Teaching vocabulary for A2 level learners with Communicative Approach

Teaching vocabulary for A2 level learners with Communicative Approach
Vocabulary is the knowledge of words and word meanings. As Steven Stahl (2005) puts it, "Vocabulary knowledge is knowledge; the knowledge of a word not only implies a definition, but also implies how that word fits into the world." Vocabulary knowledge is not something that can ever be fully mastered; it is something that expands and deepens over the course of a lifetime. Instruction in vocabulary involves far more than looking up words in a dictionary and using the words in a sentence. Vocabulary is acquired incidentally through indirect exposure to words and intentionally through explicit instruction in specific words and word-learning strategies. According to Michael Graves (2000), there are four components of an effective vocabulary program:

1. 
   wide or extensive independent reading to expand word knowledge
   
2. 
   instruction in specific words to enhance comprehension of texts containing those words
   
3. 
   instruction in independent word-learning strategies, and
   
4. 
   word consciousness and word-play activities to motivate and enhance learning
   

Words can be defined in various ways, and estimates of vocabulary size differ depending on the definition used. The most common definition is that of a lemma (the inflected 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 use
Foreign-language vocabulary
The effects of vocabulary size on language comprehension
The knowledge of the 3000 most frequent English word families or the 5000 most frequent words provides 95% vocabulary coverage of spoken discourse. For minimal reading comprehension a threshold of 3,000 word families (5,000 lexical items) was suggested and for reading for pleasure 5,000 word families (8,000 lexical items) are required. An "optimal" threshold of 8,000 word families yields the coverage of 98% (including proper nouns).