Helping Students Learn Vocabulary-Acquisition Skills
The task of teaching vocabulary-acquisition skills usually falls to language arts teachers. This
is a significant responsibility because formal learning—the kind of learning that students do in
school—demands vocabulary knowledge. When you help students learn how to build their
vocabularies, you help them succeed across the curriculum.
This article examines the two major ways in which students acquire new vocabulary, the
students for whom each way is best suited, and strategies for teaching vocabulary acquisition.
Incidental Acquisition vs. Direct Study
Students may acquire vocabulary in two ways:
1. Incidentally, through the conscious or unconscious use of context clues during
independent reading and listening activities
2. Through direct instruction and study.
Incidental Acquisition
Incidental vocabulary acquisition is a common means of learning new vocabulary, especially
for proficient readers. Students with strong reading skills who read a variety of texts may
realize substantial gains in their vocabulary without direct instruction. High-risk students may
also realize some incidental vocabulary gains through independent reading, however. Teachers
should neither ignore nor rely solely upon incidental acquisition but rather seek to enhance its
effectiveness with vocabulary logs, word walls and other techniques discussed below.
Direct Study
Of the two ways students acquire vocabulary, direct study is the more efficient, particularly for
high-risk students with poor vocabularies. There are several reasons that students may fail to
learn new vocabulary on their own:
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Lack of Independent Reading: High-risk students often have a history of reading
difficulties. As a result, these students generally read less—and with less
comprehension—than students with strong reading skills and rich vocabularies. The
less students read, the fewer the opportunities to acquire new vocabulary.
Inability to Use Context Clues: Students often lack the ability to find and use context
clues to infer word meaning. Students may simply skip over unfamiliar words or, if the
concentration of unfamiliar words is high, quickly become frustrated and stop reading
entirely.
Weakness of Context-Clue Vocabulary Acquisition: Even when students are able to use
context clues to infer the meanings of unfamiliar words, the words may not become
part of students' speaking, listening, or reading vocabularies. Studies show that
students cannot recall an unfamiliar word whose meaning they have inferred unless
they encounter the word repeatedly and within the same or a similar context.
A Multifaceted Approach to Vocabulary Acquisition
Because most classrooms contain a variety of types of students—high-risk, gifted or talented,
and everything in between—teachers are wise to adopt a multifaceted approach to vocabulary
acquisition. This approach provides direct instruction as well as opportunities for incidental
learning. Here are some strategies for implementing the approach:
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Require independent reading: If your school does not already have a recommended
reading list, help create one. Include high-interest, low-level books suitable for highrisk students as well as books that will challenge the gifted or talented. Then require
students to read a certain number of books of their choice from the list. Students
might provide feedback on their reading in a variety of ways: oral or written book
reports, posters with plot summaries, performances of key scenes, or the creation of
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"book boxes"—cardboard boxes that contain objects key to the plot or characters in a
book.
Encourage the use of semantic maps: Semantic maps are graphic organizers that
help students associate an unfamiliar word with familiar related words. To map the
word noun, for example, draw a circle and write noun in the center of it. Then draw
smaller circles around the central circle and fill each with a key related word, such as
person, place, and thing. To complete the map, surround each outer circle with a
series of subcircles, each containing an example of the related word, such as the name
of a specific person, place, or thing. Then show the relationships by connecting all the
circles with lines.
Have students keep vocabulary logs: Require students to reserve a section of their
journals or notebooks for listing, defining, and using new words that they learn during
independent reading or in their classes. Have students copy the context in which they
first encounter each word. Periodically collect students' logs and create opportunities
for students to hear, see, and use the words in context. For example, you might use
words from students' logs in classroom conversations. Have students create a "word
wall"—a bulletin board displaying new words in sentences or graphic organizers—and
require students to use the new words in compositions.
Teach students the key word method: To use this mnemonic device, students
think of an image that connects an unfamiliar word with a familiar key word that
sounds similar or is contained within the target word. For example, to remember the
word truculent, students might think of the key word truck and then draw or visualize
a picture of a fierce-looking person driving a truck to represent the meaning of the
word.
Preteach unfamiliar vocabulary in reading assignments: Studies suggest that
students must encounter a new word in print several times in order to remember its
meaning. However, the number of encounters needed to learn the word is significantly
reduced when students are taught the meaning of the word before encountering it in a
reading assignment.
http://www.glencoe.com/sec/teachingtoday/subject/vocab_acquisition.phtml