Uses an increasing vocabulary to communicate precise meaning
What do I need to know?
Expanding students' vocabulary
All texts are made up of words and phrases. It's important to expand students' awareness and appreciation of language and to help them build up their personal vocabularies. Developing an extensive vocabulary enables students to improve both their reading comprehension and their writing.
As part of the instructional programme, teachers need to plan to expand their students' vocabularies. Students need a substantial and ever-increasing bank of sight words, and they also need to be taught about how words work.
By exploring language with students and giving them opportunities to practise their new learning, teachers can develop their students' sense of enquiry and adventure and help to build a vibrant community that thrives on discussion of language and how it works. This is invaluable support for new learners of English and also for those who are experiencing difficulties in their literacy learning. Teachers can help their rapid-progress students to extend their vocabulary development by giving them experiences with texts that make demands on the reader, for example, in terms of the complex abstract ideas they present or the issues they offer for debate. These students need to be challenged to add depth to their writing by choosing language that has fine shades of meaning.
Every classroom needs a thesaurus, a comprehensive dictionary, and multiple copies of student dictionaries. Bilingual dictionaries in students' first languages should also be available where possible. Instructional reading and writing sessions, cross-curricular work, and discussions of current events can be used as springboards to launch students into the study of words - investigating synonyms and antonyms, collecting and discussing examples of homophones and homonyms, or sharing the discovery of a new and unusual word or figure of speech.
"People need to know words and terms in order to develop language and in-depth thinking. Research ... indicates that students who have a wide vocabulary generally show greater proficiency in learning than those with more limited vocabularies. A learner's vocabulary knowledge strongly influences their ability to comprehend what they read and to write effectively."
Ministry of Education, 2004a, p.27
It's part of a teacher's planning to think carefully about the vocabulary in any text that they are planning to use in their literacy programme (for example, in guided reading).Teachers also need to consider the vocabulary that students will need for a writing task. Published lists with information about vocabulary frequency can be useful in helping teachers to monitor and extend their students' vocabulary.
Effective Literacy Practice in Years 5-8, NZ Ministry of Education, 2006. p.126-127.
Vocabulary: Research and challenges: What the research tells us
Knowing about learners' vocabulary needs
Students usually need direct teaching to acquire the specialised vocabulary that is vital for academic success. Many students whose oral vocabulary is quite adequate for everyday communication have not yet acquired a rich store of words to use for reading and writing. In particular, they may lack knowledge of the academic vocabulary that's important for success at secondary school.
All students need planned opportunities to learn, use, and practise, in authentic contexts, the vocabulary that they need in order to communicate about the subjects they are studying.
There is more than one level of knowing a word or term. We can understand many words when hearing them spoken or reading them in a text, even though we do not use these words in speaking or writing ourselves. This is known as our "receptive vocabulary". Our "productive vocabulary" consists of those words that we can actually use accurately, either in speech or in writing. Students need to be able to use the specialised words that they learn.
Students learning English as a new language have an urgent need to acquire more vocabulary.Not surprisingly, new learners of English have considerably less knowledge of English vocabulary items than first-language English speakers of the same age (Nation, 1990, 2001). Cummins (1989) estimates that it takes two years for new learners of English to be able to communicate effectively at a conversational level. It can take five to seven years for these students to learn to use academic language proficiently.All students need many exposures to the vocabulary that is new to them. Effective teachers help their students to link new words to their existing knowledge and give them opportunities to reinforce their learning during meaningful communication.
Effective Literacy Strategies in Years 9-13, NZ Ministry of Education, 2006. p.27-31.
Knowing about different categories of vocabulary
The following vocabulary categories may be useful for teachers to consider.
- High-frequency words
High-frequency words are the words most often used in a language and make up over eighty percent of most written text. There are about two thousand high-frequency word families in the English language. These include all the basic words needed for communicating in English. A teacher who is aware that some students may not know the high-frequency words in the language they are using at school can plan to teach them these words first, along with a few other words that they need to know, such as the teacher's name.
- Specialised academic vocabulary
Students need to learn new, subject-specific terms for every subject that they study at secondary school. For example, in the resources and economic activities strand of social studies, they need to be able to use the terms "supply and demand", "productivity", and "access to goods and services". Many students know only the everyday meanings of words that also have different, specialised meanings. One reason for students finding certain academic words difficult to learn is that many words have a general, everyday meaning as well as a subject-specific meaning. For example, "volume", "range", and "function" all have both everyday and specialised meanings. Nicholson (1988) found that many students had very strongly established understandings of the everyday meanings of certain words and so they found it hard to grasp that these words also had specialised academic meanings. When discussing subject content with their students, teachers can explore this issue and model using the words correctly in different-contexts.
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General academic vocabulary
General academic vocabulary includes terms used across the curriculum. Some of these terms, such as "define" and "assess", are often used when giving instructions to students, and others, such as "method" and "survey", are used to describe concepts, processes, and strategies common to many subject areas. General academic words are often used in tests and examinations, and students need to be confident about using such words to "show what they know".Coxhead compiled her academic word list (a list of general academic terms) by analysing which words were most often found throughout twenty-eight subject areas in university texts in New Zealand and around the world (Coxhead, 1998).
Effective Literacy Strategies in Years 9-13, NZ Ministry of Education, 2006. p.27-31.
The challenges for teachers
Are the students aware of the context-specific meanings of the words they need to use?To understand subject content and achieve their learning goals, students need to know the relevant vocabulary, including specialised words and terms. The challenges for teachers are:
- to establish what vocabulary expertise the students bring with them (that is, to know their students);
- to establish ways of building on the students' expertise and teaching them the vocabulary they need (that is, to know what teachers can do);
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to help the students develop strategies to identify and solve unknown vocabulary (that is, to enable them to become independent vocabulary learners).
Effective Literacy Strategies in Years 9-13, NZ Ministry of Education, 2006. p.27-31.
Knowing the students’ vocabulary knowledge
Students need to know the vocabulary of specific subjects.Teachers can collect useful information about their students' vocabulary knowledge in their subject area by devising a simple test using the key words of the subject. Monitoring the students' work as they use new words will also provide valuable evidence to use when planning future vocabulary teaching.Teachers can provide an environment that is rich in subject-specific words. This raises the students' consciousness of words and their awareness of the power and fascination of words. For example, a class could develop a display of "words of the week" or a "word wall", where the students write up new words that they have learned (see Ruddell and Shearer, 2002).
This activity need not be limited to newly learned or subject-specific words – it can include any interesting words. As well as giving the message that words are fun, such a display can provide the teacher with useful evidence of their students' developing vocabulary knowledge. One student (quoted in Ruddell and Shearer, page 352) said, "I used to only think about vocabulary in school. The whole world is vocabulary."All students benefit from thinking and talking about new vocabulary. For students from non-English-speaking backgrounds, it may be best for them to use their first language for this, or to find first language equivalents for new English vocabulary.
Effective Literacy Strategies in Years 9-13, NZ Ministry of Education, 2006. p.27-31.
Knowing what teachers can do
Introducing students to new vocabulary
Teachers can identify the key terms needed for understanding and communicating about some specific subject content. This is the vocabulary that the students need to know in order to understand, discuss, and write about the subject content appropriately.. When deciding which key terms to teach, consider:
- how often the terms are used;
- how important they are for relevant subject-specific learning;
- how important they are for general academic use.
For some words, a simple explanation from the teacher may be all that is needed. For many other words, the teacher will need to plan how to integrate the vocabulary learning into their teaching of the subject content. Simply giving a word's definition or presenting it in a glossary may not be effective.
Students need to link new words with the words they already know and with related words and terms.It is important to remember that there is a limit to the number of vocabulary items that students can take in at one time. Within one learning session, students should not be expected to learn more than six or seven words.Helping students to solve unknown vocabulary.
Encourage students to actively monitor their own understanding of text. When students get "stuck" in their reading, they should be aware that they can decide to try one or more appropriate strategies. Teachers can help them to adopt and use effective literacy strategies when they come across unfamiliar words and terms.Giving students opportunities to use new words and termsStudents need many exposures to new words in meaningful contexts.
Plan to provide many opportunities for students to integrate their new words into their spoken and written vocabularies. When students practise using new vocabulary soon after learning it, they are more likely to remember it and to use it appropriately and with increasing confidence.
Teachers can promote vocabulary learning by exposing their students to new words in a range of meaningful contexts and by setting purposeful tasks that require the students to use the words many times. Vocabulary learning should occur in oral language contexts as well as written language contexts. Speaking and listening provide the platform for learning new vocabulary, which can then be used in reading and writing. Discussion and other oral-language activities that are part of the classroom culture help to establish students' newly learned vocabulary as part of their "usable memory".
Developing independent learners
Students need to be aware of the strategies that they can use to help them decode and understand unfamiliar words and terms. They will be more successful in learning new words when they consciously take an active part in the learning process. By teaching them strategies that they can use to develop their knowledge of words, teachers empower students to become independent vocabulary learners.Teachers should encourage all students to try to identify the meaning of unfamiliar words by themselves, first by using context clues and other strategies to work out the meaning and then by checking in their dictionaries. Teachers model strategies for learning unknown vocabulary, and students practise using these strategies.Teachers could suggest that students use the following questions, at appropriate stages as they learn new vocabulary, to help them think about their understanding.
- What key words do I know already?
- What related words do I know?
- What new vocabulary can I now use confidently to explain my understanding of the subject content?
- What new understandings have I gained?
- What are some examples of context clues that may help me to understand new-vocabulary?
These questions could be included in students' learning logs or put on wallcharts for students to refer to when appropriate.
Effective Literacy Strategies in Years 9-13, NZ Ministry of Education, 2006. p.27-31.
Developing knowledge of English amongst students from language backgrounds other than English
Teachers should not delay literacy instruction for students who do not yet speak English fluently, nor should they limit their teaching to low-level skills that focus on the surface features of texts. Rather, teachers should act on their awareness that reading in English improves the reader's knowledge of English – reading is one of the best ways to learn a language, particularly in the later primary and secondary years. Like all literacy learners, new learners of English need many rich experiences with texts that interest and challenge them, right from the start. However, teachers do need to choose texts carefully for these students. Only texts that are at the right levels will enable new learners of English to develop their strategy use as they learn more about their new language.
The two most important variables (affecting success in reading English texts) that distinguish new learners of English from their English-speaking peers are differences in prior knowledge (including cultural knowledge) and differences in English language proficiency.
It's very important for teachers to demonstrate that all the students' cultures are an important part of the classroom culture. It's also important for teachers to scaffold their students into the classroom ways of doing things and into unfamiliar cultural aspects of the texts they read. Effective teachers encourage their students to query what they don't understand and are ready to explain and clarify.
New learners of English need support to develop their English language proficiency, especially their knowledge and understanding of English grammatical structures and vocabulary and their ability to use them. Some learners with limited English language knowledge resort to reading slowly out loud, sounding each word out carefully. The disadvantage of this is that they are often not able to carry the meaning across the length of the sentence or paragraph.Students are better able to learn oral and written English through literacy activities when:
- they are exposed to substantial spoken or written English that is within their zone of proximal development – not too hard and not too easy;
- their teacher helps them to notice language items and language patterns in the English that they hear and read (for example, when reading a story to students, the teacher can select words for attention in passing and write them on the whiteboard without interrupting the flow of the story);
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the literacy activities are carefully sequenced and linked to students' needs, for example, when new learners of English are given opportunities to rehearse spoken language with their peers. It's very important that they have opportunities to take the risk of trying out language by speaking and that they receive constructive and supportive feedback from their peers or from the teacher.
Effective Literacy Practice in Years 5-8, NZ Ministry of Education, 2006. p.129
Teachers should:
- develop a class community of people who are curious and enthusiastic about language and keen to experiment with new vocabulary and language structures;
- encourage students to notice, savour, and share interesting words at every opportunity, for example, when reading literary and transactional texts and during class or group conversations;
- introduce, explain, and model the use of new words, including the academic and specialised words that the students need for their ongoing learning;
- explicitly teach aspects of English language, such as morphology, including the meanings of common prefixes and suffixes and interesting morphemes derived from other languages;
- explicitly teach strategies that readers can use to work out unknown words and terms in texts (for example, by using information in the words themselves, by making links to known words, and by using context clues);
- give students opportunities to use their new words and terms in authentic oral and written language contexts and encourage them by constructive feedback.
What does it look like?
Example 1
The student uses an increasing visual vocabulary appropriate to a static image, such as background, shape, layout, colour and symbolism to communicate precise meaning about Miss Brill’s isolation and inner thoughts. The black background in the image represents the dark, confining cupboard-like room Miss Brill returned to after visiting the park. The white silhouette with a bun low on the nape of the neck shows that Miss Brill was an old lady. It dominates the page because the story is mostly about what goes on inside her head. Inside the silhouette there is a bright collage of all the people, objects and events from the park. They are in colour because to her they are the most real and vibrant part of her life. They are put into the shape of a brain to show that in her mind they are a very real part of her life.
Student static image based on The Geranium by Patricia Grace – Exemplar G
Example 2
Barb Wired : Definition Perfect
The student uses an increasing vocabulary appropriate to feature writing, such as:· connotative adjectives to effectively develop the notion of ‘extremes’;
- “plump juicy…. incredibly shrunken”
- combined with a wide ranging vocabulary listing parts of the body where cosmetic surgery often occurs to communicate precise meaning about body image and happiness.
Extract from article:
Then of course there is the other extremes of looks, for example the plump juicy collagen lips, the incredibly shrunken liposuction stomaches, the shapely butts, the enlarged breasts and the age defying botox faces. All in the name of plastic surgery. Look at just how far the plastic fantastic abilities have come. It's gone from basics and being not very well-known or common to being capable of doing work on your head, hands, skin, chest, abdomen, legs and butt and taken for a test drive on many well-known celebrities.