Vocabulary Instruction

1. Vocabulary Instruction Ann Marie Wasson Christy Funderburk

2. Why is Vocabulary Instruction Important? • Learning to read, reading to learn. • To decrease the gap between the students who enter school with little vocabulary knowledge and those who have a strong vocabulary knowledge. • To enhance the students reading comprehension.

3. Types of Vocabulary Instruction • Incidental: Reading text and giving no explanation of the words. • Embedded: Briefly mentioning the definition of target words. • Extended: Using vocabulary activities in addition to briefly mentioning the definition of target words.

4. Is there a difference?

5. Research Findings • Researchers such as Coyne, Boote and Biemiller, in multiple research found that repeated reading of a storybook resulted in greater average gains in word knowledge by young children.

6. Explicit Instruction • Researchers Biemiller, Coyne, Brett, and McKeownfound two types of explicit instruction are the best for teaching vocabulary. Embedded Extended • They also found that word explanations taught directly during the reading of a storybook enhanced children’s understanding of word meanings.

7. High frequency of exposures • Ahigher frequency of exposures to words equaled a larger gain in vocabulary knowledge according to McKeown.

8. Reading Comprehension • Biemiller found that when the rate of vocabulary acquisition is increased gains in reading comprehension are also obtained. • Students who do not understand some words in texts tend to have difficulty comprehending and learning from those texts.

9. Learning from incidental exposure • Nagy led research involving eighth graders. He hypothesized that children learn vocabulary from incidental exposure. His concluded this to be true. • Nagy also said that when children begin to read on their own the more time they read is one of the greatest predictors of vocabulary size.

10. Stahl stated, “Vocabulary knowledge is knowledge; the knowledge of a word not only implies a definition, but also implies how that word fits into the world.”

11. What does it mean to KNOW a word? Beck, McKeown and Omanson suggested that an individual’s knowledge about a word can also be described as falling along a continuum. We suggested the following points on such a continuum. • No Knowledge • General sense, such as knowing mendacious has a negative connotation • Narrow, context-bound, such as knowing that a radiant bride is a beautifully smiling bride, but unable to describe an individual in a different context as radiant. • Having knowledge of a word but not being able to recall it readily enough to use it in appropriate situations. • Rich, decontextualized knowledge of a word’s meaning, its relationship to other words, and its extension to metaphorical uses, such as understanding what someone is doing when they are devouring a book.

12. Levels of Word Knowledge • Unknown: (“I’ve never heard that word before.”) • Knowledge that the word exists: (“I’ve heard the word before.”) • Partial knowledge: (“I have a general understanding of the word.”) • Complete knowledge: (“I can define the word and use it correctly.”)

13. What does all this mean for classroom instruction? What do you want your students to know? How well do they need to know the targeted words you have chosen? The answers to these two questions will help determine instructional strategies.

14. Bibliography Baumann, J. F., Ware, D., & Edwards, E. C. (2007). Bumping into spicy, tasty words that catch your tongue: A formative experiment on vocabulary instruction. The Reading Teacher, 61(2), 108–122. Biemiller A. (2003). Vocabulary: Needed if more children are to read well. Reading Psychology, 24, (3-4), 323-335. Biemiller, A., & Boote, C. (2006). An effective method for building meaning vocabulary in primary grades. Journal of Educational Psychology, 98 (1), 44-62. Brett, A., Rothlein, L., & Hurley M. (1996). Vocabulary acquisition from listening to stories and explanations of target words. The Elementary School Journal, 96 (4), 415-422. Coyne, M. D., McCoach, B. D., & Kapp, S. (2007). Vocabulary intervention for kindergarten students: Comparing extended instruction to embedded instruction and incidental exposure. Learning Disability Quarterly, 30, 74-88. Coyne, M., Simmons,D; Stoolmiller, D., & Kame’enui, E. Teaching vocabulary during shared storybook readings: An Examination of differential effects. Exceptionality, 12(3), 145-162. McKeown, M. G., Beck, I. L., Omanson, R. C., Pople, M. T. (1985). Some effects of the nature and frequency of vocabulary instruction on the knowledge and use of words. Reading Research Quarterly, 20 (5), 522-535. Nagy W. E., Herman P.A., & Anderson, R. C. (1985). Learning words from context. Reading Research Quarterly, 20(2) 233-253.

15. More resources/readings Teaching Vocabulary by Andrew Biemilller A Review of Current Vocabulary Research