Learning vocabulary is not only a process of learning long lists of words in isolation. In fact, current studies demonstrate that the acquisition of vocabulary is not only achieved by means of memorizing words but also by integrating new items of vocabulary in the practice of other language skills such as reading, writing, listening and speaking.

The fact of the integration of new vocabulary in other skills does not mean that vocabulary should be a forgotten aspect of language learning and teaching. Vocabulary is the essential part of language, that is, the meaning of words should be known and understood in order to interpret the meaning of the message accurately. It is also very important to take into account the context of the message, since words appear in a determined context and their meaning may vary depending on it. So context will help the students to infer or guess the meaning of words.

Harmer suggests that students remember words better when they do any kind of task with them. He proposes the use of discovery techniques to get the actual meaning of the words that students are dealing with. These discoveries techniques make students «work out rules and meanings for themselves rather than being given by the teacher» (Harmer, 2001; 160). Therefore, students» ‘will discover for themselves’ what a word means and how and why it is being used» (Harmer, 2001; 160). He recommends specially this technique with intermediate level students because it allows them «to activate their previous knowledge and to share what they know» in case they work in groups.

Hunt and Beglar (258) discuss three different approaches to vocabulary teaching and learning: incident learning (learning vocabulary by doing other activities as reading or listening); explicit instruction (presenting words for the first time and elaborating word knowledge) and independent strategy development (which implies guessing from the context). Although Hunt and Beglar recognize extensive reading as the principal source of acquiring vocabulary, they recommend the combination of the three different approaches.

Hunt and Beglar point out that the explicit instruction of vocabulary is very important for beginner students who are not able to understand the meaning of words in a text because of their lack of vocabulary. They state that vocabulary lists can be useful in some occasions but not always: they do not provide the needed information. Harmer also adds two main problems to the translation technique: on the one hand, it is not easy to translate all the words; on the other hand, students can consider translation an easy task and therefore students may feel discouraged. Ying (2001) declares that researchers coincide in considering the leaning of words in context as an effective strategy. For her, words appear in context and learning their meaning or definition and not their context will not help students to understand their complete meaning and use.

Hunt and Beglar (1998), Ying (2001), Harmer (2001) and Mora (2001) agree that learning meaning or teaching vocabulary does not imply only knowing meaning but other important aspects. Mora, following Gairns and Redman (1986), provides the following list:

• Boundaries between conceptual meaning: knowing the boundaries that separate one word from others of similar or related meaning.
• Polysemy: distinguishing the different related meanings of single word.
• Homonymy: distinguishing the different not related meanings of single word.
• Homophony: distinguishing between words with the same pronunciation but different meaning and spelling.
• Synonymy: distinguishing different shades of meaning.
• Affective meaning: distinguishing between connotative and denotative meaning.
• Style, register and dialect.
• Translation.
• Chunks of language: idioms, collocations, lexical phrases…
• Grammar of vocabulary.
• Pronunciation.

In order to get more successful learning, Mora explains the way that new vocabulary is stored in learners’ mind: «mental lexicon» is organized in semantic related items, so if vocabulary is grouped in semantic fields or topics, it will be easier for students to assimilate these new items of vocabulary.

Finally Ying (2001) remarks that learning vocabulary through reading has some advantages: first, students learn words, their meaning and how to use them; second, inferring word meaning from the context contributes to reading comprehension; third, it is a challenging and active activity; and fourth, learners focus their attention on paragraphs or text instead of smaller units as sentences.

This research tries to show that learning vocabulary is not a separate issue in the process of language learning or explicitly instructed. The acquisition of vocabulary is a task that is integrated in others skills and as it has been said above, vocabulary acquisition happens to be more successful and students feel more involved when it is incidentally exposed by means of extensive reading.

In this research, two students of English as Second Language have participated. They were asked to do two different kinds of worksheet and later they had to do a final test in order to know if they had assimilated correctly the new vocabulary that they are supposed to have learnt.

These students have two different characteristics: student A is seventeen years old. She studies first course of Bachillerato; student B is sixteen years old and studies fourth course of ESO. Although they are not the same age, both students are supposed to share the same level of English (student B attends extra lessons). Their level of English has been tested by means of a test of language level: Dialang (www.dialang.org). As it was expected, their level of English was the same. Both of them scored at the level B1, which means that their vocabulary was limited, sufficient for ordinary day-to-day purposes, but probably does not extend to move to specialist knowledge of the language.

The investigation took place in two different sessions: in the first one, these students were given their worksheets and they were presented for the first time to the topic; in the second one, they were given a final test in order to check the items of vocabulary that they had learnt. All the words that these two students had to work with have to do with the same topic: money. These two first sessions lasted about 45 minutes.

The two worksheets are different because we want to practise two different techniques of learning. Worksheets were given randomly. The main aim of worksheet 1 was to experiment the acquisition of vocabulary through reading. It had three different activities: in the first one, student A had to match the different parts of an expression after having read the text; in the second, they had to form adjectives from certain nouns; and in the third, they had to match each word with a definition. Worksheet 2 consisted of three activities too: in the first activity, student B had to translate a number of words related to the topic of money (with the help of a bilingual dictionary); in the second, they had to match a term with its definition; and finally they had to give a translation into English.

Finally, the vocabulary that they had learned was tested by a unique model of test. It was formed also by three different activities: first of all, they had to complete some sentences with a missing word; second, they had to translate some terms into English or Spanish; and finally, they had to invent a story that contained as many of the given words that they were able to use. This final test was designed as a mixture of the two worksheets. Since its goal was evaluating the students objectively, it contained different activities from the two previous worksheets in order not to give advantage to any of them. Besides the test was intended to combine all those characteristics of vocabulary that have been described previously in the literary background: spelling, homonymy, synonymy, meaning…

The objective of the first activity in the test was to check that the students had understood how to form adjectives from nouns and if they were able to use it in their context. In the second task, the objective was to provide a translation, a synonym or an expression with approximately the same meaning. By giving them the opportunity of defining the meaning of the words, we make them approach to the first stage of written production that was the third exercise.

In the third exercise of the test, students had to write a composition in which they should use as many items from the vocabulary as they could. The purpose of it was to check if students were able to use new vocabulary in a real context, that is, to give then a chance to show their teachers their control of vocabulary and also to motivate and encourage by writing their own ideas.

The test was evaluated globally over 60 points although each activity had a different value in terms of marks: the first exercise was valued over 12 points; the second, over 16 and the composition, over 32. In the first two cases, each question of each exercise was given two points if it was correct, or one point if it was not spelled properly. Then, the composition was given a total of 32 points, but each aspect of it was given and independent grade: 12 points on the use of vocabulary, 8 on grammar, 5 on the structure and 5 on the content.

Finally, the test, which lasted 60 minutes, took place and its results are those mentioned below. It is important specify that Student A was given worksheet 1 and that Student B did worksheet 2.

The results of each student have different characteristics: Student A and B presented the same control at providing definitions and translations asked, but Student B was considered to control better the exercise of filling the gaps. Then Student A showed that she dominated much better the written composition, that is, she knew in which context she should use certain words (Student A got 10/12 in her use of words in the appropriate context in contrast to Student B who just got 8/12).

This investigation can only give us a general overview of learning vocabulary through reading and memorizing word lists. However the results of this research can not be applied to wide population because it has been done only with two participants that have many different features although they share the same level of English. These results confirm that students who study vocabulary through reading have a better control of the vocabulary in their context.

Learning vocabulary is not an easy task and it can become into a tedious activity if we try to learn or to teach it by studying long lists of words that happen to be a memorizing activity rather than a strategy to acquire vocabulary. However, it can be done in a more relax way, that is, we do not need to teach vocabulary items only directly but to include it in other skills: while we read, we come across with some words whose meanings are unknown for us and can be discovered by focusing on the context.
Another important factor is the idea of working around the same topic. If we know that we are working on the vocabulary related to «money», for instance, we narrow of possibilities of the meaning of the words and their meaning can be inferred from the context.

As Mora (2001) proposed words contain much more features than meaning exclusively. These features can not be practise if vocabulary lessons becomes simply in memorizing strategies. By using reading as a strategy to vocabulary learning we teach the context of the words and different examples of their use. Besides, by reading we make our students feel involved in their tasks, we motivate them to reading, not only in English lesson, we work on their reading comprehension and what is more important we achieve to catch their attention by the presentation of new ideas.

To conclude, we can say that learning vocabulary through reading has been a positive experience in this research. Student A said that although she felt very comfortable when she approached to the text, it presented some problematic terms but they were solved after a second reading on the text and her work on the activities proposed. However, Student B thought that translations activities were very happy and positive because they allow her to know the meaning of the words in few time. But Student B’s marks were not as successful as Student’s A because she was not able to use the words properly. Learning vocabulary may be included in other skills, especially in reading because it allows us to prepare other activities with vocabulary issues related to the general topic, such as looking for synonyms, pronunciation or word formation.

References:

• Brown, H., Douglass H. The Principles of Language LearningTeaching. Logman. 1993. Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment. Cambridge University Press. 200l.
• Courtright, M. and Wesolek, Cathy. «Incorporating Vocabulary Activities into Reading Classes». Forum. Vol. 39, No 1, January- March. 200l.
• Harmer, Jeremy. The Practice of English Language Teaching. Logman. 1991.
• Homby, AS. Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary of Current English. Oxford University Press. 2000.
• Mora, S. «Teaching Vocabulary to Advanced Students: A Lexical Approach». Karen’s Linguistic Issues, July, 2001.
• Soars, John and Liz . The New Headway English Course. Student’s Book and Wokbook. Oxford University Press, 2003.
• Ying, Yu Shu. «Acquiring Vocabulary through a Context-based Approach». Forum. Vol. 39, No 1, January- March. 2001.