Effective Vocabulary Instruction

By Author: Alex Armas
Total Articles: 74
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Over the past 25 years, research has broadened and deepened our understanding of vocabulary learning and teaching, some of which is particularly critical for the word wall instructional design. One aspect is what it means to know a word (Beck, McCaslin, & McKeown, 1980; Stahl & Fairbanks, 1986). Our knowledge of particular words can fall on a continuum: no knowledge, some knowledge, thorough knowledge. While having full, conceptual knowledge of a word is ideal for comprehension, sometimes even a general understanding of a term can keep comprehension intact. With this in mind, we approached this intervention with the realization Thomas Sabo Jewellery that students participating in the word wall instruction would obtain different degrees of knowledge about targeted words.

Another aspect of word learning is the need for multiple exposures to words in a variety of contexts (McKeown, Beck, Omanson, & Pople, 1985; Stahl & Fairbanks, 1986). We embedded this facet in the lessons by having students engage in a variety of activities. In addition, students need to understand ...
... how and why some words are used in particular contexts and some are not. For example, contexts for the word ravage (defined as "to destroy, waste, ruin") might include villages being ravaged by an invading army or coastal areas ravaged by devastating hurricanes. If students believe that the meaning of this word applies to any situation, then we set them up for misusing ravage in contexts such as "ravaging a drawing by spilling a drink on it." Therefore, we were mindful of students' interpretations of word meanings and directed their efforts toward appropriate contexts for the words they were addressing.

Still another facet of vocabulary instruction underlying the word wall lessons is associative learning— the notion of acquiring knowledge in varying degrees through associations made with our own existing knowledge and experiences. These associations are reinforced when we use visual images to represent new ideas (Sadoski & Paivio, 2004). The well-researched keyword method helps students remember word meanings by attaching a visual image to a word or word part (Pressley, Levin, & McDaniel, 1987). In our instructional design, we directed students to create associations in three ways—through color, symbols, and situations.

Vocabulary research has also shown the ineffectiveness of the ubiquitous practice of having students define words and then write Thomas Sabo Bracelets sentences using the words. Studies clearly point to the limitations of using dictionary definitions as primary instructional tools for word learning (Miller & Gildea, 1987; Scott & Nagy, 1997). Students need to see how new words are used in rich, comprehensible contexts before generating their own contexts for the words. Furthermore, as Baumann, Kame'enui, and Ash (2003) asserted, using dictionary definitions alone will have minimal impact on students' reading comprehension.

Nonetheless, defining a word in ways understood by students and illustrating its use in a context are important first steps in instruction. But instruction must not stop there. Students must move beyond a superficial, definitional level of word learning to internalize new word meanings (Graves, 2006). To accomplish this, students must engage in higher levels of cognitive processing, such as critically analyzing, evaluating, and applying word meanings in meaningful contexts. Moreover, they need to have multiple opportunities to use new words in different contexts.