A Focus on Vocabulary
The article “A Focus on Vocabulary” offers valuable content for educators about the importance of vocabulary, vocabulary learning processes of children and youth, and techniques to promote the expansion of students’ vocabulary. I personally highly appreciate works such as this which provide pragmatical and objective information on teaching strategies that may be helpful guidance in our future professional practice. To that extent, the article is rather enlightening, especially as it suggests interesting methods to teach different kinds of words in different contexts.
Nonetheless, such strategies will be meaningless if the importance of vocabulary is not assimilated. Therefore, by showing the implications of having or not having a wide vocabulary, the section “The Importance of Vocabulary to Reading Comprehension” (2) is, for me, the crux of the text. More specifically the “Matthew Effect” unravels the need for enriching students’ vocabulary by showing that those who have a good vocabulary read more and thus increasingly expand their vocabulary, whilst those who have a poor vocabulary read less, do not sufficiently expand their vocabulary, and thus get ever poorer when compared with the first ones. In light of this, teachers must commit to breaks the latter cycle as early as possible in order to avoid large gaps between their students. Vocabulary is a key factor that can lead to either equality or inequality among students; it is up to teachers fight to make sure that all students are equally empowered by a wide vocabulary.