California English Journal

Table of Contents

April 2003

ADD WEALTH TO YOUR VOCABULARY -Richard Lederer SEEK WELL AND YOU WILL FIND: DISCOVERING LANGUAGE -Steve Elia CLOSING THE LANGUAGE GAP: STRATEGIES FOR VOCABULARY DEVELOPMENT -Kevin Feldman & Kate Kinsella PREPOSITION PROBLEMS UP WITH WHICH WE SHOULD NOT PUT -Angus Dunstan A WHOLE WEEK ON ONE LIST? -Tom Carnicelli VOCABULARY ENRICHMENT SHOULD BE JUST THAT; RICH AND MEANINGFUL -Alfee Enciso ALLUSIONS - THE HIDDEN VOCABULARY -Davina Rubin WORDS AND SOME OF THEIR WAYS -Con Cummings VOCABULARY FOR WRITING -Leif Fearn, Nanc Farnan and J. Kris Rodenberg

Artist of this issue - Jill Le Croisette Features & Departments Editor's Column President's Perspective

"Dr. von Braun," the woman gushed. "I just loved your speech, and I found it of absolutely infinitesimal value!"
"Well then" von Braun gulped, "I guess I'll have to publish it posthumously."
"Oh yes," the woman came right back. "And the sooner the better!"

a. Situation. "Many agricultural experts say that, if properly harvested, the arable lands of Ethiopia and Sudan could feed most of the continent." Arable means: _______.
b. Examples and illustrations. "Critic, essayist, historian, travel writer, diarist, Edmund Wilson was a protean man of letters, one of his era's representative figures." Protean means: _______.
c. Restatement. One of our finest poets, at the height of his power, he brings together and unifies tendencies that might have divided opposing poets into separate elements." Unifies means: _______.
d. Contrast. "The advent of television eventually swept away the huge, grandly ornate movie palaces of the 1920s and left in their place small, utterly functional faceless theaters." Ornate means: _______.

1. ARCH - archangel, archbishop, monarch = _______
2. ANTHROP - anthropology, misanthrope, philanthropy = _______
3. AUTO - autobiography, autograph, automaton = _______
4. BIO - biodegradable, biology, biosphere = _______
5. CAPET - capital, decapitate, per capita = _______
6. CHRON - chronic, chronology, synchronize = _______
7. CRAT - aristocrat, autocrat, democratic = _______
8. CRED - credit, creed, incredible = _______
9. CULP - culpable, culprit, exculpate = _______
10. EU - eugenics, eulogy, euphemism = _______
11. FID - confide, fidelity, perfidy = _______
12. GEN - genetic, genre, homogeneous = _______
13. GRAPH - autograph, biography, graphology = _______
14. GRAV - aggravate, grave, gravitation = _______
15. GREG - congregation, gregarious, segregate = _______
16. HYDRO - dehydrated, hydrant, hydroelectric = _______
17. LEG - legal, legislate, legitimate = _______
18. LEV - alleviate, elevate, levity = _______
19. LOQU - eloquent, loquacious, soliloquy = _______
20. MAGN - magnanimous, magnify, magnitude = _______
21. MAL - malady, malediction, malevolent = _______
22. MISS - dismiss, missile, transmission = _______
23. NOV - innovation, novelty, renovate = _______
24. OMNI - omnipotent, omniscient, omnivorous = _______
25. ONYM - anonymous, pseudonym, synonym = _______
26. ORTH - orthodontist, orthodox, orthopedic = _______
27. PAN - panacea, pandemonium, panoramic = _______
28. PED - expedition, pedal, pedestrian = _______
29. PEL - compel, propel, repel = _______
30. PHIL - bibliophile, philanthropy, philology = _______
31. POLY - polygamy, polyglot, polygon = _______
32. PORT - export, portable, transportation = _______
33. PRIM - primal, primeval, primitive = _______
34. SENT - consent, resent, sentimental = _______
35. SEQU - consecutive, obsequious, sequential = _______
36. SIMIL - assimilate, similarity, simile = _______
37. SOL - isolate, soliloquy, solitary = _______
38. SOPH - philosopher, sophistication, sophomore = _______
39. SPEC - introspective, spectacle, spectator = _______
40. SUB - sublimate, submarine, subterranean = _______
41. TELE - telegraph, telephone, television = _______
42. TEN - tenacious, tenure, untenable = _______
43. THEOS - atheism, polytheistic, theology = _______
44. TRACT - extract, intractable, tractor = _______
45. TRANS - transcontinental, transfer, translate = _______
46. VAC - evacuate, vacation, vacuum = _______
47. VERT - convert, introvert, vertigo = _______
48. VIV - survivor, vivacious, vivid = _______
49. VOC - invoke, vocal, vociferous = _______
50. VOL - malevolent, volition, voluntary = _______

4. Get the dictionary habit. The great storyteller Mark Twain once wrote, "A dictionary is the most awe-inspiring of all books; it knows so much . . . . It has gone around the sun, and spied out everything and lit it up." The practice of using the dictionary is essential in acquiring a mighty and versatile vocabulary. Keep an up-to-date dictionary by your side when you read. Whenever you run across a word that you are not sure of, look it up, a process that will probably take you no more than thirty seconds. Then record the word and its meaning on your private word list.
5. Use your new words. As soon as you have captured a new word in your mind, use it in conversation or writing. When you see a new word in your own handwriting, you are more likely to remember it.
Try using at least one new word each day. Tell your parents how much you venerate them. Compliment your children on their altruism when they stoop to share the remote with you. Congratulate your business associates on their enthralling and edifying presentation. Explain to Tabby that she shouldn't be so intractable about consuming her cat food.

Remind yourself not to procrastinate about acquiring and using new words. Make vocabulary growth a lifelong adventure. In the process, you will expand your thoughts and your feelings, your speaking, your reading, and your writing - everything that makes up you.

Answers
Context clues: a. capable of being farmed b. displaying great variety c. joins together separate elements d. elaborate, richly decorated
Roots: 1. leader, ruler 2. man, mankind 3. self 4. life 5. head 6. time 7. rule 8. believe 9. blame 10. good
11. faith 12. kind, species 13. write 14. heavy, weigh 15. flock, herd 16. water 17. law 18. light, rise 19. speak 20. large
21. bad 22. send 23. new 24. all 25. word, name 26. straight, correct 27. all, entire 28. foot 29. push 30. love
31. many 32. carry 33. first 34. feel 35. follow 36. like 37. alone 38. wise, wisdom 39. see, look 40. under
41. far away 42. hold 43. God 44. pull 45. across 46. empty 47. turn 48. life, lively 49. call, voice 50. Wish

Teaching word meanings should be a way for students to define
their world, to move from light to dark, to a more fine-grained
description of the colors that surround us.
- Steven Stahl

*High knowledge 3rd graders had vocabularies equal to low performing
12th graders (Smith, 1941).

* Top high school seniors knew 4 times the words of lower performing
classmates (Smith, 1941).

* 1st gr. Students from high SES groups knew about twice as many
words as lower SES students (Graves et al. 1987).

* Very little emphasis on vocabulary teaching in school curricula (Biemiller,
1999; Watts, 1995).

A Rationale Directly Addressing Vocabulary Development
Successful comprehension is, in some significant part, dependent on the reader’s knowledge of word meanings in a given passage. Baker, Simmons, & Kame’enui (1998) state, “The relation between reading comprehension and vocabulary knowledge is strong and unequivocal. Although the causal direction of the relation is not understood clearly, there is evidence that the relationship is largely reciprocal.” The good news for teachers from research in vocabulary development is, vocabulary instruction does improve reading comprehension (Stahl, 1999). However, not all approaches to teaching word meanings will improve comprehension. This article will describe some of the most practical and effective strategies that secondary teachers can employ with diverse learners to enhance vocabulary development and increase reading comprehension.

What Doesn’t Work?

“Direct teaching of vocabulary might be one of the most underused activities in K-12 education. The lack of vocabulary instruction might be a result of misconceptions about what it means to teach vocabulary and its potential effect on student learning. Perhaps the biggest misconception is that teaching vocabulary means teaching formal dictionary definitions.” (Italics added)
- Marzano et al., 2001
Classroom Instruction That Works

There are a number of traditional teaching practices related to vocabulary that deserve to be left in the “instructional dust bin”. The key weakness in all of these practices involves the cognitively limited or rote interaction students have with the new word/concept. Let us quickly review the most common of these less effective approaches.

• Copying definitions – certainly dictionaries have their place, especially during writing and after a student knows something about the word, but the act of looking up a word and copying a definition is likely to not result in vocabulary learning of new words (especially if there are long lists of unrelated words to look up and copy definitions).
• Writing sentences – writing sentences with new vocabulary AFTER some understanding of the word is helpful, however to assign this task before studying word meaning is of little value.
• Telling students to “use context” – there is little research to suggest that context is a very reliable source of learning word meanings. Nagy (1988) found students reading at grade level had about a one in twenty chance of learning the meaning of a word from context. This, of course, is not to say that context is unimportant, simply that students will need a broader range of instructional guidance than the exhortation, “use context”.
• Memorizing lists of definitions - rote learning of word meanings is likely to, at best, result in the ability to parrot back what is not clearly understood. Of course, once students have a grasp of a new word, judicious review is very helpful!

The common shortcoming in all of these less effective approaches is the lack of active student involvement in connecting the new concept/meaning to their existing knowledge base. Vocabulary learning, like most other learning, must be based on the learner’s active engagement in constructing understanding, not simply passively re-presenting information from a text or lecture. This requires that teachers use language, images, examples, and other representational forms that are familiar to their students – not simply focus on the definition provided in the glossary or dictionary.

What Does Work?
Reviewing the research literature on vocabulary instruction leads to the conclusion that there is no single best strategy to teach word meanings, but all effective strategies require the learner to go beyond the definitional and forge connections between the new and the known. Nagy (1988) summarizes the research on effective vocabulary teaching as coming down to three critical notions; 1) integration – connecting new vocabulary to prior knowledge, 2) repetition – encountering/using the word/concept many times, and 3) meaningful use – multiple opportunities to use new words in reading/writing/discussion/etc. Beck and colleagues (Beck et al. 2002) conceptualize effective vocabulary instruction as beginning with explanations NOT definitions. The critical distinction being that it is not the precise dictionary wording that drives instruction, rather it is assisting students by explaining word meanings using language, examples, metaphors, and images the students already know. Effective explanations are characterized by:

1. Language the students already know
2. Examples culled from students background knowledge/world view
3. Images, metaphors, etc. familiar to students

For example, if the new word was skeptical an appropriate explanation could be;
“ Skeptical means you are not sure you believe someone, if you told me a dog ate your homework I would be very skeptical!”

The following section will explore some practical strategies secondary teachers can employ to increase the integration/connection, repetition, and meaningful use of new vocabulary words in their instructional programs.

Increase the amount of independent reading

The largest influence on student’s vocabulary is the sheer volume of reading they do, especially wide reading that includes a rich variety of texts. This presents a particularly difficult challenge for underprepared high school students who lack the reading habit. Strategies that can help to motivate reluctant readers include:

• matching text difficulty to student reading level & personal interests (e.g. using the Lexile system – see www.lexile.com)
• reading incentive programs that include taking quizzes on books read (e.g. Accelerated Reader, Reading Counts)
• regular discussion of what students are reading such as; literature circles, book clubs, quick reviews, etc.
• setting weekly/individual goals for reading volume
• adding more structure to Sustained Silent Reading by including a 5 min. quick-write at the end of the reading period – randomly select 3-4 papers to read/grade to increase student accountabilit

Appropriate Dictionary Selection for Heterogeneous Classrooms

Secondary students certainly need to know how and when to use a dictionary to look up the meanings of unfamiliar words. Surprisingly, many adolescents lack even the most rudimentary dictionary skills and benefit from some explicit instruction. Without training and guidance, less proficient readers and English language learners are apt to encounter numerous difficulties as they struggle to first locate and then effectively navigate a lengthy dictionary entry.

Many students do not own a dictionary, and if they do, it is often not a very powerful or appropriate resource for clarifying word meanings. While English learners may carry a bilingual dictionary, this resource is generally inadequate for several reasons. First, long-term bilinguals or more recent immigrants with disrupted educational histories may have limited academic vocabulary in the home language. When looking up the meaning of a term such as categorize or stereotype, a bilingual youth may very well encounter an unfamiliar word in the native language. Simply copying a translation does little to promote reading comprehension. Further, the small bilingual dictionaries carried by secondary students carry limited and often inaccurate definitions. An electronic dictionary may be equally unproductive for a bilingual or less proficient reader tackling grade-level curricula, as they tend to offer scant definitions and no contextualized example sentences. An electronic dictionary is useful for a quick fix, but it is not the most considerate resource for a student operating from a weak academic vocabulary base while completing grade-level assignments. Another common language arts resource, which is likely to utterly demoralize an under-prepared reader, is an adult thesaurus. In order to benefit from an array of synonyms, a reader must operate from a solid academic vocabulary base. Less proficient English users will generally have no gauge of contextual appropriateness and end up infusing their written work with glaringly inappropriate word choices.

A traditional collegiate dictionary is probably the less effective resource
for students daunted by grade-level literacy tasks. High school classrooms are predictably only equipped with college-level dictionaries, which are actually designed for a proficient adult reader possessing a relatively sophisticated vocabulary base and efficient dictionary skills. This does not describe the average high school student, whether s/he is reading at or below grade level. Collegiate dictionaries can be extremely frustrating resources for most adolescent readers because they do not integrate the support mechanisms of a “learner’s dictionary.”

Many publishers, including Longman and Heinle and Heinle, have developed a line of manageable “learner’s dictionaries” for secondary students who need a more user-friendly dictionary to assist them in content area coursework. A learner’s dictionary characteristically includes fewer yet more high-frequency definitions, written in accessible language and complemented by an age-appropriate sample sentence. English language learners and less proficient readers benefit from the clear, simple definitions and common synonyms as much as the natural examples illustrating words and phrases in typical contexts. These dictionaries are also easier for students to utilize than collegiate dictionaries because the entries are written in a larger font size and include useful and obvious signposts to guide them in identifying the proper entry. A final advantage is that many learner’s dictionaries may be purchased in book form, along with a CD-ROM providing pictures, audio, and pronunciation of headwords.

Developmentally appropriate lexical resources are fundamental to providing all students, regardless of their level of English proficiency or literacy, with greater access to grade-level competencies and curricula. A democratic language arts classroom, marked by cultural and linguistic diversity, must include considerate and manageable dictionaries for less proficient readers, to enable them to develop more learner autonomy and to assist them in completing independent writing and reading tasks.

Select the most important words to teach

Students with weak lexical skills are likely to view all new words as equally challenging and important, so it is imperative for the teacher to point out those words that are truly vital to a secondary student’s academic vocabulary base. Unfortunately, teachers who gravitated toward English instruction, in great part out of a passion for language and literature, may find all words of equal merit and devote too much instructional time to interesting and unusual yet low-frequency words, which a less prepared reader is unlikely to ever again encounter. This lexical accessorizing is overwhelming to a reader who may be striving to simply get the gist of a novel, and proves to be even more daunting as the student attempts to study a litany of unfamiliar terms.

Graves & Graves (1994) make a helpful distinction between teaching vocabulary and teaching concepts. Teaching vocabulary is teaching new labels/finer distinctions for familiar concepts. In contrast teaching concepts involves introducing students to new ideas/notions/theories/etc. that will require significantly more instruction to build real understanding. Teachers can get more out of direct vocabulary work by selecting words carefully; saving more time consuming and complex strategies for conceptually challenging words, using relatively expedient strategies to assist students in learning new labels or drawing finer grained distinctions around known concepts. Making wise choices about which words to directly teach, how much time to take, and when enough is enough are essential to vocabulary building.

Tips for Selecting Words

• Distinguish between words that simply label concepts students know and new words representing new concepts (e.g. they know talks too much, thus loquacious is simply a new label, but a stock market dividend is a new concept).
• Ask yourself, “is this concept/word generative? Will knowing it lead to important learning in other lessons/texts/units?” Some linguists think of these as “mortar” words – the academic English of all content domains (e.g. analyze, principle, context), whereas the “brick” words are very content specific and to not generalize very well (e.g. lava, isotope).
  (see http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/div1/awl/awlinfo.html for more information on the linguistics of “brick & mortar words”)
• Be cautious to not “accessorize” vocabulary (e.g. spending too much time going over many clever adjectives that are very story specific and not likely occur frequently) – rather focus attention on critical academic vocabulary essential to understanding the big ideas in a text
  (e.g. prejudicial – students learn the meanings of pre – judge, connect to other concepts they know such as unfair, etc.)

Brief Strategies for Vocabulary (Stahl, 1999)

Words that are new to students but represent familiar concepts can be addressed using a number of relatively quick instructional tactics. Many of these (e.g. synonyms, antonyms, examples) are optimal for prereading and oral reading when more expedient approaches are appropriate. In every case the brief strategy features a focus on explaining what the word means using language the students can relate to, understand, and attach personal meaning.

• teach synonyms: provide a synonym students know, e.g. link stringent
  to the known word, strict
• teach antonyms: not all words have antonyms, but when possible thinking about a words opposite requires students to evaluate the critical attributes of the word in question
• paraphrase definitions: requiring students to use their own words increases connection making and provides the teacher useful informal assessment –“do they really get it?”
• provide examples: the more personalized the better, e.g. the new word is egregious – Ms. Kinsella’s 110 page reading assignment was egregious indeed!
• provide non-examples – similar to using antonyms, non-examples require students to evaluate a word’s attributes, invite students to explain why it is/is not an example
• sentences that “show you know” – students construct novel sentences confirming their understanding of a new word, using more than one new word in a sentence to show connections can also be useful
• word sorting – provide a list of vocabulary words from a reading selection and have students sort them into various categories (e.g. parts of speech, branches of government), students can re-sort words into “guess my sort” using categories of their own choosing

Conclusion

The “language gap” is a critical challenge to teachers and educators at every grade level. There is no simple solution or quick fix, an impoverished vocabulary can not be habilitated in a few weeks! However, there educators can have an enormously positive impact on building their students lexical skills IF we insure that; 1) all students are being taught to read well, 2) all students are encouraged/motivated to read widely, 3) teachers employ effective strategies to directly and explicitly teach the most important vocabulary words in a given selection or chapter of text (especially pre-teaching), 4) teachers structure opportunities for all students to explore and apply new words in their reading and writing.

In sum, it is essential to keep in mind that promoting extensive reading, carefully selecting which words to teach quickly or extensively, and choosing strategies that help students make cognitive connections between the new and the known are at the heart of effective vocabulary building. Lastly, the more intangible notion of taking delight in the world of words, modeling one’s own love of language, pushing the “lexical envelope” is less subject to research study, but certainly worthy of consideration none-the-less.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Kate Kinsella is a faculty member in the Department of Secondary Education at San Francisco State University.
Dr. Kevin Feldman is the Director of Reading and Early Intervention with the Sonoma County Office of Education

REFERENCES:
Allen, J. (1999). Words, words, words: Teaching vocabulary in grades 4-
12. York, Maine: Stenhouse.

Baker, S.K., Simmons, D.C., & Kame’enui, E.J. (1998). Vocabulary
acquistion: Instructional and curriculuar basics and implications.
In D.C. Simmons & E.J. Kame’enui (Eds.), What reading research tells us about children with diverse learning needs (pp. 219-238). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Beck, I.L., McKeown, M.G. & Kucan, L. (2002). Bringing Words to Life:
Robust Vocabulary Instruction, Guilford Press, New York.

Marzano, R.J., Pickering, D.J. & Pollock, J.E. (2001). Classroom instruction that
works: Research based strategies for increasing student achievement. ASCD,
Alexandria, VA.

Nagy,W. (1988). Teaching vocabulary to improve reading comprehension.
Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Stahl, S.A. (1999). Vocabulary Development. Cambridge, MA.:
Brookline Books.

TOP

Preposition Problems Up With Which We Should Not Put
Angus Dunstan

I have been noticing a widespread misuse of prepositions in my students' writing lately. Sometimes the wrong preposition is used, sometimes a preposition is omitted, or sometimes a preposition is added where one does not belong. Given all the other things I might find troubling about my students' writing, their misuse of prepositions may seem trivial, but perhaps there is some virtue in looking more carefully at the phenomenon.

David Crystal's excellent Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language provides a clear explanation of prepositions. There we learn that prepositions express a relationship of meaning between two parts of a sentence, often between two noun phrases, usually a relation of space or time. The common prepositions consist of just one word such as about, down, for, from, in, of, on, through, to, under, and with. Some multi-word prepositions include: ahead of, instead of, as far as, by means of, and on behalf of. Prepositions combine with noun phrases to form prepositional phrases which modify nouns or verbs:

Over the river and through the woods
To grandmother's house we go.

1. It is one of the main factors to Fern's loss of innocence.
2. Her mother is increasingly troubled with her daughter's stories.
3. Perhaps we need an amendment of the Constitution.
4. Fern begins to shed away her childhood.
5. There is a type of power attained by land ownership.
6. It was a time of extreme prejudice from whites towards blacks.
7. The Logans take great pride and feel a connection and respect for their land.
8. The final straw is the murder of one Berry and the permanent disfiguring of another by the hands of the Wallaces.
9. I enjoyed the perspective in which the novel is told.
10. She works with students in her church.
11. The stories took place within thirty years from one another.
12. It is the greatest quality we can attempt to impart on our students.
13. She based her conjecture from reading Treasure Island.
14. The way I approach a reading is also typical for those who are not avid readers.
15. Someone's emotional attitude can often cloud an interpretation, possibly even disabling the reader to other viewpoints.
16. This could shed some understanding into what the poem might mean.
17. Over and over again, death permeates in this book.
18. I was unprepared for how difficult of an assignment this was.
19. The reader had a problem with knowing what really happened in the end of the story.
20. They must live off of humans to survive.
21. They provide insight on what it is like to be rejected.
22. Each child discovers the means in which to change.
23. She had an influence in the way I looked at literature.
24. This stands to a testament of the worth of the literature.
25. She confronts her fears against an all-encompassing power.
26. She was being honest to her feelings.
27. Mary first moves in with her uncle in Misslethwaite Manor.
28. A less sophisticated reader would have been baffled with this poem.
29. I admired his enthusiasm to discuss the text.
30. Characters from different lifestyles were portrayed in the story.

TOP

Vocabulary for Writing
Leif Fearn, Nancy Farnan, J. Kris Rodenberg
San Diego State University

First, there's the word. That's what the writers told us when we interviewed a score or more several years ago at the Southern California Writers' Conference. We sat with writer after writer, relative novices, experienced, avocational, and very well-paid writers. Among the interviews were two agents and one editor. We asked, What makes you write, What turns your writer's head, What do you think teachers should teach when they teach writing? We expected the writers might talk about the muse or felt need or creative spirit. They did, but they talked about something else more. Virtually to a person they talked about words.

The writers didn't talk about words as adjectives or verbs. A fair number may not have been able to find adjectives and verbs on a third grade worksheet. They didn't talk about particular words, although the Writers' Haven listserv carries regular threads about how best to use this or that word. The writers at the writers' conference talked about their appreciation of words. One put it directly. He said what drew him to writing, and what keeps him writing, is "falling in love with the word."

Like everyone else who reads from and writes for this journal, we teach writing. And just like everyone else who teaches writing, we grapple with our students' grappling over words. As writing teachers, our grappling is with two aspects of the word. First, but only because something has to be first, is word selection, variety, appropriate and interesting use. The second, though not less important, is spelling the word. Good writers have words to use, and they spell them correctly. This article is about words for writers to use. It's about vocabulary.

We're very good at teaching vocabulary in this profession. We know which words to teach, and we know how to teach them so when our students read a new passage, they don't get stuck on words they haven't seen before. We know the shortcomings of list-giving for dictionary homework, and we've adopted a variety of interesting instructional tools and procedural knowledge that not only help readers as they face new material, but also make them veritable trained killers on the SAT. We can flat-out teach vocabulary.

But we're brought up short later in the day when we collect what our students write. The writing is good or bad, facile or primitive, scintillating or flat, but just about all of it shares one striking characteristic. The student-writers who knew the vocabulary words well enough to read the passage we assigned didn't choose to use them when they wrote. It's an interesting realization for teachers. It seems that it almost doesn't matter how we teach vocabulary; students can get every one of our test questions right and still not use the words in writing.

It isn't that it doesn't matter at all how we teach vocabulary. In fact, we increase the appearance of vocabulary words in their writing as we commit more time to teaching vocabulary, implement a Word Wall, and use it every day. If we do interesting activities with the words, they're more likely to appear in students' writing; and if we demand their appearance, they're more likely to appear, though often in ways that tell us the writing would be better if they didn't try to write "verity" into a sentence about surfing.

It's an interesting puzzle that we've been pursuing for several of years (Fearn, L., Farnan, N., and Rodenberg, J.K., 2001; Fearn, L., Farnan, N., 2003). There are two reasons why the words we teach for reading don't appear when they write. The first reason rests in our own experience as readers and writers. Think a moment -- when you read down a line of text and run into a word you've not seen before, what do you need? No, context is a skill. The question is, what's missing, what does the reader need when confronted with a new word? Yes, meaning. We need to know what the new word means. We may search for the meaning, ask a neighbor, figure it from context, but we're looking for the meaning.

Now, change language performance. You're laying down a line of text. You come to midsentence in midparagraph, and stop, dead. You stammer aloud, snap your fingers, tap the border of the keyboard just below the space bar. You look around; you beat your right index finger in the air in a sort of rhythm. You're looking for something -- a word. It escapes you. It's the right word, and it's just a tad beyond reach. What's missing? What are you looking for? Yes, you're looking for the word. We may search the thesaurus, ask a friend, or consider revising the sentence so we don't need that word, but the focus is the word.

When we read, then, and face a new word, we need meaning. When we write, though, and we're searching about, we already know the meaning; now we need the word. Vocabulary is different for reading and writing. In reading, we have words and need meanings; in writing, we have meanings and need words. Mastery of meanings for words doesn't necessarily generalize to using words when we already have meanings (Kame'enui, E.F., Dixon, D.W., and Carnine, R.C., 1987). The distinction between needing words or needing meanings is one reason.

Here's the other reason. When we read, we have to recognize words and their connections to meanings. "Recognize" in that sentence not only serves as a verb; it is also a specialized term in the psychology of learning, specifically, memory. Recognition is a specific kind of memory. It's the kind of memory people use when they make connections. It's the kind of memory our students use when they associate what they've learned about word meanings to a passage that contains new words.

When they write, however, the memory demand is different. In writing, they have to recall words. "Recall" in that sentence also serves as a verb and is the term for a specialized kind of memory. Writing requires that students, and the rest of us, not merely make a connection; writing requires that we reproduce words that fit a meaning. Of the two kinds of memory, recognition and recall, the latter is far more demanding, and if words aren't learned with the thoroughness demanded of recall, they're like not to appear when students write (Baumann, J.F., Kame'enui, E.J., and Ash, G.E., 2003).

We're teaching recognition memory for reading, and it focuses on meaning. In writing, we have to teach recall memory that focuses on words. Our students aren't using the words we teach for reading, when they write, because the situation in which and for which we teach vocabulary, for reading, doesn't generalize to writing. That's the other learning psychology term in all this. The third sentence in this paragraph contains the word "situation." We know that the situation in which something is taught is fundamental to what is learned, and we call that "situated cognition" (Putnam and Borko, 2000).

So, we have a problem as writing teachers. It doesn't consume us as sentences, paragraphs, and apostrophes do, but it's something with which we struggle some. Our students don't become better writers because they use a lot of heavy-duty words. They'll become better writers because they use several kinds of sentences properly and on purpose and they organize them in a discernable order. But that question about vocabulary still gnaws.
We want our students to have authentic experiences with writing, and from conversation with writers it's clear that one aspect of authenticity is appreciation for the word.

There are theories that explain what we're up against. There's the distinction between receptive and productive language, reading and writing. There's the distinction between recognition and recall memory, and those are connected to receptive and productive language. And there is that business of situated cognition.

Looking for Answers through Basic Research
The theories are sound, and there appear to be definite implications for classroom practice. Classroom practice, in this case, means teaching vocabulary so words are accessible to students when they write. It means teaching vocabulary so students can do more than recognize the meanings of words when they read, but can recall words they need to express themselves effectively in writing, in other words, when they already have the meaning and need a word.
Educators have a professional obligation to do more than offer what appear to be interesting theories and good ideas. We have an obligation to establish a solid and evidentiary connection between theories and practice through the intervening and necessary processes of research. To that end, we approached the theory-research-practice connection by conducting basic research designed to explore the existence of two vocabulary systems, one for reading and one for writing. In the very early steps of basic research, the objective is to establish the existence of a phenomenon--in this case the existence of differential vocabulary needs for readers and writers. The purpose of basic research is to examine the validity of what we think we know, discard what is erroneous, and provide a foundation for subsequent work that will lead to a better understanding of the phenomenon.

With whom did we work?
School 1. We began this research in middle school classrooms because we work extensively in a large urban middle school (1500 students) where 100% of the students receive free or reduced-price meals, where 49% are English language learners, and where there is strong school-university collaboration with a major priority on the infusion of literacy instruction through the curriculum. Over the five years of this collaboration, teachers at the school site adopted various literacy strategies to use, when appropriate, in support of students' literacy development and content learning. Through participation in staff development, teachers began infusing vocabulary instruction to ensure students' content learning. They used strategies designed to highlight relationships between and among words and their definitions, such as vocabulary matrices, vocabulary continua, concept wheels, word maps, and others. When we asked a history teacher and an algebra teacher to work with us over a 10-week period in this research, they readily agreed. We called the approaches to vocabulary development that these teachers used alternative vocabulary instruction.

* * *

(These four examples of the alternative instruction should appear just about here)

Vocabulary Matrix, example (Fearn and Farnan, 2001)
sour sweet hard bland pungent salt soft crunch
potato
ice cream
lima bean
raspberry
tea
celery
sauerkraut
spaghetti
cilantro
cream cheese

Vocabulary Continua, example (Fearn and Farnan, 2001)

1 2 3 4 5
hot toasty warm chilly cold
_____ _____ _____ _____ _____
_____ _____ _____ _____ _____
_____ _____ _____ _____ _____

Concept Wheel, example (Ripley, et al., 1998-1999)

MICHAEL, SEE DOCUMENT TITLED "CONCEPT WHEEL" AND INCLUDE HERE. I DON'T KNOW HOW TO CUT AND PASTE IT INTO THIS NARRATIVE. BOID

Word Map. Example (Fearn and Farnan, 2001)

Word: This word reminds me of:

Synonym: Antonym:

Synonym: Antonym:

Write a sentence that shows the meaning of the word without using
the word.

Write a six-word sentence that contains the word in the fourth
position.

Write a sentence that contains an alternative form of the word.

* * *

School 2. It was important that we identify other teachers, who did not use alternative instruction and who would participate in the study. A history teacher and algebra teacher at another urban middle school readily agreed to participate. This school is similar to School 1, with 1400 students, 67% of whom receive free or reduce-priced meals and 53% of whom are English language learners. We asked these teachers to teach vocabulary as they normally would. When we asked them to describe their vocabulary instruction, we found that they worked differently from each other, but neither one used the strategies adopted in School 1. The algebra teacher used what we called traditional vocabulary instruction. We used this terminology because the instruction, which was embedded in daily mathematics instruction on learning to solve polynomials, focused primarily on matching words with their definitions. The history teacher used what we called enhanced traditional instruction, best described as providing students with many "looks" at word. In other words, this teacher offered students numerous opportunities to use vocabulary words--through a cloze procedure where students completed prewritten sentences with appropriate vocabulary, vocabulary Jeopardy, and drawing images to express word meanings.

What did we do?
We asked the four teachers to identify a unit they would be teaching for approximately 10 weeks. The mathematics teachers were both teaching algebra, and the history teachers were teaching curriculum in medieval history. We observed the teachers multiple times at work in their classrooms, which affirmed that each one employed the vocabulary methods they initially reported to us. At the end of the 10 weeks, we asked them to give students the following prompt:

I would like you to write as much as you can, as well as you can, about what you have learned in (subject) during the past 10 weeks. Use the language of (subject) to make your writing clear.

Student writings were then read "blind" by the three researchers. We read each student's paper independently and, with a highlighter, marked the content vocabulary they used in their writing. For example, when writing about medieval history, we highlighted words such as knight, feudalism, tithe. In mathematics, we highlighted words such as polynomial, dividend, divisor, remainder. Each teacher provided us with a list of words they thought could show up in students' writings, and we found many of those words, as well as others not on the teachers' lists.

What did we find?
We had a simple word count for each student's writing. We asked which instructional procedure promoted students' word learning to the extent that the content vocabulary was accessible to them when they wrote. Our hypothesis, given the theories that guided the work, was that the alternative vocabulary instruction (designed to emphasize relationships between and among words) would support students' recall of words for writing better than either the traditional (definitional) or enhanced traditional (focused on definitions with many exposures to the words) instruction.
We found that when we applied a simple two-way T-test to compare the means of the groups, there was a significant difference, at the .000 level, between traditional and alternative history, traditional and alternative mathematics, and traditional and enhanced traditional instruction. In other words, students who learned content vocabulary through traditional instruction seemed to have fewer words accessible to them for writing about content than did students who learned vocabulary through the alternatives and the enhanced traditional approaches.

What does this mean?
It appears that instruction makes a difference in writers' ability to access words for writing. We described the purpose of basic research earlier in the article. Given the nature of this type of research, we can say, tentatively, that this study seems to show a distinction between learning words for recognition and learning words for recall. These instructional processes seem to reveal that distinction. When relationships between words and their accompanying concepts are emphasized, when words are not merely learned thoroughly but conceptually, they appear to be more accessible for retrieval (as in the alternative vocabulary instruction approach) than when vocabulary is taught only for the purpose of tying definitions to words (as in the traditional approach). While the enhanced traditional teacher did not use the alternative approaches, this teacher gave students multiple exposures or "looks" at vocabulary and provided many opportunities to use the words in context throughout the study of medieval history.

Concluding Thoughts
Teachers at all grade levels often report that the words students learn for reading are not used by those students when they write. This portion of our larger study of "the word" in writing suggests that when teachers use alternative and enhanced traditional vocabulary instruction, a higher frequency of "taught" vocabulary words appears in students' writing. In other words, those words seem to be more accessible for students' recall, which is necessary for writing.
In addition, we may assume, on a cognitive basis, that students can recognize any vocabulary they can recall.

herefore, it is reasonable to assume that the data in this study apply to reading as well as writing. In other words, when we teach words for recall in writing, it is reasonable to think that students will also recognize the words when reading. We would argue that the arrow goes one way but not the other. Students who learn words for recall can also recognize them when reading; however, students who learn words for recognition in reading will not necessarily be able to access recall them for writing.

Because this is basic research, our conclusions can only be tentative. Nevertheless, the research does suggest that the time has come to look closely at the existence of two vocabulary development systems and consider the effect of those systems on students' vocabulary development.

References
Baumann, J.F., Kame'enui, E.J., and Ash, G.E. (2003). Research on vocabulary instruction: Voltaire redux. In J. Flood, D. Lapp,
J.R. Squire, J.M. Jensen (eds.), Handbook of research on
teaching the English language arts, 2nd edition (pp. 752-785). Mahwah, NJ:Lawrence Erlbaum.
Fearn, L. and Farnan, N. (2001). Interactions: Teaching writing and the language arts. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Fearn, L., Farnan, N., and Rodenberg, J.K. (2001). Vocabulary for
reading and vocabulary for writing: Examining the
difference. San Antonio: National Reading Conference.
Fearn, L. and Farnan, N. (2003). Writing-vocabulary instruction:
Figuring out the patterns. Sacramento: California State
University Reading Forum.
Kame'enui, E.F., Dixon, D.W., and Carnine, R.C. (1987). Issues in the
design of vocabulary instruction. In M.G. McKeon and M.E. Curtis (eds.), The nature of vocabulary acquisition (pp. 129- 145) Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Putnam, R.T. and Borko, H. (2000). What do new views of knowledge and thinking have to say about research on teacher learning?
Educational Researcher, 29, 4-15.
Rupley, W.H., Logan, J.W., and Nicols, W.D. (1998-1999).
Vocabulary instruction in a balanced reading program.
Reading Teacher, 52, 336-346.

TOP

Editor's column
Carol Jago, Editor

Alas, for many of our students the words present a problem. This issue of California English focuses on ways teachers can help students learn new words every day. Kevin Feldman, Kate Kinsella, Leif Fearn, and Nancy Farnan offer research into how students acquire new language and effective methods for learning to use newly acquired words. Alfee Enciso, Tom Carnicelli, and Davina Rubin suggest ways to embed word study into your classroom practice. Angus Dunstan provides insight into preposition errors and Richard Lederer advice on "digging down to the roots."

Sandra Stotsky, the author of Losing Our Language, contends that in response to demands for wider representation and easier-to-read texts in elementary school readers, publishers have eliminated much of the literature that once prepared students for the challenging academic and literary texts they face in high school and college. She sees vocabulary development as the key: "children's language development is the engine that drives intellectual growth, and the language of schooling is the engine that drives academic achievement. Thought and language interact at the level of the word."

Let's make sure California students have the words they need.

TOP