Improving Vocabulary Instruction

TED 406 Teaching Secondary Reading

Jill Aguilar

How many words do students need to know?

• Early vocabulary researchers: – 2,500 to 26,000 words typical grade 1 students– 19,000 to 200,000 words college graduate students

(Beck & McKeown, 1991)

• Current consensus among researchers:– students add approximately 2,000 to 3,500 distinct

words yearly to their reading vocabularies

(Anderson & Nagy, 1992; Anglin, 1993; Beck & McKeown, 1991; White et al., 1990)

Four-Part Vocabulary Program

Graves, M.F. (2006). The Vocabulary Book: Learning and Instruction.

• Providing rich and varied language

experiences

• Teaching individual words

• Teaching word-learning strategies

• Fostering word consciousness

Four Essential Classroom Components

• Specific words (based on specific

criteria)

• Independent word learning strategies

• Wide reading

• Word consciousness

Teaching Specific Words• New meanings for known words—

synonyms for words that students already know

• New words representing known concepts—multiple meanings, such as attention, channel, and practice

• New words representing new and complex concepts—liberty, biome, probability

Teaching Independent Word Learning Strategies

• Morphology– Root words

– Prefixes and suffixes

– Cognates

• Context clues

• Use of dictionaries and other references

Teaching words well means giving students multiple opportunities to develop word meanings and learn how words are conceptually related to one another in the texts they are studying.

Vacca, R. T., & Vacca, J. L. (2008). Content Area Reading: Literacy and Learning Across the Curriculum p. 142. Boston: Pearson, Allyn and Bacon.

Selecting Words to Teach (Graves 2006)

• Is understanding the word important to understanding the selection in which it appears?

• Are students able to use context or structural-analysis skills to discover the word’s meaning?

• Can working with this word be useful in furthering student’s context, structural-analysis, or dictionary skills?

• How useful is this word outside of the reading selection currently being taught?

Usefulness and Frequency (Beck 2002)

• Tier One - words such as clock, baby, and happy whose meanings students are likely to know

• Tier Two - words such as fortunate, maintain, and merchant; likely to appear frequently in a wide variety of texts and in the written and oral language of mature language users; whose meanings students are less likely to know.

• Tier Three - words such as irksome, pallet, and retinue that appear in text rarely; often unknown to students, appearance in texts limited to one or two occurrences; often specific to particular content, students often can use the context of texts to establish their meaning.

Some Criteria for Identifying Tier Two Words

(Beck et al., 2002, p. 19)• Importance and Utility: Words that are characteristic

of mature language users and appear frequently across a variety of domains.

• Instructional Potential: Words that can be worked with in a variety of ways so that students can build deep knowledge of them and of their connections to other words and concepts.

• Conceptual Understanding: Words for which students understand the general concept but provide precision and specificity in describing the concept.

Types of Vocabulary Found in Textbooks

• General vocabulary - everyday words with widely acknowledged meanings in common usage

• Special vocabulary - words from general vocabulary that take on specialized meanings when adapted to a particular content area

• Technical vocabulary - words that have usage and application only in a particular subject area

Vacca, R. T., & Vacca, J. L. (2008). Content Area Reading, p. 145.

nationalism

imperialism

naturalism

instrumentalism

isolationist

radicalism

fundamentalist

anarchy

prestissimo

adagio

larghetto

presto

allegro

largo

andante

tempo

metaphor

allusion

irony

paradox

symbolism

imagery

simile

polyunsaturated

glycogen

monosaccharide

hydrogenation

enzymes

lyzine

cellulose

octogon

hemisphere

decagon

hexagon

bisect

equilateral

quadrilateral

pentagon

Which content areas include the terms in the lists below?

Vacca, R. T., & Vacca, J. L. (2008). Content Area Reading, p. 145.

Why Not Teach All Unknown Words in a Text?

(Armbruster, Lehr, & Osborn, 2001)

• The text may have a great many words that are unknown to students – too many for direct instruction.

• Direct vocabulary instruction can take a lot of class time – time that teachers might better spend having students read.

• Students may be able to understand a text without knowing the meaning of every word in the text.

• Students need opportunities to use word-learning strategies to independently learn the meanings of unknown words.

The Academic Word List (AWL)10 groups of approximately 60 headwords each—intended for high school & college

Sublist 1

analyzeapproachareaassessassumeauthorityavailablebenefitconceptconsistconstitutecontextcontractcreatedatadefinederivedistribute

economyenvironmentestablishestimateevidentexportfactorfinanceformulafunctionidentifyincomeindicateindividualinterpretinvolveissue

laborlegallegislatemajormethodoccurpercentperiodpolicyprincipleproceedprocessrequireresearchrespondrolesectionsector

significantsimilarsourcespecificstructuretheoryvary

Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly, 34, 213-238.

Teaching Independent Word Learning Strategies

• Morphology– Root words

– Prefixes and suffixes

– Cognates

• Context clues

• Use of dictionaries and other references

Examples of morphologically rich families*

• create created creates creating creation creations creative creatively creativity creator creators recreate recreated recreates recreating

• interpret interpretation interpretations  interpretative interpreted interpreting interpretive interprets misinterpret misinterpretation misinterpretations misinterpreted misinterpreting misinterprets

reinterpret reinterpreted reinterprets reinterpreting reinterpretation

reinterpretations

*Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly, 34, 213-238.

Examples of “strong” cognates: 1st Sub-List of the Academic Word List

analyze analizar

benefit beneficio

define definir

distribute distribuir

identify identificar

indicate indicar

individual  individual

Characteristics of Effective Vocabulary Instruction

Marzano, R.J. (2004). Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement.

• Effective vocabulary instruction does not rely on definitions.

• Students must represent their knowledge of words in linguistic and nonlinguistic ways.

• Effective vocabulary instruction involves the gradual shaping of word meanings through multiple exposures.

Characteristics of Effective Vocabulary Instruction

Marzano, R.J. (2004). Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement.

• Teaching word parts enhances students’ understanding of terms.

• Different types of words require different types of instruction.

• Students should discuss the terms they are learning.

Characteristics of Effective Vocabulary Instruction

Marzano, R.J. (2004). Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement.

• Students should play with words.

• Instruction should focus on terms that have a high probability of enhancing academic success.

Six Steps to Effective Vocabulary Instruction

Marzano, R.J. (2004). Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement.

1. The teacher provides a description, explanation, or example of the new term.

2. Students restate the explanation of the new term in their own words.

3. Students create a nonlinguistic representation of the term.

Six Steps to Effective Vocabulary Instruction

Marzano, R.J. (2004). Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement.

1. Students periodically do activities that help them add to their knowledge of vocabulary terms.

2. Periodically students are asked to discuss the terms with one another.

3. Periodically students are involved in games that allow them to play with the terms.