This is the fourth post in our series on teaching vocabulary. If you’re new here, we suggest you begin by reading the previous posts in this series, click here for the introduction to the series, here to read about explicitly teaching new vocabulary words, and here to read about providing rich and varied vocabulary experiences. Each post will focus on building inclusive, culturally responsive practices around one aspect of Micheal Graves’ Four Principles of Effective Vocabulary Instruction (The Vocabulary Book: Learning and Instruction 2005).
What role does independent word learning play in students’ vocabulary development?
While vocabulary breadth (i.e. the number of words an individual knows) is correlated with reading comprehension (Carlisle, 2000; Verhoeven & Van Leeuwe, 2008), vocabulary depth (ie. how much an individual knows about a word and the quality of that information) has also been shown to play an important role in the strength of a reader’s comprehension of text (Binder et al., 2017). While explicit teaching and access to ample opportunities to hear and read rich vocabulary play a role in both aspects of this development, readers also need a toolbox of strategies to help them when they do encounter new words—particularly when they don’t have a peer or adult to provide a quick working definition.
As we mentioned in our post on providing students with access to rich and varied vocabulary experiences, research has found that the average learner enters kindergarten with 5,000-10,000 words in their vocabulary and leaves high school with around 50,000 (Nagy and Herman, 1987). Divided over 180 instructional days each year, that's around 17-20 words per day—certainly more than could be effectively and efficiently taught through explicit instruction. That means students in vocabulary-rich instructional environments will have many, many opportunities each year to both broaden their vocabularies and deepen their knowledge of words they’ve already had some exposure to.
When students encounter unfamiliar words in texts their ability to understand and engage with material can be significantly impeded. This is particularly crucial for students with language-based disabilities and for multilingual learners. Multilingual learners often face the dual challenge of learning content while simultaneously developing proficiency in a new language. Students with language disabilities may also face unique challenges in vocabulary acquisition which can impact overall literacy development. For example, when a student has a language disability such as Developmental Language Disorder or difficulties with language processing, they may struggle to store new words in long-term memory and/or to efficiently retrieve words when needed. For both students learning a new language (Teng, 2016) and those with a language-based learning disability (Storkel et al., 2019) having more encounters with a new word may be needed to help with storing and later using newly learned vocabulary. Additionally, explicit instruction in vocabulary-learning strategies serves as a vital bridge between existing knowledge and new vocabulary.
Multilingual students have the additional advantage of bringing pre-existing linguistic knowledge from any additional languages they know, which can be leveraged alongside other strategies to help with acquiring new vocabulary and accelerating comprehension.
What strategies support independent word learning for children?
There are a few strategies that are particularly helpful to explicitly teach students when aiming to support. their independent word learning.
1. Teach students to use context clues.
While studies have shown that students gain a lot of word meaning through reading and using context (Nagy, Anderson, & Herman, 1987), research also reveals that context clues are not always reliable for determining a nuanced understanding of unknown words (Schatz & Baldwin, 1986). Although context clues might not give a reader a totally nuanced understanding of a new word’s definition, Tim Shanahan posits, “The real purpose of using context is to comprehend the text, not to learn word meanings. Context use also improves efficiency and reduces the burden of having to look up so many words” (2022). That is to say, that teaching students to use context clues is one important (but certainly not the only important way) to support readers with independently tackling new vocabulary as they read.
Imagine, for example, that a student reads this passage on pioneering medical researcher, Dr. Roland Scott:
“During this time, [Dr. Scott] began to notice the high number of African American children in the emergency room experiencing sickle cell symptoms and complications. Dr. Scott was a trained allergist, but he switched his focus to help improve treatment for this misunderstood disease.”
If the term sickle cell is unfamiliar, the reader will likely be able to determine some but not all information about the disease from this passage. For example, the reader will likely deduce that sickle cell is a disease and may further understand that it affects many African American children and can cause symptoms that are serious enough to warrant a trip to the emergency room. However, because the context is limited, the reader will not have a full understanding that the disease is genetically based, nor have an awareness of how the symptoms of the disease might manifest in a person’s life. All that being said, knowing to pause and think about context likely will help the reader better understand Dr. Scott and his contributions to the medical field, the overall topic of this text.
Teaching students to look around the word, or to use context can help them to monitor their reading and make meaning of text when encountering unknown words, even though it may not help them develop nuanced definitions of those unfamiliar terms. Common types of context clues that students might attend to include:
Definition: The mercurial King, who changed his mind often and without warning, made it difficult to succeed in the kingdom.
Synonyms: The building was dilapidated or run-down, with broken windows and peeling paint.
Noticing words that indicate a contrast: Unlike his gregarious brother, Charlie preferred the quiet of a peaceful night home alone.
Examples/ Illustrations: The museum contained many artifacts such as pottery, clothing, and hunting tools.
Cause and Effect: Because the drought lasted for months, the once-fertile farmland was empty and nothing would grow.
When students are aware of and use various types of context clues to monitor their comprehension, they can also use these reading experiences to independently develop their vocabulary.
2. Teach students to study words morphologically.
Helping students to break words into meaningful parts (or morphemes like roots, prefixes, and suffixes) can provide another inroad into developing and deepening understanding of unknown words. Morphological patterns are the one linguistic feature that links directly to pronunciation and decoding, orthographic patterns and spelling, and word meaning (Kirby & Bowers, 2017). When students learn to break down complex words into their component parts they don’t just learn the individual words, but also gain access to entire word families and patterns that will carry over to many other words. Just as each exposure to a word increases the likelihood of recognition and the depth of understanding of that word in the future, each meaningful encounter with a morpheme also provides the reader with additional information that will recur in future reading experiences and thereby support further and continuous word learning.
For multilingual learners, morphological awareness is especially valuable because many English words share common roots across languages—especially languages that derive from Latin and Greek. For example, a Spanish-speaking student who recognized the morpheme photo in photosynthesis can connect it to the Spanish morpheme foto. Cross-linguistic transfer allows multilingual learners to leverage their full linguistic repertoire as a resource for learning new vocabulary.
Additionally, building morphological awareness helps all students better understand how English words are constructed and can help children learn to recognize patterns. For multilingual students, this can also help build awareness of how suffixes may change parts of speech or how prefixes may modify meaning in ways that differ from other languages they know.
3. Teach multilingual students to be on the lookout for cognates.
Just as multilingual students will come to recognize that some morphemes are shared between languages. Cognates provide another way to use prior language knowledge to facilitate English vocabulary knowledge development (Cardenas-Hagan, 2020). For example, an Urdu speaker might be able to use knowledge of the word yūnīvarsiṭī to make meaning of the word university while a Hatian-Creole speaker might be able to conceptualize the English word culture based on prior knowledge of the word kilti.
4. Teach students to use reference tools.
While many students will be able to use a mixture of context, morphological understandings, and cognates to increase access to unknown words and make meaning of complex text, it is important for students to also build awareness of the physical and digital resources available to support them when encountering unknown words. You will want to ensure that you teach dictionary skills explicitly, including:
How to use print and digital resources to locate information about an unknown word
When to use digital and physical reference tools
How to choose the right definition for context
How to compare definitions from different sources
Additionally, you’ll want to teach students how to interpret and internalize definitions as well as how to apply them to the text. This might include teaching them to visualize, or even sketch, the meaning of a new word as well as to use a synonym to try to make meaning of text using the target word.
5. Teach students to anticipate polysemy.
One vital understanding that you’ll want to help students build is the awareness that many words in English are polysemous, or have more than one meaning. Researchers estimate that approximately 70% of English words have multiple meanings (Hiebert, 2020). Helping students understand that even common words such as bank, light, and run can carry dramatically different meanings depending on context helps children develop both linguistic fluency and comprehension depth. Additionally, students will immediately notice this as they build dictionary skills and find that most words have several possible definitions to navigate. As they use these tools they’ll need to use both context and the provided meanings to determine which definition is appropriate.
Independent word learning is essential for students’ ongoing vocabulary development, allowing them to understand new words while they read. Strategies like using context clues, breaking words into morphemes, recognizing cognates, and utilizing reference tools help students deepen their comprehension and literacy skills. These approaches are especially valuable for multilingual learners and students with language-based learning challenges. By fostering independent word-learning skills, educators empower students to continuously expand their vocabulary and enhance their reading comprehension.
This post is part of our Vocabulary Instruction Series. Stay tuned for deep dives into the other three pillars of effective vocabulary teaching.
References
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