THE TEACHING OF EFL VOCABULARY

IN THE INDONESIAN CONTEXT:

THE STATE OF THE ART
2005/2006

Febri Yanti (14121367)

State Islamic Institute Of Metro

E-mail : feefebry26@gmail.com

Abstract:

There has been extensive literature on the teaching of vocabulary of English as a foreign
language (EFL vocabulary) in the Indonesian context. However, a comprehensive analysis on
the teaching of EFL vocabulary in this country has been a rare endeavour. This article aims
tounderpin various issues of the teaching of EFL vocabulary and relate them to a wider
context of second/foreign language vocabulary teaching and review results of re-search as
well as current practices of EFL vocabulary teaching and learning in the Indonesian context.
It is expected that this article could provide an outline of the teaching of EFL vocabulary and
some recommendations for future research and practices.

Key words:teaching, EFL, vocabulary, Indonesian context

Vocabulary, in addition to grammar and pronunciation, is one of language ele-ments

considered necessary for language mastery. Vocabulary is defined as all
the words in a particular language (Wehmeier, et al., 2005:1707), whereas vo-cabulary
teaching, as Furneaux (1999) states, deals with the selection and presentation of words (lexis)
for learners (p.367). Vocabulary teaching aims at enabling learners to understand the
concepts of unfamiliar words, gain a greater number of words, and use words successfully for
communicative purposes. Thus, good vocabulary mastery supports mastery of each of the
language skills, both receptive (listening and reading) and productive (speaking and writing).
TEFLIN Journal, Volume 19, Number 1, February 2008

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For example, in reading, learners vocabulary size affects their comprehension of a reading
text (Nuttall, 1989), while in writing, vocabulary contributes to the success in writing
compositions up to 20% of the achievement level (Hartfiel, et al., 1985).
As far as the history of second/foreign language teaching methodologies is concerned,
vocabulary has been viewed differently depending on which method is fashionable.
Eminently respectable under the Grammar Translation Method and the Reading Approach,
vocabulary was then on far from being re-garded as of pivotal importance in language
learning. According to Seal (1991), there was even a period when too much vocabulary
learning was re-garded as a positively dangerous thing (p. 296). This means even though
learners have a rich repertoire of English words, they might not be able to pro-duce coherent
sentences to convey ideas. The emergence of the Audio-lingual Method (ALM), for example,
elevated grammar teaching but kept vocabulary learning minimum. As the main purpose of
language teaching in the ALM was to establish the basic phonological and grammatical
patterns of the language through habit formation (Seal, 1991:297), vocabulary seemed to be
suppressed.
The view that vocabulary learning was of secondary importance in second language
pedagogy still went on even though the ALM had been less popular. In the area of second
language research, the same neglect could be readily ob-served. Until approximately late
1980s developments in research seemed to have neglected the area of vocabulary acquisition
in the second language con-text. According to Meara (1984), the limited research in the area
of vocabulary was caused by two major reasons. First, attention has been greatly focused on
grammatical element of language because this element was believed to be the most important
basis to build linguistic theories. One example was the publica-tion of Chomskys (1957)
Syntactic Structures, which was followed by exten-sive discussion by and voluminous
publications from other linguists and ap-plied linguists. Second, appropriate models that can
explain acquisition of sec-ond language vocabulary were not available in the literature and
this hindered better understanding of the role of vocabulary in second language teaching and
learning. The dominant structuralisms view adopted by the ALM that language is a habit
formation, for example, manifested in the application of pattern practice and drills for
improving speaking skill in second language teaching, leaving a narrow space for creative use
or the teaching of vocabulary that is important for mastering language skills as well. Cahyono
& Widiati, The Teaching of EFL Vocabulary3.

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 The 1980s, thus, have seen a shift in the status of vocabulary (Furneaux, 1999:368).
Given little priority in the past, vocabulary has been viewed as a core component of language
proficiency. As Nation (2002) states, vocabulary growth is such an important part of
language acquisition that it deserves to be planned for, deliberately controlled and monitored
(p. 267). Vocabulary learn-ing is thus not to be left to look after itself. It receives greater
attention in many textbooks and language programs (Furneaux, 1999:369). For example, in
their edited book discussing the nature of vocabulary, vocabulary acquisition, and vocabulary
pedagogy, Schmitt and McCarthy (1997) noted a number of books on vocabulary published
in the end of 1980s and early 1990s, indicating the awakening of vocabulary teaching and
research studies. Their book, claimed as presenting the state of the art in vocabulary studies
(p. 1), in fact, also con-tributed to the rich discussion of the study of vocabulary recently.
The importance of vocabulary in recent years has been elevated by three recent
developments in the theory and practice of language teaching (Seal, 1991:297-298): the de-
emphasis on grammar, the newly-placed emphasis on communication, and the perceived
needs of students of English for academic purposes (EAP). With the emergence of
communicative language teaching (CLT), formal studies of language become de-emphasized
and the view of lan-guage teaching as facilitating learners to communicate becomes fostered.
Addi-tionally, increasing vocabulary provides the basis for developing student sabil-ity in
communicating. In the context of teaching EAP, there is an increased awareness of the need
for providing ESL/EFL learners with more vocabularies to account for their success in
academic studies. As Seal (1991) puts it, there are signs that a new era is upon us in which
the place of vocabulary in language learning process and as an area of research is being
restored to re-spectability and prominence (p. 296).
More importantly, the computerized analysis of language data by lexicog-raphers and
researchers has resulted in the ability to work on vocabulary with considerably more
confidence (Harmer, 2000). From a corpus of millions of words, computers can give
information about, for example, how often words are used and in what linguistic contexts. As
a result of such knowledge, it is reasonably easier to discuss word meaning, word-use
extension, collocations, and the grammar of words.
The growing importance of vocabulary has been evident not only in sec-ond/foreign
language teaching and learning in a wider context of the world, but also in the Indonesian
context of EFL. A great number of Indonesian writers, in TEFLIN Journal, Volume 19,
Number 1, February 20084 fact, considered vocabulary as essential as grammar (e.g.,
Mukminatien, 1994) and recommended that vocabulary be given a greater emphasis in the

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Indone-sian curriculum (e.g., Kweldju, 2005; Priyono, 2004). Responding to this trend, this
article reviews what has been going on in the Indonesian context as far as vocabulary
learning and teaching is concerned. It starts with the description of various issues on the role
of vocabulary in second/foreign language learning and examines the place of EFL vocabulary
in the English curriculum. Further-more, it explores current practice and results of research
on the teaching of EFL vocabulary in the Indonesian context. Finally, this article outlines
some in-sights for future practice and research on the teaching and learning of EFL
vocabulary in Indonesia.

VOCABULARY TEACHING AND RESEARCH: THEORETICAL PER-SPECTIVE

Theoretically, the teaching of second/foreign language vocabulary and re-search on

acquisition of second/foreign language vocabulary can be given sepa-rate attention. However,
these two areas of concerns are complementary in that vocabulary teaching can get insights
from vocabulary research, while vocabulary research can initiate from conditionsencountered
in vocabulary instruction. In this section, each of the two areas of concerns will be discussed
separately, and then the relation of the two areas will be highlighted.
Two major questions concerning vocabulary teaching and learning are as follows:
Should vocabulary teaching be done directly, or should vocabulary acquisition take place
through exposure? According to Seal (1991), the answers to those questions will have
implications on how vocabulary is taught in second/foreign language classroom, be it
unplanned or planned vocabulary teaching. Unplanned vocabulary teaching refers to
vocabulary being taught unsystematically, arising because one student has a problem with a
word that has come up in the lessons, or because the teacher thinks that an important
vocabulary item is unknown to the majority of the students. In contrast, planned vocabulary
teaching involves two types: one incidental to the objective of the lesson and the other one
specifically designed as vocabulary lesson.
Quite similarly, Hunt and Beglar (2002) describe three approaches to vocabulary
teaching and learning: incidental learning, explicit instruction, and independent strategy
development. Incidental learning is learning vocabulary as a Cahyono & Widiati, The
Teaching of EFL Vocabulary5by-product of doing other language activities, for example,
reading and writing. As reviewed by Hunt and Beglar (2002), several studies have confirmed
that extensive reading and listening contribute to the incidental vocabulary learning. In
contrast, explicit instruction refers to intentional learning of vocabulary through instruction,

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which is essential for beginning students whose lack of vo-cabulary limits their reading
ability. Finally, independent strategy development concerns equipping learners with
strategies for vocabulary learning.With the three approaches indirect, direct, and independent
strategies potentially enabling students to learn vocabulary, it is necessary for teachers to
carefully plan their vocabulary teaching. A wide variety of activities and exer-cises should be
employed so that all of these approaches can take place. Exam-ples of these activities and
strategies include inferring from context and guess-ing from context (incidental learning or
indirect instruction); building a large sight vocabulary, integrating new words with the old,
providing a number of encounters with a word, describing a target word, facilitating imaging
and con-creteness, elaborating semantically such as through semantic feature analysis,
semantic mapping, ordering, pictorial schemata, and collocation (explicit or di-rect
instruction); and involving the students in learning through individual par-ticipation,
collaboration with classmates, and self-reflection, as well as training the students in using
different dictionaries and in making vocabulary notebooks (independent learning strategies)
(S?kmen, 1997). Regardless of the variety, current argument on vocabulary learning suggests
the usefulness of a system-atic approach to vocabulary teaching over incidental vocabulary
learning. This is because, as Nation (2002) indicates, incidental learning bears some limita-
tions due to the fact that many second language learners cannot read independ-ently because
of limitations in their vocabulary knowledge. While the teaching of second/foreign language
vocabulary has gained many insights from the three approaches, research on second/foreign
language vocabulary acquisition has been based on a field wider than classroom setting. The
following section fo-cuses on research on second/foreign language vocabulary acquisition by
elabo-rating first Mearas (1984,1997) work on the relation of word and lexis. In his article as
cited earlier, Meara (1984) stated that one reason for the limited research on vocabulary
acquisition was the unavailability of appropriate model for vocabulary acquisition. To
contribute to the discussion of vocabulary acquisition, in his later article, Meara (1997)
provided a model of the relation between a word (W) and lexicon (L). According to Meara, a
word is connected in some way to the main body of lexicon. All words in this body of lexicon
are related in various ways to other words as indicated by arrows of various direc-tions and
various ways of relation.

Although Mearas (1997) research has showed us that one word is con-nected with other
words, it does not explain further how this connection facilitates vocabulary learning.
Responding to this issue, Ellis (1997) examined the role of memorization in vocabulary

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acquisition. Ellis stated that memory works through short-term and long-term processes.
Words stored as short-term representations are easily forgotten, whereas long-term
representations of words are retained longer. Words learned through short-term
representation can be retained as long-term representation through rehearsal or practice,
resulting in the chunking of working memory contents(Ellis, 1997 p. 139) or lexicon(Meara,
1997:120). This implies that words that are related to other words as chunks can be learned
more easily than isolated words. Referring to what S?kmen (1997) elaborated above, in
practice this word relation can be taught through the use of chunking vocabulary exercises
such as semantic mapping, ordering, pictorial schemata, and collocation. Such word relation,
either lin-guistically or conceptually, is also found in the use of metaphor (Kweldju,
2005,2006) or words used to suggest concepts different from their literal meanings.

EFL VOCABULARY IN ENGLISH CURRICULUM

The place of EFL vocabulary in the Indonesian curriculum seems to be changing in

accordance with the existing curriculum, perceived from the changing objectives and
methods of English instruction in Indonesia. The 096/1967 Ministerial Decree on English
instruction stipulates that the objective of English instruction in secondary schools is to equip
the students with a working knowledge of English through the development of the language
skills of reading, listening, writing, and speaking in that order (Huda, 1999:127). In the
1960s, the curriculum adopted a version of the ALM. Under the ALM, it can be assumed that
grammar teaching was so elevated that vocabulary teachingwas suppressed. As Seal
(1991:297) suggests, this dominant teaching methodology resulted in an immediate and
devastating effect on vocabulary teaching and research; vocabulary learning should be kept to
a minimum.
A modified version of the ALM was adopted in the next curriculum, implying quite a
similar practice of vocabulary teaching in the Indonesian education system. However, as can
be seen in the English textbooks used in the junior as well as the senior high schools,
vocabulary teaching in the 1975 curriculum seemed to gain greater attention. Each unit of
lesson always presented a list of vocabulary that students had to focus on. This indicates the
uniform lists of words that secondary school students throughout Indonesia had to master.
The sets of vocabulary items to teach had been decided beforehand.
The 1984 curriculum was said to implement a communicative method in the English
instruction in Indonesia. Officially, the English instruction was geared toward the objectives

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of enabling junior high school students to develop English language skills of reading,
listening, speaking, and writing in thematic situations in accordance with their individual
developmental levels and interests, using 1000 word-level and appropriate structures and
senior high school students using 2500 word-level and appropriate structures (Depdikbud,
1986).
The 1994 curriculum adopted the meaningfulness approach (pendekatan
kebermaknaan), a version of the communicative approach in order that the objective of
English instruction is not misinterpreted (Huda, 1999:142). To avoid misinterpretation of the
approach, according to Huda (1999:150), some principles of the implementation are stated
explicitly, one of which is the mastery of communicative competence. From this statement, it
can be seen that language components (grammatical structures, vocabulary, and
pronunciation) are considered necessary; linguistic form is used as the organizing principle.
The 2004 and 2006 curricula, the so-called Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC)
and the school level curriculum or KTSP (kurikulum tingkat satuan pendidikan), emphasize
the development of communicative competence covering linguistic competence, discourse
competence, socio-cultural competence, and strategic competence. Linguistic competence, in
particular, includes such components as grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. Under the
four stages of teaching and learning process suggested by the curriculum, namely Building
Knowledge of the Field (BKOF), Modelling of the Text (MOT), Joint Construction of the
Text (JCOT), and Independent Construction of the Text (ICOT), vocabulary teaching is
supposed to be dealt with at the very first stage. In the BKOF stage, teachers are expected to
focus on grammar, to elicit studentsvocabulary, and to have sharing activities of the topic.
However, the word focus is left to teachers to decide. Such a practice implies the lack of
uniformity of what words secondary school students should master.
The review suggests that regardless of its place in the curriculum, vocabulary seems
to be considered necessary. This is even so as secondary school students are required to have
sufficient vocabulary power to do English final examination successfully. This implies that
teachers need to work on developing students vocabulary systematically. Nevertheless, what
vocabulary lists teachers have to help learners master is influenced by teachers understanding
of the existing curriculum. At some time, the uniformity of word lists to teach makes it easier
for teachers to work on the vocabulary development. At some other time, when the existing
curriculum does not suggest explicitly what word lists to teach, teachers sensitivity of what
vocabulary the students might need is highly required.

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EFL VOCABULARY RESEARCH AND PRACTICE IN INDONESIA
As mentioned previously, vocabulary is important to support mastery of language
skills. Accordingly, vocabulary research and practice are usually related to the teaching and
learning of language skills, with a special emphasis on the relation between vocabulary and
reading. In Indonesia, in particular, research studies on vocabulary are needed to fully
understand the role of vocabulary in second or foreign language learning and to overcome
teaclearning problems related to vocabulary acquisition (Mukminatien, 1994). In this section,
some reports on ESL/EFL vocabulary teaching and learning as well as research are reviewed,
beginning from what research showed regarding lexical competence of Indonesian learners of
English.
Compared to research on the teaching and learning of ESL/EFL, research on lexical
competence of Indonesian learners of English is less flourishing. This, perhaps, was caused
by the common situation that vocabulary learning or teaching was considered secondary or
neglected as it used to be. However, notable research reports were Nurwenis (1997) study of
Indonesian students EFL vocabulary size and Kweldjus (1999) study of Indonesian students
collocation abilities.
Nurweni (1997) sought to find out whether secondary school graduates knew the 2000
most frequent words and the 808 academic words as the target words. The results of her study
indicated that on average, the 324 subjects knew 987 of the 2000 most frequent words, and
239 of the 808 university words, making up 1226 words in total. It was then inferred that the
students might have known a far smaller number of words which are far less frequent. It was
also very likely that they forgot, thus did not acquire yet, most of the words already exposed
to them. Theoretically, the students were expected to acquire 14 words a week; in fact, they
only acquired about 7 words a week, which according to Nurweni (1997) was a real waste of
time, money, and energy in English teaching. The loss of so many words already exposed
suggested the need for increasing the number of word repititions.
In her study, Kweldju (1999) examined English department students knowledge of
collocations. Collocation refers to the co-occurrence of a word and another word or more in
the near vicinity (Priyono, 1999:98). Examples of (lexical) collocation include spicy food,
lenient rules, heavy drinker, and week tea. Sixty students who were involved in Kweldjus
study were given a list of 25 items of collocations. These students were asked to determine
whether they were familiar with these items and given five possible options: known, fairly
known, little known, hardly known,and unknown.

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 The results of the study showed that in general the students were able to supply only a
few expected collocations, whereas most of the students were familiar with several
collocations. These findings suggest that many Indonesian learners of English were not aware
of collocations and, as Kweldju (1999) recommended, collocations should be brought to the
attention of the learners and deliberately learned(p. 60).
Studies reported above suggest the importance of vast vocabulary knowledge, more
particularly vocabulary size. Accordingly, when dealing with vocabulary size, teachers need
to start from the most frequently-used words, meaning that information on vocabulary
frequency lists is necessary. This does not mean that teachers need to provide students with
extensive lists of vocabulary as learning resources. However, as Nation and Waring (1997)
suggest, teachers need to have reference lists to judge whether a particular word deserves
attention or not, and whether a text is suitable for a class(p. 17). Thus, lists of vocabulary
serve as a guide for teachers to determine what vocabulary to teach and how many words to
teach within a particular period of time.
In addition to discussing the importance of knowledge on vocabulary, it is also
necessary to focus on what teachers have conducted to improve students lexical competence.
Mukarto (1989), for example, suggested that games be used to deal with the problems of
vocabulary teaching and learning. Examples of games include go fish where students play
cards and ask each other for cards to make pairs and hangman where students think of a word
and write a number of lines indicating the number of letters of the words that other students
should guess. Proved to be one of the best solutions, games could be played by students
outside the class hours, helping them overcome their poor mastery of vocabulary.
Other research studies have explored the role of vocabulary learning and/or teaching
strategies. A research study conducted by Merawati (2003), for example, showed that the
teaching of guessing meaning of words from context could improve reading skills and
strategies. Applying a classroom action research design, Merawati had the students study
vocabulary by following three cycles. First, the students were given short texts and asked to
practice guessing word meaning from context. Second, they were introduced to patterns of
expository texts with more difficult words and asked to follow the guessing process more
naturally. Finally, the students were given longer texts containing un-known or nonsense
words that can stimulate them to find out more clues to the word meaning from more
extensive textual context. Merawatis study showed that practice on guessing meaning from
context helped students understand word meaning from sentences and paragraphs within the
text and understand the meaning of a large amount of conceptual words.

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 In her exploration of the use of strategies in understanding difficult words in reading
texts, Kusumarasdyati (2006) found that Indonesian learners used strategies varying from
looking up either monolingual or bilingual dictio examining context cues, and skipping
unfamiliar words. However, the uses of these strategies were mainly based more on interest
than innate strategy use. This suggests, as Kusumarasdyati said, that each individual learner
has a unique strategy he/she is likely to use in understanding unfamiliar words.
While some research has examined vocabulary in relation to language skills, some has
investigated vocabulary as a separate language component. Cahyono (1993) examined the
effect of teaching topical vocabulary on studentsvocabulary mastery. Students in his study
were divided into two groups: the experimental group being taught how to develop
vocabulary size using topical vocabulary (e.g., new vocabulary was presented topically such
as weather, plants, and animals), while the control group was taught word formation process
or vocabulary building (e.g., analyzing the meaning of derivational affixes such as suffix
lessin the word careless). The results showed that there was no significant difference between
the two methods of vocabulary learning, suggesting that any method of the two contributed to
the learners improved achievement on vocabulary tests applied in the study.
To some authors (e.g., Kweldju, 2004, 2005; Priyono, 1999, 2004), vo-cabulary is
believed to be the most significant element of English language teaching (ELT). More
importantly, they suggested that solution of problems of ELT lies in the good handling of
vocabulary. Based on a series of in-depth re-search studies, Kweldju (2004, 2005) argues that
students single source of problem in learning English is vocabulary. Therefore, she proposed
that ELT in Indonesia should be lexically-based, meaning that English teaching and learning
strategies should be made in such a way that the strategies could lead to vocabulary
acquisition. As strategies relate also to the age factor, Kweldju (2004) stated that adult
learners should be taught to learn EFL vocabulary more deliberately, whereas children should
be let learn English vocabulary more incidentally through reading childrens literature.
Similarly, Priyono (2004:26) stated that the main problem of Indonesian EFL students is their
limited vocabulary. He then emphasized the importance of vocabulary teaching (i.e.,
facilitating the process whereby EFL input leads to learners EFL vocabulary intake).
According to Priyono (1999, 2004), as lexical properties entail grammatical aspects, the
teaching of EFL vocabulary will support the teaching of aspects of grammar and meaning,
thus reducing the necessity to teach grammar.
Some other authors (Prayogo, 1997; Pranowo, 2006) consider that teachers have
significant roles in developing student sabilities to develop their EFL vocabulary learning.

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This is because vocabulary is both an important content learning (Cahyono, 1999) and a
significant part of any literacy pragram. Considering the crucial place of vocabulary, Prayogo
(1997) suggests that various available strategies for vocabulary learning be implemented in
the classroom. Picture clues, sight words, context clues, structural analysisand dictionary use
are among the many available strategies which can be utilized as temporary aids as well as
independent strategy. Like Prayogo, Pranowo (2006) values the importance of strategy
teaching, more particularly the teaching of text attack skills. Pranowos argument was based
on his observation that most Indonesian learners lack strategies in dealing with new words.
He then suggests that in dealing with new words, teachers need to work on a number of
aspects that contribute to more fruitful English language learning. These aspects include
thepronunciation of the word, the spelling, the word class, the meaning, and the use.
With the development of computer as a tool for storing and using words and texts,
there has been atendency in applying computer based and corpus-based vocabulary teaching.
In his study on how students perceived vocabulary teaching using computer, Dwijatmoko
(2006) found that, in general, the stu-dents thought the process of learning could be
conducted successfully with the help of computer. From this finding, Dwijatmoko concluded
that a computer-based vocabulary teaching is a good way for teaching vocabulary (p. 17).
Furthermore, he stated that the students perceived positively the interaction or practice
sessions, the classroom atmosphere, and the modes of computer-assisted vocabulary learning.
In short, Dwijatmoko found computer helpful for students vocabulary learning development
and suitable with their learning styles.
Another strand in the use of computer to teach vocabulary deals with the use of
corpora. Corpora refer to a large collection of spoken and written words or texts stored in a
computer database. Corpora provide some ready to use language teaching materials such as
the frequency lists of words and concordancesof words. In Indonesia, recently published
articles have addressed the use of corpora in ELT (e.g., Husada, 2006, 2007). For example, in
his article discussing the nature of corpora, Husada (2006) stated that the frequency lists of
words are useful to help both students and teachers know which of the words falland autumn
is more frequently used in relation to their contexts such as American or British English. In
his later article, Husada (2007) provided an ex-ample of investigating the use of the
exclamatory words damn, damn it anddammit using corpora-based analysis. It is interesting
to know that alth three expressions are interchangeably, the exclamatory word damn, as he
stated, is used about three times as often as damn itand almost four times as frequently as
dammit (p. 42). The use of corpus-based data such as these can be a useful insight for EFL

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vocabulary teaching. It should be noted, however, that Husadas example is merely for thesake
of analysis, as the word damnin our context is considered vulgar. Thus, teachers should
choose words that are needed for communication by the students and, at the same time, are
sound ethically.

INSIGHTS FOR FUTURE EFL RESEARCH AND PRACTICE IN INDONESIA

Increasing learners vocabulary has apparently been considered necessary. Language
teachers and researchers have realized the importance of vocabulary as an area worthy of
effort and investigation. Referring to the historical back-ground and current situation of the
teaching of EFL vocabulary in Indonesia, we will try to highlight some issues that could
becuseful for future EFL research and practice in this country. First, research areas that seem
worth explor-ing are how EFL learners acquire and organize lexicon as well as how they
enlarge that lexicon. As reviewed before, the limited research on vocabulary acquisition is
likely due to lack models of vocabulary acquisition and the un-derlying relation between
words and lexicon. Data regarding these might con-tribute to the research body of either
descriptive studies or acquisition studies. Researchers might be interested in describing
responses to such questions as: How are words actually used in discourse? How are words
structured and or-ganized? How are words related? How are individual lexical items related
to the lexicon web as a whole? In terms of vocabulary acquisition, researchers might want to
explore problems such as: Are some words more difficult than others? What makes a word
more difficult to learn? What strategies are suitable for facilitating vocabulary acquisition?
Second, language teachers need to explore various techniques in the teach-ing of
vocabulary. Using intensive and extensive reading activities as a means of exposing learners
to vocabulary in context seems to be the most practical for classroom applications. Besides,
increasing learners vocabulary requires inde-pendent strategy development, implying the
need for training learners in the use of strategies for vocabulary learning. Independent
learners, as Seal suggests, tend to become effective dictionary users and effective word
readers. In addition to teaching activities, it is then necessary to train learners in the use of
strategies for recording words as well as reviewing them. This is useful to make learners
aware that they need to refer to any new word they know again and again in order for the
word to be retained.
Finally, those afore-mentioned issues should also be highlighted and worked on in
teacher-training institutions. Vocabulary studies can be included as significant parts of the
program so that teacher trainees can develop aware-ness of the importance of vocabulary

12
teaching. As more emphasis is given to vocabulary, they should bebetter informed in terms of
issues related to re-search and practice of vocabulary teachingand learning.

CONCLUSION
The need to learn vocabulary has been viewed differently in different lan-guage
teaching methods. The fashionable method contributed to the decision as to how to place
vocabulary teaching in the overall program of language teach-ing. In the Indonesian context,
the place of vocabulary teaching has also under-gone changing depending on the existing
curriculum. Nevertheless, considering the context, vocabulary appears to be the most
significant element in the sense that good handling of vocabulary is likely to lead to solution
of ELT problems. Strategies of English teaching and learning should be geared toward
vocabulary acquisition. This article has reviewed various issues of vocabulary teaching in the
broader context of ESL/EFL teaching as well as in the Indonesian context and has indicated
that much still can be done for future EFL research and practice in Indonesia to contribute to
the research body of descriptive or acquisition studies concerning vocabulary. Additionally,
teachers as well as teacher train-ees should be equipped with much better understanding of
how necessary in-creasing learners vocabulary is in the success of second/foreign language
ac-quisition. Three approaches of indirect, direct, and independent strategies ap-pear potential
in enabling students to learn vocabulary, which teachers can make use of in planning their
vocabulary teaching.

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REFERENCES

Cahyono, B. Y. 1993. Pengaruh Pengajaran Kosakata Topikal pada Peningka-tan Penguasaan

Kosakata Bahasa Inggris [The effect of topical vocabulary teaching on the improvement of
nglish vocabulary mastery]. Bahasa dan Seni, 21(2):54-63.

Cahyono, B. Y. 1999. ContentArea Textbooks as Sources for Vocabulary Learning. Jurnal

Ilmu Pendidikan, 6(Special edition):403-412.

Chomsky,N. 1957. Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton.

Depdikbud [Ministery of Education and Culture]. (1986). Kurikulum Sekolah Menengah

Tingkat Atas: Garis-garis Besar Program Pengajaran Bidang Studi Bahasa Inggris [Senior
high school curriculum: Basic course outline of the English subject matter]. Jakarta:
Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebu-dayaan.

Dwijatmoko, B. B. 2006. Computer-based Vocabulary Teaching: The Stu-dentsPerception.A

paper presented at the 54thTEFLIN International
Conference, Salatiga.

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