Most Vocabulary Programs Fail To Work. Here's Why.
By: Tom Donahue
What are the two main reasons almost all vocabulary programs fail to increase the rate at which students learn new words?
1. They start everyone at the same place (no-word difficulty list and no placement test)
2. They don't take the student through the material enough times to embed the information in their long term memory.
Research shows that children entering the first grade have large differences in their oral (pre-reading) vocabulary. In one study the top five percent of first graders had a working vocabulary of 7000 words. Children in the bottom 28 percent had an average vocabulary of 1500 words. These differences were not, on average, due to IQ (children in the bottom 28 percent learned new words just as quickly as those in the top five percent, once they started school) but to environment- how many hours did each child spend being read to or in conversation with adults?
For the most part schools are not aware of the vocabulary level of the incoming students. Since a pre-readers vocabulary can only be measured orally schools are not equipped to measure it. The problem is that if nothing is done to improve the vocabulary of a student that is behind they will continue to get farther and farther behind. Each year the material they will work with is going to be more difficult adding to their frustration and often time low self esteem. What is the solution? We must find out the vocabulary level and build a customized training path based on that information. The results will come very quickly as they improve their vocabulary. The challenge today is that current training methods are using a one size fits all approach. Most of the time students are being presented with word list where they already know a large part of it or even more frustrating is when they are presented with material that is way beyond their level. In the first scenario they won't be challenged and in the second scenario it will be so hard they will quit in frustration. Either way they aren't going to improve their vocabulary enough to matter.
So, what would a well designed vocabulary program look like? The bottom line is that the student must have enough repeat exposures in different formats for the word to become a part of the passive vocabulary. Which means they may not use the word in every day life but they would recognize the word. To be successful all of this must help the student know the words meaning, how to spell it as well as the proper pronunciation. That way when they are reading and they run across one of these words they will recognize it immediately and be able to continue a full speed.
Finally, learners must find the practice path enjoyable or they will never get enough repetitions to put the new words into long-term memory. Students must "fall in love with practice," in other words, if they are ever going to close the vocabulary-reading gap and catch up to their peers.
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