Vocabulary Knowledge and the Development of EFL Learner's Communicative Competence

Abstract

Abstract. The importance of vocabulary acquisition for EFL learners is unarguably regarded as essential in language learning nowadays. Although this fact seems clearly evident, the status of vocabulary has only become vital recently. At the present time vocabulary is viewed as an important aspect of language ability and a decisive feature of foreign language proficiency. Foreign language vocabulary acquisition has become a challenging subject of discussion and research. However, there are still questions that either have not been so far raised but exist in the EFL teaching and learning practice, or only few studies have focused on them. One of such subjects is the relationship between the EFL student’s vocabulary knowledge and their speaking performance. Thus, the current article focuses on the issue of correlation between vocabulary knowledge and speaking performance with a shift on the quality of the vocabulary needed to achieve fluency and accuracy in a foreign language.