ELTWeekly Vol. 5 Issue#24 | July 8, 2013 | ISSN 0975-3036
English holds a place of supreme importance as an international language. Today English is considered to be a property of all. It has become an indispensable tool for better career opportunities in different walks of life. The use of English is not restricted to any English speaking country. It is the first language of countries like the United Kingdom, USA, New Zealand, Australia and Canada. It is the first language of more than 320 million people.
English is a language that informs us about the progress that has been made or is being made in various fields anywhere in the world. English provides access to the scientific and technical knowledge and it is essential for the political and economic development of the vast areas of the world. It is a window that reveals to us the various facets of life.
Despite continued pressure from nationalists English remains at the heart of Indian Society. It is widely used in media, in Higher Education and government and therefore it remains a common means of communication, both among ruling classes and between speakers of mutually unintelligible languages. According to the recent survey approximately 4% of the Indian population use English. This figure might seem insignificant, but out of total population this represents 35 million speakers – largest English speaking community outside USA & UK. Some consider English to be their first language, but for the vast majority of Indians it remains a second language. Today India is the third largest English speaking country in the world after the USA and the UK.
In any language – teaching situation four constitutes are taken into consideration, they are sound, structure, meaning and vocabulary. The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (2000) defines Vocabulary as “All the words that someone knows, learns or uses”. Vocabulary is a very important means to express our thoughts and feelings, either in spoken or written form. Mccarthy (1990) rightly argues, ‘No matter how well the student learns grammar, no matter how well the sounds of L2 are mastered, without words…..communication in a language just cannot happen in any meaningful way’ (p. 14). A good vocabulary empowers learners and makes them feel self-confident to express themselves.
Sound, structure, meaning and vocabulary have an equal place of importance but according to Morris (1964) vocabulary is unquestionably a major consideration. The modern engineering aspirants represent the upwardly mobile rising middle class of a resurgent India. In order to succeed in their professional career, they need communicative competence in the English language. It has been observed that these students are familiar with technical words, but are not able to present themselves well either in formal or informal contexts as they lack knowledge of words. This study seeks to focus on remediation required for engineering students with reference to the study of words.
Vocabulary is considered important because even if one wants to frame a few sentences, one needs a stock of vocabulary. In the initial stages more attention is usually paid to the accuracy of sound, rhythm and structural form, and so vocabulary may be restricted to a few words. But in technical studies it is important to enlarge the student’s vocabulary. Students of the engineering level are in a better position to enlarge their vocabulary because at this level students know sentence pattern and common words reasonably well. Extension of vocabulary is a gradual process. It cannot be done over night.
In spite of the claims regarding various methods adopted for the teaching of vocabulary, scholars and lexicologists have expressed the view that in the Indian context, we lack exhaustive data and a lot of descriptive work needs to be carried in this direction.
To make words part of engineering students’ linguistic behaviour, along with their meaning, pronunciation and usage, the teachers should motivate them to study their root, affixes, synonyms, antonyms homophones and homonyms. The teacher needs to emphasize the fact that true synonyms are rare in a language and what we often get are ‘near’ synonyms.
Words that are often confused could be discussed together. For example, words like ‘expect’, ‘except’ and ‘expect’; ‘principal’ and ‘principle’and ‘quite’ and ‘quite’. Students could be asked to frame sentences using these words. It is necessary to remember that usage is a very important aspect of language, and so while teaching engineering college students, it is essential to motivate students to use words, as it can help better retention. Very often students assume that they know a word, but get into practical difficulties when they start using it. ‘Knowing’ a word is a very complex process which involves using it in appropriate grammatical form, pronouncing it correctly, recognizing its connotations and associations and using it in appropriate contexts. In order to master all these sub-skills, the teacher must frame several exercises in order to take students to the level of usage.
There are two types of vocabulary, active vocabulary and the passive vocabulary. It is felt that English teachers at engineering colleges need to develop some strategies for enriching students both active and passive vocabulary.
There are different aspects of Vocabulary. Many of these aspects have been posited by Richards and reinforced by Taylor. They are as follows:-
-Knowledge of Word Frequency
-Knowledge of Register
-Knowledge of collocation
-Knowledge of Morphology
-Knowledge of Semantics
Learning collocation is an important aspect of learning of vocabulary. A collocation can be defined as two or more words that often go together. In other words, a collocation is an expression consisting of two or more words that correspond to some conventional way of saying things.
There are different kinds of collocations in English. Good examples of this type of word pairing are combination with `make` and `do`. You make a cup of tea , but you do your homework. The different types of collocation are:
– adverb+ adjective (utterly stupid)
– adjective +noun(regular exercise)
-noun+noun(round of applause)
-noun+verb(dog barking)
-verb+preposition(filled with horror)
-verb+ adverb(whispered softly)
Engineering college students often produce unidiomatic collocation. For example, `I was large smoker instead of `I was a heavy smoker` or The storm made a lot of damage` instead of `The storm did a lot of damage`or ‘They did an operation’ instead of ‘They performed an operation’.
Errors of this kind are called collocation errors. These errors spoil the charm of speech and writing. Collocation information is a vital component in the learning of new vocabulary of the second language. In order to `know` a word one must know the collocational profile of that word. A multiple choice test question should be framed to test students understanding of collocations and rather than providing sentences in general, the teacher could pick up sentences from students’ journals, engineering texts and brochures.
According to Taylor (1990), knowledge of register means `knowing the limitation imposed on the use of the word, according to variations of function and situation` (p.2). For example, ‘Would you like to have a cigarette?` is the most neutral formula as it is suitable in most contexts. However, `want a fag?` may be an acceptable utterance among friends, but if made to a stranger or a person of high authority, it would be considered impolite. It is important to label a word as formal or informal in order to avoid the use of formal words in informal situations and vice versa .While teaching vocabulary to engineering college students, the teacher must acquaint students with words that go well with different styles like frozen, formal, consultative, informal and intimate.
A dictionary is certainly an important tool in the teaching and learning of vocabulary. Collins Cobuild dictionary gives us frequency of words and this could indeed be a very useful information for the teacher to select words. Those words that have a greater communicative value could be selected by the teacher. Students should be motivated to refer to a dictionary in the classroom and exercises could be framed for this purpose. For example, the teacher can show students seven different sentences using the word ‘cool’, and ask students to understand how the meaning of this word is different in each case by referring to a dictionary. An exercise of this nature would help students to understand the fact that many words in English have multiple meanings. Really ‘knowing’ a word means knowing all its different kinds of meanings.
Games generally contain the value of intrinsic motivation, and intrinsic motivation can promote long-term language retention. Certain group tasks could be designed for engineering college students. For example, the teacher can give the cut outs of a short story to different members of a group, and announce that the group that would put together all those cut outs in a cohesive way would win. It has been observed that generally students take a lot of interest in activities of such kind. Students must be given a chance to play and struggle with words.
In the age of globalization, English language teachers of Engineering colleges are expected to play different roles: diagnosticians, counselors, communication skill consultants and soft skill trainers. It is hoped that a teacher would play all these roles efficiently in our classrooms and try to enrich students’ vocabulary in engineering classes on a gradual basis by adopting the eclectic method for teaching words and using innovative and interesting ways of teaching vocabulary, so that students would show keen interest and enthusiasm in finding, learning, understanding and using new words.
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