Students are aware that they have to acquire vocabulary items for communicative purpose. However, they normally do it passively despite the fact that they can actually learn different new words on their own with the advent of technology.
In order to stimulate students' interest in vocabulary learning, teachers can try to pick vocab items that are relevant to their daily life. Besides, it is also important to teach vocab items in a lively way instead of providing dictionary explanations to students only. One way I think it may be useful in teaching vocab is to relate the words to students by using them as the examples. In this way, they might be able to remember and recall the items in the future.
Yet, students should also play their part in vocabulary acquisition. One way to do so is definitely related to reading. Reading different genres and reading different themes will help them in language and vocabulary building. From reading, they will be able to learn words from context, and more importantly, how to use the vocab items naturally with their correct collocations. If students are wide-read, teachers don't have to be worried about the number and the sophistication of their vocabulary items they know.
Mother tongue is sometimes useful in vocabulary teaching given that students are less-able who may not understand explanations / simple synonyms. However, I rarely switch to the mother tongue when I explain new vocabulary because we hope that students can learn the items naturally instead of translating everything in their mind.
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