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Purpose: This clinical focus article will highlight the importance of vocabulary instruction, in particular, thinking about instruction in terms of focusing students' attention on words and their uses. Vocabulary knowledge that supports literacy and academic learning is extensive and multidimensional. Many learners accumulate high-quality vocabulary knowledge independently, through wide reading and rich language environments that provide abundant practice with words and language forms. However, instruction in vocabulary provides a more efficient way of getting that job done, especially for learners who are less likely to be experiencing rich language interactions, for example, because they struggle with reading and do little of it on their own.
Method: Three aspects of vocabulary instruction, choosing words to teach, the inclusion of morphological information, and the importance of engaging students in interactions around words, will be explored. Considerations in choosing words include their role in the language and their utility to students. Morphology will be discussed in terms of using Latin roots in instruction as a resource for unlocking new word meanings and a framework for understanding language.
Conclusion: Effective instruction means bringing students' attention to words in ways that promote not just knowing word meanings but also understanding how words work and how to utilize word knowledge effectively.
How many words do you know? You deal with an abundance of words every day, comfortably and fluently. You are breezing along in this text right now with hardly a thought to what you know about each word. However, you have no idea, no way of knowing, just how many words you know. So many words are available to us to process with ease, yet an accounting of those words is beyond our reach. This illustrates why it is hard to get a handle on the role and importance of vocabulary learning. Just as the extent and depth of one's knowledge remains elusive, it is hard to understand the extent and depth of knowledge that needs to be acquired by students for them to experience literacy and academic success. Learning-and teaching-vocabulary is a bit of a stealthy process.
The most obvious aspect of a word's meaning is its definition. However, knowing a definition is by no means the essence of word knowledge. A rich variety of information is needed...