takefuta and Takefuta 1996 in their bibliographic study emphasized the close relationship between vocabulary teaching and teaching methodologies of English . In this light purpose of this article is to explore how vocabulary instruction was regarded in the different approaches to language teaching based on the classification proposed by Celce-Murcia 2001 and more specifically to give and overview of the importance each approach has placed on vocabulary teaching and to discuss the possible shortcoming of each approach.Finally the current status of vocabulary teaching is discussed