Teaching Practices
There are many, many techniques for learning or teaching word meaning. Some of us learn words by hearing them in a discussion or podcast. Others learn them from frequent reading. Others have a feel for the morphological variations in words, and thus can make good guesses about what complex forms mean. Still others know enough Spanish or Latin or Greek to be able to make reasonable guesses about the meanings of words using etymology.
All these routes to word knowledge are valuable, and yet none alone is sufficient to ensure rapid acquisition. When we are designing vocabulary instruction, we need to be sure that all of the routes are taught and implemented whenever possible.
To the question of whether students learn vocabulary through explicit teaching of definitions or natural encounters with new words in context, the answer is: both. Students can acquire new words incidentally, but explicit teaching speeds up the process. The word definitions provide the basic meaning, and examples in context clarify meaning and use. (The same basic combination of contextual use and a definition is important even if the examples in context come before the definition.)
Teach word-learning strategies in addition to teaching words.
Students with relatively limited reading skills are often way behind their peers in word knowledge. So, it's important to teach word learning strategies, in addition to teaching words, because it’s not possible to teach enough words to ensure that students with limited vocabularies can catch up. Even if you teach 10 words a week, 20 words a week, or 30 words a week; you still won’t make up the vocabulary deficit that these students have. And, of course, you can't really teach 30 words a week, at least not in a way that students will retain them long term. There's not enough instructional time to do that.
Students can use on their own:
- Encourage students to pay attention to and point out morphological structure in words. If they know include, then maybe they could figure out inclusion as a related word. Maybe they could even figure out seclusion and how it relates to inclusion, if they've been taught how to do that.
- English learners can be given the strategy of searching for cognates, looking for words in English that look or sound and perhaps mean something similar to words they know in Spanish or other romance languages. Those are the kinds of strategies that, if students deploy them carefully, can really help them gain a much greater vocabulary than we could ever hope to teach explicitly.
- Have students work with partners to identify any forms of the vocabulary words from current or previous lessons. Require that they read aloud the sentences that include these words. Challenge them to rephrase each of these sentences aloud. Model and provide guided practice for this process first.
- Use choral or echo reading when time allows without sacrificing comprehension of the text. Give students time to read the text silently before reading it together.
10 Topics
Word Awareness
Cultivating word awareness means making sure that students enjoy learning words and also that they become aware of words they encounter that they don't know yet.
Dictionaries
Using dictionary definitions is not a bad idea; they can be critical in confirming or disconfirming guesses about word meanings. But they need to be used in conjunction with other sources of information.
Explicit Instruction
While some students acquire meanings incidentally, most students need to be explicitly taught the meanings of at least some vocabulary words.
Relying on Context
Teachers often introduce new vocabulary by providing definitions up front. However, it can be helpful to delay explicit teaching of a word's meaning in some situations.
Recurrent Exposures
Words are learned best through multiple exposures in a variety of contexts.
Meaningful Use
Students can gain some word knowledge from definitions, but generally only if they are given other types of information about the word.
Refining Meanings
After students have encountered the word several times and cemented the meaning with a learner-friendly definition, students can then be told about alternative meanings or additional meanings.
Networks and Mapping
Although many vocabulary programs present words in lists, they are actually learned and stored in mental networks, as represented in maps.
Correcting and Encouraging
It’s important to encourage students to experiment with words, but that means not being surprised when students make errors with words.
Assessing Vocabulary
Ideally, assessments would also provide opportunities for students to learn something while doing them.