مجلة الآداب و اللغات
Volume 22, Numéro 1, Pages 439-445
2022-05-15

Vocabulary Plight In Foreign Language Proficiency

Authors : Benrabah Boumédiène .

Abstract

The present paper lays down the perennial importance of the receptive skills as the most appropriate source for the growth of foreign language vocabulary. Supported by many foreign language acquisition (henceforth, FLA) researchers, any language input should come, first, at EFL learners’ capacity to read and listen with certain easiness to comprehend and work out the meaning to gain confidence and set motivation. In due course, First year EFL students are presenting the sample population being subject to a language proficiency test. This typical taking-part study intervenes with two groups: ‘the experimental’ group receiving the special treatment; and ‘the control’ group- whose role is to provide a baseline for comparison and contrast. This intervention design engenders a practical issue through which the researcher attests the necessity to expose EFL learners, explicitly, to the foreign language in its manifold (spoken written, literary, prosodic...) aspects with large and varied forms. Supposedly, learners, in that context and with such intervention remedy, are likely to acquire the target foreign language favorably. So, EFL learners, in reality, could do with the mastery of that language only by reading and/or listening to texts or messages intensively. The results, after the intervention, showed better scores among the experimental group compared to the other (control) group. In fact, the premise that vocabulary could be better attained through the receptive skills was confirmed.

Keywords

vocabulary development ; Comprehensible input ; Comprehension ; language proficiency ; receptive skills