Assessing the Effects of Teaching Vocabulary in Developing Receptive Skills: A Review Article

Abstract

Vocabulary is central to English language teaching. Through vocabulary, students can understand, communicate, and write well. Without sufficient vocabulary knowledge, students cannot understand others or express their own ideas. The aim of this topic is to find out if teaching vocabulary can help students in improving reading or listening or not? Behind this question, there are some reasons in the Afghan context. First, students mostly have basic vocabulary knowledge and a mass of vocabulary, but the reading power is weak. This is especially true in most university students having a problem reading fluency and accuracy. Second, while students listen to native speakers, they have problems catching ideas and comprehension from their speech. Hence, it is vitally important to teach vocabulary accurately to improve sub-skill (vocabulary) and receptive skills (reading and writing). For these reasons, I have reviewed ten different articles discussing the importance and effects of teaching vocabulary to improve students’ receptive skills (reading and listening). This issue is vital in the Afghan context for acquiring receptive skills and sub-skill (vocabulary). The current study conducted to find out appropriate answers for the following research questions: What are the effects of teaching vocabulary in developing receptive skills? How teaching vocabulary influences the development of receptive skills? The ten articles reviewed show that teaching vocabulary influences the development of receptive language learning skills, especially learning English as a foreign language. The findings of the study indicate that vocabulary teaching not only influence the development of one skill of learning a language, but it can have multi-dimensional effects regarding the development of language skills, particularly the development of the primary skills of learning a language, for example; listening, speaking, reading and writing. For this reason, the articles strongly support the statement that vocabulary is one of the vital skills through which a learner can be able to develop performance skills and comprehension (receptive) skills.