¿Cómo aprendemos el vocabulario en una lengua extranjera?

Zusammenfassung

This article attempts to support the teaching of lexicon in the foreign language (FL) classroom,which has for a long time, in the field of FL teaching and learning, been relegated to secondplace, with grammar often being the main focus. The theoretical framework of this work con-siders the role of lexicon throughout different teaching methods and reflects upon three mainquestions: What does it mean to know a word? What role does memory play in learning lexi-con and how important is repetition and revision in this process? In the second half of the ar-ticle, a teaching activity is presented that was carried out with beginner and intermediate FLstudents learning Portuguese during a whole semester. This work deals with the compilationof a semantic glossary, where the entries are grouped hierarchically and provide complemen-tary and relevant information. The method employed was comprised of five steps, where themain steps were the initial contact with the resources consulted, the information search andfinally an oral presentation. This activity contributed to the development of the students’ lexi-cal competence, favoured the use of lexical inferencing strategies and the memorization ofwords. In addition, the activity allowed the students to be consciously aware of the learningprocess.