Concept Building Through Vocabulary Development

Concept Building Through Vocabulary DevelopmentAuthor(s): Shirley KoellerSource: The Elementary School Journal, Vol. 82, No. 2 (Nov., 1981), pp. 136-141Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1001452 .

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Concept Building through Vocabulary Development

Shirley Koeller Texas Tech University

A child's oral language ability is the most

potent and effective curriculum aid available to elementary school teachers. Chil- dren begin school with language; they are

ready to talk, to express themselves, to lis- ten, and to interact. Wise, resourceful teachers welcome children's natural, enthusiastic language abilities and further

encourage students by accepting and ex-

tending these language accomplishments. They shrewdly create classroom environ- ments where a lively oral language pro- gram introduces the related basic skills of

reading, writing, and the refinement writ-

ing skills of punctuation, capitalization, and spelling. Vocabulary development for children depends upon their experiential backgrounds and is an essential founda- tion deserving attention in the elementary school curriculum.

Vocabulary develops as children notice, define, and pronounce unfamiliar words, figures of speech, and technical terms and use these in oral and written language. De-

velopment begins with attention to, and fascination for, vocabulary. Vocabulary, which includes concepts, morphemes, and semantics, is the most important predictor of comprehension, the meaning derived from oral or written language (Singer and Donlan 1980). Reder's (1980) research on

comprehension demonstrates the im- portance of word identification and

The Elementary School Journal Volume 82, Number 2 O 1981 by The University of Chicago 0013-5984/82/8202-0005$O01.00



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138 THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOLJOURNAL

suggests that if pupils have problems iden-

tifying words, their deficits may result from not understanding the meaning rather than the inability to decode.

In this article, concept building is discussed, and several information-processing strategies that teachers can use to

promote student vocabulary development are presented. Information-processing strategies for vocabulary development that

require contrast, classification, and seriation of words will advance concept build-

ing because meanings are explored, established, and extended when these

strategies are employed.

Concepts Meanings associated with a word become a

meaning cluster or concept. Tennyson and Park (1980) define a concept as a set of

specific objects, symbols, or events of similar characteristics (critical attributes) which can be referenced by a particular name or

symbol. Concepts are thus mental compo- sitions which people use to describe the common and uncommon qualities of ob-

jects and experiences. Reder (1980) indicates that "concreteness" of concepts must be defined individually, because

comprehension depends upon each per- son's conceptual framework (schemata) to make referents clear. Ruddell (1974) con- curs, noting that comprehension must be accounted for by each listener's and reader's background, cognitive strategies, interests, and values. Proust's conception that every reader reads himself (Ruddell 1974) extends to the notion that all young learners learn themselves.

Children develop concepts as they notice and discuss examples or nonexam-

ples of the attributes of objects and experiences they perceive. Singer and Donlan (1980) state that contemporary social studies programs deliberately promote concept development, a process including discrimination, abstraction, generalization, and organization of attributes and their values. For example, democracy, freedom,

and truth are basic concepts as well as vo-

cabulary words in textbooks. These au- thors note that interrelated concepts in some valid relationships form a generalization, while a theory sets forth some interrelated generalizations.

Research by Tennyson and Park (1980) on concept teaching supports teaching strategies which include demonstrating the

relationship between examples and con-

trasting the relationship between examples and nonexamples. Their research indicates that concept attainment is pro- moted when the learner identifies attributes generalizable to newly encountered

examples and discriminates between

examples and nonexamples. The re-

lationship between examples and

nonexamples is critical to concept learning. They note that providing a concept defini- tion significantly reduces the number of

examples and nonexamples needed to master a concept, and that usage definitions are more effective than technical definitions for grade school pupils.

Preliminary classroom activities When communicating, children use familiar words. Interest and curiosity in new words promote vocabulary growth as children notice previously unknown words and new meanings for known words. With

young learners in the elementary school, effective vocabulary development, spoken and written, best begins with discussing familiar words and terms for everyday ob-

jects and events to insure that their mean-

ings are known.

Encouraging student responses Preliminary word study activities can

encourage children to perceive and define their own clusters and to separate exam-

ples of these words from nonexamples. This initial sorting allows students to actu- ally discover that certain words go to- gether. Many educators (Applegate 1960; Savage 1977) have discussed the infinite and wonderful flexibility of language for

NOVEMBER 1981



CONCEPT BUILDING 139

purposes of communication. Teachers can

enjoy the remarkable inventiveness of children's language as students originate their own personal word clusters and categories. One child, for example, clus- tered the words "somebody," "anybody," and "whobody" (as in "Whobody else is

coming to my birthday party?"). Teachers can better understand a

child's network of connectives (schemata) of what is reasonable, relevant, and under- standable from that particular child's point of view if children's unique classifications are encouraged and accepted (Fromberg 1977). As children group words they think are alike or different, they can explain their reasons, thus allowing teachers and

peers insights into understandings and

learnings. Discussions in which each child's

idiosyncratic syntax and logic of re-

lationships are explored and respected en- hance the language development of all children as they understand the re-

lationships perceived by other children and teachers.

When children notice and are stimu- lated by words, their experience and ability to cluster words grow. Research supports the positive effects of early classification

experiences in mathematics upon children (Ahr and Youniss 1970; Robinson 1970; Weeks 1970; Lesh 1971; Sheppard 1973). Indeed, the mathematical Venn diagrams can be used to classify verbal symbols (see fig. 1).

Activity: hand-flip chart Student teachers report that one activ-

ity which is effective at all elementary levels in developing a positive attitude toward

FIG. 1

words and word classification is an adapta- tion of a current fad resembling a "hand-flip chart." The hand-flip chart is one popular way for children to discuss and record relevant vocabulary. Children are enthusiastic about this device and in- vent a variety of hand-flip charts to record examples and nonexamples of such things as daily schedules, color words, cues for a melodrama, adverbs to be dramatized, tasty words, bilingual words, toys-liked- best words, family-member words, feel- ings, spatial relationship words, looks-on- faces, and so on. Discussing and then re- cording the verbal examples and nonexamples of important concepts en- ables children to hear, see, and "feel" vocabulary entering through the ear, the eye, and the hand. The permanence of the recordings (transferred from the chalk- board to hand-flip charts, tagboard, news- print, folders, little books, index file cards, journals, thesauri, word books, and other numerous possibilities) allows the student to add to the recorded category and to review it as needed. When pupils discuss and record humorous/doleful, thoughtful/ thoughtless, hard/easy, relevant/irrelevant concepts that are important to them, they share schemata while adding new words to their vocabularies. Vocabulary is thus em- phasized in a realistic, communicative way because children hear, see, discuss, understand, repeat, label, and use related and contrasting words.

Promoting detailed study of verbal classification Initially, children will use personal categorization based upon their experiential backgrounds and the meanings that words have for them. As teachers allow children (in both cooperative brainstorming groups and individually) to discuss and create verbal classifications, they can offer guidance and assistance for more detailed study of the relationships existing among words and clusters of words. Vocabulary words with multifold, diverse meanings



140 THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL JOURNAL

provide endless opportunities to classify words and to discover generalizations. Vo- cabulary classification systems in the elementary school are unlimited; children may categorize words by familiar meaning, concreteness, parts of speech, structural patterns, roots and affixes, or other attributes.

Ruddell (1974) notes that there are various types of meanings: lexical; re- lational; interpretation of information at the factual level, interpretative level, and applicative level; and derived literal meaning. Pearson and Johnson (1978) be- lieve that four general relationships of meaning follow each concept: class mem- bership, properties or attributes, lower- order concepts that exemplify the concept, and other-concept relationships that are at the same level of abstraction.

Verbal classifications promote semantic growth and language understandings. Norton (1980) states that two vocabulary techniques, use of context clues and structural analysis of roots and affixes, are especially helpful in improving students' understanding of meaning, and children who know these techniques are able to understand 90 percent of new reading vocabulary. Systematic teacher-directed examination of the context of new words begins by having children substitute common synonyms for unknown words. This practice is beneficial; Singer and Donlan (1980) report that fourth graders who sub- stituted words like "boy" for "lad" were able to better comprehend a passage. Norton (1980) suggests that in our sensible writing system words meaning the same tend to look the same (play, playful, playpen, played); because of similar spell- ings, children discover that consistent structural patterns ("ed," "ing," "s") in new words indicate specific meanings. Singer and Donlan (1980) state that teaching morphemes like these reduces the com- plexity and magnitude of the vocabulary load in content areas. Reder (1980) notes that when children move toward mor-

phemic investigation of prefixes, suffixes, and, most important, roots, they discover the extent to which the principles they find generalize to connected discourse.

Verbal seriation

When children discover, discuss, and record word associations in vocabulary classifications, the quantity of their own vocabularies, both oral and written, grows. Students acquire precision in their ability to discriminate among synonyms by at- tending to the "quality" of vocabulary and what I call "verbal seriation." For example, even very young children can find pictures in magazines and books or bring objects for show-and-tell to illustrate the semantic difference between words like big and large, love and like, house and home, pretty and beautiful, good and nice. Brainstorming to compile verbal seriations emphasizes semantics as children study the meanings of synonyms. An effective tech- nique is to have children make word cards of synonyms of bipolar words like happy- unhappy, big-little, or love and hate. Stu- dents can seriate the synonyms along a continuum which accurately describes the relative quality of words such as adore, enjoy, despise, cannot stand, and detest. Pupils hold word cards, and must locate themselves in different places in a line, thus creating a seriation which reflects the meanings which the words and terms hold for the users. Precision in using words is vitally important because, as Applegate (1960, p. 27) states, "when we think Grand Canyon thoughts, we cannot speak Death Valley words, and when our thoughts go down as deep as the earth's middle, we can hardly rattle off dry-gully words."

Conclusions Conventional wisdom and the general public implore educators to teach basic skills. Vocabulary is fundamental, and vocabulary development transfers to all basic skills. Norton (1980) correctly states that well-planned vocabulary instruction im-

NOVEMBER 1981



CONCEPT BUILDING 141

proves performance in the language areas of speaking, listening, reading, and writ-

ing. Maximum vocabulary development is an essential goal for elementary language-arts programs. Strategies discussed in this paper will promote and insure growth in both quantity and quality of oral and written language. Wittrock (1978, p. 101) concludes that:

the individual differences suggested by the research ... emphasize information processing strategies. Instead of age, sex, and I.Q., the strategies of learners, such as analytic and holistic strategies, prom- ise to lead more directly to theoretically interesting instructional procedures. By the same reasoning, studies of student attributions, encoding processes, and attentional and motivational mecha- nisms may also lead to improved instructional procedures. Instructions to elaborate concepts and issues, in different modes or different strategies, ques- tions about the meaning of subject mat- ter, metaphors, similes, and analogies to induce comparisons and hypostatiza- tions to represent abstract concepts are all potentially important ways that teachers might facilitate the constructive cognitive processes of the brain.

These suggested strategies for maximizing vocabulary development will provide children with more words for effective communication. Additionally, Wittrock be- lieves that strategies like these facilitate

concept building and cognitive processing. Perhaps most important of all, these activities allow pupils to experience the

"power to 'grow' a true enjoyment of words" (Applegate 1960, p. 31).

References

Ahr, P. R., and Youniss, J. "Reasons for Failure on the Class Inclusion Problem." Child De- velopment 41 (March 1970): 131-43.

Applegate, M. Easy in English. New York: Harper & Row, 1960.

Fromberg, D. P. Early Childhood Education: A Perceptual Models Curriculum. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1977.

Lesh, R. A. "The Generalization of Piagetian Operations as It Relates to the Hypothesized Functional Interdependence between Class, Series, and Number Concepts." Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 1971.

Norton, D. E. The Effective Teaching of Language Arts. Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill Publishing Co., 1980.

Pearson, P. D., and Johnson, D. Teaching Read- ing Comprehension. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1978.

Reder, L. M. "The Role of Elaboration in the Comprehension and Retention of Prose: A Critical Review." Review of Educational Re- search 50 (Spring 1980): 5-54.

Robinson, V. H. B. "An Investigation of the Performance of Kindergarten Children on Quantitative Class Inclusion Tasks." Ed.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1970.

Ruddell, R. B.Reading-Language Instruction: In- novative Practices. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1974.

Savage, J. F. Effective Communication. Chicago: Science Research Associates, 1977.

Sheppard, J. L. "Conservation of Part and Whole in the Acquisition of Class Inclu- sion." Child Development 44 (June 1973): 380-83.

Singer, H., and Donlan, D. Reading and Learning from Text. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1980.

Tennyson, R. D., and Park, O. "The Teaching of Concepts: A Review of Instructional De- sign Research Literature." Review of Educa- tional Research 50 (Spring 1980): 55-70.

Weeks, G. M. "The Effect of Attribute Block Training on Second and Third Graders' Logical and Perceptual Reasoning Abilities." Ed.D. dissertation, University of Georgia, 1970.

Wittrock, M. C. "Education and the Cognitive Processes of the Brain." In Seventy-seventh Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, edited by J. S. Chall and A. F. Mirsky. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.



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Concept Building Through Vocabulary Development