VOCABULARY “How does one learn the language of literature that is so different from everyday spoken language except by reading books?” —Professor Emerita Lilly Wong Fillmore, University of California at Berkeley
KEY FINDINGS
> > “On average, 90% of the words in a text are drawn from 2,500 complex word families (e.g., help, helping, helps, helped, helper , but not helpless or helpful) . The other 10% of the words in texts come from the remaining 300,000 (or more) words in the English language” (Hiebert, 2015). > > Developing the core vocabulary (i.e., the 2,500 complex word families) through voluminous reading (the best and most effective way to develop vocabulary)— together with instructional strategies that spotlight the core vocabulary—enables students to successfully tackle new and unique words they might encounter in text (Hiebert, 2016, 2019). > > The more children read, the more their vocabularies grow (Hiebert, 2019; Cunningham and Zibulsky, 2014; Kuhn et. al., 2006; Allington, 2012, 2009; Baumann, 2009). Conversely, reading comprehension is impacted by the depth and breadth of the reader’s vocabulary (Wong Fillmore, 2014). > > Incidental word learning accounts for a large percentage of all new words learned. Estimates are that each year children learn on average 3,000 words, only about 300 of which are explicitly taught to them in school (Krashen, 2011; Massaro, 2016; Beck and McKeown, 1991). > > Still, children benefit from both implicit and explicit instruction. For example, children are more likely to remember new words in a read-aloud when teachers offer a brief definition of the words before or during the read-aloud (Neuman and Taylor, 2013). > > Vocabulary, in particular, is very highly correlated with reading comprehension in the upper elementary years (Hiebert, 2019; Duke and Carlisle, 2011; Baumann, 2009; Wagner, Muse and Tannenbaum, 2007). What’s more, vocabulary demand is the feature of text complexity that is likely the greatest challenge (Nelson et al., 2012).
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VOCABULARY
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