Abstract:
The aim of this study is to investigate the actual use of lexical semantic relations in vocabulary teaching and teachers attitudes towards its use as an amusing technique in the process of vocabulary teaching and learning. The research has adopted the descriptive analytical method. Data has been collected through the means of a questionnaire for a number of 52 secondary school teachers of English language. They were requested to give their opinions on a number of 15 items. The most important results show that most teachers do not use the technique of lexical semantic relations in teaching new words especially in the relations of hierarchy (hyponymy, meronomy and taxonomy) beside that sentence written and spoken contexts are not taken into consideration when teaching new words. Based on the findings, the researcher recommends that lexical semantic relations have an important role in vocabulary teaching therefore this technique should be used by all teachers in teaching new words. Above all teachers should take into consideration written and spoken contexts when teaching to shed some lights on polysemous words and homophones. Finally, other topics such as: impact of awareness of synonyms and antonyms in vocabulary learning or investigating the actual use of idioms and collocations by foreign language learners are suggested topics for further studies.
