Helping Young Learners Improve Their Vocabularies

¶ … Nelson and Stage (2007) was to assess the effects of contextually-based multiple meaning (i.e., words with multiple meanings) vocabulary instruction on student vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension. To this end, groups of 3rd and 5th grade students were provided with the standard language arts instruction in isolation (in other words, non-specific treatment) or with contextually-based multiple meaning vocabulary instruction that was contained in the standard language arts instruction that is provided to all students over a 3-month period (Nelson & Stage, 2007).

The results of this study showed that the students who were provided with the contextually-based multiple meaning instructions demonstrated statistically and educationally significant improvements in their vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension overall compared to the group of students who received the non-specific treatment (Nelson & Stage, 2007). The results of this study also showed that the demonstrated improvements were most visible in the reading comprehension scores, and those students who had lower vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehensive achievement levels tended to achieve more significant improvements vs.

those students with an average to high achievement level (Nelson & Stage, 2007). In sum, these researchers concluded that, "The results of this study indicate that vocabulary knowledge plays a critical role in people's lives and future possibilities" (Nelson & Stage, 2007, p. 2). These findings support the assertion that a robust vocabulary is a defining quality of educated people, and large vocabularies facilitate academic achievement in general and reading comprehension in particular There are two basic ways that vocabulary is learned: indirect and direct vocabulary instruction (Nelson & Stage, 2007).

According to Nelson and Stage, "Indirect vocabulary building pertains to learning words primarily through exposure -- through conversations with others, being read to, or reading on one's own" (2007, p. 2). Consequently, the more opportunities that students have to participate in reading vocabulary exercises, the better likely that their reading comprehension and vocabulary knowledge will improve; however, there remains a dearth of timely and relevant research concerning indirect learning experiences in vocabulary development (Nelson & Stage, 2007).

A purpose of a systematic review of the literature conduced by Rupley, Logan and Nichols (1999) was to provide the basis for effective instructional design protocols that can be used to develop a balanced approach to teaching vocabulary instruction. In their model, research-based principles are used to guide effective vocabulary instruction and there is a focus on integrating vocabulary instruction into all stages of the reading lesson framework, prior to, during and following reading exercises (Rupley et al., 1999).

According to Rupley and his associates, "Vocabulary instruction should encourage students to make associations and accommodations to their experiences and provide them with varied opportunities to practice, apply, and discuss their word knowledge in meaningful contexts" (1999, p. 340). The overarching objective of classroom vocabulary instruction is to provide students with opportunities to improve their current levels of conceptual knowledge as well as their ability to comprehend the material they have read (Rupley et al., 1999). This is an important component of vocabulary instruction because as Rupley et al.

point out, "Students cannot comprehend well without some knowledge of the concepts that are represented by the print" (1999, p. 341) Indeed, absent a rich and large vocabulary, students will not be able to accurately discern and interpret what they have read. As noted by Rupley, Logan, and Nichols (1999), "Vocabulary is a shared component of reading and writing- it helps the author and the reader to comprehend through their shared meanings of words" (p. 337).

There is an inextricable relationship between comprehension and vocabulary that affects students' entire academic careers, and students that struggle with comprehension may be experiencing problems with vocabulary deficiencies (Rupley et al., 1999). The research to date indicates that even students who have effective comprehension skills ordinarily can be overwhelmed when they are presented with an excessive number of unfamiliar words (Biemiller, 2003).

An inability to access the meaning of words in reading assignments can cause significant problems for young students, including restricting their comprehension of the written material, limiting their capacity to establish relevant connections between the written material and their internalized knowledge and understanding of the world, constrains their ability to make informed and intelligent inferences and adversely affects their critical reasoning skills (Cunninghma & Stanovich, 1997). Conversely, fluent reading skills are promoted when vocabulary knowledge is well developed and rich in words (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1997).

There are some benchmarks available to help assess vocabulary acquisition progress, and young people tend to acquire reading vocabulary at a rate of around 3,000 to 4,000 each year, meaning that by the time they reach 8th grade they should have a working vocabulary of more than 25,000 words (Graves, 2004). Providing young students with reading instruction that concentrates on increasing their vocabulary can provide significant positive academic outcomes, including improvements in comprehension as well as the ability to infer meaning from what has been read (Rupley, Nichols, & Mraz, 2012).

The connection between a strong vocabulary and reading comprehension as well as the positive academic outcomes that can be achieved in promoting young students' reading development has been well documented (Rupley et al., 2012). In this regard, Rupley and his associates conclude that, "As students' vocabulary grows their ability to comprehend what they read grows also; furthermore, as their comprehension capabilities grow so do their abilities to learn the meaning of new words from context" (2012, p. 301).

Because the process of acquiring a large vocabulary is time-consuming and challenging, many teachers may be tempted to gloss over this aspect of reading instruction in favor of what they perceive to be more meaningful classroom content (Phillips & Foote, 2008). In this regard, Phillips and Foote emphasize that, "Too many teachers resort to copying definitions as the strategy of choice in vocabulary instruction [because] it saves time and enables them to progress to the actual content in a more efficient manner" (p. 62).

Copying definitions is a rote exercise that is used in many classrooms alone or in combination with the use of context clues that are used to help students decipher the meaning of unknown words in a given reading (Phillips & Foote, 2008). Although these approaches have their place, they both fail to provide the relational knowledge that.