Academic vocabulary

Hello everyone,

I have always struggled with deciding how much time I should spend on teaching vocabulary. The latest research I have heard has said that normal humans need at least six different contacts with a word before the word enters their vocabulary. Keep in mind that there is a difference between the vocabulary we passively recognize and understand, and the vocabulary we actively use. The six contacts usually only bump a word into our passive recognition.

If normal high school students should have a vocabulary of around 10,000 words by the time they graduate from high school, and if our students have a working English vocabulary of between 2000-4000 words, then we're asking them to gain between 1500 and 2000 words per year just to catch up with the rest of America. That comes out to 9000-18000 contacts with new words alone, not to mention reviewing old words. And this leaves us able only to passively recognize words, not actively use them.

What that means to me is that I have to decide what vocabulary development is going to give me the most bang for the buck, and what vocabulary techniques will provide the most efficient way of acquiring new vocabulary.

There are certain words that MUST be taught in any given subject. These are the words for which sufficient class time must be set aside for the introduction to a given word and a full comprehension of that word must be gained. These are the so-called "academic words" that are talked about so much. Words like "metaphor" and "narrative" in English; "numerator" and "congruent" in math; "mole" and "plate" in science; and "macroeconomics" and "legislative" in social studies.

The words must be taught on their own terms. It is wise to use a variety of approaches to each word (graphic organizers and word walls are two very useful techniques after direct instruction), but they may also be taught in their contexts with language in general. Prefixes such as "meta-" ("over"), "con-" (reminding students that it can mean both "with" and "against"), and "macro-" ("large"); and root words such as "-num-" ("number"), "-gress/gruent-" ("go" or "gone"), and "-legi-" ("read") would make some of the above words jumping off points for a large number of other words.

Teaching the various meanings of common words like "mole" and "plate" expand both the richness of the words, but the students' understanding that most words in English have multiple meanings--and sometimes those meanings are widely variant. Both those words are homographs--they are spelled one way, but they have multiple, unrelated meanings. "Mole" is an animal, a spy, and a blemish, besides being a number in chemistry. "Plate" is something you eat from, a valuable object, and a dental appliance besides being a portion of the earth's crust. You will need to give the entire picture sometimes, just so your students will understand the part of the picture you're teaching.

By actively teaching the important academic words in your curriculum, and by teaching the etymological reasoning behind those words, you empower your students to continue gaining words on their own, which could save you 18,000 lessons.

Jeff Combe