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Words, words, words- they are everywhere!  Often people's intelligence is judged by the vocabularies they have and the words they use, sometimes correctly and sometimes not. Nonetheless, there is no way of getting around the fact that words are used as a vehicle to learn and communicate.  Learning new words is an integral part of school, starting at preschool and going all the way through college and beyond.  Not knowing the meaning of words or how to learn new words can make the school experience very difficult.  Often we take for granted the various strategies we use to learn new words.  Some of these strategies are second nature for us but not always so obvious for all learners.  However, with a little bit of instruction and practice, vocabulary strategies can be taught. Students can apply strategies to any number of subjects, from actually learning their vocabulary words in Language Arts classes to learning what words mean in Science (viscosity), Social Studies (impeach), Math (variable), Art (perspective), etc.  The key to developing an impressive repertoire is by becoming an intentional word learner and flexibly using a variety of strategies.

Research tells us that children learn vocabulary in two ways: incidental learning and direct instruction. Incidental learning includes learning vocabulary words in a more natural way (in context) by wide reading and classroom discussion, family conversation, etc. where students are exposed to those same words  several times.  Some estimates of the number of words that students know varies from 2,500 to 26,000 words in the vocabularies of typical first grade students and from 19,000 to 200,000 words for college student's vocabularies. Currently, there is consensus among researchers that students add approximately 2,000 to 3,500 distinct words yearly to their vocabularies (Anderson & Nagy, 1992; Anglin, 1993; Beck & McKeown, 1991; White et al., 1990). Often times, students a re taug ht strategies to facilitate learning vocabulary during independent reading.  Such strategies may include predicting the me aning based on context, sounding out words to see if they match a word in their speaking vocabulary, and analyzing the structure of the word based on prefix, suffix, root, or stem knowledge. These days, with technology at our fingertips, it is easy to ask Siri or Google what a word means, but honestly, one of the hardest things for students to do is to STOP when they do  not know a word and try to do something about it! Incidental word learning, believe or not, is how we increase our vocabulary the most. Obviously, teachers cannot directly teach 3,500 words a year, or your children would be learning over 90 vocabulary words a week (and you thought they have a lot of homework now). Some estimates say that if students are intentional word learners and read just 20 minutes every day they will be on track for their grade level when vocabulary skills are assessed.

When it comes to direct instruction, there are a vast number of available vocabulary strategies. The language arts curriculum seems to encompass teaching many parts of speech and includes more adjectives, adverbs, and verbs, as well as nouns. However, most vocabulary words in expository texts are nouns. A simple formula for definitions of nouns, first proposed by Aristotle, is a tried and true method that has stood the test of time. Simply find what group (category) the word belongs to and then tell how it is distinguished from other members in that group or category. When defining an everyday word- a banana is a fruit that is yellow, long, slightly curved in shape, and grown in bunches; or a science term- chlorofluorocarbons are gases that contain chlorine and fluorine and are thought to be responsible for the decrease in the ozone layer, the formula is the same. Putting the word into its category helps you file it away in your mind in an organized manner. Moreover, when you try to recall and give a definition, it helps to access this category first to use clear and concise word choice.  When defining nonspecific people or occupations, you can follow the same formula, i.e.) a nomad is a person who moves from place to place, a navigator is a person who steers or directs the course of a ship or plane.  For individual people, you can state their job first and then say how they are related to whatever topic you are learning about (chapter titles or headings are good references)-  Robert E. Lee was the commander of the Confederate Army during the Civil War; Alfred Wegner was a scientist who formulated the theory of continental drift.  More importantly, you have to connect the new word with something you already know about. This is referred to as accessing prior or background knowledge, whereby you are associating the new with the known. If you can relate an archeologist's job to a time when you were digging in the sand searching for something, or even to Indiana Jones, you are making a connection that lasts just by connecting to what you already know.

Being successful in school is not always a matter of what you know, but how you express what you know, along with your ability to learn and integrate new knowledge. With a little practice, anyone can master the skill of learning and giving the meanings of words, using clear and precise language.