Teaching Theories of Language Acquisition

Understanding the meaning of a word is a key part of communicative ability and is extremely important for both the construction and conception of a foreign language. To learn a word, one needs to know about its general usage and situational limitations, know its original form and the forms that can be derived from it, the networks it can form with other words and, all the meanings of this particular word(Richards 1976 cited in Ghazal, no date).

In relation to the importance of vocabulary learning, Pikulski and Templeton suggested that students learning new words will lead to improve listening, speaking, reading and writing vocabularies. With a further enhancement in comprehension and production in the foreign language (Pikulski and Templeton 2004). This is corroborated by an investigation by (Nassaji 2004) who found that students of English as a Foreign Language who had a greater vocabulary knowledge were more efficient in using English which was a direct testament to their vocabulary knowledge.

This suggests that vocabulary is important in English Language. The Saudi classroom does not always allow for the best methods of learning English and therefore there is the need for a supporting method of learning, one that can be completed outside of the learning environment and used in an interactive environment. Mobile phone apps intended for English vocabulary purpose may be the solution.

Vocabulary Learning

In order to help improve the learning of English language, and vocabulary specifically, it would be helpful first to understand what it means to learn a new word. Once it is understood how a new word is learnt, it is important to discuss the process of how this new word is learnt.

(Nichols and Rubpley 2004) referred to what...

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...ere is a possible benefit to be realized in the event of the use of mobile apps to teach vocabulary .

As mentioned in my discussion, successful examples were observed by certain researchers on the increased usage of mobile phone app technology. This in comparison to traditional vocabulary learning methods could be directly linked with the current situation in Saudi Arabia. This is because there is an extremely high number of people who own and efficiently use their mobile phones in Saudi Arabia with people generally tending to use their mobile phones for entertainment and education purposes. Also mentioned in my discussion, the accessibility and portability of the mobile phone is extremely important. As this offers a huge country the ability of always being able to learn new vocabulary at any time and at any place, "on-the-go" as long as there is internet access.