Building vocabulary one word at a time

Yes, speaking is one of the key factors in improving a language. However, before you are able to speak, you must first build a strong vocabulary base. Words are the building blocks of any language, and the quality of your vocabulary reflects on your speech as a whole.

There are basic words that you will need in order to be understood in any language — survival words that are simple and repeated frequently. But, once you have mastered these, you will want to polish your speech and sprinkle it with a few ‘’fancy’’ words in order to take your conversations to the next level.

Some people don’t bother learning new words because they do not want to seem obnoxious or presumptuous. However, if you play your fancy words right, you will come across not as a ‘’snob,’’ but rather as an eloquent individual.

Here are a few tips (and links) to help you take your vocab to the next level.

1. Read. A lot. In my experience, this is the best way to enhance your vocabulary. It is also a bit of a time-consuming activity, which makes it the least popular with learners. Reading is a great method to learn new words because you learn from context. This makes memorization easier, because the next time you need to recall a word, you can easily retrieve it from the context you found it in.

Try to read a little bit of everything. Read academic books, the news and non-fiction in order to learn technical terms or specific jargon. Also, read newspapers, magazines and even blogs. You want your vocabulary to be sophisticated but you also want to keep up with any slang that the “cool” kids are using these days!

2. Read music lyrics and TV show scripts. No, this is not a typo. If books are not your cup of tea, then try reading some lyrics. The good thing about music is that you can listen while you read, sing along and memorize songs. The only problem is that music often uses simple words, so this method might only be helpful for beginners. Also, be careful, because songs are often poetic and they are not necessarily logical nor grammatically correct. You can also try reading your favorite TV show’s transcripts online.

3. Flashcards. This is a very popular way to build vocabulary. It is easy and convenient because you can carry your cards with you and review them anytime, anywhere! There are also some online flashcard apps such as Anki; they are equally effective and they save paper.

4. Use them or lose them! This should go without saying, and you should make it a habit to use your newly-discovered words as soon and as often as possible. Some words, such as phrasal verbs, have more than one meaning. Using them often will give you the opportunity to explore all of the possibilities. If you learn new words but never make the intentional effort to use them, there’s a good chance you won’t remember them a month later.

5. Make it fun. This is the most important rule because none of the previous techniques will help you if you don’t like what you are doing. Here are some ideas for making the best of your vocabulary-learning experience.

Label it: Use sticky notes to label everything around the house.

I spy: As you walk down the street, try to think in your target language. Name everything you see and if there is something you can’t name, make a note to learn it later or look it up on your dictionary or smartphone.

Duolingo: Here’s a super-cute and super-helpful application that will greatly contribute to your vocabulary, in a variety of languages, whether you are a beginner or an advanced student.

Use learning sites that target vocabulary enhancement: There are many useful sites that feature comprehensive lists of vocabulary, sorted by theme and category. LearningChocolate is great for English learners and Conjuguemos is fun for those learning romance languages and German.

Play Scrabble, Words with Friends and do crossword puzzles: You’ll learn while you have fun.

Use online vocabulary-quiz generators: Freerice is a very fun and useful site that can help you learn synonyms for the words you already know, and more.

Translate it: If you are ever bored waiting for your next class, at the doctor’s office or at the bus stop, you can open up your favorite online translator and just start translating any and all words that come to mind.

Word of the day: You can set yourself the task to learn a random word from your dictionary every day by subscribing to WOD, or by using any online dictionary site.

Analyze it: When you learn a new word, don’t just see it, analyze it. Look up the meaning and explore all the features of online dictionaries. Look at its synonyms, antonyms and how it is used in a sentence.

And of course, you can always just sit down and read a bit of the dictionary. Seriously!

You can use all or some of the above methods to learn new words. Just remember to have fun and be prepared to use common words in case the person you’re talking to doesn’t share your passion for vocabulary. Be concise and humble. No one likes the guy that uses four synonyms in the same sentence just to prove that he has read the dictionary. Don’t be that person! Good luck!

Hero Image (Learning) by Alison Christine (CC BY NC 2.0)

Language philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once wrote, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”

Wittgenstein knew that his world was limited to the words he could use to describe it. This has been borne out through more methodical tests, like those performed by Johnson O’Conner. For over two decades he performed a variety of experiments to establish what factors turn a person into a success. The one factor that Johnson found to predict success, taking other variables into account, was vocabulary size. The larger the vocabulary, the better chances that the person would find their way into the C-Suite. The earlier children begin building vocabulary, the better their chances are for success in life.

Children start to understand words at 12-18 months, absorbing everything they hear. As they get older, they benefit from having their vocabulary expanded with more complicated words. By the time they are ready to start preschool and kindergarten, their vocabulary is advanced enough that they need to have discussions that improve their word knowledge. Kindergarten is the time when vocabulary differences become evident. A child from an affluent family will understand nearly twice the words that a child from a poor family. This is a gap that, if left unchecked, affects student learning.

Fortunately, many strategies are available to close that gap.

• Teach children words directly. Vocabulary lists belong in the classroom. Teaching students five to ten words a week, especially ones that are related to other lessons, vastly improves student vocabulary. This helps them build their language skills over time, up to 6,000 more words through graduation.
• Teach children words indirectly. Vocabulary lists help expose students to new words. Lists give a child a decent cushion, but they need more than that to succeed in higher education. Expand vocabulary to all lessons by using words with similar meanings through the day.
• Use words in context to make them interesting. Teaching vocabulary without context makes it difficult to understand their meaning. Putting vocabulary list words into sentences and other lessons provide examples to students how the word is used. This technique is another way to build their confidence in the words they are using.
• Repeat words over and over. Students require hearing the word over and over, up to fifteen times before they become comfortable using them. With all of the repetition of certain words during the day, their vocabulary will grow without them even knowing it.
• Encourage use of new vocabulary. Have students draw pictures of the new words. Play a game using the words as answers to questions. Activities that make students more comfortable with the vocabulary that is taught improves the chances they absorb and use those words.

These small but necessary steps build a foundation for reading. The more words a student has in their possession, the easier it is for them to grasp new concepts in class. Building vocabulary encourages them to explore new concepts, opening them up to new ideas, that expose them to new words. A virtuous learning circle develops, giving every student a chance at success through high school graduation and beyond.

Parents are invested in insuring the best outcome possible for their child who has an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This article puts a different spin on parent opportunity to help one’s child build his/her vocabulary. It is focused on awareness of a particular way of viewing vocabulary and contains suggestions for some targeted teaching during reading aloud activities. It involves building on information commonly known within the educational community.

Background

The National Reading Panel (NRP) report in 2000 made many recommendations for educators about important components of reading. Good vocabulary development was one area identified as important for reading comprehension. In later elementary school and beyond, mature readers learn new word meanings as they encounter the words in print. Typically, younger children DO NOT learn the meaning of early reading words as they learn to read them. Instead, these new reader’s draw upon their already established repertoire of receptive spoken vocabulary words for the meaning. So, for example, when a first grade child learns to read the word “dog,” he usually already has a mental concept of what constitutes the category of “dog-ness.” Teachers assume that young students have an underlying competency with specific basic words but they recognize the need to teach the meaning of others. Which “others” to teach, is an important question. Since the NRP report, school systems have incorporated various approaches to address vocabulary enhancement. One of the concepts in the vocabulary field is the classification of vocabulary into three tiers; this concept has particular importance for individuals with ASD. The three tiers are defined in the following manner:

• Tier 1. These basic common words usually have a physical concrete referent and are the easiest to teach with regard to meaning. These are often the words teachers assume that children already know. Educators, however, may teach examples of multiple meaning for these words, idioms, and high frequency everyday expressions. Examples of Tier 1 words include “school,” “block,” “boy,” “walk” or common expressions such as “make up your mind.”
• Tier 2. These high frequency words contribute to the richness of books and conversation and are sometimes described as utility words. There is usually a lack of explicit instruction for many of these words, unless there is a demonstrated need for such. These words are less concrete but students have often acquired the meaning of many through exposure during daily living activities. Examples of Tier 2 words include “simple,” “because,” “for instance,” “estimate,” “plot” and “country.” Mastery of Tier 2 words is important for the comprehension of text books and daily reading material. There are too many words in this class for teachers to teach all the vocabulary words that might constitute Tier 2, so they must be selective. Tier 2 is sometimes called the level of the mature language user; this does not mean only adults users but individuals who have moved beyond basic simple sentences and basic concrete vocabulary.
• Tier 3. These are low frequency words that are found in content books about specific subjects. These are words that children may not encounter until the upper grades. These words need to be consciously learned and/or taught directly since they are not common in ordinary communication or media exchanges. Examples of Tier 3 words include: “isotope,” “phylum,” “Impressionism,” and “Renaissance Period.”

Teachers will vary in whether they choose to teach a lot of vocabulary, usually Tier 2, with traditional drill/dictionary work or to teach a smaller number of words while insuring depth and breadth of word meaning. A parent may wish to be familiar with his/her child’s teachers approach and reinforce the vocabulary being learned.

Implications for Parents of Children with ASD

Understanding Tier 2 becomes important for parents of even preschool children. If one looks at children’s books in the bookstores or at the library, many contain words that do not represent simple concepts. For example, on the site www.storylineonline.net if one views/listens to a pre-school/early elementary school book entitled Sebastian’s Roller Skates, one will encounter many Tier 2 words just in this singular book. The lists includes, “shy, blush, geography, tropical islands, billiard ball, regret, capital of Iceland, heart broken, concentrate, imagine, glide, repair, balance, Sahara Desert, and Mount Everest.” This list illustrates three points: the abundance of Tier 2 words, their frequency, and the futility of trying to directly teach every word. Some words will need to be taught on an-as-needed basis if they have not been learned incidentally. There are no lists of everything that might be classified as Tier 2; much depends on the circumstances.

A parent will want to be aware of the concept of Tier 2 words because of the frequency of their usage, their importance for reading comprehension, but also because of what parents know about their child’s disability of ASD. There has to be concern that children with ASD as a group will have more difficulty with Tier 2 words because they have language learning problems and may:

• Not have an interest in the conversation and dialogue that occurs around them—the source for incidental learning of some vocabulary for other children
• Only attend to key words in the utterances of others and miss the gist of the message
• Not ask about the meaning of words
• Deduct a wrong interpretation of meaning
• Have a shallow or restricted interpretation of meaning
• Have strength in Tier 1 words because the referents are more concrete
• Have delayed development in acquisition of Tier 1; may or may not have caught up to peers
• Require more direct teaching of Tier 1 vocabulary than typical peers
• Decode print words or repeat words but may have little understanding of the meaning

A parent can be in a better position to help his/her child in the vocabulary area if he/she has more awareness of exemplars of the tiers. One source of high frequency words that is age sensitive are the suggested vocabulary lists for augmentative communication users. Four lists are available: PreSchool Nondisabled Children Vocabulary, Vocabulary List for Augmented Infant/toddlers-Elementary, Vocabulary Lists: Young Adults (typical conversation and written communication vs. augmented conversation), and 20-30 Year Old Nondisabled Adult Vocabulary. These can be accessed at http://aac.unl.edu. Of course, the older the individuals in the sample, the more the lists will include Tier 2 and Tier 3 words. For the younger children, the lists will contain a significant portion of Tier 1 words. Tiers are not identified in the lists so one will need to use the descriptions presented earlier to informally classify words into tiers.

There is no specific list of Tier 3 words either but one can gather ideas from various sources. Tier 3 is for special interests and not just academics. For the parents of an upper elementary aged to secondary level aged child, an interesting site to explore is http://www.vocabulary.com/dir-wordlist-word_list-alphabetic. This directory leads to extensive vocabulary lists on many topics ranging from baseball to bees to geology. This might be a source for Tier 2 as well as Tier 3 within special topics. For baseball, for example, the list includes “league,” “loyalty,” and “superstition” which might represent Tier 2 while “ERA,” “ground out,” and “triple play” may be Tier 3 vocabulary that is only of interest to someone who enjoys watching/playing baseball. It is easy to under or over-estimate your child’s familiarity with common vocabulary which is why these lists may be helpful.

As mentioned earlier, there is no specific site to Tier 2 words. A selective list, however, called a high-incidence academic word list with 570 words is available from: http://notebook.lausd.net/pls/ptl/docs/page/ca_lausd/fldr_organizations/fldr_instructional_svcs/instructionalsupport services/language_acq_home/lang_acq_pro_dev/handout4_academic_word_list.pdf or Google “A High-Incidence Academic Word List” + “Kinsella” to retrieve the list. Kansella states that this list represents “…a very important vocabulary for learners intending to pursue academic studies in English at the secondary and post-secondary levels.” Parents should not feel that they personally have to teach all of these words. Rather, the purpose of this article is to raise awareness and to offer sources of information so tiers might be recognized and teaching done selectively as the opportunity arises. It must be remembered that it is important to distinguish between recognizing a word versus knowing the meaning. Reading skills usually lag behind the ability to recognize heard words during the early elementary years. Heard word knowledge, however, is the foundation for reading. Everyone may receptively know more word meanings than words they could define or would use in their daily vocabulary.

Building Vocabulary While Reading Aloud

Although one may use words of various tiers in oral conversation, a book reading activity by Mom or Dad might still represent the best structured and motivating context for teaching a few Tier 2 words per month (assuming the child has a reasonable command of Tier 1 words). If possible, a parent will want to read through a book or chapter ahead of time, identify potential Tier 2 words, and then select one to three targets. If it is a book that will be read repeatedly, then it is easy to build more recognition or to shift to other choices after the first few seem acquired by the child. Of course, generalization to other situations is crucial or the meaning may become restricted to the situation in the book. Each parent will need to find what works best for his/her child and his/her own comfort level with “teaching” a few vocabulary words that are not as concrete as Tier 1. The child’s teacher may have useful suggestions that may help the process. The school speech language pathologist may have administered a test that can give school staff and family a picture of how the child stands relative to other children of the same age from a tiered vocabulary perspective. (The assessment is called the MAVA or Montgomery Assessment of Vocabulary Acquisition; it is targeted for ages 3 through 12).

Teachers will use a technique to evaluate prior knowledge about words that might occur in an upcoming chapter, unit of study, or a book to be read (Beck, McKeown, and Kucan, 2002). Parents might also want to use this particular approach with their child to evaluate their knowledge of certain oral (or print) words. This approach will be more successful at home if the child is already familiar with it from school. It can be modified from recognition of a printed word to a question about an orally presented word (the print version applies if the child is reading; the oral word version, if the parent is reading).

A parent could keep the oral word version chart handy as a cue when reading aloud to his/her child. A parent would not want to check every Tier 2 word in a story because that would make story-time an unpleasant and lengthy experience but a few words might be checked out prior to reading or just automatically explained during the reading event. Parents do not want to become formal teachers and must use informal methods that fit a home lifestyle if they wish to add some vocabulary to their child’s repertoire. They may need to explain meaning or repeat the sentence by saying it in another way. It may be helpful to use the select target words in many situations and with some frequency over several days. Parents may wish to keep a log of what they are informally targeting and solicit the help of others in the generalization process. They will want to be sure to go back to review on a periodic basis (i.e., make an effort to use the vocabulary word again and again over time and/or re-read the book which was the original source of the instruction).

Research suggests that it is hard for readers to intuit meaning just from a context. Sentence and paragraphs contexts vary in terms of how many clues and information they provide that would lead a reader to a correct interpretation of an unfamiliar vocabulary word. If one only encounters a word rarely, it is less likely to become a useful component of one’s repertoire. That brings learning back to some direct instruction across the age levels. For young children, teachers are advised to select words that represent concepts understandable to the audience (i.e., the young child). Second, it is advisable to select words that can easily be explained to someone of a given age and language ability level. Third, it is important to select words that are useful and which the child is likely to encounter again with some frequency. With reference to the book Sebastian’s Roller Skates mentioned earlier, words like “concentration” and “balance” might fit these criteria for targeting with this book and in other daily living activities.

The primary guideline for teaching new vocabulary words is known by every educator and most parents (i.e., you help the child attach the new information to the old or familiar). So, with the example from Sebastian’s Roller Skates, one might help the child understand “balance” by tying it to concrete examples. One could ask the child to stand on one foot and try to not tip over (i.e., lose his balance). He could attempt to balance a book on his head. He could be reminded of the days when he was learning to ride his bike (i.e., if he lost his balance, he fell off the bike). Depending on the child’s age, one could introduce a broader meaning into the conceptual realm. For example, people balance a checkbook or their checking account on line. They balance sleep and work, work and fun, etc. Your child is much more likely to remember these associated examples than a dictionary definition. One could even give him/her some reward for using the target word(s) in his/her conversation during the week, if this is an age appropriate challenge.

Reading aloud to your child gives him/her an opportunity to hear/learn vocabulary that he/she may not be able to read on his/her own. The read aloud situation allows for an interactional exchange that will not occur when/he/she reads alone at his/her reading level. Building vocabulary is an important goal with life-long implications. Parents can help their child do this (i.e., build vocabulary one word at a time).

Resource

Vicker, B. (2009). Reading with your school-age child: Building vocabulary one word at a time. The Reporter 14(3), 11-14.

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