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Vocabulary Instruction

Vocabulary Lesson Design

Most teachers assume that vocabulary instruction will help students with reading comprehension, but deep understanding doesn't come from merely knowing the definition of a word, so vocabulary instruction has to include more than acquainting students with word definitions. New concepts, and new words for known concepts, are problems that all readers have to solve. But how do skilled readers do that? What is the connection between word knowledge and comprehension of text passages?

For teachers who want to support content area reading, I've compiled a summary of findings about word learning, and some research recommendations for vocabulary lesson design.

A case for Wide Reading

• School English contains 85,000 to 100,000 words.
• The average first grader enters school with a vocabulary of about 6,000 words.
• A high school senior typically has a vocabulary of about 40,000 words.
• The average student learns approximately 3,000 words each year.

These figures demonstrate that instruction counts for very little of the word-learning that students do, since no teacher assigns even a thousand words for students to learn each year. Incidental word learning comes through social interactions, media, and reading. Oral contexts are richer than print for gaining meaning because they contain intonation, gesture, and object presence. They offer opportunities for a person to ask questions for clarification whereas written contexts require inferences which are often imprecise.

Vocabulary is acquired incrementally, with a 1/20 chance of learning a new word from one exposure, which means that more reading = more chances to learn new words. It is estimated that 25 minutes of reading per day would result in 750 - 1500 new words learned each year.

Vocabulary and Comprehension
Reading comprehension is correlated with vocabulary but causality is not known. Teaching word meanings does not lead to increased comprehension of extended text passages since definitions do not yield enough information - background knowledge is critically important.

Schema theory says that knowledge is an organized structure. An instrumentalist approach to word knowledge stresses definitional learning, whereas a knowledge-based approach that ties new words to concepts and larger domains of knowldedge will improve comprehension. This approach is time consuming, but it may also contribute to general interest in word learning (word awareness) if it becomes part of a strategy repertoire for reading. As students engage in wide reading, they encounter words in a variety of contexts which results not only in more nuanced understanding of words but also in an increase in general knowledge.

Any meaningful encounter -even a definition - will produce a benefit, however small. Because the volume of words to learn is too large to be addressed by direct instruction, teachers need to establish conditions for learning new words by

• teaching strategies that include definitions, context clues, and word structures (affixes and roots).
• raise word awareness
• develop motivation
• provide opportunities for wide reading
  

Issues in Design
There is no single criteria for knowing a word. Words knowledge can fall within a range of levels. Some words are completely unknown, while others may have been encountered without full understanding, and at the other end of the continuum, the meanings of many words are fully established.

The Concept of Definition map is a useful tool for mapping a student's understanding of a word. It asks the student to categorize the word into a larger domain, to list three descriptive adjectives, and to name two examples of the word.





Program design for vocabulary lessons should include

• working with dictionaries and definititions;
• discussion;
• personal associations;
• justifications for the associations;
• a word's relationship to other words: analogies;
• cloze procedures and open-ended questions in which the target words are used.
• high frequency of use
• use away from vocabulary lessons.

Word selection is important. The words chosen for study should include

• words that are central to the theme of the lesson;
• words that have general utility;
• words that may be unfamiliar to students.

Exposure to a verbal environment that includes extensive reading is the best method for acquiring new vocabulary - but such environments are not available to all students away from school. Teachers, therefore, should offer opportunities for students to engage in wide reading.

• personal associations;

Source Material:
Nagy, W. E., & Herman, P. A. (1987). Breadth and Depth of Vocabulary Knowledge: Implications for Acquisition and Instruction. In M. G. McKeown & M. E. Curtis & (Eds.), The Nature of Vocabulary Acquisition. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

Beck, U. L., McKeown, M. G. & Omanson, R. C. (1987). The Effects and Uses of Diverse Vocabulary Instructional Techniques. In M. G. McKeown & M. E. Curtis & (Eds.), The Nature of Vocabulary Acquisition. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.