Knowing Words & Vocabulary Instruction
“Vocabulary knowledge is essential to spoken and written communication and, by extension, to academic progress across the school grades.”
-S. Adlof (2019)
Word knowledge, background knowledge, and reading comprehension are closely linked. But what does it mean to know a word?
Knowing a word is multidimensional and is based on several kinds of knowledge, including phonological knowledge, orthographic knowledge, and semantic knowledge, and the relationships between these (Adlof, 2019; Colenbrander, Pace Miles & Ricketts, 2019; Perfetti, 2007).
This means knowledge of the sound structure of the word, the spelling of a word, and the meaning of the word are three key elements to word knowledge.
A word’s representation in memory can be considered high quality when all three key elements can be retrieved in a coordinated manner (Colenbrander, et. al. 2019). We can therefore start to see how “knowing a word is not an all or nothing proposition” (Beck, McKeown & Kucan, 2013). There are levels or stages of “knowing” and a description of the stages of “knowing” is described in Bringing Words to Life (Beck et. al, 2013) . The authors describe these stages ranging from “no knowledge” to “rich, decontextualized knowledge of a word’s meaning and its relationships to other words”.
As it turns out, the more words you know, the more background knowledge you have and the more background knowledge you have, the greater the opportunities for deeper and meaningful learning experiences.
Word knowledge is essential to academic achievement and all students can benefit from high quality, robust vocabulary instruction (Adlof, 2019).
Children with language and reading difficulties experience specific challenges learning new words and may require more repetitions, more practice, and more opportunities to use and apply vocabulary in a variety of contexts.
Evidence exists to indicate a causal relationship between vocabulary knowledge and listening/reading comprehension and this word knowledge also continues to the development of decoding skills (Adlof, 2019). Robust vocabulary instruction and thoughtful consideration of vocabulary targets plays an important role in the development of reading and writing skills.
For information about your child’s speech, language, reading or writing development, contact me
References
Adlof, S. (2019). Prologue to the Forum: Vocabulary across the school grades. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 50 (461-465). https://doi.org/10.1044/2019_LSHSS-19-00007
Alt, M., Gray, S., Hogan, T.P., Schlesinger, N., Cowan, N. (2019). Spoken word learning differences among children with dyslexia, concomitant dyslexia, developmental language disorder, and typical development. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 50 (540-561). https://doi.org/10.1044/2019_LSHSS-VOIA-18-0138
Beck, I.L., McKeown, M.G., Kucan, L. (2013). Bringing words to life: Robust vocabulary instruction (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Guilford.
Colenbrander, C., Pace Miles, K, Ricketts, J. (2019). To see or not to see: How does seeing spellings support vocabulary learning? Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 50 (609-628). https://doi.org/10.1044/2019_LSHSS-VOIA-18-0135
Duff, D. (2019). Has vocabulary intervention had an effect? A valid, reliable, and (fairly) quick outcomes measure for semantic knowledge. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 50 (506-517). https://doi.org/10.1044/2019_LSHSS-VOIA-18-0134
Perfetti, C. (2007). Reading ability: Lexical quality to comprehension. Scientific Studies of Reading. 11(4), 357-383. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254312976_Reading_Ability_Lexical_Quality_to_Comprehension