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THE VOCABULARY DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM
The program developer has emphasized vocabulary
development for many years in his own classroom. During this time much research
has shown that presenting students with a list of words and merely asking them
to look up the definitions of each word is the least effective means to grow
student vocabulary. Words “learned” this way quickly succumb to the “normal
curve of forgetting.” Nevertheless, researchers are hard-pressed to come up
with a valid means of teaching vocabulary that can be shown to work. There is a
way to teach vocabulary effectively that short-circuits the “normal curve of
forgetting,” and I describe that process next.
So for those researchers and
critics who want a straightforward answer telling what should be done (something
they have utterly failed to provide), here is the answer. Have students read
books on subjects they are interested in, with an emphasis upon nonfiction.
Instruct students to read three books on a subject they are most interested in
as found in the public library or school library or the nearest major bookstore.
Choose an easy book (from the children’s section of the library), a medium book
(perhaps from the youth or young adult section of the library), and a hard book
(from the adult section of the library), all on the same self-selected subject
of most interest to that individual student. Have the student read the books in
that order, from easy to hard. The knowledge gained from the easy book will
permit the student to understand the medium book. The knowledge gained from the
easy and the medium book will provide the student with enough background or
prior knowledge to understand the hard book, and the student will now be able to
read the hard book with as much ease and interest as he or she read the easy
book. Let the student become an expert in the chosen subject. Let the student
share the newly-gained expertise with classmates, whether with a book talk,
demonstration, oral presentation, drawing, chart, Power Point program, or other
visual aid. All the students engaged in the same process with their own
subjects will be eager to use cooperative learning strategies to share their
newfound information with classmates, and they can all efficiently share with
and teach one another in an orderly fashion, as with the “pair and share”
strategy or structure. Let the student attempt to “sell” his or her interest to
another student by sharing what he or she has learned. That student may then be
motivated to read the same books, and the two students will share a common
interest.
Repeat the process for additional
subjects of interest to the student, or of relevance to the course being taught.
Ideally, over a period of time, each student would be encouraged and allowed to
read a series of books from each of the library Dewey classifications—one topic
from the 100’s, another from the 200’s, the 300’s, 400’s, 500’s, 600’s, 700’s,
800’s, and 900’s. But let the student start in the classification which most
interests him or her, and gradually work his or her way into the other
categories as interests widen. Also have the student read biographies and
autobiographies in the same manner, some of which may be related to the
nonfiction subject categories already self-selected.
I call this process the “reading
ladder strategy” to develop vocabulary and content knowledge. The more books the
student reads, the more subjects the student masters and becomes expert about,
the greater vocabulary the student will gain. This method works. The vocabulary
gained in this way will not succumb to the “normal curve of forgetting,” but
will be a permanent asset for the student. The measure of a student’s vocabulary
really tells how much, how wide, and how deep that student’s reading experience
or life experience is. The more, and the more widely a student reads, the higher
will be his or her vocabulary. It is as simple as that.
Now reflect what that ought to
mean for curriculum and curriculum reform. None of the “modern” reform efforts,
helpful and researched as some of them may be, has caught up with my “reading
ladder” idea which I formulated forty years ago. My idea directly incorporates
the concept of depending upon intrinsic motivation, not extrinsic, by
encouraging the students to self-select a subject that interests them. My idea
develops eager, avid, voracious life-long readers who read because they want to,
not to get a grade. My idea produces students who are eager to learn, who score
in the highest possible category on any test you wish to throw at them, provided
they have done the reading and sharing in the manner described.
A student’s vocabulary level is
the best predictor of future academic success, as for college entrance. It also
is the most accurate measure we have of present or future business and career
success. Years ago Johnson O’Connor discovered that business executives in the
highest office of their companies (CEO’s) have the highest vocabularies,
vocabularies fully equal to college professors and other high level academics,
even, in some instances, when the tested executive had no formal schooling
beyond the proverbial eighth grade. Johnson O’Connor believed that vocabulary
improvement was the key to insuring future success. He thought that increasing a
person’s vocabulary, by whatever means, would assist them to be more successful.
Others have shown that vocabulary is directly related to future financial
income. Those with high vocabularies have high incomes, unless, I suppose, they
are schoolteachers.
Most of our students come to us
without the wide reading background my “reading ladder” approach would have
afforded them had they been encouraged and permitted to follow the procedure
outlined above in their previous years of schooling. Therefore, their vocabulary
levels frequently measure below, often far below, their grade level on
standardized tests. In our classrooms students find the textbooks difficult, the
vocabulary frequently beyond them, and complain that the material is “boring.”
The vocabulary “load” of new textbook reading material is so great that there is
little hope for students to learn so many new words in the time we have to teach
them. Sometimes, though, textbook publishers have gone to the opposite extreme
and watered down the vocabulary, depriving students of the opportunity to learn
the words necessary to understand the subject. This paucity of student
vocabulary problem, by the way, would be non-existent if my “reading ladder”
approach had been employed from the earliest grades. Of my own children, my
oldest son tells me that he never has to study for the vocabulary quizzes or
tests he encounters in high school. He knows all of the words already. He
learned them while I home schooled him when he was a child, when I used the
“reading ladder” approach to introduce him to nonfiction reading.
As I have taught students over the
years, I have developed a set of vocabulary words arranged in twenty lists of
twenty words each to furnish students at least the basic knowledge of vocabulary
they need to survive content area textbooks. I present the words list by list,
such that students study between two and four words a day. I let them look up
the words they do not know in a dictionary if they please. For selected words, I
go over their meaning and application and ramifications in depth with special
“mini-lessons,” such as for the words “allegory,” “celestial,” etc. I go over
the words orally, in the form of an oral review, using the strategy “Which word
means…” and award oral points credit for their correct responses, frequently as
an end-of-class strategy keeping students fully engaged the last four or five
minutes until the bell rings. I have them do the “Five meaningful sentence”
writing strategy. I use their sentences to teach correct English and sentence
structure using the “Sentence Correction Strategy.” I use cooperative learning
strategies for students to work together to learn to recognize and correct their
own and each other’s mistakes.
I teach them “test taking
techniques,” and explain the “process of elimination strategy,” using the very
words we have been discussing on sample exercises. I introduce students to the
format used on the “English Usage Tests” of the SAT and ACT tests, and have
created practice exercises using their own compositions as the text from which
to develop the simulated ACT/SAT tests. I sometimes let students take a set of
words and write a free writing composition that incorporates those words in
their essay. I teach them the “wrong answer category identification” strategy,
and work hard at making my students test-wise. I have devised multiple forms of
the same test, and alternate tests over the same words, with pretests,
posttests, interim tests, and weekly tests. I have devised tests over
grade-level word lists that simulate the format used on standardized tests (such
as the MAT, Metropolitan Achievement Test) the students will take so they become
proficient at taking tests in that particular format.
I prepare selected word lists
based on the vocabulary words found in a particular nonfiction article, story,
or textbook chapter the students will read. I present the sentences containing
the words from the article, story, or textbook and have the students make
predictions about what the article, story, or textbook chapter will be about.
This is a helpful pre-reading strategy to get them interested in the forthcoming
reading, but it also helps them overcome the hurdle of new vocabulary.
I present students with a very few
challenging vocabulary words (oubliette, orrery, syzygy, glabrous, hegemony,
ambidextrous, ambivalent, equestrienne, ponderous, prosaic, jocund) and let them
go on a hunt to discover their meanings. Sometimes I include a word or two so
hard that nobody can find them because they are not in the dictionary (you don’t
think so? Try finding the definition for “intusposition,” then find the word
somewhere in print, and good luck trying!), and my most eager students gain a
lot of knowledge about dictionaries, libraries, and librarians and research
skills and word roots in a valiant search to find the word and discover its
meaning. Some few students have found it. But this makes for exciting learning,
and students are turned on by the challenge.
This VOCABULARY DEVELOPMENT
PROGRAM contains the word lists, the weekly, interim, final and pretests and
posttests for vocabulary that I have developed over the years. It contains
examples of the strategies already named to use with these words. It contains
examples of student written sentences and compositions for the “sentence
correction strategy,” and simulated SAT/ACT English usage exercises. There is
enough material here for a full vocabulary program, and the program fully
integrates with the goal to develop student’s test taking, reading, writing, and
oral communication skills at the same time vocabulary is enhanced. Of course,
the most effective vocabulary development program of all is the “reading ladder
strategy” described above. You will be able to effectively use the “reading
ladder strategy” for your students once they have progressed through the
LANGUAGE ENRICHMENT PROGRAM. The program developer hopes you will incorporate
the “reading ladder strategy” immediately into your own classroom, and watch the
students grow by leaps and bounds as a result. In the meantime, use the
vocabulary strategies contained in this VOCABULARY DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM to create
an interest in and knowledge of the words of our English language.
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