Vocabulary: The Key to Comprehension

Why Is Vocabulary Instruction Critical to Comprehension?

Imagine that someone presents you with a Spanish text and asks you to read it aloud. You do so and manage to say all the words. However, because you don’t speak Spanish, you don’t don’t know what the words mean and, therefore, you can’t comprehend what you’ve read. The same challenge occurs for individuals who have underdeveloped vocabularies. This is why vocabulary instruction is a vital, but often neglected, component of a comprehensive reading program.

“Vocabulary and word meaning are necessary features of understanding,” said Savvas author and literacy expert Sharon Vaughn. “That’s fundamentally what understanding is, knowing the meaning of the words and having enough background knowledge to be able to apply it to the text.”

Vocabulary proficiency and reading comprehension, according to Science of Reading research, directly influence each other. Since reading comprehension is the goal of reading, then vocabulary development needs to be an integral part of an overall literacy program.

“Encourage students to find collections of words like the way they would collect ‘gemstones.’”

Acquiring many words and their meanings not only helps with comprehending stories and nonfiction texts, but it also allows students to understand academic language across other content areas, like math, science, and social studies. Vocabulary development also helps with understanding language used during assessments and standardized tests. Teaching students to be “collectors of words” — a phrase Sharon uses to make word acquisition fun — and to be familiar with their meanings can have endless benefits to many areas of their academics, as well as their lives outside the classroom.

What Is Vocabulary and Why Is It Important in Learning to Read?

Vocabulary is a term that refers to the words we need to know in order to communicate. We need to build our vocabulary — our collection of words we know — to both understand ideas, as well as clearly relay ideas to others. Vocabulary is a fundamental part of the reading process because with every new word a student learns, the likelihood that they will understand what they read increases.

“Well before children enter the classroom, they start acquiring words and the meaning of words,” said Sharon. “We just have to keep expanding students’ access to words and we can do that in many different ways.”

Teachers can expand students’ access to words by reading aloud texts that contain more mature vocabulary than students typically access through their own independent reading, or by intentionally planning opportunities for them to hear and use new vocabulary words in rich discussions.

Promoting vocabulary development is an essential feature for promoting comprehension and student learning. Every academic content area encompasses discipline-specific vocabulary that a student must understand to be successful in those academic disciplines, as well as school as a whole. In order for a student to be a proficient reader, they need to know the words that will help them obtain new knowledge and be able to communicate clearly with others.

“Vocabulary and word meaning are necessary features of understanding.”

A student’s vocabulary level in the early grades is also highly predictive of their reading, language development, and overall academic achievement across the grades. Students benefit when teachers are systematic and mindful about using and introducing academic vocabulary in their teaching and everyday routines to provide a foundation for rich vocabulary knowledge and continued vocabulary growth.

The Three Tiers of Vocabulary

There are many, many words out there but not all of them have equal importance when it comes to teaching vocabulary to students that will enhance their academic performance. So, when thinking about what words to use in instruction, as well as while assessing word knowledge, teachers can refer to what’s known as the Three Tiers of Vocabulary (Beck & McKeown, 1985).

A word’s complexity, meaning, and frequency of use determines in which of the three tiers it fits. Below is a breakdown of the tiers with word examples for each.

• Tier 1: These words are the most basic, familiar words that are commonly used in everyday conversation. These words typically only have one meaning, and do not usually require direct instruction. Examples include: girl, sad, bed, book, bus, red.
• Tier 2: This tier contains high-frequency words that can often have multiple meanings and academic vocabulary that is found across disciplines and content areas. These words aren’t typically encountered in everyday conversation but can often be found in written texts. These words usually need direct instruction and can indicate how a student is progressing in their academics. Examples include: examine, valuable, classify, function, masterpiece, right.
• Tier 3: These words are often referred to as low-frequency words and they usually only occur within a specific subject area. For example, students learn the word isosceles when they’re taught about isosceles triangles in a geometry class, but that word wouldn’t typically be used outside of that subject area. Other examples include: photosynthesis, molecule, aorta, osmosis.

It would be most beneficial for teachers to focus instruction on tier 2 words because those words are more difficult to learn due to their multiple meanings, yet they occur frequently across content areas. Whereas tier 1 words are so commonly used everyday that students typically already know their meanings, and tier 3 words are very specific to certain content areas and may be better for content area teachers to include in their vocabulary instruction.

What Vocabulary Instruction Looks Like in the Classroom

Effective vocabulary instruction has come a long way since memorizing word lists and their accompanying definitions. These days, it’s about teaching students to be collectors of words by providing them access to a wide variety of words through texts and spoken language while giving them meanings and definitions. But it’s also about teaching students to be aware of and curious about the words around them.

“Encourage students to find collections of words like the way they would collect ‘gemstones,’” said Sharon. “You become a word collector when you listen to words and try to find words you don’t know. When someone says a word, you wonder about that word and wonder about whether or not there’s another way to use that word. You become a word learner.”

The key to fluency practice is providing lots of opportunities for reading in many different settings, whether it be in small groups, whole class, partner, or independently. So, if the whole class is reading a particular passage, the teacher can model reading fluently and everyone can read that same passage together. Then, students can turn to a partner and read it to each other. And then they can read independently.

One powerful way to teach vocabulary in the early grades is through read-alouds with books that are a little bit above their grade level and will usually include new words that you can introduce to them and they can collect and explore. During read-alouds and other learning activities, elementary teachers make word learning engaging and fun by having students use new vocabulary in relevant and meaningful ways.

“The kind of rich and meaningful way in which we attack the acquisition of words can be taught to young children, and that can be a huge asset to them as they go through life,” said Sharon.

Put Vocabulary Into Practice!

Now that we’ve learned all about vocabulary and why it’s such an important part of learning to read, here are some activities, information, and suggestions for educators to consider while planning instruction.