2. The Importance of Teaching Vocabulary
Vocabulary is one basic component to develop English as a foreign
language at elementary, intermediate, or advance levels. It plays important
roles to support other language skills such as listening, speaking reading, and
writing. Coady and Huckin state “vocabulary is central to language and of
critical importance to the typical language learner.” (Coady and Huckin,
1997:5)
McCarthy has a statement about the importance of vocabulary, he
states “No matter how well the students learns grammar , no matter how
successfully the sounds of L2 are mastered , without words to express a wider
range of meaning, communication in L2 just cannot happen in any meaningful
way. (McCarthy, 1990: iii)
Rivers in Nunan says that the acquisition of an adequate vocabulary is
essential for successful second language use because without an extensive
vocabulary, we will be unable to use the structures and functions that we may
have learned for comprehensible communication.(Rivers in Nunan, 1991: 117)
From the opinion above, it can be concluded that vocabulary is very
important to achieve language skills as listening, reading, speaking and
writing.