Word Awareness

“We believe that word awareness, like word knowledge, is a complex and multifaceted construct, and that there are many ways in which students’ awareness of language impacts their word learning. “ (Nagy & Scott, 2000)

Students don’t always know the words they don’t know. 

Very often, vocabulary instruction relies on students selecting the words they don't know from a text. While self-identified words should certainly be attended to in vocabulary instruction, we should not be fooled into thinking that students always know what words they don't know. It is important to raise word awareness, making students more conscious of the multiple meanings, nuances, and use of different words. 

Sometimes students may not feel comfortable speaking up about words they don’t know, leaving it up to the teacher to identify vocabulary words to teach. Other times, students may not identify a word as unknown because they know its simplest meaning, but not its more specialized meaning. For example, students may know the word “substitute” as an adjective that describes a teacher, but not as a process of swapping one chemical for another. In addition, many words might seem familiar. Students might read, “The artist preferred to use concrete objects in her work” and believe the author is referring to objects literally made of concrete, rather than solid physical objects. Unless students are doing a good job of monitoring their comprehension, they may not even realize they don't fully understand what particular words mean. Students may not fully comprehend a text if they are not aware of the words they do not understand.

Cultivate “word awareness" in the classroom. 

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. One of the great challenges in vocabulary acquisition is that we're always hearing words that we're not quite sure of, or that we are not quite sure how to use. The only way to get better at using and understanding these words is to pay attention to them. We can encourage students to notice and ask questions about words they don't know. Students can try using these words if they have a sense of what they might mean, so they can then acquire more information about these new words.