Eight Characteristics of Effective Vocabulary Instruction

Characteristic 1: Effective vocabulary instruction does not rely on definitions

• Research supports why dictionary definitions are not effective instructional devices:
descriptions of words should be used, not definitions.
• Descriptions of words use “everyday language.”

Characteristic 2: Students must represent their knowledge of words in linguistic

and nonlinguistic ways.
• Linguistic (language-based) and nonlinguistic (imagery-based) representations are
utilized to anchor information into permanent memory. When both are used, it is
referred to it as “dual coding theory” (DCT).
• Statistics show that nonlinguistic techniques increase students’ acquisition of new
terms by a significant margin—37 percentile points higher than those techniques that
allow students to simply review definitions. Also, when students paired linguistic and
nonlinguistic techniques, they achieved a 21 percentile point increase compared to
students who only generated sentences (linguistic representations) from the
vocabulary terms.
• Students should be encouraged to create a mental picture of the new words or even
act them out. They can use graphic representations pictures and pictographs.

Characteristic 3: Effective vocabulary instruction involves the gradual shaping of

word meaning through multiple exposures.
• Knowledge of a term deepens over time if a student encounters the term multiple
times. During each encounter, students revise/add to their understanding of the term.
• Information about the term should be represented in both linguistic and nonlinguistic
ways.
• Engaging students in activities involving similarities and differences are highly useful
exercises (comparing, classifying, creating metaphors, and creating analogies).

Characteristic 4: Teaching word parts enhance students’ understanding of terms.

• Teaching of roots and affixes has traditionally been a part of regular vocabulary
instruction.
• The logic behind this instructional activity is that knowledge of roots and affixes
enables students to determine the meaning of unknown words.

Characteristic 5: Different types of words require different types of instruction.

• The 2 basic categories of words are nouns and verbs.
• Categories are intended to be a system that facilitates processing of natural language
or artificial language.
• See Figure 4.8 pages 81-84. (This is a list of semantic features designed to provide
guidance regarding the critical semantic features for words that are the target of
explicit. vocabulary instruction.)
• Research indicates that instructional activities focusing on key semantics features
positively affect learning of vocabulary terms.
• Many terms can be associated with more than one category with these qualifications
figure 4.8 serves as a tool for enhancing vocabulary instruction.

Characteristic 6: Students should discuss the terms they are learning.

• This provides students the opportunity to encode information in their own words.
When asking the students to discuss the words, meanings of the terms are embedded
into their permanent memory.
• Vocabulary Self-Collection Strategy (VSS) is a program which allows students to
select words of their choice to discuss. This gives the students ownership and allows
them to have the opportunity to collaborate and engage in effective classroom
conversations. This again will foster effective transition to permanent memory.

Characteristic 7: Students should play with words.

• Powerful instructional techniques that schools typically underuse are games.
• Games present manageable challenges for students.
• Games provide tasks that “challenge the individuals’ present capacity, yet permit
some control over the level of challenges faced.
• Games arouse curiosity. They do this by “providing sufficient complexity so that
outcomes are not always certain.”
• Games involve some degree of fantasy arousal. Fantasy arousal is not “merely
unbridled wish fulfillment or fairy tales, but rather the creation of imaginary
circumstances that permit the free and unfettered use of one’s growing abilities.”

Characteristic 8: Instruction should focus on terms that have a high probability of

enhancing academic success.
• Identify a list of vocabulary terms is critical to academic success.
• Research suggests that vocabulary be thought of in 3 tiers.
• Tier 1 contains basic words. These are terms students encounter frequently in reading
and are commonly a focus of instruction at lower grades.
• Tier 2 contains infrequent words. The chance of learning them in context is slim.
Studies indicate that word frequency is not a reliable indicator of a words importance.
Word frequency is not the guide we need to identify the target words for explicit
vocabulary instruction.
• Tier 3 contains words that are specific to subject areas. They focus on Tier 2 words as
the target of vocabulary instruction. However, if the goal of explicit vocabulary
instruction is to acquire academic background knowledge, then what is clearly needed
is a list of subject specific terms.