Vocabulary Instruction: Best Practices

Grand Canyon University

SED 435

Vocabulary Instruction: Best Practices

Vocabulary is an important part of any lesson in any subject, in every subject there is new vocabulary related to the subject, students need to learn a great amount of vocabulary in a daily basis, and teachers need to find the right way to teach students the concepts as well as the vocabulary associated with the material.

Knowing that the English language is has six times words more than the French language and three times more than the German language, and three out of four words are drive from another language (Bromley, K., 2007) makes teaching vocabulary a necessity.

Also keeping in mind the factors that affect the manner of teaching vocabulary, such as the purpose behind teaching these specific words we are teaching, the strategy we will be using in order to teach those words, and the students we are going to teach. (Flanagan, K. et. Al. 2007)

Also Flanagan has divided words into four categories: Critical before words (level one), Foot in the door words (level two), Critical after words (level three), and Word that one does not teach (level four). (Flanagan, K. et. al. 2007)

Or according to Isabel Beck, words to be chosen for instructions are divided into three tiers:

1. Tier one words are words that students know, they are the simple words in every students memory and need no further instruction such as mother, sad, rain, etc.

2. Tier two words are words used by more mature language user like coincidence and absurd.

3. Tier three words that are used in certain learning material or situation, they are not frequent words, and more specific to content area like circumference, temperature, tangent.

And she explains that teachers will be teaching words of tiers two and three since these words are needed for work place, or advanced classes in context areas, or serious business matter. (Beck, I., 2002)

Mathematics has lots of terms students need to learn in order to master the subject, not only procedures and ways of solving problems. As a math teacher I will be dealing with the problem of teaching my students the terms or vocabulary related to the subject along with way of solving problems, this task is hard enough for teachers, and they need to build a personal plan for teaching vocabulary and build some type of vocabulary awareness to help students learn, understand, and pass important state tests to be able to apply for good school in the high school level.

As a future math teacher I have some type of plan for the teaching model I would be following in my class with my students, my plan informs vocabulary as a part of the subject and need to get a part of instruction to help students remember these words

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