Because of the increasing demands that today's society places on language, there is an increasing need for vocabulary building. The opening of new fields, industries, and media and the vocabularies of specialized fields have all contributed to making increased word knowledge a necessity. New words have been coined to describe developments in new industries such as space exploration and computer science, and new concepts have required new words. Therefore, today's students must have large vocabularies. Instructors can make the acquisition of a large vocabulary challenging for the student by developing interest in the origin and development of words. Although Marshall McLuhan has prophesied a universe dominated by media without content, the author contends that one still needs a well developed vocabulary to succeed in today's society. (WB)