|
- Although having a strong command of language involves more than vocabulary, the fact remains that the number of words in a person's vocabulary is a significant factor in understand reading material.
- Development of vocabulary and concepts goes hand in hand.
- It is estimated that students in grades 3 through 9 can be expected to know 88,533 word families.
- While it is true that children have extensive vocabularies prior to reading, reading is probably the most important mechanism for vocabulary development as they get older.
- The challenge for the teacher is to narrow the gap between what vocabulary students have and the vocabulary they need.
- Word meaning becomes an increasingly important determinant of ease in word identification as the number of words encountered in print begins to expand.
- Words targeted for vocabulary study need to be prioritized for effectiveness and efficiency (not random selections) so that students are concentrating on learning words for specific purposes.
- Once students learn a word in one context, they may have to expand their understanding to include one or more other meanings and determine which meaning is applicable in a given situation.
- It is common for students with learning disabilities to experience confusion in comprehending what they are reading because they are relying on a single meaning for a multiple meaning word.
- Words are the labels for things, events, people, places and ideas. Concepts rely on these labels for their creation and articulation.
- In general, the more semantic information, or "meat," given with a new word, the more likely it is that students will learn that word.
- After the meaning of a particular word is understood, the word still has to move into long-term memory, which is the storage component.
- Unless a word is stored and can be accessed during reading, it is not a functional part of background knowledge.
- Students must have multiple encounters with a word. The more language experiences students have with a word, hearing it, reading it, and using it themselves in speaking or writing, the more chance the word has of becoming part of their repertoire.
- Instructional techniques should be geared to the level at which students need to know a word and focused on those words they need to know in depth.
- Having lists of vocabulary words for students to look up in the dictionary and having them try to memorize the meanings are not practices recommended for vocabulary development.
- Semantic feature analysis is designed to help students learn the vocabulary representing ideas in a reading assignment. It also enables students to learn the relationships between and among words and ideas.
- It is important for teachers to use instructional methods that facilitate the acquisition of independent word learning strategies, even when they are teaching vocabulary directly.
- Strong word recognition skills gained in first and second grade promote the depth of vocabulary acquisition that is necessary to engage in significant amounts of independent reading.
- The LINCS Strategy, which can help students learn words for which they need to know definitions in their academic classes, cues students to systematically use a set of memory enhancing techniques.
|
