Of prime importance in reading is vocabulary skill. The reader must know the meanings of enough of the words in a sentence for it to make sense and also know how to combine individual word meanings within a sentence. Once the student is past the initial stages of reading, he spends a large percentage of his time encountering new vocabulary, which can be approached in a number of ways. The teacher can give the meaning for each new word, as is common in teaching reading to non-native students. Or, also common, the student may spend hours with a dictionary writing native-language glosses into his text. For the native speaker of English, the most common form of vocabulary building is guessing from context and/or word formations.

In many settings in which English is taught as a foreign language (EFL) there are high degrees of emphasis on rote memorization. Because vocabulary development skills are seldom specifically taught, the student is not aware of the skills or their benefits. Most students have been trained to panic. Their first reaction on encountering a new word in a text is to stop and ask for a definition, even if the rest of the sentence defines it. The student of English as a foreign language cannot begin to read with full comprehension until he has been taught to conquer the unknown word by using contextual aids, that is, the formation of the word itself and the environment in which it is found.

(Adapted from Vocabulary in Context, by Anna Fisher

Kruse, in Long, Michael H. and Richards, Jack (eds.), Methodology in TESOL – A Book of Readings. New York: Newbury House, 1987)