Linguistic, psycholinguistic, and sociolinguistic aspects of word knowledge are examined. Vocabulary techniques are discussed according to how they build up word frequency, vocabulary growth in native speakers, underlying forms, semantic structure, word association, and case relations. (SCC)

Describes a study which compared a traditional approach to second language vocabulary instruction with the semantic field approach, which is based on the association between five related words and a key word that could be mentally substituted in context. Findings lend support to the use of the semantic field approach. (SED)