Developing reading skills in English for agricultural purposes

Abstract

Learning vocabulary as the building blocks for communication plays an important role in foreign and second language learning as it is an essential component of becoming a fluent foreign language user. Very often vocabulary learning occurs as a product of reading. While reading, a sentence could be incomprehensible to the readers by the occurrence of a single unknown word and the learner can consult the dictionary to understand the text. Through regular reading the learner may remember and recognize some new words he/she came across in his/her reading. Of course, we all should be aware that no dictionary contains every word in the language. The sciences, medicine and technology generate a lot of words that never make it into a dictionary; numerous foreign words that appear in English-language contexts are left out. A great many words are invented all the time and then they simply vanish from the record. This material has been prepared as a guide for using various types of dictionaries with the aim of increasing foreign/second learners’ vocabulary in English as a foreign/second language. It is convenient for the learners of different levels of English language and appropriate to be used in different teaching/learning environments, both in face-to-face and elearning. A guide for using a dictionary is designed to be used by high school teachers in the field of agriculture and related fields, and agricultural advisors in Serbia. Also, it can be useful for the current and future students of both agriculture and other fields of science, and for professionals in other domains. Printing of the guide is funded by TEMPUS project CaSA Building Capacity of Serbian Agricultural Education to Link with Society, coordinated by University of Belgrade, Faculty of Agriculture.