How Many English
Words do the Senior High School Students Acquire per Week?
Ari Nurweni
The 1984 SMA English curriculum
states that SMA graduates are expected to master 4000 words. The curriculum
also specifies the topics and the number of words to be exposed to SMA students
for each week (30 words per week). If it is accepted that each semester
consists of 15 weeks, and each week the students actually learn 30 different
words, then SMA graduates only learn about 2700 different words during their
study at senior high school. Therefore, in my opinion the number of 4000 words
also includes the words that should have been learnt by them at SMP, that is,
1500 words according to the updated 1975 SMP English curriculum. However,
Nababan (1984) states that we tend to forget about 40% of the words we have
learned. If this is accepted, theoretically SMA graduates will only acquire
about 2520 of the 4200 words (if the students only learn 2700 and 1500 at SMA
and SMP respectively). The figure suggests that on average the students acquire
about 14 different words per week during their study at SMP and SMA (2520 words
divided by {12 semesters x 15 weeks}).
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Nurweni, A. (1997). How many English words do the senior high school
students acquire per week? TEFLIN Journal, 8(1), 103-115.
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