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Vocabulary Instruction

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How We Learn New Words Firsthand experience with the concept is directly

related to reading comprehension Experience is a better predictor of reading

comprehension ability than just knowing the meaning of words and being able to do well on vocabulary tests

Experience helps to develop schema better than just knowledge of a word

Vocabulary aptitude is a trainable skill

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Principles for Effective Vocabulary Instruction

Learned best through direct, hands-on experience

Both definitions and context should be offered teach basic definition or information that helps

determine the connections of the new word to known words

understand the importance of context for knowing the correct and intended meaning of a word (50 definitions for run)

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Principles for Effective Vocabulary Instruction

3. Must include a depth of learning component as well as a breadth of word knowledge

Association processing—through synonyms and word associations

Comprehension processing—fitting a word into a sentence blank, classifying the word with other words, finding antonyms

Generation processing—creating a new or novel product such as restatement of the definition, using in a novel sentence, relating it to a personal experience

CAUTION: creating own sentences must be done with care—students need to demonstrate real understanding of the word and use it in its proper grammatical form

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Principles for Effective Vocabulary Instruction 4. Students need to have multiple

exposures to new reading vocabulary words Some studies suggest as many as 6 exposures

necessary to be able to recognize and learn any new words

Listening vocabulary exceeds reading vocabulary for a long time

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Which words do we teach?Language or Text Source Number of “rare”

(uncommon) words per 1,000 words

Adult speech (such as expert testimony)

28.4

Adult speech (college graduates to friends)

17.3

Prime time adult television 22.7

Mister Rogers/Sesame Street 2.0

Children’s books--preschool 16.3

Children’s books--elementary 30.9

Comic books 53.5

Popular magazines 65.7

Newspapers 68.3

Adult books 52.7

Scientific article abstracts 128.0

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Words should have:

High utility—usefulness Facilitate concept development Contribute to greater spelling and

orthographic knowledge

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Strategies for teaching vocabulary in Chapter 7 worth knowing:

Predict-O-gram (p. 236)—using words from the story to be read and placing them under the appropriate story grammar part to work on meaning and prediction

Word Banks (p. 229) and Word Cards (p. 237)—to review new words by writing them on cards with various explanations, pictures, examples to assist

Semantic Maps (p. 238) and Semantic Feature Analysis (p. 239)—to assist in constructing new schema by categorizing and establishing relationships of words with their features

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Strategies for teaching vocabulary in Chapter 7 of Reutzel and Cooter worth knowing:

Making Words (p. 238-241)—to improve phonetic understanding of words and increasing number of words recognized in print

Encouraging wide reading (p. 249)—one of the best ways to increase vocabulary but not highly valued in reading standards

Studying different types of word functions (p. 253-257)—antonyms, synonyms, euphemisms, onomatopoeia and other creative words