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texts. Therefore it is an incremental process. The following steps
have been identified:
1. On the first exposure we pick up some of word sense and form;
some pronunciation if exposure is verbal, or the first few letters of
its spelling if it is written.
2. After a few more exposures we consolidate these features and
notice the word class, and perhaps some other meaning senses.
3. Only after a large number of examples, we develop intuitions
about the word frequency, register and collocational behav-
iour.18
As many lexical items are polysemous, the core meaning of a word
is likely to be learned first. This is the sense with the highest fre-
quency, also called denotation, and allows for other figurative
meanings and associations to develop later, after further exposure.19
Memory plays a key role in vocabulary acquisition. Short-term
memory, also known as working memory, retains information for a
very short time (a number of seconds) while processing, but it has
a small storage capacity. Therefore lexical items are grouped into
chunks, or longer units, as they enter the working memory for
elaboration. The aim of vocabulary learning is to transfer the lexi-
cal information from short-term memory to long-term memory,
which is more permanent and has a virtually unlimited storage
capacity, but is relatively slow. In other words, the language input
proceeds from sensory receptors (sight, hearing, etc.) into short-
term memory for processing over a short time. Then, in order to
become intake (permanently stored in the semantic network of the
mind, readily available for retrieval), it has to find some pre-exist-
ing information to attach to; a hook with which to establish con-
nection and remember. The new lexical item settles more easily in
the long-term memory when a link to an old, previously acquired
word or phrase is created. The most common type of hook is mean-
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18 Norbert Schmitt, Vocabulary in Language Teaching, pp. 117–118.
19 For example, when noticing the word cane (‘dog’), its core meaning ‘four legged animal, kept
as a pet’ is learned first, as it is by far the most frequent sense. Later on learners might infer the
meaning of the idiom solo come un cane (‘desperately lonely’). Only after exposure to different
types of specific texts, can they meet the less frequent meaning ‘cock of a gun’.
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