This paper reviews the research on best practices for teaching academic vocabulary within the classroom. The different types of academic vocabulary are defined. The common themes presented are the importance of limiting the number of vocabulary words chosen for instruction, providing direct instruction of vocabulary, providing students with multiple exposures to words, and creating word rich environment within the classroom. The paper concludes with personal reflection of the author and implications for professional instructional practices.
Key Words: academic vocabulary, direct-instruction- word choice, word-rich environment, word consciousness, instructional practices, vocabulary instruction
Best Practices in Academic Vocabulary
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It will then present four key components of an effective vocabulary instruction program: word choice, direct instruction of strategies, multiple exposures to new vocabulary, and creating a word-rich environment. In conclusion the paper will present the authors reflection as well as implications for instructional practices.
What is Academic Vocabulary?
When discussing academic vocabulary it is important to first understand what academic vocabulary is defined as. In What is Academic Vocabulary? (Baumann &Graves, 2010, page number?) academic vocabulary is broken into two different categories. Domain-specific academic vocabulary is vocabulary that is specific to certain content. This is vocabulary that is often found in content textbooks. General academic vocabulary words are words that appear across content areas. These are words that may have different meanings across content areas depending on the context in which they are used.
Baumann and Graves also include metalanguage and symbols in academic vocabulary (11, 2010). They define metalanguage as the processes or expressions that are often used in math. Math often has many symbols that are used to represent objects or mathematical expressions. These are also part of academic language and need to be taught as
All students need direct instruction of vocabulary, but it is especially imperative for ELLs. They need much more exposure to new vocabulary than their native-English-speaking classmates. ELLs need to learn cognates, prefixes, suffixes, and root words to enhance their ability to make sense of new lexicon. Beginning ELLs and more advanced ELL students should actively engage in holistic activities to practice new vocabulary because learning words out of context is difficult for these students. If they memorize the meanings of the words on a list, they will not be able to use the words in their own writing or verbal production until they really understand the meanings. When vocabulary instruction includes explicit, implicit, and strategy instruction, students are repeatedly exposed to the target vocabulary in a variety of contexts which increases their individual vocabulary development and the other resources that help in doing so is the Semantic Mapping primary focus on visual relationships, which is helpful to students from all backgrounds.
Students who are English Language Learners are taught in whole group with their general education teacher and in a small group with their ELL paraprofessional. About 5 % of students who are ELL are on or above grade level in Reading based on the i-Ready Diagnostic Assessment 3. This is why the district believes these students and others should have extra practice or progress monitored on their mastery of vocabulary skills in school. Helping students master the skill of vocabulary teachers need to be able to have time to demonstrate an effort to systematically teach word study. They also need to be able to use vocabulary techniques and practices that will be intense and meaningful to the students in third grade. Last but not least, they need to be able to share effective vocabulary techniques in their PLC’s that have worked for them in their
Including new vocabulary terms in the context of the lesson’s text give students an opportunity to figure out the meaning of words using context clues. Fisher and Frey recommend context clues to
their meaning. The students will repeat the vocabulary words every time the teacher says the
As of this year, I have learned how to use tier three words in my writing. I did not know what tier 1, 2, 3 and 4 words were before taking this class. A big part of learning how to expand my vocabulary was writing essays throughout the year. I learned that making stories interesting is what really grabs readers attention and makes them want to continue reading. What helped me change my use of vocabulary to make my stories worth reading for others? I made a list of words that all mean the same thing, then used the one that added life to the story or would drives the reader to keep reading. I can now go into interviews and talk to professionals with a larger vocabulary. This year, learning to expand my word choices has improved my writing and how I present myself has become better than it has ever
Building vocabulary is an important task in the early grades. There has long been debate on how one should go about teaching vocabulary such as, it is better to teach a limited number of words fully and more intense or expose children to many words to enhance “incidental learning”. Research has proven that incorporating both into instruction is most effective. Read-aloud and teachers increase use of vocabulary have also been proven to help vocabulary and word knowledge. There are three tiers of words that children are presented in their life. Tier one words are those that they are most familiar with such as park, tier 2 are the increasingly hard words such as fortunate and finally the tier 3 words are words that students have rarely been exposed
Studies confirm a high correlation of 0.6 to 0.8 between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension (Baumann & Kame’enui as cited in Dalton and Grisham, 2011 p. 307). However, the rate at which individual children develop vocabulary knowledge is enormously varied. At 5 years old there is already a 30 million word exposure gap (Hart & Risley as cited in Dalton and Grisham, 2011 p. 307). Linguistic morphology, the study of words and word origins, is a significant component of vocabulary learning programs. Children should be actively supplied with multiple exposures to words and exposures in varying contexts. Walbank and Bisby (2016, p. 11) describe how building adjective vocabulary adds dramatically more interest, accuracy and detail to students oral and written language. To encourage this development, students can work in small groups to brainstorm alternative, more interesting words, for commonly used adjectives. For example, replacing the word ‘good’ with ‘magnificent’, ‘superlative’ or ‘exceptional’. This direct vocabulary instruction is essential, but having only explicit teaching is insufficient. Beck et al (2008) estimate that educators can only actively teach 300-400 words per year (as cited in Dalton and Grisham, 2011 p. 307). Also, research indicates that children learn a far greater number of words indirectly through reading, than from instruction (Cunningham & Stanovich as
In addition to the vocabulary in their readings, students have been expected to learn twenty-five new vocabulary words per week. The focus is not on rote memorization of definitions; students must know synonyms, antonyms, and especially how to use vocabulary words in the context of the entire sentence. They study how to choose the right word for their purpose (diction) and analyze the subtleties of language.
This gives students the words they need to know in order to communicate in a proper way. The two different types of vocabulary are oral and reading; oral is words that are used while speaking or notice when listening and reading is the words that are noticed in text. This concept is important because when children start to speak, they eventually start to understand and notice words in text. Also, it is important for them to understand the meaning of the words in order to understand the text the are reading. This is why the teacher in my class has the children become familiar with the books and reading them by going over the words and their meanings, so they can understand the story in general and they’d be able to sequence things more
English language learners need direct instruction of new vocabulary (Haynes, 2010.) Educators must provide practice saying new words. ELL’s should have more exposure to new terms, words, idioms, and phrases than their English fluent classmates. Educators must tie new vocabulary to previous knowledge and use pictorials to highlight significance. Content area Educators are encouraged to teach new vocabulary that occurs in text as well as that related the subject materials.
One on these new concepts was the idea that there are three types of reading vocabulary. These types include general vocabulary, special vocabulary, and technical vocabulary. I learned that general vocabulary “consists of everyday words with widely acknowledged meanings in common usage”(Vacca et al., 2014, p. 240). Secondly, special vocabulary “is made up of words from
Although vocabulary is the sub-skill of a language, it plays a very important role in language learning and teaching. In fact, vocabulary is central to language and is of paramount importance to language learners. On the other hand, words are the building blocks of a language that are used to label objects, actions, and ideas. In other words, people cannot convey the intended meaning without knowing vocabulary. It is widely accepted that vocabulary is a very important part in English language learning because no one can communicate in any meaningful way without vocabulary. As McCarthy (1990) stated, the single, biggest component of any language course is vocabulary. Nation (1990) also affirms that vocabulary can be considered as the most important element in language learning because Learners think that many of their
Vocabulary plays a significant role in English as second language learning process. For the majority of English as Second Language(ESL) learners, the ultimate goal of learning the language is to understand (read and listen) and communicate (write and speak) with little difficulty and the lack of sufficient vocabulary may be the constraint of such goal (Folse, 2004). As the bedrock of English and as well as language, vocabulary also facilitates the development of other language skills: lexical richness leads to the progress in the use of language, namely listening, speaking, reading and writing skills (Nation, 1994). Reversely, The improvement in such skills may enhance learners vocabulary size as the exposure to more learning materials improves the capacity to acquire new vocabulary. (The importance of learning vocabulary/ why vocabulary?)
2: (a) Written vocabulary are words used within an individual’s writings. There is a positive correlation between a student’s exposure to text and the academic achievement of that individual. Therefore, students should be given ample opportunities to independently read as much text as possible in order to gain vocabulary and background knowledge.
Nowadays, whereever you go around the world you can find a certain people who can communicate with English Language. Because of globalization and other reasons English is going to be the language of the world. Apart from the use of English as their mother tongue in some countries there are a number of countries who can teach English as Second Language or Foreign Language. Hence, in order to use English Language more effectively and efficiently having rich knowledge of vocabulary is crucial. In most cases you can find communication break down when the students at school are not able to recall the appropriate word for the right situation of interaction. So in order to overcome this and similar problems the use of visual materials in teaching English Language vocabulary is mandatory. The use of visual materials makes the meaning of the words memorable and long lasting in students mind.