What does it mean to know a foreign word? Part 1 I think most of you, if asked what it means to know a foreign word, would say it means to know the word's pronunciation, spelling and meaning. The answer would be correct, but not complete. There are some more in-depth descriptions of a word. Perhaps, in the foreign language teaching, the most known of them is the description, or to be more precise, the model of a word by I. S. P. Nation. You can find more information about it in his book, Learning Vocabulary in Another Language, published in 2001. I'm going to provide you with some insight into the model. Nation distinguishes 9 parts that make up a word and calls them 'aspects'. They are grouped into three areas, form, meaning and use. 1st area: Form Spoken Form Written Form Word Parts 2nd area: Meaning Form and meaning Concept and referents Associations 3rd area: Use Grammatical functions Collocations Constraints of use I believe the easiest way to prove that this make sense is to put an example word (for example, the word example) into this model. So, if you would like to know the word example, you: Have to know how it is pronounced. I am Polish, so apart from that this word from its 8 sounds, includes, I suppose, 4 sounds that the Polish language doesn't have, it has a different pronunciation in British English and American English. It means that I have to choose a variety of English and learn 4 new sounds. Have to know how it is written. I, as a Pole, am fortunate that my language uses Latin alphabet. If I were Greek or Russian or Chinese I would have to learn this alphabet to be able to use spelled version of this word. Have to know its word parts. It means that you have to know that to make its plural form, you have to add the letter 's', not the letters 'es'. Have to be able to connect its form and meaning. So, we already know there are two forms, spoken and written (pronunciation and spelling). Ah, I know in the 'form' area, there are 3 aspects, but this 'word parts' aspect is not exactly a form, but it's here, because it helps to form the other aspects (forms, in this case), for example written form (exampleS), or spoken form (ɪɡˈzɑːmpəlZ, not ɪɡˈzɑːmpəlS). This is why Nation put this aspect in this area, I suppose. Coming back to the main thread, basically, a new element in this aspect is 'meaning'. Depending on dictionary, the word example has many meanings. In Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (http://www.ldoceonline.com/), it has 4 general meanings...