LLED 360

Vocabulary can be a huge part of ELLs’ struggles in the classroom, especially since most subject areas have highly specialized terminology specific to that field. In English, one of my teachables, ELLs have to deal with many brick terms that pertain to both language and literature. Because of this divide, it is almost like there can be two registers used in English, and these students may have a hard time distinguishing which register to use. For instance, they may be more familiar with terms like noun, verb, clause, and paragraph, but become confused and even disengaged when they find out their English class is studying alliteration, assonance, personification, and meter in poetry. To make matters more difficult, often English teachers will throw in grammar lessons between larger literature units. This means ELLs must quickly learn to switch registers back and forth.

Another interesting point about English relates to this week’s article by Lehr et al. They make note that many vocabulary words actually mean different things depending on the subject. They give the example of the word “volume,” which refers to a book or set of books in English class, but loudness in Music, and an amount of space in Science. We can actually take this example one step further in the sense that certain words have multiple relevant definitions within the same subject. For instance, the term “genre” has at least two uses in English. Genre can refer to the form of text, such as novel, short story, play, or poetry. Yet, genre can also be used to classify texts based on content, such as comedy, tragedy, dystopian, etc. Hence, as teachers we must be aware of not only how our subject’s vocabulary can be used in other subject areas to mean different things, but also how some words can have more than one definition within our own field.

Jessica L.

Initially, I found this article very dry. I also found it a little disheartening as it seemed to only point out problems and no solutions. Don’t use big words your students won’t understand, but don’t use easy words so your students aren’t challenged! I had to really think about practical examples before I saw how it could really be helpful in a classroom. Overall it reinforces the general themes we’ve been covering in this and other classes and makes some key points:

1. Vocabulary is key to comprehension – If you’re students can’t understand the words, the won’t understand the ideas.
2. Students are more likely to learn if they feel they can be successful – If they’re barraged with words they can’t understand, but are expected to know, they may just give up.
3. Students are more likely to learn if they’re at least somewhat enjoying themselves – Having a bit of fun with words can keep students hooked longer, and they’re more likely to learn.
4. Students are more likely to learn vocabulary (and really any subject material) if they are asked to engage with it in a variety of ways – Written, verbal, broken down into parts, used in a sentence, explained through pictures, general exposure, activities within the classroom, self-directed learning at home, etc.

I also liked how the article explicitly pointed out that people have larger receptive vocabulary than productive vocabulary. So students may be able to understand a word when it is read or heard, but they may not be able to think of that word when speaking or writing. However, when speaking or writing, students have the opportunity to find alternate ways of showing their understanding, whereas when they read they do not. I think it’s just a matter of keeping all this in mind and preparing to support our students if they are having difficulties in any of these areas.

Worth checking out:
Mysteries of vernacular: Bewilder – Jessica Oreck and Rachael Teel

I thoroughly enjoyed this reading. I think it reinforces the importance for us teachers to be cognitive of the words we use and more importantly, how they are received. The article made me more aware of how we should not assume that our students, that we ourselves too, have a full grasp of the language we use in the classroom. From my experiences, some teachers gave a list of words with their definitions and expected students to memorize that list. I remember countless vocabulary quizzes throughout high school. Looking back, those tests were not always the most effective way to introduce new terms or help me remember those terms. Through this article, I gleamed some new, practical, and integrated methods for approaching vocabulary.

I think the article effectively argued that for students to “know” or better grasp words, they must come to experience these words incrementally, multidimensionally, and integrally. I think teachers cannot forgot that this requires time, patience, a natural approach, and one that is applicable and relevant to students lives. I think this is particularly challenging with discipline-specific words. I think we must emphasize the importance that vocabulary does not emerge from a vacuum, but is situated in context and relation to other words. Therefore accessing prior knowledge is crucial as it helps students learn from channels or avenues that they already possess––thus reinforcing those connections and memory access.

To take an example: as a social studies teacher, I may teach my students about the concept and policy of “multiculturalism.” There is already so much occurring in a word like this. The word can be broken down into its various elements: “multi”; “cultural”; “ism.” Each one of those parts are interrelated to other words they may encounter. It is also a term that has rich historical and societal weight. It used all the time, particularly in describing Canadian society. Therefore a word like this has great potential to explore related concepts like culture in general, but more importantly for my students––cultures represented in our classroom. It could be their own distinct culture, it would be a debate over the characteristic of a Canadian culture (whatever that may mean), it can even be a discussion about the culture of our class itself. Therefore by making these connections, this word is integrated into a whole slew of vocubalry regarding culture, society, history, backgrounds, politics, and more.

One final comment on the article. The sections on “word consciousness” and “computer-related instruction” I found highly relevant. I recently discovered these fascinating, informative, and useful TED Ed talks called “the mysteries of vernacular.” They can be found here: http://ed.ted.com/lessons?category=literature-language. These short videos can, I hope, help develop a curiosity in the stories and mysteries behind words. Often, these words can be quite confusing or appear out of joint with a majority of other words. It is a resource worth revisiting and perhaps adaptable to the classroom in various forms.

Michael Yang

It could certainly be a daunting task to try and bring students up to a certain level of vocabulary. What caught my eye while reading “A Focus in Vocabulary” was the idea of the “Matthew Effects” (2), that good readers read more and improve their vocabulary, while poor readers read less and develop a less extensive vocabulary. By the time students reach secondary school, they may have either had poor reading skills since elementary school, or, if an ELL, had less experience with English overall than their peers. In terms of students who are not ELL’s but lack effective reading skills, while the article may supply many tools and strategies, I wonder if these are enough to combat a way of reading that’s been ingrained into them, possibly for most of their lives?

I had an English teacher in grade 11 who gave my class weekly vocabulary quizzes, but I’m not sure if my classmates who did less well in school ever cared enough to learn the words. Based on my conversations with those I knew, they were not interested, and not concerned with their quiz marks. The quizzes were multiple choice, and therefore they would simply circle their guesses, hand it in, and forget about it. I’m sure my teacher meant well and was genuinely trying to improve the vocabulary of our class, but after reading the article I would be more inclined to try a different method and diversify my teaching. Rather than giving a vocabulary quiz that was the exact same format every week as my teacher did, I would try to vary my approach, with the hopes that every student would find at least one method effective for them.

After reading this week’s article and looking at some of the different blogs that have already been posted, I believe there is a little confusion. In the blog A Focus on Vocabulary, the author says that only eight to ten words can be learnt per week. The author did not understand how so few words could be learnt when students have so many different classes and life experiences occurring, where they are exposed to so many different words. After reviewing Lehr’s article, I believe that the blog author misunderstood parts of the reading. Lehr states that only eight to ten new words can be effectively taught each week, however there are other ways for students to learn more words. If we could only learn new words by being taught them, we would only learn approximately four hundred words per year, however Lehr states that humans learn two thousand to three thousand five hundred words per year. Therefore, students are able to learn more words through incidental learning, where they are exposed to other words through their own reading. The amount of words that students learn through this manner is indicative to the amount of reading and exposure students have to different vocabulary terms.

I would be lying if I said that the article by Lehr made complete sense to me.  Although I believe I have a solid grasp of the English language, both orally and in term of vocabulary and grammar, some of the language and sentence structure of this article left me slightly puzzled – I can only imagine how an ELL student feels!  That being said, there were certain concepts addressed by Lehr that stood out to me.  The think the concept of ‘acquiring ownership’ of words is a great way to think about how kids acquire and expand their vocabulary knowledge.  I agree with Lehr that both repetitive exposure as well as exposure in different contexts is extremely beneficial and helpful for developing and fully understanding how to use words.  Since English is my primary language, I rarely think about how difficult it is until someone, for example, one of my Greek co-workers asks me how to use a particular word in a sentence and why he cannot be used in the way they originally said.  I have found myself on many occasions at a loss for words or talking in circles in attempts to explain the grammatical ‘rules’.  Another example is when someone asks you to define a word, and although you know they word and have used it, you are unable to provide a helpful definition.  As Lehr suggests, “knowing a word is a matter of degree rather than an all-or-nothing proposition” – it is a process, a sort of continuum that we as educators need to realize in order to better understand why our students may be struggling with what we feel should be simple vocabulary acquisition.  Simply being able to spell a word, does not necessarily indicate an understanding of that word.

Two other aspects I find very important that Lehr mentions are the importance and balance of both reading and oral opportunities for vocabulary development.  I thoroughly enjoy reading (although I do not currently read for pleasure as I have so many school readings to do) and think that it was extremely helpful in developing my own vocabulary and language skills.  I really liked how Lehr explained that although as educators we need to encourage and guide students toward developmentally appropriate reading material, we also need to keep in mind that reading for pleasure that may not always reflect a student’s reading competency is okay.  Reading needs to continue to be fun in order to promote intrinsic motivation within children instead of them reading only when they are forced to.  I remember in one of my English classes in high school, instead of making everyone read the exact same book for their book report, my teacher gave a selection of 10 books for the students to choose from – some were more advanced and others were at the appropriate level.  It was the first time I had ever had a choice of what I wanted to read and it made me WANT to do the report because I actually found the content interesting.  Lastly, I really connected with the idea surrounding both educators and parents providing their children with opportunities to practice their oral vocabulary.  At dinner, my parents always asked me how my day was and the types of things I did at school or camp.  If I gave them a vague “it was good”, they would probe for a more in depth answer and looking back now, I really appreciate it.  I think as educators we will hopefully automatically do that, but I think it is our job to encourage the parents of our students, especially in the younger grades, to do the same.  Make suggestions and explain how this will benefit their child.  Some questions I did think of is how young is too young to start this process?  Should we really be using ‘baby-talk’ and nicknaming objects when our children are infants?  Just something to think about!

The idea that students can only effectively learn 8 to 10 new words a week seemed like it was a rather low number in comparison to the actual amount of new words that students would be exposed to. This is especially true when you consider that each class, which depending on the school’s term system could be anywhere from 4 to 8 in a week, would have its own new concepts and words for students to learn about. This doesn’t even take into account the number of non-‘vocabulary’ type words, the everyday words students are expected to already know and are not explicitly taught as part of the class.

The emphasis on exposure to new words through reading was also a point that caught my attention, because as a student I was always reading everything I could get my hands on, and it opened me up to a huge array of vocabulary that I did not get exposed to at school, or in everyday interaction. When I was in elementary school I remember being told by my teachers to pick out books for silent reading from the library with two conditions: there could be no more than 5 words on the first page that I did not understand, but there had to be at least 1 or 2 new words that I would need to look up or ask someone the meaning of. I think that this sort of guideline worked really well to make sure that students didn’t get too frustrated by a lack of understanding and no longer enjoy reading. It also acted to ensure that students were still challenging themselves.

In reading the article on vocabulary, one thing that really resonated with me is the strong connection between reading and incidental accumulation of vocabulary. Coming from a family that did not use English as a primary language, my oral language experience in the home environment provided little support in building my English lexicon. However, conversations with my family members are typically highly interactive — detailed accounts of what has been happening at school are encouraged and described regularly at the dinner table. In addition, my parents took me to the library every week and I prowled the shelves in search of my next favourite author or series. Reading to me was an obsession, and I attribute my steady increase in vocabulary to reading on a daily basis.

However, many children of non-English speaking families may encounter difficulty in adjusting to language used in school — this relates back to the idea of a teacher’s “invisible criteria” or expectation of a certain level of language proficiency not explicitly taught in the classroom. Some ways to ameliorate the struggles experienced by these students — who may in fact be quite proficient in common oral language (e.g. BICS) — can include the teacher directing students to reading resources that target specific areas of language weakness or giving general guidelines to the types of reading material that best suit the student’s level. In an English classroom, such reading material would typically include the more literary pieces such as prose and poetry.

Lucy Y.

In this week’s article, A Focus on Vocabulary, the statistic that “no more than 8 to 10 words can be taught effectively each week” stood out to me.  When I first read this I thought it seemed unreal, but then I thought about the use of the word effectively in the sentence.  I’m sure that in the classroom, students are introduced to a lot more than 8 to 10 words per week, but this doesn’t mean that they necessarily learn their meanings as a result.  The article went on to discuss incidental learning and the fact that students must learn vocabulary from other sources than the classroom, specifically through “oral language and wide reading.”  It also mentioned that research supports the idea that the amount of time a student spends reading is “one of the best predictors of their vocabulary size.” This led me to think about the importance of reading for children, and reflect on my own experiences.  When I was growing up we had no cable TV, no video games, but we had a mountain of books in our house. My mom started reading to me before I could even talk, and as I got older I spent all my free time at home reading. I would ask my mom what new words meant, or would look them up in the dictionary myself. I excelled at spelling and vocabulary tests at school, and I can honestly say that I have never struggled with reading comprehension.  Given the important link between reading, vocabulary, and comprehension discussed in this article, I think my own experience highlights the importance of encouraging students to pick up a book on their own time.

“Accounting 11 is a prerequisite course to Accounting 12.  This course expands on the accounting concepts learned in Accounting 11 and introduces new accounting concepts like depreciation, payroll, inventory management, and taxation to name a key few.  This course is ideal for students who are planning to pursue a career in accounting, business management, commerce, or an entrepreneurship opportunity.”

I am in Business Education discipline and what you see above is a course description of Accounting 12. I’ve read above description many times, and never gave a second thought to it. To me, the description was simple and clear. However, after reading the article, “A Focus on Vocabulary,” I began to wonder if it was clear for high school students as well. How many of the words above would be unfamiliar to students?

I asked a Gr. 9 student I tutor to underline all the words she wasn’t confident with. Here is the list of words she underlined: prerequisite, concept, depreciation, inventory, pursue, commerce, and entrepreneurship.This particular student wasn’t born in Canada, but speaks perfect oral English. It was surprising to me that she does not know what “prerequisite” and “pursue” mean.

As teachers, we make assumption that the words familiar to us would also be familiar to students. Teachers must realize that students often use  vocabularies orally without full understanding of them; thus, the students aren’t familiar vocabularies when they see them on paper.

I came to realization that vocabulary deficiency not only affects learning English and Literature, but also other subjects. Teachers of all fields should help students build on vocabulary. I believe that the learning begins with the understanding of the course.