Young Learner Vocabulary Essay

Teaching Vocabulary to young Learners

Knowledge of vocabulary plays the key part for successful language acquisition and is crucial for language development. Vocabulary has been overlooked in the past, but researchers now view vocabulary knowledge as a vital tool for successful language acquisition as limited vocabulary of a target language hinders successful and meaningful communication.

Lexical knowledge and knowing the three aspects of Lexical Knowledge; form, meaning and use are the primary qualities to communicative proficiency, leading to successful language acquisition (Alqahtani,2015).

Teaching Vocabulary to Young Learners

When teaching young learners vocabulary, they learn from various concepts they are being taught. For example

Visual aids help create context and meaning for young learners, as they make context more comprehensible. The majority of how we learn, we acquire by what we see and visual aids deliver information to our long-term memory (Konomi,2014)..

Strategies for Teaching Vocabulary. Teaching young learners vocabulary can be achieved through various methods and strategies. Successful acquisition involves a teacher’s understanding how to use a variety of strategies to help a learner have an understanding of the target vocabulary and being able to retain and recall the information when needed. To communicate efficiently, learners need strategies to accomplish their aims in language acquisition. Ideally for very young learners, techniques and approaches should attract their attention, as young learners have a limited attention span compared to older learners. Young learners enjoy a numerous amount of classroom activities. Some of the primary approaches to mention include songs, games and role-play, which are motivational and limitless approaches of introducing vocabulary to a young learner

Games. Children love to play and introducing target vocabulary through games helps provide a young learner with a fun approach to vocabulary acquisition. Games can be used to overcome a learner’s boredom in the class, as well as providing support for teachers to achieve positive learning outcomes. Using games to teach vocabulary is recognized as being significantly important for language learners, as they provide the learner with enjoyment and help sustain an interest in learning and using the target vocabulary in a confident and productive way (Bakhsh,2016).

Role-play. Role-play provides learners with an opportunity to practice target vocabulary in meaningful and different social contexts and it provides communication skills and social awareness. Learners learn to use the vocabulary learnt through role-play in a more realistic and more practical way. The effects of role-play for teaching vocabulary are positive (Huang &