TITLE: Vocabulary Instruction: Preferred Practices

File: B:JHS1914

Source: Journal of Reading (29:7, April 1986, p. 581)

Date: 8/22/94

I. Criteria for evaluating vocabulary development strategies

A. Reader environment:

Reader environment (in the interactive reading process model) relates to textual features, conversational features, and instructional features.

1.Is the context sufficient to define the concept? (textual features)

2.Is the text content appropriate to the experiential background of the students? (text features)

3.Does the strategy provide for teacher-student interaction? (conversational features)

4.Is the intent of the interaction to elicit, activate, and assess the student’s prior knowledge? (conversational features)

5.Does the strategy provide opportunity to establish a clearly defined vocabulary product? (instructional features)

6.Does the strategy set student expectations and responsibilities related to the product? (instructional features)

B. Knowledge utilization and control:

Knowledge utilization and control relates to (1) Affective State: goal direction, content and time expectations; (2) Cognitive State: plan of action over time; (3) Metacognitive State: monitor and evaluate in the reader's current Text Representation, processing and meaning of a text to a given time.

1.Is goal direction and time expectation for the instructional activity clearly established for the reader (affective state)?

2.Is the plan of action established for the reader? (cognitive state)

3.Is a mental state for monitoring and evaluating developed with particular concern for awareness of what is not known? (metacognitive state)

4.Is the student encouraged to process meaning and be aware of the need to revise earlier hypotheses about meaning? (text representation)

TITLE: Vocabulary Instruction: Preferred Practices

File: B:JHS1914

Source: Journal of Reading (29:7, April 1986, p. 581)

Date: 8/22/94

C. Declarative and procedural knowledge:

Declarative and procedural knowledge pertains to Decoding, Language, and World Knowledge of the reader.

1.Is the student sensitive to mispronunciations which may activate inappropriate schema? (decoding)

2.Is the reader made aware of pronunciations which may cue word origin and provide a meaning cue? (decoding and language)

3.Does the strategy provide opportunity for the student to activate prior knowledge and schema related to the word meaning? (language and world knowledge—declarative).

4.Does the strategy provide opportunity to activate and use procedures for developing understanding of new words? (language and world knowledge—procedural)

D. Reader product:

Reader product relates to (1) comprehension, (2) word recognition, (3) oral output, (4) written output, (5) affective state change, (6) cognitive state change, (7) metacognitive state change, (8) new knowledge.

1.Does the instructional strategy provide opportunity for the student to understand the instructional goal product, i.e., learning and personal use of new words? (comprehension)

2.Is opportunity provided to use the new word and concept in written and/or conversational settings (oral and written output)

3.Does the strategy develop positive attitudes toward the goal of independent vocabulary growth? (affective state change)

4.Does the strategy provide opportunity for the student to develop a plan or personalized strategy for continued independent vocabulary growth? (cognitive state change)

TITLE: Vocabulary Instruction: Preferred Practices

File: B:JHS1914

Source: Journal of Reading (29:7, April 1986, p. 581)

Date: 8/22/94

5.Does the strategy develop sensitivity to new words encountered in the student’s daily environment? (metacognitive state change)

6.Does the strategy provide opportunity for elaboration and use of the concept and its language label leading to long-term acquisition of the word? (new knowledge)

Source: Journal of Reading (29:7, April 1986, p. 588)

II. Guidelines for evaluating vocabulary instruction

1.Instruction should help students relate new vocabulary to their background knowledge.

Gipe, Joan P. "Use of Relevant Context Helps Kids Learn New Word Meanings." The Reading Teacher, vol. 33 (January 1980), pp. 398-402.

Uses a context method. Students read a three-sentence passage that used an unknown word in a defining context. After reading the passage, students respond in writing to a question or statement with information from their personal experience that further exemplifies the meaning of the unknown word: "Write down something a barbarian might do at the dinner table" or "Where have you seen a beacon that is a warning sign?"

Beck, Isabel L. and Margaret G. McKeown. "Learning Words Well—A Program to Enhance Vocabulary and Comprehension." The Reading Teacher, vol. 36 (March 1983), pp. 622-25.

"Tell me about something you might want to eavesdrop on" or "Describe the most melodious sound you can think of."

Carr, Eileen. "The Vocabulary Overview Guide: A Metacognitive Strategy to Improve Vocabulary Comprehension and Retention." Journal of Reading, vol. 21 (May 1985), pp. 684-89.

Utilizes student personal vocabulary cards with definitions and clues from the student’s personal experiences (obnoxious: offensive, unpleasant, Jonathan—unruly undisciplined neighbor's child).

TITLE: Vocabulary Instruction: Preferred Practices

File: B:JHS1914

Source: Journal of Reading (29:7, April 1986, p. 581)

Date: 8/22/94

2.Instruction should help students develop elaborated word knowledge.

Help students develop a breadth of word knowledge that goes well beyond memorizing a definition or learning a word in a single context.

Introduce new vocabulary and related concepts together. Examine relationships among new vocabulary. Introduce words in multiple contexts.

Introduce new words in groups dealing with a general semantic category. The category "eating" includes the words obese, glutton, devour, appetite, fast, nutrition.

Beck, Isabel, Charles Perfetti, and Margaret McKeown. "Effects of Long Term Vocabulary Instruction on Lexical Access and Reading Comprehension." Journal of Educational Psychology, vol. 74, no. 4 (1982), pp. 506-21.

3.Instruction should provide for active student involvement in learning new vocabulary.

This principle can be related to a model of memory known as "depth of processing." The harder one works to process stimuli (as by constructing a relationship rather than by memorizing a given one), the better one's retention."

Blachowicz, Camille. "Vocabulary Development and Reading: From Research to Instruction." The Reading Teacher, vol. 38 (May 1985), pp. 876-81.

Craik, Fergus and Richard Lockhart. "Levels of Processing: A Framework for Memory Research." Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, vol. 11 (1972), pp. 671-84.

Mezynski, Karen. "Issues Concerning the Acquisition of Knowledge: Effects of Vocabulary Training on Reading Comprehension." Review of Educational Research, vol. 53 (Summer 1983), pp. 253-79.

TITLE: Vocabulary Instruction: Preferred Practices

File: B:JHS1914

Source: Journal of Reading (29:7, April 1986, p. 581)

Date: 8/22/94

4.Instruction should develop students’ strategies for acquiring new vocabulary independently.

Help students develop the ability to learn through individual work with a minimum of teacher involvement.

Develop strategic readers responsible for their knowledge, cognizant of that responsibility, and motivated to learn. Students need to use a variety of methods to acquire word meanings, monitor understanding of new vocabulary, develop ability to change or modify strategies for understanding new words if comprehension is not forthcoming.

Schwartz, Robert M. and Taffy E. Raphael. "Concept Definition: A Key to Improving Student's Vocabulary." The Reading Teacher, vol. 39 (November 1985), pp. 198-205.

Utilize a word map in diagram form. At the center is the word. A vertical line extends above it to a box which, when filled, answers the question: "What is it?" (probably with the answer: person, place, or thing). To the right extends several lines to boxes to answer the question: "What is it like?" Downward and across the bottom are boxes to be completed which answer the question "What are some examples."

Carr, Eileen. "The Vocabulary Overview Guide: A Metacognitive Strategy to Improve Vocabulary Comprehension and Retention." Journal of Reading, vol. 21 (May 1985), pp. 684-89.

Teach students steps for self-selecting and defining vocabulary terms from natural text. First, students select and define words, either through context or the dictionary. Then students create an overview of vocabulary terms from the text by categorizing them according to superordinate concepts from the text. Definitions or synonyms are included on the overview along with a personal clue to associate the new definition with background knowledge, recorded on an individual vocabulary card. Students check their understanding by covering clues and definitions to recall word meanings.

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