To encourage students
like nice and stuff in their academic discourse and writing.
These students may be avoiding
the use of richer academic
vocabulary because they have
only partially mastered more
advanced words and are afraid
of using them incorrectly.
To encourage students to
expand their written vocabulary,
teachers need to support student
experimentation and reward use
of even partially known words.
In assessing student writing,
teachers should include rubric
categories for not only correct
word usage, but also the range
of academic language used. That
way, teachers can give credit for
attempts to use rich language
even if the student’s first attempts are
only partially correct.
to expand their
written vocabulary,
teachers need to
support student
experimentation.
Teach Word Learning Strategies
In the example of the word distribute,
we treated the words redistribute and
distributive as synonymous with the target
word even though they are actually
morphological derivatives. For adult
readers with a strong awareness of morphological relationships, the semantic
connections between these words are
clear. Adolescent students, however,
may not understand such relationships.
Research suggests that students
with better morphological awareness
have better vocabulary knowledge and
reading comprehension (Kieffer &
Lesaux, 2008). Therefore, we advise
teachers to use a range of words related
to the target word and to explicitly
discuss how prefixes (such as re-)
change its meaning. These strategies
can deepen students’ knowledge of the
target word and provide them with
tools for analyzing and understanding
other unfamiliar academic words.
Teachers should also draw students’
attention to different word forms
whenever the class encounters them.
The Word Generation Program
Beginning in 2006, we developed a
whole-school, cross-content program
based squarely on the research
described here. Operating under the
Strategic Education Research Part-
nership ( www.serpinstitute.org), the
Word Generation program was imple-
mented in five Boston middle schools.
This program introduces students to
selected academic vocabulary words in
the context of a high-interest passage
about a controversial topic (for example,
Should people be able to rent a pet? or
Should parents be allowed to keep some
adoption information private?). Each
Monday, students read the passage in
English class. On Tuesday, Wednesday,
and Thursday, they encounter
the words and the topic again
in content-specific activities
in math, science, and social
studies. (In social studies, for
instance, students debate the
topic in class.) On Friday, stu-
dents write persuasive essays
defending their position on the
topic. Thus, Word Generation’s
focus on vocabulary also sup-
ports reading accuracy, fluency,
syntax issues, background
knowledge, and comprehension.
