Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1989. 19/3. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 19)

Kovács, Éva: The History of Teaching Vocabulary

- 119 kovács, éva THE history of teaching vocabulary The proliferation of approaches arid methods is a prominent characteristic of the history of foreign language teaching. The establishment of new classroom practices and approaches to designing language programs and materials reflects a commitment to finding more efficient and more effective ways of teaching languages. The main aim of this paper is to provide an account of some trends in language teaching beginning with the direct method through the eclectic, the linguistic approach, the contextual, the audio-visual and the bilingual Method to the conscious-practical method concentrating on teaching lexis. Teaching vocabulary has always been a neglected field of foreign language teaching though recently more and more attention is bei rig paid to the problems of vocabulary in foreign language teaching and a steadily growing amount of work is beginning to challenge assumptions that have relegated vocabulary teaching to a secondary position in the priorities of language teaching. Despite this, even in the popular test-selling communicative coursebooks such as the STRATEGIES series (Brian Abbs and Ingrid Freebairn, 1975-82), there is still a prevailing assumption that the lexical burden must be kept to the minimum and new lexis is still largely subordinated to structural and functional patterning in practice and production. The new lexical items are not reinforced and practised in vocabulary exercises and this overall lack of lexical emphasis continues throughout the books with the view that vocabulary will accumulate incidentally. The main concern of this paper is to present an argument for the importance of vocabulary teaching and highlight what kind of a role vocabulary teaching has played in ttie history of foreign language teaching with the hope that it will help both teachers ant I teacher