A Focus on Vocabulary
Lehr et al. raises a fascinating question in the article—how many words do students need to know to achieve comprehension? What constitutes an “extensive” vocabulary? To answer this question, we need to first put the word “vocabulary” in context. One could have extensive vocabulary in either academic (in specific disciplines) or non-academic context. Furthermore, it is important to consider the purpose behind having an extensive vocabulary. From a critical perspective, it seems that this “extensiveness” has implications for privileging certain groups of people while excluding others. In other words, a person who has an extensive vocabulary in a particular academic field is better able to maintain his/her status within that field (or within the class that esteems that field) than someone who does not. This is also the case for a person with extensive vocabulary in a non-academic field. In both cases, the purpose is to legitimize specialized knowledge through the possession and use of extensive vocabulary.
I am a bit disappointed by the fact that reviews of classroom intervention studies have suggested that no more than 8 to 10 words can be effectively taught each week. I have grown up learning the English language by memorizing a lot of vocabulary every week. Though there is no way of knowing how much vocabulary I have retained, I did arrive at the conclusion that knowing a word is more than spelling, defining and pronouncing it correctly. From a sociolinguistic perspective, the spelling, definition and pronunciation are in fact unstable elements of a word because they are socially constructed, have been shaped and changed over the course of the history. In short, in order to know a word, we must see it in different social and historical contexts. Hence, the student needs to be exposed to the word in a variety of contexts (that is, both inside and outside of the classroom) as much as possible to draw out the–perhaps inexhaustible–riches in the meaning of the word. I like this quote: “Knowing a word is a matter of degree rather than an all-or-nothing proposition. The degrees of knowing a word are reflected in the precision with which we use a word, how quickly we understand a word, and how well we understand and use words in different modes (receptive, productive) and for different purposes.”.
Finally, I like the strategy of Text Talk where the teacher draws from the student’s knowledge and experiences outside of the classroom and connect that to explaining the meaning of a word in the classroom. The concept of decontextualizing book language (the language that represents ideas and concepts) seems quite useful, as teachers are encouraged to go beyond having the students read aloud the text by engaging in meaningful, productive teacher-student talk that accompanies the reading to achieve a fuller comprehension.