APPROACH TO TEACHING AND DEVELOPING VOCABULARY

Sturza Amalia
University of Oradea Faculty of Architecture and Constructions 4, B. St. Delavrancea street,
410085, Oradea [email protected] 0259-408447

Vocabulary was an area which was arguably neglected in foreign language teaching for a number of
years, but it now seems very much back on the agenda. Vocabulary knowledge is not something that can
ever be fully mastered; it is something that expands and deepens over the course of a lifetime. Instruction
in vocabulary involves far more than looking up words in a dictionary and using the words in a sentence.
Vocabulary is acquired incidentally through indirect exposure to words and intentionally through explicit
instruction in specific words and word-learning strategies.

Key words: vocabulary development, strategy, teaching, word meaning, word formation

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Introduction
Vocabulary Teaching is clearly more than presenting new words. Of course, this may have its
place but there are other issues, too. For example, students see a lot of words in the course of a
week, some of them are used often, others are not. Should we teach some words and not teach
other? Is there any way in which we can encourage students successful to really learn a word?
Why are some students successful at vocabulary learning but others are not? If we know the
answer to the question, the work of teaching and learning a word would be easy.
Vocabulary is the knowledge of words and word meanings. As Steven Stahl puts it, ‘Vocabulary
knowledge is knowledge; the knowledge of a word not only implies a definition, but also implies
how that word fits into the world’506. According to Michael Graves, there are four components of
an effective vocabulary program:
- wide or extensive independent reading to expand word knowledge
- instruction in specific words to enhance comprehension of texts containing those words
- instruction in independent word-learning strategies, and
- word consciousness and word-play activities to motivate and enhance learning507.

Intentional vocabulary teaching

According to the National Reading Panel, explicit instruction of vocabulary is highly effective508.
To develop vocabulary intentionally, students should be explicitly taught both specific words and
word-learning strategies. To deepen students' knowledge of word meanings, specific word
instruction should be robust509. Seeing vocabulary in rich contexts provided by authentic texts,
rather than in isolated vocabulary drills, produces robust vocabulary learning (National Reading
Panel, 2000). Such instruction often does not begin with a definition, for the ability to give a

506 Stahl, S.A. 2005. Four problems with teaching word meanings (and what to do to make vocabulary an
integral part of instruction). In E.H. Hiebert and M.L. Kamil (eds.), Teaching and learning vocabulary:
Bringing research to practice. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
507 Graves, M.F. 2000. A vocabulary program to complement and bolster a middle-grade comprehension
program. In B.M. Taylor, M.F. Graves, and P. Van Den Broek (eds.), Reading for meaning: Fostering
comprehension in the middle grades. Mew York: Teachers College Press.
508 National Reading Panel. 2000. Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the
scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. Washington, DC:
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
509 Beck, I.L., M.G. McKeown, and L. Kucan. 2002. Bringing words to life:Robust vocabulary
instruction. New York: Guilford.
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definition is often the result of knowing what the word means. Rich and robust vocabulary
instruction goes beyond definitional knowledge; it gets students actively engaged in using and
thinking about word meanings and in creating relationships among words.
Research shows that there are more words to be learned than can be directly taught in even the
most ambitious program of vocabulary instruction. Explicit instruction in word-learning
strategies gives students tools for independently determining the meanings of unfamiliar words
that have not been explicitly introduced in class. Since students encounter so many unfamiliar
words in their reading, any help provided by such strategies can be useful.
Word-learning strategies include dictionary use, morphemic analysis, and contextual analysis.
For ELLs whose language shares cognates with English, cognate awareness is also an important
strategy. Dictionary use teaches students about multiple word meanings, as well as the
importance of choosing the appropriate definition to fit the particular context. Morphemic
analysis is the process of deriving a word's meaning by analyzing its meaningful parts, or
morphemes. Such word parts include root words, prefixes, and suffixes. Contextual analysis
involves inferring the meaning of an unfamiliar word by scrutinizing the text surrounding it.
Instruction in contextual analysis generally involves teaching students to employ both generic
and specific types of context clues.

Approach to Teaching and Developing Vocabulary

The amount of vocabulary that children need to acquire each year is staggering in scope,
estimated to be about 3,000 words a year. Therefore, a comprehensive approach consisting of the
following components needs to be in place.
- Use “instructional” read-aloud events.
- Provide direct instruction in the meanings of clusters of words and individual words.
- Systematically teach students the meaning of prefixes, suffixes, and root words.
- Link spelling instruction to reading and vocabulary instruction.
- Teach the effective, efficient, realistic use of dictionaries, thesauruses, and other
reference works.
- Teach, model, and encourage the application of a word-learning strategy.
- Encourage wide reading.
- Create a keen awareness of and a deep interest in language and words.
Provide Direct Instruction in the Meanings of Words
Which words should be taught? In deciding which words to teach we have found it helpful to
think about ‘levels’ of vocabulary.
Level I Words
These are words that are used over and over in everyday speech. Since they are so frequently
used in a variety of contexts, virtually all children learn them. Some examples of these words
would be house, girl, cat, up, umbrella, etc. Level I words are sometimes referred to as
‘conversational speech’. Students who are learning English as a second language will sometimes
make progress with this level of vocabulary but have difficulty making progress with words at
levels beyond this one.
Level II Words
These are words that are likely to be learned only through reading or through instruction. They
have been referred to as the vocabulary of educated persons, as ‘academic vocabulary,’ and as
‘instructional vocabulary.’ They are words that are necessary for general success in school.
Words such as perspective, generate, initiate, intermediate, calculation, etc. are possible
examples.
Level III Words
These are words associated with a particular field of study or profession. These words make up
the technical vocabulary or jargon of a field. Examples of Level III words from the field of
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reading instruction include the terms digraph, diphthong, schwa, metacomprehension, etc. As one
might expect, some words such as calculation might be classified as either a Level II or Level III
word or both.
Level IV Words
These are words that are interesting but so rare and esoteric that they are probably not useful even
in most educational environments, and they are not associated with a field of study or profession.
Examples are words that were but no longer are used: majuscule (a capital letter), xanthodont
(one who has yellow teeth like a rodent), noctuary (an account of what happens in a night).
Notice, however, that some Level IV words are useful for teaching morphological clues such as
noct meaning ‘night’ and dont or dent referring to teeth. Level IV words are also helpful for
creating an interest in words and language. Just by their definitions, it should be apparent that a
major responsibility of teachers is to expand the Level II and Level III words of their students.
Teachers of content areas have a special responsibility for teaching Level III words.

Teaching of Word Meaning

Words are labels for concepts and teaching word meaning is essentially teaching concepts for
given words. There are several suggestions for teaching concepts in Nation510. One of these
concerns the presentation of multiple positive examples of the concept. Positive examples are
instances to which a given word truly applies. Among the positive examples of vehicle, for
example, are cars, trucks, vans, buses, trains, etc. Giving multiple positive examples is necessary
because concept learning requires the abstraction of the important features of the concept and
ignoring the unimportant ones, and to do this the learner has to see several examples and needs to
identify what is common to them all and what is different. The important (i.e. criterial) features
of being a person, for example, is to be a human being and usually to be an adult. On the other
hand, ‘color of skin, color of hair, and age are not criterial features of person’511. If multiple
examples of person (e.g. pictures of individual persons with different skin and hair colour and
from different age groups) are provided, learners will be able to work out the criterial features
and learn to ignore the noncriterial ones in the concept of person they formed512.
Some concepts have constant reference (i.e. refer to a single entity) like earth, sun, etc. while
others do not show much variance among their referents (e.g. water, orange, snow, etc.). All the
examples that would be given for these concepts will be inevitably very similar to one another. It
should be tested, therefore, if multiple examples are still better than one example for these words
simply because they increase the exposure time. It should be useful, though, to give multiple
examples in the case of words with abstract or general meanings (e.g. person, adult, vehicle,
furniture, building, etc.). Nation’s (1990) another recommendation is to use negative examples of
a concept in addition to the positive examples. Negative examples are instances to which the
word does not apply. The negative examples of person, for example, will include “things that are
not persons”513. However, for the negative examples to be meaningful, they need to be
sufficiently similar to the positive examples. Negative examples will be useful in showing the
boundaries of a concept and thus, helping learners to distinguish the word from other similar
concepts. For example, the word desk and table are semantically related in English. Both
concepts involve a flat surface resting horizontally on vertical (usually four) axes. The two words
are distinguished in English with respect to the use to which they are put. A table isused for
eating from and a desk is used for study. Thus, an office desk or a home desk might be used as
negative examples for the word table to help learners limit the meaning of table and to prevent

510 Nation.I.S.P (1990). Teaching and learning vocabulary, New York Newbury House. Chapter 4.
511 Idem p.53
512 Ibid. p.53-54
513 Ibid. p.54
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overgeneralisation to desks (e.g. referring to a home desk as a table). However, some caution is
necessary in claming that negative examples are good since negative examples might be
confusing when the learner is still wrestling with basic understanding of the core concept and has
yet a shaky understanding of it. Thus, negative examples are yet to be shown to be effective.

Teach the Meaning of Prefixes, Suffixes, and Root Words

The majority of English words have been created through the combination of morphemic
elements, that is, prefixes and suffixes with base words and word roots. If learners understand
how this combinatorial process works, they possess one of the most powerful understandings
necessary for vocabulary growth. In recent years research has suggested some promising
guidelines for teaching the meanings of prefixes, suffixes, and word roots as well as for the ways
in which knowledge of these meaningful word parts may be applied. Word roots such as dict,
spect, and struct are meaningful parts of words that remain after all prefixes and suffixes have
been removed but that usually do not stand by themselves as words: prediction, inspection,
contract. In the primary grades students begin to explore the effects of prefixes such as un-, re-,
and dis- on base words. In the intermediate grades students continue to explore prefixes and an
increasing number of suffixes and their effects on base words: govern (verb) + -ment =
government (noun). Common Greek and Latin roots begin to be explored, along with the effects
of prefixes and suffixes that attach to them514. These include, for example, chron (‘time,’ as in
chronology), tele (‘distant, far’ as in television), and fract (‘break,’ as in fracture). A large
proportion of the vocabulary of specific content areas is built on Greek and Latin elements. As
this morphological knowledge develops, teachers can model how it may be applied to
determining the meanings of unfamiliar words encountered in print.

Teach the Application of a Word Learning Strategy

As noted earlier, written texts contain richer vocabulary and, therefore, more opportunities for
expansion of vocabulary through reading as compared to the word challenge in oral language.
There is research that shows that students can be taught strategic behaviors to improve their
ability to learn the meaning of words515. While skills such as application of morphological clues,
reference works, and spelling clues to word meanings are all useful, they become more powerful
and functional when combined with the use of context clues in a deliberate strategy. These could
be the steps:
Step 1: Carefully look at the word; decide how to pronounce it.
Carefully processing the letters or chunks of letters of a word and thinking about the sounds for
them will leave a memory trace for the word even if it is not a word that the reader knows. At
very least, it is likely that if the reader encounters the word again in future readings, there will be
at least a modicum of familiarity with it.
Step 2a: Look around the word for context clues, including:
• Look within the sentence.
• Reread previous sentences.
• Read ahead for more context clues.
Step 2b: Look in the word for prefixes and suffixes, base words, and root words that might offer
clues.
For a word with a common prefix such as un-, morphological clues would likely be used before
the use of context clues. The hallmark of a strategic reader is the flexible application of strategies.

514 Templeton, S. (1989). Tacit and explicit knowledge of derivational morphology: Foundations for a
unified approach to spelling and vocabulary development in the intermediate grades and beyond. Reading
Psychology, 10, 233–253.
515 Kuhn, M.R., and Stahl, S.A. (1998). Teaching children to learn word meanings from context: A
synthesis and some questions. Journal of Literacy Research, 30, 119–138.
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Step 3: Make your best guess at the word’s meaning.
It is important to stress with students that natural context most often will not lead to a clear
understanding of a word’s meaning and that some words will not contain recognizable
morphological clues. Nevertheless, it seems useful to take the step of making a best guess at the
word’s meaning since this further mental activity is likely to make the word more familiar the
next time it is encountered—even if the student’s understanding of the word has to be revised.
Step 4a: If you don’t have a good idea as to the word’s meaning and if the word seems important,
use a dictionary or glossary.
Two touchstones for determining whether or not a word is important could be used. First, if the
reader is beginning to have difficulty understanding what he or she is reading, the meaning of the
word may contribute to a better understanding of what is being read. It is, therefore, important.
Second, if it is a word that the reader has encountered before and still has no good idea as to its
meaning, it is probably an important word since it is likely to be encountered again in the future.
Step 4b: If you think you have figured out the meaning of the word or if the word doesn’t seem
important, keep reading.
Telling a reader to look up every unknown word in a dictionary it’s unrealistic; mature readers
don’t. Therefore, it is legitimate to move on and keep reading if context and morphological clues
have been somewhat helpful or if the word doesn’t seem to be important for comprehension of
what is being read or for adding to one’s functional vocabulary. Teachers need to strategically
and flexibly model and teach each of the above steps. Eventually, as students mature in their
reading skills, they can and will internalize the steps in this strategy. Application of these steps
then becomes much smoother and more automatic, requiring less attention. In fact, good readers
usually “blend” these steps.

Conclusions
1. Vocabulary should be taught both directly and indirectly.
2. Encountering vocabulary words often and in various ways can have a significant effect on
vocabulary learning.
3. Vocabulary words that students will find useful in many contexts should be selected.
4. Restructuring tasks to be certain students fully understand the task and the components of
vocabulary learning can lead to increased vocabulary learning, particularly for low-achieving and
at-risk students.
5. Actively engaging students’ results in larger vocabulary gains.
6. Emerging support for the use of computer technology to increase vocabulary.
7. Vocabulary words can be learned through incidental and indirect ways. Repetition, richness of
context, and student motivation may add to the efficacy of incidental learning.

Bibliography:
1. Allen, V.F. (1983) Techniques in Teaching Vocabulary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2. Graves, M.F. (2000). A vocabulary program to complement and bolster a middle-grade
comprehension program. In B.M. Taylor, M.F. Graves, and P. Van Den Broek (eds.), Reading
for meaning: Fostering comprehension in the middle grades. Mew York: Teachers College Press.
3. Nation.I.S.P (1990). Teaching and learning vocabulary, New York Newbury House.
Stahl, S.A. (2005). Four problems with teaching word meanings (and what to do to make
vocabulary an integral part of instruction). In E.H. Hiebert and M.L. Kamil (eds.), Teaching and
learning vocabulary: Bringing research to practice. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
4. National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of
the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction.
Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

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5. Templeton, S. (1989). Tacit and explicit knowledge of derivational morphology: Foundations
for a unified approach to spelling and vocabulary development in the intermediate grades and
beyond. Reading Psychology, 10, 233–253.

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