cultural diversity || enhancing children's vocabularies

Enhancing Children's VocabulariesAuthor(s): John FollmanSource: The Clearing House, Vol. 63, No. 7, Cultural Diversity (Mar., 1990), pp. 329-332Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30188512 .

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Enhancing Children's

Vocabularies

JOHN FOLLMAN

In an old study of pupils in grades 1 to 9, vocabulary correlated .91 with mental age (IQ) on the Stanford

Revision of the Binet-Simon IQ scale (Terman 1918). Miner (1957) found, across twenty-one studies, a median correlation of .83 between the vocabulary subtest score and the general intellectual functioning score. Thorndike (1973) found, across fifteen countries, that the average correlations between vocabulary and reading comprehension were .71 for ten-year-olds, .75 for fourteen-year-olds, and .66 for eighteen-year-olds.

The commonly accepted correlation between IQ and academic achievement is .70, with a median in the range of about .90 at Grade 1 to about .50 for college students. Vocabulary is central to IQ. Also, vocabulary knowledge correlates almost .50 with mathematics com- putation, slightly higher with mathematics problem solving, and higher with nearly all other academic subjects in the curriculum.

Thus it is clear that vocabulary is vital to IQ, to general intellectual functioning, to reading comprehension, to academic achievement in general, and to achievement in other subjects in the curriculum in par- ticular.

Dale, O'Rourke, and Bamman (1971) interjected a note of caution about the kind of vocabulary gains that might reasonably be expected. Conversely, they indi- cated that any motivated person can increase his or her working vocabulary 10 percent by concentrating on those words, parts of words, and expressions that are only partly known.

Surprisingly, the results of experimental efforts to enhance children's vocabularies have been equivocal at best (Royer 1983; McKeown, Beck, Omanson, and Po-

pie 1985). Improving reading comprehension through vocabulary instruction has also proved equivocal (Jen- kins and Dixon 1983; Graves 1986; Stahl 1986). Nagy (1988) noted that few people have had the intense, pro-

John Follman is a professor at the University of South Florida.

longed vocabulary instruction that would guarantee gains in reading comprehension and that after the third grade, reading may be the single largest source of vocabulary growth for children who read a reasonable amount.

The statistics concerning pupils' vocabulary growth per year are wildly inconsistent. Estimates of yearly word growth range from 600 to more than 5,000, but this growth apparently occurs without much direct instruction in school (Nagy, Herman, and Anderson 1985) because only about 200 of the words learned per year are taught (Miller and Gildea 1987). Schwartz (1988) surveyed the literature and concluded that students of ages 10 to 14 could acquire between 750 and 8,250 new words a year from incidental context. The average child learns up to 5,000 words yearly, about 12 to 13 each day, with probably only about 2 of the words per day at- tributable to direct teaching in school (Nagy et al. 1985; Nagy, Anderson, and Herman 1987). Miller and Gildea (1987) asserted that children learn 13 words per day, but no one teaches them that many.

We know the Stahl and Fairbanks (1986) meta-analysis of some fifty-two studies that vocabulary instruction can enhance reading comprehension; there was a strong effect size of .97.

In this article, I present an overview of the research literature on the efficacy of the main contemporary methods of enhancing elementary-level children's vocabulary, with the emphasis on their learning vocabulary avocationally.

Main Methods of Enhancing Vocabulary

Avocational

Avocational means that pupils learn vocabulary incidentally through reading material that interests them. Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, and Wilkinson (1985) reported that the amount of reading students do out of school consistently relates to increased reading achievement. The rationale for stressing avocational reading is

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330 The Clearing House March

the Miller and Gildea (1987) observation that pupils learn about 13 words per day but only about 2 in school. Outside of school, therefore, is potentially the most profitable area in which to attempt to enhance pupils' vocabulary. Nagy and Andersen (1984) estimated that middle-grade children might read between 100,000 words a year (for the least able but motivated) to as many as 1,000,000 (for the average, motivated child). Unfortunately, it is overly ambitious to imply that edu- cators know how to enhance pupils' interests or to improve their vocabulary development through their interests. However, one promising approach is to administer instruments that will identify pupils' interests and then provide relevant reading materials with a range of reading difficulty and have pupils read these materials di- rectly or indirectly through the Premack principle, which allows pupils to read materials of interest after completing class assignments.

Some classic sources of interesting, game-type, vocabulary-enhancing activities including anagrams, rid- dles, hidden words, cross-words and other puzzles, palindromes, and word games have been compiled (Platts, Marguerite, and Shumaker 1960; Russell and Karp 1963; The California Reading Association 1970; and Dale et al. 1970). Burns and Roe (1979) provided a wide array of reading activities for primary and inter- mediate levels. Johnson and Pearson (1984) include a chapter on vocabulary games; Graves (1987) has compiled 200 interesting reading activities for young readers; Criscuolo (1988) lists ten activities designed to motivate unmotivated readers; Hurst (1988) and Chil- dren's Literature Abstracts (1989, June) also have reading recommendations. Hobbies involving reading are also potentially useful.

Context

Context, which seems to be the preferred method of building children's vocabularies, will be treated as the operational approach to implementing children's learning vocabulary avocationally. Unfortunately the research indicates that the effects of context in enhancing children's vocabularies are both small and equivocal.

Nagy et al. (1985) demonstrated experimentally that eighth graders could make small, statistically reliable gains in word knowledge from context. They also ob- served that students encounter 30,000 words annually; then using the conservative probability estimate of only .05 that a student will learn an unknown word from context, they extrapolated that students could learn about 3,125 new words per year from context-a huge number.

Gipe (1978-79); Carnine, Kameenui, and Coyle (1984); Jenkins, Stein, and Wysocki (1984); Nagy et al. (1987); and Nagy (1988) offer mixed research results on increasing vocabulary from context.

Direct Instruction

Jenkins, Matlock, and Slocum (1988) determined experimentally that Specific Vocabulary Instruction, a vocabulary learning process of fifteen minutes per day, five days per week, produced learning of about 430 words over the 180 days. These 430 words were in addi- tion to words learned incidentally while reading, and represent about 15 percent of the vocabulary growth that occurs without explicit instruction. Using Deriving Meaning, a system to derive the meaning of unknown words, and assuming a low success rate of only .106, students could be expected to derive meanings of 3,180 new words from the estimated 30,000 unknown words encountered annually. Adding 3,180 Deriving Meaning instruction words and 430 Specific Vocabulary Instruc- tion words results in almost 4,000 new words learned per year-an impressive total.

The quintessential expression of direct instruction is the Direct Instruction Model (DISTAR) (Becker 1977), in which the teacher, in face-to-face instruction with small groups, uses carefully sequenced, daily lessons with modern learning principles such as drill, signals, and reinforcement. DISTAR produced the most achievement in "culturally disadvantaged" children of any of the models researched. Stahl and Fairbanks (1986) also found drill and practice to be effective.

Frequency

McKeown et al. (1985) demonstrated experimentally that high frequency (twelve) encounters with each word, were significantly more effective than low frequency (four) encounters on four dependent variables. Memo- rizing new words is a related vocabulary enhancement method that is often ineffective because learners are not actively involved in the learning.

Keyword

Sternberg (1987) asserted that the keyword method of teaching vocabulary may be the most effective method. The keyword method requires that the learner associate the word to be learned and an already familiar word that sounds like a salient part of the new word and then encode a meaningful image of the keyword and the definition of the new word (Pressley, Levin, Kuiper, Bryant, and Michener 1982). They found the keyword method to be superior to five other methods of enhancing vocabulary learning. In another study, three keyword instruction conditions, each representing a differ- ent degree of structure, were significantly superior to a control, nonkeyword condition in enhancing fifth-grade pupils vocabulary learning (McGivern and Levin 1983). However, not much research has been conducted on the keyword method.

Technology

Rice and Woodsmall (1988) demonstrated empirically that preschool children can be taught novel words



1990, Vol. 63 Children's Vocabularies 331

through television. Perhaps, if effective computer pro- grams are actually accomplished, television, especially interactive television, can actually enhance vocabulary instruction. Miller and Gildea (1987), after noting the importance of pupils' intrinsic motivation and the pres- ence of a human tutor, asserted that much of the tutor- ing task could be carried out by a suitably programmed computer.

Comprehensive

According to Jenkins and Dixon (1983) the "most systematic, long-term classroom investigation of vocabulary teaching" was carried out by Beck and colleagues (Beck, McCaslin, and McKeown, 1980). Tasks of definition, sentence-generation, classification, and oral- production; tasks capitalizing on already learned vocabulary; game-like tasks; and review were associated with superior performance on vocabulary measures. Beck, Perfetti, and McKeown (1982) discuss similar successful results with "disadvantaged" fourth graders. Wenglin- ski (1987) reports an example of the Beck comprehension approach conducted by a classroom teacher. He compared a Beck formal approach with that of Levine's vocabulary through Pleasurable Reading II; both ap- proaches produced results superior to that of a control group.

Writing Duin and Graves (1987) conducted a variant of the

approach of Beck and colleagues with seventh graders. They supplemented the activities with ones that empha- sized the use of new words in writing stories. The group using the intensive vocabulary plus the writing treat- ment and the one using the intensive vocabulary treat- ment both outperformed the traditional group.

Potpourri About twenty years ago, the St. Louis Vocabulary

Development Project taught 1,800 new words three times per week over ninety radio broadcasts (Draper and Moeller 1971). Generally, reading score gains were three to four months above expectation. Also, the sixth- grade IQ average was 100.1, the first time in many years that an entire St. Louis grade level equaled the national average.

Pany and Jenkins (1978) reported that effective ap- proaches in teaching word meanings included discussing unfamiliar word meanings prior to reading; working with a dictionary; using defined words in sentences; studying word parts; and using classroom experiences, visual aids, context clues, and a vocabulary development kit. In a recent research, Herman, Anderson, Pearson, and Nagy (1987) demonstrated that certain text features, including thorough explanation, enhanced incidental acquisition of vocabulary. Their treatments were too technical to be reported here; readers may want to consult their article for details.

Finally, having one, and preferably both parents-if possible-read to the child is strongly advocated, not only for vocabulary enhancement but possibly also for bonding and identification with the parent. There is a modest literature indicating that having an adult read to children enhances children's labeling (Ninio and Bruner 1978), vocabulary development (Mautte n.d.), early reading (Almy 1949; Durkin 1970, 1974-75), reading (Hewison 1988; Teale and Martinez 1988), and reading affect (Mautte n.d.). In one study, the actual amount of adult reading to prekindergarteners was eight minutes per day with mothers, and three minutes per day with fathers (Dunn 1981). Perhaps its relative novelty may be the secret of its success.

Recommendations

A balanced approach that emphasizes using context in intrinsically interesting, avocational activities with middle-class children and using direct instruction and frequency, as well as intrinsically interesting, avocational activities, with other children is recommended to enhance vocabularies. The Beck et al. comprehensive approach should also be considered for both groups. Computer technology offers some promise. Ultimately, the best hope for children resides in their learning vocabulary avocationally.

REFERENCES

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Beck, I. L., W.S. McCaslin, and M. G. McKeown. 1980. The rationale and design of a program to teach vocabulary to fourth-grade students. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, Learning Research and Development Center.

Beck, I. L., C. A. Perfetti, and M. G. McKeown 1982. Effects of long- term vocabulary instruction on lexical access and reading comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology 74: 406-21.

Becker, W. C. 1977. Teaching reading and language arts to the disadvantaged-What we have learned from field research. Harvard Educational Review 47: 518-43.

Burns, P. C., and B. D. Roe. 1979. Reading activities for today's elementary schools. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Carnine, D., E. J. Kameenui, and G. Coyle. 1984. Utilization of con- textual information in determining the meaning of unfamiliar words. Reading Research Quarterly 19: 188-204.

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332 The Clearing House March

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