Discussion on English Vocabulary and Description.docVIP

Discussion on English Vocabulary and Description 　　Abstract： Compared with the study of Grammar， syntax， the description on vocabulary is comparatively slower than them. The related theories of vocabulary description have fast developed since the 1980s and 1990s have experienced a growing interest in vocabulary learning and teaching----The vocabulary size， text coverage， word list， meaning of vocabulary in context， and collocation have been discovered and described， which helped new insights in arrange of different research fields have all added to our understanding of vocabulary development. Vocabulary acquisition research， based on vocabulary description， has established itself as a central research focus for language acquisition researchers and contributed to the focus of practical teaching and learning in English. 　　Key words： vocabulary and description； English； teaching and learning； vocabulary acquisition 　　该成果为四川外国语言文化研究中心编号为SCWY11-12的《基于语料库的大学英语词汇习得及其课堂教学模式的构建》项目成果。 　　We know a word by knowing its phonological， morphological， syntactic， and semantic attributes. Vocabulary knowledge makes language use possible， language use helps the increase of vocabulary knowledge， knowledge of the world aids the increase of vocabulary knowledge and language use and so on （Nation， 1993）. How much vocabulary does a second language learner need？ How many words are needed to do the things a language user needs to do？ And how should it be learned？ Just like Labov （1973） wrote， words have ability to change their meaning from one context to another. So knowing a word is not as simple as it might seem. With these cautions in mind let us now look at the following aspects concerning with describing vocabulary for second language learners. 　　（1）Vocabulary size 　　Reports and papers of systematic attempts have been published for over 100 years， for measuring the vocabulary size of native speakers of English. With various motivations for such studies， but the idea that vocabu