Allen | Too Little or Too Much?

What Do We
KnowAllen
about Making Vocabulary Instruction Meaningful?
Janet
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Too Little or Too Much? What Do

We Know about Making Vocabulary
Instruction Meaningful?
[EDITORS NOTE: Janets column on vocabulary always, always, hit the mark. She pushed our thinking about words and about connecting kids to
words by presenting big ideas, and then she always grounded those ideas within the context of
the classroom. Though I could have asked Janet
to write a column on just about any topic around
adolescent literacy, I wanted her writing about
vocabulary and was so very pleased when she
agreed. Janet and I shared an hour of downtime at
the 2005 NCTE Conventionjust the two of us
sitting in a hotel lobby talking with no interruptionsand when we both stood to leave, I thought
that what Id most remember of that convention
was that hour with Janet. What a thrill to ask her
questions, to listen to her think through issues.
Thats what her column was for me each issuea
time to read her thinking about vocabulary. I must
offer many thanks to Janet for being a part of this
incredible team.]

Finally, it occurred to me that we probably dont

need something new in research or in practice;
rather, we need to put into place the research and
instructional strategies that have been highlighted
in professional literature during the past two decades and we need to document those practices
that are successful with our students. As Baumann,
Kameenui, and Ash cite in the Handbook of Research on the Teaching of English Language Arts, We
know too much to say we know too little, and we
know too little to say that we know enough. Indeed, language is difficult to put into words (2003,
p. 752).

What Do We Know?
In examining what we know about teaching vocabulary, we already know many things:
Those who know more words are better
readers.
Increasing the volume of reading helps
readers learn new words.

fter several years of writing The

Word Market column for this
journal, I wondered what I could
possibly say in the final issue of this
editorship that would frame vocabulary
instruction in some new, insightful way. I
reread my columns and revisited the
research that had informed my practice
during this past decade. I talked with
teachers in schools where I was doing
staff development. I looked back at my
own teaching journals.

We can only teach a small fraction of words

that adolescents need to know.
Knowing a word means more than knowing
a definition.
Word learning is often based on background
knowledge of the concept.
Words used in expressive vocabulary (speaking and writing) need to be known to a
greater degree than those encountered in
receptive vocabulary (listening and reading).
Instruction in definitions probably wont
increase comprehension of a passage containing the word.

Voices from the Middle, Volume 13 Number 4, May 2006

Copyright 2006 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.

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Learners need vocabulary instruction that is

generative so they are learning how to learn
new words they encounter during independent literacy experiences.

use these words as a beginning word bank for writing about the event.

With so many known areas available to us as educators, where do we begin to rethink instruction
that is consistent with what we know from research? For me, the beginning of all instruction is
increased volume and diversity of reading.
Increasing the amount of time we spend reading to and with our students and the amount of
time they spend reading independently will increase their receptive and expressive vocabularies.
Many researchers cite print exposure as an explanation for the differences in vocabulary growth
seen in children (Nagy & Anderson, 1984). I believe the key is not only in exposing students to
more print but also to increasingly richer language
experiences through text choice.

While Possible Sentences gives students the opportunity to work with words that are important
for a particular selection, academic vocabulary
(Coxhead, 2000) helps students with specific words
that might appear across content areas. Academic
vocabulary refers to those words that are commonly used in textbooks across content areas. So,
factor is a part of the academic vocabulary but polynomial isnt. Essay is; prepositional phrase isnt. Authority is; longitude isnt. Words like polynomial,
prepositional phrase, and longitude are content-specific words, and knowing their definitions helps
with the specific content of algebra, English, and
geography class. But those other wordsfactor,
essay, illustrateappear in textbooks across content areas.
Students who have a strong academic vocabulary have a head start on textbook reading. If the
assignment says, Write an essay that describes the
factors affecting Rainsfords decision, students

Meaningful Vocabulary Instruction

When students develop rich independent reading
lives and that is combined with thoughtful, purposeful instruction, students vocabularies increase
exponentially. What follows are three types of
practices that illustrate meaningful vocabulary instruction.

Predicting Content
This vocabulary instruction can occur prior to
reading as a way to anticipate and predict content, as a way to support comprehension across
content areas, and/or as a means of assessment.
One such strategy that I have used many times is
Moore and Moores Possible Sentences (1986). In
this strategy, you give students a short list of words
from a text they will soon read. Students work in
groups to develop possible sentences that show
how these words might be used in writing about
this event. During and/or after the reading, students can return to their earlier sentences and revise them so they accurately reflect the information
heard in the reading. In this way, the vocabulary
words have supported students both before and
during reading. Following the reading, they can

Understanding across Content Areas

TO LEARN MORE: VOCABULARY

Allen, Virginia French. 1983. Techniques in Teaching Vocabulary.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Baumann, James, & Kameenui, Edward (Eds.). 2003. Vocabulary
Instruction: Research to Practice (Solving Problems in Teaching
of Literacy). New York: Guildford.
Blachowicz, Camille, & Fisher, Peter. 2002. Teaching Vocabulary in
All Classrooms (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson
Education.
Johnson, Dale, & Pearson, P. David. 1984. Teaching Reading
Vocabulary (2nd ed.). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Nagy, William. 1988. Teaching Vocabulary to Improve Reading
Comprehension. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of
English/Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
Ohanian, Susan. 2002. The Great Word Catalogue: Fundamental
Activities for Building Vocabulary. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

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who understand what an essay is and know what

factors are jump right into the assignment. But
students who dont know those words cant get to
the point of the assignment because they lack the
academic vocabulary to do the assignment.
One list of academic vocabulary (Coxhead,
2000) can be accessed at http://language.massey.
ac.nz/staff/awl/sublists.shtml. The point is not to
simply distribute the list and have students memorize definitions, but instead to consider the list and
decide which words are a part of the academic vocabulary of your school and then make sure your
studentsespecially second language learners
know what these words mean. This is more easily
accomplished if all the content teachers in your
school have helped decide which words are critical for which grade level. When students hear all
their teachers using the words and see common
definitions and examples for these words, they more
quickly add them to their own word knowledge.

Assessing Understanding
Finally, I think vocabulary words can be used as a
rich source of assessment. In Figure 1, Concept
Circles Assessment, students are given concept
circles at the end of a section of reading. These
concept circles were created as an assessment tool
for pages 124183 of Dating Hamlet: Ophelias
Story. In the two circles here, Ive included words
or phrases from these pages and asked students to
describe what these words mean in relation to the
text they have read. Implied in the assignment is
that students would demonstrate their comprehension of the text by discussing events, characters,
motivations, and literary elements. I also ask them
to articulate why they think these four words/
phrases fit together in the concept circle. At times
when I use these, I leave one of the quadrants
empty and ask students to put a word in that would
fit with the other three words/phrases.
An additional tool that I use assesses word
knowledge at a level beyond the definitional level.
It is often easier to create assessment and evaluation through matching words and definitions, but
the research is clear that definitional knowledge
is insufficient to support comprehension. In trying to move away from matching words and definitions, I created a series of word questioning
prompts.
How are _____________, _____________,

_____________, and ____________ related?

What possible connection could there be

between _________ and_______________?

What is the relationship between

____________ and _______________?

(Choose seemingly unrelated items for this.)
How are __________, ________________,

________________, and ____________ all

related to __________________?
If I discovered ________________, why

wouldnt I be in _____________?

Figure 1. Concept Circles Assessment

These question templates can be used by simply

inserting new words for different texts and/or
units. The possibilities for response are endless,

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but students have to justify the relationships between and among words, which indicates both
higher level thinking and a deeper understanding
of the words/concepts.
The possibilities for energizing our vocabulary instruction and assessment are endless. The
rich resources provided in professional books and
the textbooks you probably have at your school
can be adapted to fit a variety of texts and meet
diverse instructional purposes. I find that students
enjoy the unexpected when the instruction is varied in this way. As one student at the middle school
where I work in California said, We do words at
the beginning of class every day. Its like I always
know were going to get something new!

What? Nothing New?

So, in this final installment of The Word Market,
I offer you nothing new except a reminder to use
the resources that skillful educators have provided
us. Use them; make them your own; write your
own stories of success in teaching vocabulary in
your classroom. My closing Word Market words
come from Stahls (1999) Vocabulary Development:
From Reading Research to Practice:
Our knowledge of words determines how we understand texts, define ourselves for others, and define the
way we see the world. A richer vocabulary does not
just mean that we know more words, but that we have
more complex and exact ways of talking about the
world, and of understanding the ways that more complex thinkers see the world. (p. 1)

What a rich gift we give our students when we

choose meaningful vocabulary instruction in all
our classrooms! It has been a joy to share words
with you as we have explored new ways to make
words come alive for our students. It is my hope
that a natural extension of the words we have
shared, the words your students have learned, and
the new ways of teaching you have discovered
would be the sharing of your words with others.
As always, teachers continue to be the best resources for other teachers.

References
Baumann, J. F., Kameenui, E. J., & 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 ed., pp. 752785). Mahwah,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL
Quarterly, 34(2), 218238.
Moore, D. W., & Moore, S. A. (1986). Possible
sentences. In E. K. Dishner, T. W. Bean, J. E.
Readence, & D. W. Moore (Eds.), Reading in the
content areas (2nd ed., pp. 174179). Dubuque,
IA: Kendall/Hunt.
Nagy, W. E., & Anderson, R. C. (1984). How many
words are there in printed school English? Reading
Research Quarterly, 19, 303330.
Stahl, S. A. (1999). Vocabulary development: From
reading research to practice. Newton Upper Falls,
MA: Brookline.

Janet Allen was a reading/English teacher for 20 years and currently speaks throughout the nation
on literacy issues. She can be reached at jallen3219@aol.com

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