Teaching Vocabulary, part 2

Hello everyone,

Here is an exchange that is worth making public (the teachers are excerpted from emails):

TEACHER: I have tried various methods to teach vocabulary during my years of teaching. I've taken vocab from the texts we're reading and alternately given them the definitions and had students look up the words. I've also tried teaching Latin and Greek roots. None of these methods have met with much success.

COMBE: Having students look up the words rarely works. I've tried it too. It's a good way to keep them quiet and busy, but it doesn't teach them much. Sort of like the pedagogical equivalent of afternoon television.

However, I have found that teaching roots and affixes to be very useful. 80% of all English academic language has a Latin origin (I'm told). With our students, teaching Latin/Spanish/English cognates can be really useful. Teach them to have confidence that the everyday word they might use in Spanish (i.e., "verdad"--truth) has a very academic, upper-class sounding cognate in English ("verity"). "Antes" (before) in Spanish is used as a prefix in English ("anteroom"). A couple of days with the Latin roots and affixes, and they gain a lot of mileage.

The Greeks take more time and focus, but pay off well later on. Simply teaching the Greek numbers (mono-, bi-, tri-, tetra-, penta-, hexa-, hepta-, octo-, ennea [usually rendered in the Latin "nove-"], and deca-) gives a lot of word meanings.

It takes six exposures to a word for it to truly enter our vocabulary (researchers tell us). Those six exposures may happen any number of ways, but in direct teaching, they can be built into a single lesson with some follow-up and reinforcement. Of course, this means that you are going to want to devote some significant class time to teaching some words, so they ought to be words that will pay big dividends later.

TEACHER: Honestly, when I learned vocabulary, we MEMORIZED words - endless lists of words. Even when I studied for the GREs I had flashcards in the car. I know this sounds trite and boring, but it's the only thing I've ever experienced that works.

COMBE: They don't talk about this sort of memorization at expensive conferences. There are advantages and disadvantages to it, and the main disadvantage for expensive conference presenters is that it puts all the onus on the students to learn on their own and that means no money for the presenter. However, that's also a disadvantage for the teacher. There is no way to guarantee that students will actually teach themselves the words. Some do; most don't.

It seems to me that if you're going to give a list for memorization, you need to understand a few things. I think that sort of assignment works best either when you're working with highly motivated students, or when you're trying to get your students exposed to a large number of words, but you're not necessarily working for any kind of working fluency. (In other words, they will more easily recognize the words in various contexts, but they won't likely be able to use the words correctly in an essay.) I gave my AP language students lists of words and left them on their own to memorize the lists, then quizzed them once a week for general word recognition. Few of them did well on the quizzes, but their general ability to recognize some words improved, and they had the words reinforced when we discussed the quizzes. Some years I would repeat the lists if they did badly on the quiz. Those who did well with vocabulary passed the AP test, but they either had a good vocabulary to begin with or they were exceptionally motivated to memorize lists out of context.

This method was commonly used in the foreign language classes I took, but it was usually combined with various opportunities to practice the words in other modalities (speaking and listening). Again, such words usually remain the sort that I recognized in context, but couldn't call up with the sort of easy recall required for language fluency.

TEACHER: I'm sure that most teachers implement various vocabulary teaching strategies into their lesson plans already.

COMBE: True. Some strategies are always good but very time consuming; some strategies are always bad; some strategies work or don't work depending on a variety of factors ranging from how they're used to what they're used for, and always filtered through the teacher's needs and personality.

TEACHER: Let the English teachers focus on this one...please.

COMBE: Language classes always include vocabulary as part of their curriculum. However, teachers in disciplines other than language classes (by language classes I mean English, ESL, and foreign language) still must teach vocabulary specific to the discipline. There are certain words that are essential to the discipline you're teaching. Words and phrases like "polynomial," "imperialistic," "supply side," "meter," "oxygenate," "ecosphere," and so on, have to be consciously taught in direct teaching if you want students to have more than a passing understanding of them.

Further, there are certain words that are commonly used in academic discourse that our students struggle with. I can cover those in another context, but my students always had a hard time with the difference between "compare," "contrast," and "qualify." I always had to take a part of a day and overly teach the meanings of those three words so students could answer test questions. That sort of academic language, along with specific disciplinary jargon, ought to be taught outside the language classes.

The big question remains: what are the best and most efficient ways to teach words? You're adding the question, which words should be taught by which disciplines?

Jeff Combe