Vocabulary Development

"Bringing Words to Life"

By Isabel Beck, et. al 

Preface opens with the authors description 
of a memory they had learning new words.
Word  awareness in and beyond school.

One talked about learning the word earnest and all of a sudden noticing that word everywhere and "thinking" that everyone had just learned it too. Becoming aware of words in one’s larger environment is a very important part of vocabulary development. It deepens understanding of familiar words and introduces new ones. Attending to word awareness needs to be explicit and systematic.
Dictionary definitions are a limited form of understanding word meaning.

One shared about how little knowledge of a word can be dangerous. Discussing words is important. Talking about their meanings and sharing reactions in contrast to memorized definitions. Ways of introducing word meaning is important.
Conveying the beauty of words and the power of language.

One reflected on the sound and the feel of words through a religious connection. Words are instruments that author and poets use to enchant, delight, sadden, and amaze.

Chapter One:

Focus on rationale. In lieu of strategies the book will focus on how students learn words and how we can support and maintain that. Discuss why direct vocabulary instruction is important, the kinds of word information that can be derived from context, and what it means to know a word.

Chapter Two:

What words or kinds of words are important to teach? Provides ways to assess which words to teach and a number of criteria to apply.

Chapter Three:

Focus on the foundation – Introducing words. Raise issues about dictionaries, and focus on explaining a words meaning rather than providing a definition.

Chapter Four:

Focus on developing vocabulary for young children. Activities for introducing sophisticated words, engaging in interacting with word meaning.

Chapter Five:

Focus on developing vocabulary beyond primary and through high school. Highlighted concepts are: providing rich information about words, frequent opportunities to use and consider words, extending attention to words beyond vocabulary lessons.

Chapter Six:

How to make the most of natural context to derive word meaning. First, acknowledge unreliable nature of deriving word meaning from natural context. Approach provided to assist teachers in guiding students to deal with new words in context.

Chapter Seven:

Presents the image of a classroom that embraces the attention to words and the uses of words as a delightful experience that is ongoing in classroom interactions. Provides techniques and resources for creating such an environment.
 
Appendix:

Books for a Lively Verbal Environment

• Language Focus

• Word Histories

• Multiple Meaning Words

• Kinds of Words "The New Reading Teacher’s Book of Lists"

• Fantasies About Words

 

Conventional wisdom about learning words in context argues that students learn best when they read words in the context of a story or writing. Book argues that in fact this is a poor approach to learning vocabulary. It burdens the idea that the author wrote the words for the intention of teaching them.

Words in context:

Mis-directive – direct student to incorrect meaning (grudgingly)

Non-directive – no assistance in directing reader towards any particular meaning (lumbering)

General – provides enough assistance to put the word into a general category (gregarious)

Directive – likely to lead students to a specific, correct meaning (commotion)

Stories are developed by professional authors who use "good" words to communicate, the stories were not developed for the teaching of meaning.
Number of words to teach:

Suggests that a goal of the 700 words per year need from K-9 ^th grade could be focused on via 400 words per year.
Knowing a word:

One:

Fast mapping (quick sense of meaning) to Extended Mapping (understanding and use that comes over time with multiple encounters.

Two:

Stage 1: Never saw it

Stage 2: Heard it; but doesn’t know what it means

Stage 3: Recognizes it in context as having something to do with .

Stage 4: Knows it well

Three:

• No knowledge

• General sense, such as mendacious has a negative connotation

• Narrow, context-bound knowledge, such as knowing that a radiant bride is a beautifully smiling happy one, but is 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, de-contextualized knowledge of a words 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.

Four:

Qualitative dimensions

Generalization: The ability to define a word

Application: The ability to select and recognize situations appropriate to a word

Breadth: Knowledge of multiple meanings

Precision: The ability to apply a term correctly to all situations and to recognize inappropriate use.

Availability: The actual use of a word in thinking and discourse

• Connection to other words or concepts and topics, as well as the types of discourse that a word is typically found.

• The register of a word in terms of whether it is used in formal or less formal contexts, its grammatical forms, and its affective connotations.