulary** -- A person's listening vocabulary is all the words he or she can recognize when listening to speech. People may still understand words they were not exposed to before using cues such as tone, gestures, the topic of discussion, and the social context of the conversation. - **Speaking Vocabulary** -- ­A person's speaking vocabulary is all the words he or she uses in speech. It is likely to be a subset of the listening vocabulary. Due to the spontaneous nature of speech, words are often misused. The misuse -- though slight and unintentional -- may be compensated by facial expressions, tone of voice. - **Writing Vocabulary** -- Words are used in various forms of writing from formal essays to social media feeds. Many written words do not commonly appear in speech. Writers generally use a limited set of words when communicating. For example, if there are a number of synonyms, a writer may have preference as to which of them to use, and they are unlikely to use technical vocabulary relating to a subject in whom he has no knowledge or interest. **Exercise 1.** Think of words almost similar in meaning to the following words: 1\. Love [ ] 2\. Happy [ ] 3\. Hate [ ] 4\. Sad [ ] 5\. Event [ ]