Why does Vocabulary Matter - Voiceskills

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Why does Vocabulary Matter
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• A good vocabulary is an important building block
  for helping language learners to communicate
  effectively, but its also essential to school
  performance more widely. Research consistently
  finds that the extent of a childs vocabulary
  knowledge relates strongly to their overall
  academic success - a childs vocabulary when they
  are five years old can tell us how well they may
  do at school at 11.
• Vocabulary and spoken language in general, is a
  key foundation for literacy. If children who have
  just started learning to read know the words they
  are reading, they can more easily and quickly
  sound out, read, and understand them, as well as
  comprehend what theyre reading a solid
  vocabulary is the bridge between phonics and
  reading comprehension.

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Vocabulary in Context

• Teaching lists of words out of context can be a
  starting point for observation, and for
  conversations about language acquisition. But the
  emphasis for me should be on the use of
  vocabulary within the context of the entire
  language system. It cant sit in isolation.

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Perceptions of Vocabulary Learning are also
Contextually Driven

• Conversely, many of the children in the schools
  where I work come to school without what you
  might call book or academic language, or
  conversational language. But within their homes
  and communities, in their context, of course they
  have language! What these children might lack is
  the language, or the so-called cultural
  capital, to access what teachers expect in
  school. That simply means you have to teach it.

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Active Vocabulary

• When it is about teaching vocabulary, it is
  related to the acquisition of language. So we
  might begin exploring ideas of phoneme
  correspondence, and expecting children to
  recognize a word a task which is very difficult
  for them if they dont have the word in their
  active vocabulary. If its not in their active
  vocabulary they have less idea of how it might
  sound or where the emphasis or stress may come in
  the word it remains in effect a nonsense word,
  unless they have the skills to work out what it
  means in the context of the surrounding text.

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Measuring Vocabulary

• In the classroom, vocabulary is low-hanging
  fruit easy to grasp and observe, it provides a
  ready insight into some of the challenges that
  children can face as they learn. Yet while
  teachers have a sense of what vocabulary is,
  whether that is accurate or not is a really
  interesting question.
• As a matter of fact, standalone assessments that
  help a teacher look more closely at each
  different aspect of literacy learning, might help
  in enabling students acquire a wider range of
  vocabulary.

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• For example, we get children to spend 10 minutes
  with a paper and pencil and write down as many
  words as they know how to spell. Statistical data
  says that the number of correctly spelt words
  ranged from 3 to 118 over a group of around 200
  children.
• To understand what this tells us, we need to
  think about what the task requires. The children
  have to recall words they know how to spell it
  isnt the case that the child who only writes 8
  words doesnt know more just that they cant
  write them down.
• From the words that they do write, you can begin
  to establish whether they have semantic networks,
  i.e. do they write blue, yellow, red, or do they
  appear to choose words more randomly? This, in
  turn, will have a bearing on their writing
  ability.

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Understanding Assessment

• We need to be aware of what assessments can show
  us, and what they cant. It is often assumed, for
  instance, that the phonics screening check
  measures reading. But it doesnt measure reading
  it measures one aspect of reading.
• There are a lot of reading assessments that are
  used all the way through school, to form the
  basis of judgments about childrens attainment.
  But we need to think critically what do these
  assessments test? What does each really measure?
  Is the assessment a proxy, and if so, is it an
  appropriate proxy for what we actually want?

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Thank You

• Voice Training and Research Institute
• No.135, First Main Road, K.K Nagar, Madurai-
  625020.
• E-mail support_at_voiceskills.org
• Ph no 91- 95970 82692 / 95970 84540Web
  https//voiceskills.org/