Effective vocabulary teaching – essential and secondary factors every ESL teacher should pay attention to

Abstract

Purpose: of this paper is to give both ESL teachers and learners a guideline to increase vocabulary with various ways of effective techniques and usages. Moreover, introduction of this systemic way of learning vocabulary shall enable learners write in English orthographically correctly and speak without pronunciation errors. Study design: This study is carried out empirically while observing sample population directly. Findings: How much ever knowledge we have in grammar and in macro skills of the English language, it will never be in help if a learner isn’t in possession of enough vocabulary. Despite the fact that vocabulary learning and teaching in the Sri Lankan education system carries immense importance, learners have yet been learning vocabularies either in inappropriate and/or inaccurate ways. Learning vocabulary requires teachers and learners to pay attention to essential factors like spelling, pronunciation, meaning or meanings of the word and meaning variation according to the word class changes in the word and secondary factors like increasing vocabulary through word family and word tree, getting thorough knowledge in collocation, synonyms, antonyms, homophones, word tree and so on and so forth. This article will enable learners to increase their vocabulary effectively as well as teachers to teach vocabulary effectually. Originality/Value: Findings of this research have been greatly accepted by teachers and ESL learners of all ages. The step by step guidelines introduced in this research in order to increase vocabulary are more productive compared to present vocabulary teaching and learning methods.