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Vocabulary Acquisition History And It Is Important

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Vocabulary acquisition history and it is importance in learning a language
Vocabulary learning is no longer the Cinderella of the field of second language acquisition (SLA) research. Since the early 1980s, research on second language vocabulary learning has taken a prominent role in the field of SLA. Previously, learning a language was heavily based on learning grammar rules, which learners have to follow and understand in order to use correct grammatical sentences. As a result, that has led to a neglect of learning vocabulary as there was an assumption that vocabulary can be learned through communication and can take care of itself (Meara, 1980; Maiguaschca, 1993).
A plethora of scholars (e.g., Carter & McCarthy, 1988; McCarthy, 1990; Nation, 2010; Nation & Laufer 2012; Schmitt, 2010) in vocabulary learning, however, argue that vocabulary acquisition is the basic foundation of language learning because words are the building blocks of communication and without them, learners will not be able to express themselves and communicate by using a target language. Lexical errors are the most common among second language learners. In fact, vocabulary errors seem to be not only the most serious ones for students, but also the most disruptive ones for native speakers in terms of interpretation. As Gass (1988) observes, grammatical errors still result in understandable structures (e.g., she a girl), whereas vocabulary errors may interfere with communication (e.g., He tried to hold the

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