Word Uses and Traits
The words we really need to teach aren’t the ones you'd expect.
Students learn the meanings of many words on their own through spoken language, but the words most important for us to teach are the words not used often in spoken language
yet crucial to understanding written text. Rare words that are neither written nor spoken frequently,
pulchritude for example, might be nice to know for spelling bees, but they are not high-leverage words important for understanding written texts. Words like
consent,
correlate, and
contradict are much more useful words that help students navigate higher level text successfully.
Focus on generative words.
It is important for vocabulary instruction to focus on generative words, ones that are going to be especially helpful in students’ lives. Generative words are ones that occur frequently across different content area texts. These are the words that will give students access to texts from which they can learn content and more words. Generative words are also those that connect to one another and that give opportunities for teaching morphological variation. Finally, generative words are the ones students will need to make arguments, be persuasive, and discuss evidence.
This includes words for thinking….
One set of very important words includes the words used to talk about truth, evidence, and drawing conclusions. These include verbs like:
affirm,
deny,
suggest,
support,
prove; nouns like:
evidence,
claim,
theory,
argument, and
proof; and expressions like:
call into question,
relate to, and
conform with. These words are likely to be encountered in math, science, and social studies texts, though with slightly different meanings in different contexts.
…and also words for disciplines.
Generative words are useful across content areas, and thus everyone’s responsibility. Some more special purpose (often called “Tier 3”) words will need to be taught because they appear in a text the students are about to read. Teachers also need to address vocabulary words that are specific to a particular subject–photosynthesis, hypotenuse, republic. Those words are closely tied to conceptual knowledge within the content area and thus are best taught as part of a larger, conceptually organized topic (e.g., republic, democracy, representation, delegation, branches of government, and other directly relevant terms and concepts).
6 Topics
Word Tiers
Some have proposed categorizing words into one of three tiers for the purpose of vocabulary instruction.
Cognates
Cognates are words that share etymological origin and have similar meanings and forms.
Polysemy
Words often have multiple meanings, which are sometimes closely related but often distantly or only tangentially related.
Lexical Density and Nominalization
The ratio of content words to function words is called lexical density. Nominalizations increase lexical density.
Discourse Markers
There are a lot of markers in texts that signal organization, such as first, in conclusion, or although.