Promoting Students’ Vocabulary Development: An Overview
William
Nagy
2005
Vocabulary is an essential tool for learning. It has long been recognized as a crucial factor in reading comprehension (Anderson & Freebody, 1981; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). More than that, the vocabulary of any domain is itself a crucial part of the content that is to be learned.
Individual differences in
vocabulary size appear very early, and are strongly correlated with
socioeconomic status (Hart & Risley, 1995; White, Graves, & Slater,
1990). Vocabulary knowledge is
cumulative: The more words you know, the
easier it is to learn yet more words.
Hence, individual and socioeconomic status related differences in
vocabulary may widen over time (“Matthew effects” – Stanovich, 1986; Penno,
Wilkinson, &
The Challenge
of Promoting Vocabulary Development
There are a number of obstacles in the way of children attaining sufficiently large reading vocabularies. The main obstacles are:
Unless teachers are aware of the seriousness of these obstacles, they are not likely to be motivated to undertake the effort that is required to overcome them.
The size of the task
Vocabulary acquisition involves astronomical amounts of information. Average school-age children add at least 1,000 root words to their reading vocabularies every year (Anglin, 1993, and the total number of words learned per year may be two or three times that (Anderson & Nagy, 1992; Beck & McKeown, 1991). Individual and SES differences in vocabulary size involve thousands of words (Biemiller & Slonim, 2001).
Differences between oral and written language
Written language tends to use a far richer vocabulary than oral language. The key difference, however, is not the difference in modality (spoken vs. written), but in the nature and the functions of the language that tend to be used in these two modalities. Written language is typically decontextualized, whereas oral language is typically contextualized. Contextualized language is language in which the meaning is supported by the context (shared physical context, shared knowledge and beliefs, and a here-and-now topic). Intonation and gesture provide additional channels of information, and there is the possibility of feedback. Decontextualized language is language in which the meaning is not supported by the context (participants are separated in space and/or time, only limited assumptions can be made about shared knowledge and beliefs; the topic is not here-and-now). Word choice and word order are the only channels of information, and there is no feedback.
Because written language depends heavily on word choice for communicative effect, it uses a much richer vocabulary. Familiarity with the vocabulary of everyday conversation and television is not enough for success in literacy (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1998; Snow, 1991, 1994).
Recognizing the difference between contextualized and decontextualized language is essential for understanding the nature of the difficulties facing students learning to read in a second language. Such students may become conversationally fluent in the second language in less than two years, but can take 5-7 years to catch up with monolingual peers in academic vocabulary (Collier, 1989; Cummins, 1981). Thus there is a gap between the time that they achieve conversational proficiency and the time that they achieve reading proficiency. During this time, such students’ conversational fluency may lead to their reading difficulties being misdiagnosed as learning disabilities.
However, it is not just second language learners or speakers of non-standard dialects for whom the written language may be a foreign language. Children come to school with varying degrees of experience with the kinds of adult-child interactions that foster the development of decontextualized language abilities (Dickinson & Tabors, 2001). Teachers cannot assume that children are familiar with the vocabulary of text; more fundamentally, they cannot assume that children are familiar with the communicative functions, whether oral or written, which make vocabulary play such an important role in decontextualized language.
The Complexity Of
Word Knowledge
Knowing a word is not the same as knowing a definition. Even preschoolers know the word if well enough to use it in a sentence, but how many adults could give a definition for this word? Conversely, knowing the definition of a word does not guarantee that you can use it correctly. This is one of the reasons why traditional definition-based methods of teaching vocabulary are often ineffective (Stahl & Fairbanks, 1986).
Different Types of
Words Require Different Types of Instruction
Some words are already in students’ oral vocabularies, and the students simply have to learn to recognize them in print. Other words may be new labels for familiar concepts – for example, apologize may be a new term for the familiar concept of saying you’re sorry. Other words may be familiar forms used with new meanings, e.g., plate used for large sections of the earth’s crust. Other words may be completely new labels for unfamiliar concepts, e.g., logarithm. No one method of instruction would be optimal for all these cases.
Potential Sources Of
Information About Words Are Problematic
Context. Incidental learning from context during reading is a major source of vocabulary growth, but any single encounter with a word in natural context is not likely to be very informative (Schatz & Baldwin, 1986).
Teachers may overestimate the amount of help that context provides, for several reasons. First, lessons in the use of context sometimes use artificially informative contexts for examples. Second, teachers may not always recognize the distinction between use of context for decoding and the use of context for learning the meanings of new words. In the former case, context is often very helpful – if the student already has the word to be decoded in his or her oral vocabulary. For learning the meanings of new words, on the other hand, context is not as helpful. Third, when you already know the meaning of a word, context looks much more helpful than it really is for a person who doesn’t know the word yet.
Word parts. Huge amounts of vocabulary growth can be attributed to children’s increasing ability to use prefixes, roots, and suffixes to interpret new words (Anglin, 1983). Nevertheless, word parts are not a completely reliable source of information about word meanings (e.g., casual/casualty, emerge/emergency, sign/resign/design), so inferences about word meanings based on word parts must be checked against context.
Definitions. Dictionaries are a valuable resource, but students often experience serious difficulty extracting information from definitions (Miller & Gildea, 1987; McKeown, 1993; Scott & Nagy, 1997). . Dictionary definitions are often hard for children to understand (Scott & Nagy, 1997), and even the best definitions do not provide enough information to enable a child to use a word appropriately (McKeown, 1993). An example of a traditional, definition-based task is giving students a list of words, and having them copy down their definitions from a dictionary and write a sentence for each word. One expert has called the traditional task of having students write a sentence using a new word on the basis of its definition “a waste of time” (Miller & Gildea, 1987).
To use context, word parts, and definitions effectively requires awareness of words and flexible thinking – metacognitive and metalinguistic sophistication that you cannot take for granted. The students who need the most vocabulary growth are likely to be the least effective at using available sources of information.
A
Comprehensive Approach for Promoting Vocabulary Growth
Promoting vocabulary growth requires effective use of multiple means (Graves, 1992; Graves, Juel, & Graves, 1998), recognizing the strengths and limitations of each. The major categories of means for promoting vocabulary growth are teaching individual words, teaching word-learning strategies, providing exposure to rich written and oral language, and increasing students’ interest in and awareness of words.
Teaching individual
words intensively - achieving productive control and precision of
meaning for completely new words and concepts
Intensive instruction is necessary when important new concepts are being taught or when students are expected to bring formerly unfamiliar words into their writing or speaking vocabularies. Traditional definition-based instruction is not adequate for these goals.
What does intensive vocabulary instruction look like? A meta-analysis of vocabulary instruction research (Stahl & Fairbanks, 1986; Stahl, 1986) determined that to be effective in producing in-depth word knowledge, vocabulary instruction must: (a) give both definitions and context; (b) encourage deep processing (making multiple connections between new and known information, requiring mental effort or creativity), and (c) provide for multiple exposures to the instructed words. Examples of instruction meeting these criteria can be found in the work of Beck, McKeown and their colleagues (e.g., Beck, Perfetti, & McKeown, 1982).
What does it mean to “give both definitions and context”? That means you don’t just explain what the word means, you also show how it is used.
(In many cases, a brief definition – one in language that the children can understand – is an adequate way to introduce the meaning of a word. Further activities are necessary to ensure that this meaning can be applied quickly and flexibly. However, with concepts that are new and complex – as is the case with much content-area terminology – a definition does not constitute an adequate introduction for a word. More attention must be given to activating relevant background knowledge, explaining relationships among related concepts, providing graphic representations of these relationships, and distinguishing between examples and non-examples of the new concept)
What does it does it mean to “encourage deep processing,” to “make connections between new and known information,” to require mental effort or creativity”? Beck, McKeown and their colleagues came up with a variety of activities that accomplished this. Many of them were simply carefully crafted questions that required students, not to parrot back the definition they have been given, but to apply it. For example, after students had been given the definition for the word “console” they might be asked questions such as the following: “After the results of the contest were announced, Mary ran over to console Amy. How did Amy do in the contest?”
Such questions are only one part of encouraging deep processing. To be intensive instruction must include a variety of activities to be used in combination for each word.
What does it mean to “provide multiple exposures to the instructed words”? It means that if you want to produce the level of word knowledge that consistently results in measurable gains in reading comprehension, the students will have to see the word and do something with it at least 7 times.
Beck, McKeown, and Kucan (2002) describe vocabulary instruction that has these three characteristics in their book Bringing Words to Life. This is the kind of instruction that is required if you want students to achieve ownership of words – that is, not only will they easily understand text containing these words, but they will also be able to use the instructed words in their own speech and writing. A combination of instructional activities, and repeated experiences with the words, is necessary at this level of instruction.
However, such instruction takes a lot of time and effort, both on the part of teachers and on the part of students. What kinds of words deserve this kind of effort? Questions you should consider in choosing words for intensive instruction include the following:
· Do you want your students to be able to use these words in their writing?
· How important is this word for understanding the text you are currently working on?
· How often will your students be encountering this word in their future reading?
· Does this word relate to major themes in the text, or to other themes you want to emphasize?
· Does this word refer to a complex concept that is unfamiliar to your students?
Though having students choose words for instruction is very motivating, student choice should not be the only factor in determining which words deserve such intensive instruction. Students will sometimes choose words that simply don’t deserve this level of effort. It may be possible, however, to incorporate some degree of student choice. For example, a teacher could have students generate a pool of candidate words from which she chose those for which intensive instruction was appropriate.
Of course, not many words can be covered with this level of intensity; this kind of instruction is only for words that you really want students to use in their own writing and speaking. Other words can be covered less intensively.
Teaching individual words less intensively - taking incremental steps to increase knowledge of specific words.
Word learning is incremental. That is, it takes place in many small steps - you don’t learn a word all at once. It takes repeated encounters with a word to bring it to the point where you really own it – where you can use it in your own writing, or understand why someone used that word rather than a different one in a text.
In some cases it is necessary to
take a student from no knowledge of the word to a thorough knowledge of the
word. But sometimes it’s enough to take
the student just a few steps further
along the journey at a given time. For
example, when a teacher stops to explain a word while reading a story aloud to
students, this is not intensive vocabulary instruction. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that such
an explanation has no value. In fact,
such explanations can have a significant impact on students’ word learning
(Elley, 1989; Penno, Wilkinson, & Moore, 2002). Word and concept sorts (e.g., Bear,
Invernizzi, Templeton, &
For some words, such instruction may be all that is needed for the time being. Sometimes students only need to learn a word well enough to understand what a sentence means, and then move on. Although this instruction can have an impact on students’ vocabulary growth, one should not expect students to acquire new and complex concepts with such instruction. Nor will they necessarily be able to use words learned this way in their writing. In other words, it is important to match intensity of instruction with goals and expectations. If students are expected to learn to use a word effectively and appropriately, intensive instruction is necessary – but only a relatively small number of words can be covered with that level of intensity. In other cases, it may be enough to give students sufficient information about a word to meet a particular need (for example, to read a text without stumbling over the word, and to get the gist of the meaning). Relatively brief instruction may be sufficient for such purposes – but then the teacher should not expect students to display thorough knowledge of the word, or to use it in their writing.
What kind of words can get by with less-intensive vocabulary instruction? If a word is important for understanding the text, but it is not a word that you expect students to use in their own writing, or to encounter very often in their reading, a brief explanation may be sufficient. But you need to remember that this brief explanation will not give students enough knowledge of the word to use it in their writing. They may not even remember what it means if they see it again.
And of course there are some words that don’t necessarily require instruction at all, even if students don’t know them. One certainly doesn’t always need to know all the words in a text to read it with a high level of understanding. Many children’s authors (Dr. Seuss and Roald Dahl come to mind right away) use made-up words that no one knows before they have read the book. Especially in narratives, low-frequency words are often used more for ornamentation and effect than for furthering the plot. There are also words that can provide an occasion for illustrating or reviewing word learning strategies.
Teaching word
learning strategies
Teaching individual words – whether through intensive instruction, or simply by providing explanations as needed – is only part of a comprehensive approach to promoting vocabulary growth. Students need to learn words on their own as well.
There are a number of things that teachers can do to help students become better word learners, including:
Part of being a strategic reader is knowing how to deal with the unfamiliar vocabulary one encounters while reading. Strategic readers know how to make appropriate and flexible use of the resources available to them. Students can be taught to deal strategically with context, word parts, and definitions (Buikema & Graves, 1993; Nagy, Winsor, Osborn, & O’Flahavan, 1994; White, Sowell, & Yanagihara, 1989). Good strategy instruction includes explicit explanations (how, when, and why to apply strategies), modeling, guided practice with authentic materials, and gradual transfer of responsibility to students.
Word learning strategy instruction should include information about the limitations of context, word parts, and definitions, should teach students to integrate information from multiple sources (Does the meaning of the word parts make sense in this context?), and other higher level strategies (Do I need to know this word to understand the text? Is this word worth looking up in a dictionary? Do I know enough about this word to go on?).
Teaching children to use dictionaries is also a worthwhile goal. Using a dictionary is far harder than teachers realize. When you have taught students alphabetical order and guidewords, so they can find the word in the dictionary, you’re not done, you’ve just gotten to the hard part. Taking the information in the definition and using it to interpret a text is a very complex and difficult cognitive strategy. Teachers need to recognize it as such, and teach it accordingly.
The goal of teaching word learning strategies is to have students come to the point of applying them independently. It is therefore essential that teachers capitalize on opportunities to practice these strategies, and to point out their value, across the curriculum.
Increasing breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge
through experiences with rich oral and written language.
To pick up vocabulary at the necessary rate, children have to be saturated with rich language. Much – probably most – vocabulary growth takes place during tasks that focus on other goals besides vocabulary growth. To maximize students’ vocabulary growth, it is important to provide them with extensive exposure to the written register, that is, the language typically used in books and in more formal speech.
Increasing exposure to rich written language
For older and more able readers,
wide reading is the largest single source of vocabulary growth, and encouraging
wide reading is one important component of a comprehensive approach for
vocabulary (
The National Reading Panel (2000) found that sustained silent reading did not consistently result in measurable gains in vocabulary knowledge. However, there is a wealth of other evidence that vocabulary can be learned incidentally through reading – evidence reviewed by the National Reading Panel (2000), and also in a recent meta-analysis of word learning while reading by Swanborn & de Glopper (1999). Therefore, care must be taken to ensure that time students spend reading is used most effectively.
Effective use of reading to promote vocabulary growth requires increasing both students’ volume of reading and their level of comprehension, by (1) appropriate matching of students with texts -- student-selected books do not always contain rich enough language to promote vocabulary growth (Carver, 1994; Carver & Leibert, 1995); (2) providing adequate time for reading; (3) teaching strategies that help children comprehend text better and cope with unfamiliar words; and (4) fostering a classroom environment that encourages social interactions related to reading (Guthrie, Schafer, Wang, & Afflerbach, 1995). Because one of the goals of sustained silent reading is to foster a lifelong habit of reading, teachers must also and to help students experience an appropriate mix of challenge and enjoyment in their reading.
Experiences with rich oral language
In the primary grades, while students are still in the process of acquiring the mechanics of reading, it is especially important that teachers make effective use of oral language to promote vocabulary growth. It is during the primary years that teachers have the opportunity to build the foundation of the vocabulary and concepts that children will need to understand the increasingly difficult texts they will encounter in fourth grade and beyond.
The way that teachers interact with young children has been shown to have a powerful impact on their vocabulary growth (Dickinson & Smith, 1994; Dickinson & Tabors, 2001). The quality of the interactions between teachers and children, and the nature of the language that is used, are extremely important. In particular, the oral language of the classroom has to prepare students for the language they will encounter in text.
However, many teachers are not fully aware of the profound differences between the conversational register (how we usually talk to each) and the written register (the language of text). Proficiency in conversational English is not, by itself, an adequate foundation for facing the vocabulary demands of most text (Cummins, 1994). It takes intentional and skillful use of oral language activities to support the level of vocabulary growth necessary for success in school.
Like good children’s authors, teachers should sometimes use words that are over their students’ heads, but in a playful way that invites learning. Questions about unfamiliar words should be a common and natural part of class activities. Talking about words in stories, and explanations in passing of difficult words in a story, can lead to significant increases in learning (Brabham & Lynch-Brown, 2002; Brett, Rothlein, & Hurley 1996; Dickinson, 1994; Dickinson & Smith, 1994; Elley, 1989).
The following are some ways to increase student’s exposure to rich oral language:
It is important for students not only to hear, but also to use, richer oral language. Children’s expressive vocabulary is a stronger predictor of their future success in reading than their receptive vocabulary (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998).
Here are some ways to increase students’ use of richer oral language:
Increasing students’ interest in and awareness of words
A comprehensive approach to promoting vocabulary growth also has to address student motivation. Obviously, in any of the instructional practices mentioned so far, it is important to do whatever possible to ensure that students are engaged and motivated. Ultimately, the most powerful type of motivation is intrinsic motivation. In the case of vocabulary, this means cultivating the attitude that words are inherently interesting and worthwhile learning.
Therefore, it is important to use every opportunity to increase children’s awareness of language and the expressive power of words. “Word consciousness” (awareness of and interest in words) is held up as a goal by a number of educational researchers (e.g., Anderson & Nagy, 1992; Beck, McKeown, & Omanson, 1987; Scott et al., 1994). However, word consciousness is a multi-faceted construct. The following are some of the different aspects of word consciousness:
a) A feel for how written language works. Oral language is often highly contextualized, relying on gesture, intonation, and a shared context to communicate meaning. Written language is typically decontextualized, and relies primarily on word choice for communicative effect. Students need to develop a feel for how written (decontextualized) language is different from everyday conversation. Hearing text read aloud is one important way to familiarize students with the nature of decontextualized language. However, it is also valuable to draw students’ attention to distinctive characteristics of written language, and to help them learn to read like a writer, and write with an audience in mind (Scott & Nagy, 2004).
b) Sensitivity to syntax. To infer the meanings of new words, and to make effective use of information in definitions, students have to be able to reflect on word order, and understand how the position of a word in a sentence determines how its meaning relates to the larger context.
c) Awareness of word parts. Students’ awareness of morphology (prefixes,
roots, and suffixes) contributes to their vocabulary growth (Anglin, 1993), and
to their reading achievement (
d) In-depth knowledge of specific words. To appreciate the power of words, students need to have in-depth knowledge of specific words. For example, students cannot reflect on effects of using the word bewildered rather than the word astounded in a story if they have only superficial knowledge of these words. Unfortunately, most traditional vocabulary instruction results at best in only a passing acquaintance with words. Hence, another motivation for intensive vocabulary instruction is to bring students to a sufficient level of knowledge to be able to appreciate what is conveyed by the choice of specific words.
Here are some things you can do to help children develop an awareness of words:
Differences between home language and school language, or between informal and formal language, can be a source of embarrassment and confusion. However, a good teacher can turn these differences into an opportunity for insight.
Conclusion
Lack of vocabulary knowledge is an extremely serious problem for many of today’s schoolchildren. Hence, promoting large-scale, long term vocabulary growth is essential for the academic success of all students.
Because of the complexity and sheer
size of the task, a multi-faceted approach to promoting vocabulary growth is
necessary.
Teaching individual words is one part of a program to promote vocabulary growth, but it cannot by itself produce large-scale, long-term gains in vocabulary size. For vocabulary instruction to have long-term pay-off, it must contribute somehow to learning of words not specifically covered in instruction. Effective instruction of individual words should therefore (a) be motivating, and help create or sustain an interest in words; (b) increase students’ word consciousness; and (c) not consume too much of the time that should be devoted to reading.
Promoting vocabulary growth does not mean spending excessive classroom time on activities traditionally associated with vocabulary. Many of the means of promoting vocabulary growth (for example, wide reading, reading aloud to students, attending carefully to an author’s choice of words, learning strategies for what to do when one comes across an unfamiliar word in text) serve valuable functions beyond vocabulary growth. However, teachers need to be intentional about promoting vocabulary growth, and this goal has to pervade the curriculum.
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