1.1.1 Arguments for Presenting Vocabulary in Semantic Sets

It has obtained popularity for several decades by employing word associations or semantic sets in English vocabulary teaching (McCarthy, 1990). Semantic sets means groups of words that are related semantically, or groups of words whose meaning would fall under one super-ordinate concept (Finkbeiner and Nicol, 2003; Tinkham, 1993, 1997; Waring, 1997), but not necessarily synonyms of each other. According to Tinkham (1997), a semantic set is defined in the current study as a group of words with semantic and syntactic similarities, such as “banana, peach, plum, strawberry, pear, apple”, which fall under the super-ordinate concept “fruit” and come from one single syntactic word class, in this case, nouns. 

Numerous SLA theorists and researchers insist either implicitly or explicitly that presenting new L2 vocabulary in semantically categories is an effective method of vocabulary teaching. According to some researchers, presenting new words in semantic categories will facilitate the vocabulary building, which is the common practice and prevalent belief among textbooks. And they further points out that this belief is not founded on research but on methodology and convenience (Waring, 1997). In fact, a brief investigation into some English textbooks some commonly used English course books showed that many of them have the tendency to introduce new English words in semantic sets (New Headway Elementary-Soars and Soars, 2000).