Antonym: A word that means the opposite of another word. Examples: "happy - sad"; "tall - short."

Background knowledge: A personal reservoir of information on a variety of topics; information retained in one's long-term memory.

Concept development: The process of gaining an understanding of an idea, or concept.

Content enhancement: A systematic teaching procedure for content instruction that involves making decisions about what content to teach, manipulating and translating that content into easy-to-understand formats, and presenting it in ways that are easy to remember

Content-specific vocabulary: Words that relate to a given domain of knowledge, such as medical terminology or computer jargon.

Decoding: Relating a sequence of letters in print to their corresponding sounds, allowing the reader to translate the sequence into a word.

Direct instruction: Instruction characterized by high rates of teacher involvement and control during the initial stages of information acquisition and careful performance monitoring as the learner gradually assumes control over application; structured, modular, and sequential instruction that emphasizes practice and mastery and provides a high level of success experiences and positive feedback to the student.

Explicit: Completely and clearly expressed without ambiguity or vagueness; fully developed. Example: Explicit instructions would leave no doubt in one's mind about what to do. Every part would be "spelled out."

Figurative language: Word images that cannot be interpreted literally; types of figurative language include similes ("cute as a button"), metaphors ("he was a lion in battle"), idioms ("start from scratch"), personification ("the puppy was indignant"), and hyperbole ("I'm so hungry I could eat a horse").

Fluency: In the area of reading, the skill of reading with accuracy, speed, and ease; also called automaticity.

Full concept knowledge: Knowledge that allows an individual to demonstrate a broad understanding of a word and to use this knowledge to manipulate meaning. For example, an individual with full concept knowledge is able to name antonyms, compare and contrast similar words, understand multiple meanings of words, and use words in novel ways.

General vocabulary: Words that individuals in a given culture would know from common experiences and use in everyday life.

Graphic organizer: Visual depiction of information organized to enhance comprehension of it.

Hyperbole: A non-literal statement or expression, which is purposely farfetched. Examples include, "I nearly died laughing" and "I tried a thousand times."

Idiom: A phrase, statement, or expression the meaning of which is not obvious from a literal interpretation. Examples include "with a grain of salt," and "born with a silver spoon in one's mouth."

Interactive analysis: Collaborative examination of a given idea in order to fully understand the entire concept and its relationship to other ideas.

Keyword method: Method of remembering a new word by linking it to a known word that looks or sounds like the new one. For example, to remember that the word "drudge" mean to do hard, menial, or monotonous work, you might imagine a person working day in and day out in a stifling fudge factory doing nothing but cutting huge slabs of fudge as they rapidly move by on a conveyer belt.

Lexicon: A compilation of words and their meanings in a book (dictionary) or stored in a person's memory (vocabulary). We each have our own personal lexicon, or mental dictionary.

Linguistics: Field of knowledge relating to the study of language; involves study of the subsystems of phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.

Matthew effects: Briefly stated, the effects of a cycle, in which students with learning disabilities may find themselves. Poor decoding skills limit their ability to advance to more complex texts. This in turn, limits their exposure to the content, as well as the more complex structure, of texts that are necessary for future learning.

Metalinguistics: A person's reflection on the nature or properties of language or his/her own use of it; an individual's language awareness.

Metaphor: A figure of speech in which there is an implied, not stated, comparison of two unlike things or ideas. Such as, "it's a dog's life"; "all the world's a stage"; and "computers are the vehicles of tomorrow".

Mnemonic device: Creative device used to aid memory. It can be linguistically based as in a word mnemonic, for example: HOMES gives us the beginning letters of the Great Lakes: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior; or a sentence mnemonic, for example: Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge which stands for the notes on the staff of the Treble Clef. It can also be visually based, as in mnemonic illustrations which are pictures that help us remember information, such as a picture of a wolf with a hat on that says "canine on the brim to help remember the species to which wolves belong.

Partial concept knowledge: Word knowledge that is characterized by limited use and difficulty discriminating a word's meaning from meanings of similar words.

Reading comprehension: The process or result of gaining intended and personal meaning from written material.

Reciprocal relationship: A connection between two processes in which development in one area enhances development in the other. Correspondingly, where a problem exists in one the other is adversely affected. For example, there is a reciprocal relationship between vocabulary and concept development. Vocabulary knowledge assists with growth in concept knowledge and vice versa. Deficits in vocabulary thwart concept attainment and vice versa.

Repertoire: All of one's experiences or one's expertise in a particular area.

Scaffolded instruction or scaffolding: Instruction during which the teacher provides a student with just enough help to allow him to accomplish a task that he would be unable to accomplish without help. As instruction continues, the student does more and more on his own until he can successfully accomplish the task without any help.

Semantic feature analysis: Using a graph or table to determine the relationship between a given word and its features in vocabulary instruction.

Semantic map: A graphic structure that is focused on a single, central idea or concept from which all information radiates outward.

Semantics: Part of the structure of language, along with phonology, morphology, syntax, and pragmatics, which involves understanding the meaning of words, sentences, and texts.

Simile: A phrase or expression using 'like' or 'as' to compare two unlike objects or ideas to each other. Examples include, "cheeks like roses"; "as hard as nails"; and "as bright as a button".

Strategic instruction: In the context of reading, an educational approach aimed at providing rules or guidelines to help individuals approach reading tasks more effectively, efficiently and independently.

Strategy: A method or plan that uses personal resources to complete a task efficiently, effectively and independently.

Subordinate: As used in this module, a smaller, less inclusive idea or concept that fits under a larger, more inclusive one.

Superordinate: As used in this module, a larger, more inclusive concept or category to which subordinate concepts belong.

Tactic: An approach a teacher uses to help a student learn.

Verbal association knowledge: An understanding that allows a person to link a new word with a specific definition or single context. This involves surface understanding of a word.

Vocabulary acquisition: The process of gaining and keeping new words in one's knowledge base.

Vocabulary deficits: Gaps in the number of words which one knows in comparison to peers; problems with learning new words fast enough to serve well in acquiring new information.

World knowledge schemata: Organized network of structures, frames, units, or scripts that include labels, concepts, ideas, and facts about the world in general and information shared by people in a given culture.