ABSTRACT
Review of the literature related to the teaching and learning of vocabulary in foreign language (FL) curricula over the past 20 years reveals three principal observations. First, there is strong agreement among researchers that vocabulary while perceived by teachers and students to be an important part of learning a language, has not received the attention it deserves (Meara, 1980; Allen, 1983; Gairns & Redman, 1986; Laufer, 1986; Carter, 1987; Hague, 1987; Nation, 1990; Arnaud & Bejoint, 1992; Huckin & Coady, 1993). Carter and McCarthy (1988) describe vocabulary as "the neglected Cinderella" of applied linguistics. Second, the question of how vocabulary should be approached within a foreign language curriculum remains the subject of debate. While some researchers argue that vocabulary does not need to be explicitly taught in FL classes, others advocate a more systematic and direct approach to the teaching of vocabulary. The first camp (see Krashen, 1982, 1989; Parry, 1991; Oxford & Scarcella, 1994) maintains that significant gains in learners' vocabulary can be achieved through exposure to the language through reading, listening, and speaking in what is referred to as "incidental" learning of vocabulary. Furthermore, efforts to work on vocabulary in nonfully contextualized activities are, according to this camp, of limited benefit to learning. Opposing this view is one expressed in other studies (Carrell, 1984; Carter, 1987; Oxford & Crookall, 1990; Gu & Johnson, 1996), which argue that "incidental" learning of vocabulary, while important, provides mainly receptive knowledge of words, but falls short of developing active control of vocabulary. Such control can be best achieved by "intentional" teaching of vocabulary through fully or partially contextualized contexts. The third observation is that the field still lacks consensus on processes of vocabulary acquisition, including its conceptualization, the role and definition of context, and the effectiveness of various vocabulary learning strategies (Kojic-Sabo & Lightbown, 1999).
