Building strategies for vocabulary Development: Addressing synformy

Impresiones FL de Natalia Rondini

Lugar: Córdoba Capital; Año: 2014 p. 42

978-987-1976-30-0

The learning of new vocabulary items, particularly at an advanced stage, calls for time, effort, and an awareness of what one is doing. Although some items may be easily acquired ?and even though some people have a good instinct and a knack for lexical development ? it has been recognized that foreign language students must, during their undergraduate formative stages, study lexis by means of specific with a view to handling and using the language as accurately and appropriately as possible. Students on teaching or translator training programs have good reasons to monitor and improve their vocabulary learning processes. For instance, a teacher must be ready to explain why a particular lexical item is more suitable than another in a particular context, even when both seem to have the same meaning or even the same translation into the student?s mother tongue, and ought to be able to do it convincingly, so that the student is satisfied with the explanation and understands why both items are not exactly the same, therefore learning how to use one and the other. The translator, on the other hand, should know that there is usually more than meets the eye when it comes to choosing the right target language equivalent for a particular item. A good translation is preceded by a thorough analysis of all the semantic, morphologic and pragmatic components of the source item, as well as the corresponding analysis of the possible equivalents, which leads to the most appropriate choice regarding meaning, use, frequency, and variety, among other factors. The student of Literature is undoubtedly an interested party when dealing with lexical development, since much of the work of a teacher of Literature in a foreign language will involve lexical knowledge and awareness.