INCORPORATING VOCABULARY LEARNING STRATEGIES AND BLENDED MODE OF LEARNING TO ENHANCE VOCABULARY OF UNDER GRADUATE ENGINEERING STUDENTS

Vocabulary acquisition is the crucial element to learn English as a second language, because it is the fundamental prerequisite to the four skills of a language listening, speaking, reading and writing. Even in second language learning, vocabulary learning is a crucial part. With the advancement of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) in the professional and technical areas of study, Students' successes depend on the vocabulary learning strategies employed by them. Vocabulary has been recognized as crucial to language use in which insufficient vocabulary knowledge of the learners led to difficulties in second language learning. For students of under graduation engineering vocabulary causes a great deal of hindrance in learning since the vocabulary they are acquainted with technical jargons and so academic lexical items occur with a lower frequency as compared to general vocabulary items do. Allen (1983) also accentuated that “In communication major hindrance is a lexical problem; communication process breaks down when the speaker does not use the exact word during communication.” This shows that vocabulary teaching is important in classroom teaching, as without knowledge of vocabulary chances of a breakdown of the communication cycle increases. The study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of technical vocabulary learning strategies and blended mode of learning to enhance the vocabulary of undergraduate engineering students. This paper presents the discussion of the methods of developing vocabulary.