Vocabulary

Literacy Development and Vocabulary Instruction

Introduction

• Introduction to Hollis Scarborough’s Reading Rope (2001)

• Importance of vocabulary in reading comprehension and written expression

National Reading Panel (NRP) Findings

• NRP’s report on the five essential pillars of reading instruction (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000)

• Vocabulary instruction recognized as an essential pillar

Measuring Vocabulary Skills

• Assessment via language samples

  • Word length (single vs multisyllabic)

  • Complexity (sentence types, use of negatives, wh questions)

  • Lexical variety (total words used vs unique words used)

  • Frequency of use (low vs high-frequency words)

Approaches to Vocabulary Instruction

1. Direct Instruction

• Definition provided directly or through resources (dictionaries, peers, adults)

2. Contextual Abstraction

• Use of contextual clues from surrounding sentences to infer meaning

  • Five types of context clues:

    • Definition Clues

    • Example Clues

    • Inference Clues

    • Synonym Clues

    • Antonym Clues

3. Morphological Analysis

• Understanding affixes (prefixes and suffixes) to derive meanings

  • Common prefixes: re-, un-

  • Common suffixes: -able, -er, -ful

Vocabulary Growth Statistics

• High school graduates learn approximately 40,000 words, averaging 5-8 new words per day (Nagy & Scott, 2000; Nippold, 2007)

• Realistic teaching approach emphasizes contextual abstraction and morphological analysis over direct instruction.