With the research highlighted in the introduction of McKeown
and Beck’s paper, it is no wonder vocabulary has been put on a back shelf: it seems pointless. If it’s true that a child’s vocabulary
destiny is sealed in the home, rather than in school, and that traditional
instruction is “not particularly effective” why would educators bother with
vocabulary instruction (Making Vocabulary Interventions Engaging and Effective,
139)? Vocabulary is worthy of study
because is known to correlate with comprehension, giving it an important place
in literacy development. However, in
order to be effective in bolstering student comprehension from vocabulary
instruction, teachers need to get comfortable with new, well-researched and
proven-effective approaches to vocabulary instruction.
Looking at literacy from my adult-education lens, I
immediately gravitated towards Bauman and Graves (2010) approach, which is
about focusing on instruction of words that give the most “bang-for-your-buck”
(What is Academic Vocabulary, 8). McKeown
and Beck (2011) pointed out that “95% of conversational language is made up of the
most frequent 5,000 words” (Making Vocabulary Interventions Engaging and
Effective, 140). This means that most
instruction should be focused on these words because they are of “high frequency and high utility” and give
the most immediate return-on-training-investment in the adult world. Given that adults typically expect high
levels of utility in their training, the approach of focusing on learning
vocabulary from context, for example a work context, would likely be more rewarding
and would likely lead to greater motivation and higher retention in language
instructional programs.
Considering an early years perspective, learning vocabulary from
context also seems a viable approach. The
approach described by McKeown and Beck (2011) in which the word use, along with
the physical surroundings associated with that word, while incorporating other
cues like gesture and intonation, helps early learners to learn vocabulary from
their own everyday context (Making Vocabulary Interventions Engaging and
Effective 140). Having observed children
in daycare years being taught the phonological expression of the word, while in
the context of a daily routine like snack time, and combining this instruction
with gestures, like sign language sign, I can see McKeown and Beck’s ideas
being highly effective. Vocabulary
learning like this may be supplemental to the vocabulary used at home, perhaps giving
these preschoolers the long-range academic advantages described in McKeown and
Beck’s research.
In terms of school-age students, I think that the challenge
becomes more about successfully making the cognitive leap from conversational vocabulary
to the written word. This necessitates a
further change in approach to vocabulary instruction. This is where to McKewon and Beck’s (2011) idea
of differing tiers of words becomes useful, still focusing of utility but
incorporating more of the words of formal register found in literature (Making
Vocabulary Interventions Engaging and Effective, 148). Less familiar and more challenging words
allow for the “word consciousness” described by Lane and Allen (2011) (The
Vocabulary Rich Classroom: Modeling
Sophisticated Word Use to Promote Word Consciousness and Vocabulary Growth,
365).
Building on the development of early years conversational
vocabulary to McKewon and Beck’s (2011) idea of Tier 2 words will help bridge
to Lane and Allen’s ideas about maturing in language use in the process of
“word consciousness” (The Vocabulary Rich Classroom: Modeling Sophisticated Word Use to Promote
Word Consciousness and Vocabulary Growth, 365).
This approach develops word
consciousness by using friendly definitions and explanations of words,
alongside of modeling vocabulary use.
The idea of a friendly definition is a simple, but important departure
from academic tradition of looking up words in the dictionary and then writing
out the definition. I know from
experience that children often encounter even more unknown words during this
practice, making this approach more of an exercise in penmanship than in
vocabulary. Lane and Allen (2010) advocate
for an approach that not only models vocabulary use, but actively and
purposefully connects vocabulary words to the child’s real life, giving
language-level appropriate understanding and the opportunity to say the new
word and then incorporate it into the child’s own vocabulary (The Vocabulary Rich
Classroom: Modeling Sophisticated Word
Use to Promote Word Consciousness and Vocabulary Growth, 369). This incremental approach goes beyond improving
comprehension in reading and likely makes for a more confident student and
better overall communicator.
References:
Bauman,
J. F., & Graves, M. F. (2010). What is academic vocabulary? Journal
of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 54(1), 4-12. DOI: 10.1598/JAAL.54.1.1
Lane, H. B., & Allen, S. A. (2010). The
vocabulary rich classroom: Modeling sophisticated word use to promote word
consciousness and vocabulary growth. The Reading Teacher, 63,
362-370. DOI: 10.1598/RT.63.5.2
McKeown,
M. G., Beck, I. L. (2011). Making vocabulary interventions engaging and
effective. In R. E. O’Conner, & P.F. Vadasy, (Eds.). Handbook of
reading interventions (pp. 138-168). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
No comments:
Post a Comment