Open the Floodgates with Morphosyntactic Awareness

Action! Language is wrapped around action. A single word -- a verb -- can stand alone as a complete sentence: "Go!"  

In what ways does vocabulary knowledge depend on understanding the basic functions of verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs? How does morphological knowledge intersect with knowledge of syntax, grammatical function, or word class? How does vocabulary knowledge, morphological knowledge, and syntactic knowledge support reading comprehension?

In an earlier post I discussed the morphophonemic characteristics of English words, applied to learning to read (see Thunder & Lightning). Today, I discuss another important aspect of literacy: the morphosyntactic nature of English words. Morphosyntactic knowledge has to do with morphology (word formation) and syntax. English words are morphosyntactic because their morphemes -bases, roots, affixes- convey meaning (that's the morph part) while the suffixes in particular convey grammatical information (the syntax part). The final suffix in a word usually conveys whether the word is classified as noun, verb, adjective, or adverb.  For a well-known example, most words ending in the suffix -ly are adverbs, as in quietly, sweetly, loudly...but that is only the beginning. Let's really open wide those metalinguistic floodgates, with the goal of improved comprehension. 💦

VERBS

Latin roots or bases are often verbs. The root COGN denotes the verb 'to know' as in recognize, cognition, incognito, etc.  RUPT conveys 'to burst or break' in words like rupture, eruption, interrupt, corrupt. Likewise, CRED denotes 'to trust, believe' as in credibility, credit, incredulous, etc. 

Psst...The root CRED and its morphological derivatives illustrate the cover of the upcoming 3rd edition of Vocabulary Through Morphemes (Ebbers, in press with Silvereye Learning Resources, who also holds limited copies of the Teacher's Edition).

NOUNS - especially abstract nouns:

When we affix the derivational suffix –ion to the end of a root or word, it generally becomes a noun, as seen when the verb act becomes the noun action. Words that end with the suffix –ion are often abstract nouns; they represent ideas, concepts, feelings, or a process. They are not usually concrete concepts, not easy to see or touch or illustrate. Examples: The root TRACT means ‘to pull’ and it becomes an abstract noun with the suffix -ion: traction, detraction, contraction (an exception is tractor, a concrete noun). Similarly, the root FRACT means ‘to break’ as in the abstract nouns fraction, infraction, refraction. 

Morphological awareness (MA) helps us understand this transformation, at least at an intuitive level, if not with metalinguistic clarity. As we grow in MA, we begin to somewhat subconsciously realize that the invented word *taction would probably be a noun, something to do with the state or quality of showing tact, especially if we had some context to help: An effective diplomat must demonstrate *taction and discretion. 

On the other hand, if MA is not advancing, we may not grasp the noun-forming function of the suffix –ion. This is problematic for vocabulary development and for comprehension. Limited understanding of derivational-suffix morphology is evident in poor readers and writers as described in recent reviews of the literature (Levesque & Deacon; 2022; Liu, Groen, & Cain, 2024). Understanding the role of the suffix is key to understanding language. This becomes even more essential when reading informational texts, because derivational suffixes are ubiquitous to academic words. 

There are more than a dozen derivational suffixes and they all provide information about the word class, helping us decipher the syntactic property of the word. For example, words that end with –ize / -ise tend to be verbs, as in verbalize, fantasize, and exercise. Words that end with –ism tend to be abstract nouns, as in feudalism, pacifism, and capitalism. Words that end with –ive tend to be adjectives, as in creative, expansive, assertive, imaginative... 

The morphophonemic aspects of English words help us learn to read and spell, as discussed in Edview360. However,  morphosyntactic aspects help us understand the word and connect it with other concepts into meaningful sentences and passages. This is where the rubber hits the road for advancing beyond simple into complex texts (Castles, Rastle, & Nation, 2018).

Helping  students develop morphological awareness, including morphosyntactic awareness, is an important aspect of literacy, as discussed quite a bit more thoroughly in the three papers referenced below. 

Check back again next month! Stay tuned for some thoughts on helping students develop word consciousness or word sensitivity,  drawn from correspondence with the ever-curious Andy Biemiller.

Cheers,

Susan

REFERENCES:

Castles, A., Rastle, K., & Nation, K. (2018). Ending the reading wars: Reading acquisition from novice to expert. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 19(1), 5–51.  https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1529100618772271 

Levesque, K., & Deacon, S. (2022). Clarifying links to literacy: How does morphological awareness support children’s word reading development? Applied Psycholinguistics, 43(3), 921–943. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/applied-psycholinguistics/article/clarifying-links-to-literacy-how-does-morphological-awareness-support-childrens-word-reading-development/8BA65B23729527F2C3377E7AAF1CC0F9 

Liu, Y., Groen, M. A., & Cain, K. (2024). The association between morphological awareness and reading comprehension in children: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Educational Research Review.

What is Disciplinary Literacy and Why Aren’t We Talking More About it? (Zygouris-Coe)

In this post, Dr. Vicky Zygouris-Coe discusses theory and offers practical applications for helping older students develop disciplinary literacy. Vassiliki ("Vicky") Zygouris-Coe is an Associate Professor of Education at the University of Central Florida, College of Education. Her research focuses in literacy in the content areas, online learning, and teacher professional development. Dr. Zygouris-Coe has impacted reading instruction in the state of Florida through the Florida Online Reading Professional Development project—Florida’s first online large-scale project for preK-12 educators. Her work has been published in a variety of professional journals. She serves in several editorial roles, including Co-Editor of Literacy Research and Instruction, Associate Editor of both the Florida Educational Leadership and the Florida Association of Teacher Educators Journal.

What is Disciplinary Literacy?

Shanahan and Shanahan (2008, 2012) propose that disciplinary literacy, advanced (and specialized) literacy instruction embedded within content-area classes such as math, science, and social studies, should be a core focus of literacy efforts for middle and high school grades. Disciplinary literacy “involves the use of reading, reasoning, investigating, speaking, and writing required to learn and form complex content knowledge appropriate to a particular discipline” (McConachie & Petrosky, 2010, p. 16). According to this perspective, definitions of literacy in the secondary grades must be anchored in the specifics of individual disciplines. Disciplinary literacy highlights the complexity, literacy demands, and differentiated thinking, skills, and strategies that characterize each discipline.

Disciplinary literacy is built on the premise that each subject area or discipline has a discourse community with its own language, texts, and ways of knowing, doing, and communicating within a discipline (O’Brien, Moje, & Stewart, 2001). It moves beyond the notion of “every teacher is a reading teacher” and literacy as an “add-on” set of generic strategies used to improve the reading and writing of subject area texts. Rather, it situates literacy as an integral part of content (Moje, 2008) so that “literacy within the discipline” becomes the goal of disciplinary literacy.” (Zygouris-Coe, 2012, p. 4)

Findings from the Shanahan and Shanahan (2008) study suggest that each discipline (e.g. history, chemistry, mathematics) carries different cognitive and literacy demands. Participants in Shanahan’s and Shanahan’s (2008) study varied in the way the read, in what they considered to be challenges in the text, and in how the texts should be taught. For example, comprehension can be challenging with mathematics when text is extremely dense and students need to understand the flow of information from print to numeracy, to graphs. Vocabulary can be challenging in chemistry due to extensive technical vocabulary in the discipline. Whereas in history, vocabulary can be challenging due to the many dated words and metaphorical terms. In terms of discipline-specific strategies, for example, sourcing, contextualizing, identifying arguments and how the author portrays events, etc. are useful to history. In chemistry, separating essential from non-essential information, visualizing, and thinking of examples are some of the strategies that fit the content demands. Lastly, explaining concepts, writing equations, and illustrating data are some of the strategies that would help students read and comprehend text in mathematics.

Some of the challenges we are facing with preparing students to succeed in disciplinary literacy include literacy professionals’ lack of knowledge of each discipline to be able to provide teachers with specific tools to teach students the kinds of knowledge, literacies, language, and inquiry different experts (e.g., mathematics, science, history) use. In addition, content area teachers lack knowledge in the literacy demands of their discipline. As a result, we have many adolescents who cannot read and comprehend text in different disciplines—we must prepare teachers to develop students’ discipline-specific knowledge and skills (Lee & Spratley, 2010; Moje, 2008; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008; Snow & Moje, 2010). As educators, we need to develop our knowledge of the unique structure, goals, practices, texts, and discourse of each discipline and how knowledge is created and shared (Fang, 2004; Fang & Schleppegrell, 2008; Geisler, 1994; Halliday, 1998; Schleppegrell, 2004).

Why Aren’t We Talking More About Disciplinary Literacy?

We are living in the midst of high accountability and educational reform. The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have been adopted by most states and will be implemented in 2014. The CCSS call for literacy within each discipline, for critical thinking of complex texts, for complex knowledge development, and for evidence-based reading, writing, and speaking. Disciplinary literacy tasks are situated within the CCSS. So, why aren’t we talking more about disciplinary literacy efforts or initiatives in secondary pre-service teacher preparation and in-service teacher education?
Shanahan and Shanahan (2012) discuss the existing mixed perspectives about what literacy in the content areas should look like. In addition, they highlight that disciplinary literacy is not a new term for reading across the content areas. Disciplinary literacy refers to the knowledge, discourse, and habits of mind necessary for learning in each discipline (McConachie & Petrosky, 2010); it is not just about a set of strategies for reading and writing across the disciplines. Also, vocabulary learning is not about using core effective strategies to help students memorize or make connections among concepts; there are unique discipline differences that we should take into consideration in each subject area. Students need to learn the scientific vocabulary of each discipline and specific tools to develop and analyze it—they need to learn (and use) the language of each discipline, its grammar, patterns, and uses.

In my opinion, there should be more discussion among educators and researchers about disciplinary literacy, more learning about it in professional learning communities (PLCs), and planning for instruction that would meet both the content and literacy demands of each discipline. We need to get away from using generic strategies that only help students organize text and focus on helping students learn how to think, read, talk, write, communicate, and inquire in ways that are consistent to each discipline. This paradigm shift from generic to discipline-specific literacy would help bring about the development of content, literacy, and thinking skills we have been longing to see in our adolescents’ learning. Of course, this shift would require a different way of teaching and learning in secondary content area classrooms and schools and a different approach to teacher preparation and professional development. We need more dialogue, research, collaborations, and direction on this topic. In the following section, I will focus on one aspect of the disciplinary learning framework, that of accountable talk (McConachie & Petrosky, 2010).

Accountable Talk to Support Disciplinary Literacy Learning

We know from research that students learn best when they are actively involved in their own learning. How can teachers maintain student engagement in, and facilitate ownership of, learning? One way they can do it is through modeling, promoting, and facilitating accountable talk in each content area. Accountable talk is an important component of a disciplinary literacy-learning framework (McConachie & Petrosky, 2010). It is talk that supports the development of student reasoning and their ability to verbalize their thinking (Michaels, O’Connor, Hall, & Resnick, 2002). Accountable talk is talk that reflects student understanding of words and concepts read or discussed in class, participation in co-construction of meaning, and monitoring of meaning as it is “molded” from student to student in class. Accountable talk is respectful of everyone’s ideas. Everyone is expected to participate actively in discussions, listen attentively, and expand on ideas. In addition, everyone is accountable to knowledge building, to providing sufficient evidence for assertions, and to rigorous thinking. According to this type of talk, everyone is “accountable” to the development of meaning “by all and for all.”

Accountable talk will help teachers to “revoice” students’ comments and prompt them to provide additional support for their assertions. It will also help teachers to provide further insight into student knowledge and use higher-level vocabulary while still maintaining contact with student ideas. Students will benefit from teacher modeling, feedback, scaffolded support, and a positive and collaborative learning classroom environment.

Here are some basic examples of accountable talk.

• I have something to say about…
• I agree with ______ because…
• I disagree with _______ because…
• I wondered about…
• Is this your main point?
• Can you prove that …?
• I have a question for _______ about…
• Could you repeat what _______ said?
• Could you say more about that?
• Do you agree or disagree with what ________ said? Explain your thinking.
• Could you give us an example?
• Could you elaborate more on the meaning of this word?
• Do you agree or disagree with _________ statement?

Accountable talk will vary according to content area as a result of each discipline’s structure, goals, ways of thinking and learning, vocabulary, and texts. For more information on discipline-specific examples of accountable talk, please see Figure 1.

Figure 1. Examples of accountable talk in four disciplines. This figure illustrates sample discipline-specific questions that can promote student engagement, use of specialized vocabulary, and learning in each discipline.

Conclusion

Disciplinary literacy includes the use of reading, thinking, speaking, inquiring, and writing required to learn and develop complex content knowledge appropriate to a particular discipline (McConachie & Petrosky, 2010); it is not about a set of generic tools transplanted into the discipline to improve reading and writing of content-specific texts (Moje, 2008; Shanahan, 2012). A focus on disciplinary literacy will help students develop content knowledge and critical literacy thinking skills needed for success in school, college, and career.

Resources

To learn more about disciplinary literacy, please examine the following resources.

1. Dr. Timothy Shanahan’s blog: Shanahan on literacy.
2. Topics in Language Disorders (January/March, 2012). Themed Issue on Disciplinary Literacy.
3. University of Pittsburg, Institute for Learning.

References

• Fang, Z. (2004). Scientific literacy: A functional linguistic perspective. Science Education, 89, 335–347. 
• Fang, Z., & Schleppegrell, M. (2008). Reading in secondary content areas: A language-based pedagogy. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
• Geisler, C. (1994). Academic literacy and the nature of expertise: Reading, writing, and knowing in academic philosophy. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
• Halliday, M. A. K. (1998). Things and relations: Regrammaticising experience as technical knowledge. In J. R. Martin & R. Veel (Eds.), Reading science: Critical and functional perspectives on discourses of science (pp. 185–235). London, UK: Routledge.
• Lee, C. D., & Spratley, A. (2010). Reading in the disciplines: The challenges of adolescent literacy. New York, NY: Carnegie Corporation of New York.
• McConachie, S. M., & Petrosky, A. R. (2010). Content matters: A disciplinary literacy approach to improving student learning. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
• Michaels, S., O’Connor, M. C., Hall, M. W, & Resnick, L. B. (2002). Accountable talk: Classroom conversation that works. (Version 2.1). [Online resource]. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh.
• Moje, E. B. (2008). Foregrounding the disciplines in secondary literacy teaching and learning: A call for change. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 52(2), 96-107.
• Schleppegrell, M. J. (2004). The language of schooling: A funcilinguistics perspective. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
• Shanahan, T., & Shanahan, C. (2008). Teaching disciplinary literacy to adolescents: Rethinking content-area literacy. Harvard Educational Review, 78(1), 40-59.
• Shanahan, T., & Shanahan, C. (2012).What is disciplinary literacy and why does it matter? Topics in Language Disorders, 32(1), 7–18.
• Snow, C. E., & Moje, E. B. (2010). What is adolescent literacy? Why is everyone talking about it now? Phi Delta Kappan, 91(6), 66-69.
• Zygouris-Coe, V. (2012). Disciplinary literacy and the common core state standards. Topics in Language Disorders, 32(1), 35-50.

Vocabulary Development for English Language Learners (Cárdenas-Hagan)

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan is a Bilingual Speech Language Pathologist and a Certified Academic Language Therapist with a doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction. She is the Director of Valley Speech Language and Learning Center in Brownsville, Texas and works with the Texas Institute for Measurement Evaluation and Statistics at the University of Houston. Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan is the author of Esperanza (HOPE), a Spanish language program designed to assist students who struggle with learning to read. Her research interests include the development of early reading assessments for Spanish-speaking students in addition to the development of reading interventions for bilingual students. She is the Co-Founder of Brownsville READS!, a nonprofit organization to promote literacy. Elsa currently serves as a board member of the International Dyslexia Association.

Demographics

Did you know that according to the United States Census Bureau (2010) there are over 11 million English as second language students in our schools? This student population represents more than 400 native languages spoken in the home. However, 80% of English language learners report Spanish as their first language. As educators, we must be prepared to meet the challenges of teaching this diverse population of students.

Research

Fortunately, we now have some important research findings regarding effective literacy instruction for English language learners. One major resource is The National Literacy Panel Report on Language Minority Children and Youth (August and Shanahan, 2006). This report was funded by the US Department of Education and provides evidence on teaching reading and writing to language minority students. It also defines the gaps in the available research. This report explains that vocabulary is an area where English language learners lag behind their English-speaking peers. The report also describes the body of evidence for vocabulary knowledge as a predictor of reading comprehension. Therefore it is essential to implement evidence-based strategies for teaching vocabulary to English language learners.

STRATEGIES FOR INSTRUCTION

Word Selection

Vocabulary words must be carefully selected. Beck, MeKeown and Kucan (2002) discuss three tiers of words. Tier 1 words are described as common, basic, every day words. Tier 2 words are academic words used in texts across multiple contexts. Tier 3 words are academic words that are discipline specific and very narrow in their usage. Examples of tiered words may be as follows:

Tier 1	Tier 2	Tier 3
boy	chatter	photosynthesis
table	marvelous	phoneme
chair	precious	cerebellum

Polysemous Words with Multiple Meanings
Tier 1 words are basic, common words. We might think our students know them, but these words often have multiple meanings. English language learners may need to consider the varied meanings of common words. For example, think of the word run. How many meanings can you generate for this word? Listed below are eight definitions of the word run, used as a verb.

Definition	Example
To go or to move.	I can run an errand.
To take part in a race.	Jim will run in this weekend's marathon.
To be a candidate.	Mario will run for president of the club.
To flow.	The Rio Grande River runs through his property.
To extend or continue.	Run the add through the weekend.
To operate.	Patricia will run the governor's campaign.
To total.	You can run the tab.
To recur persistently.	He runs on end about his new car.

Further examples of basic words with multiple meanings include bat, sport, and light. Instructors can discuss these words with their students. Students might explore the multiple ways these words are used.

Explicit Instruction: Six Steps

We can teach English language learners word learning strategies. These strategies can become routines that not only increase vocabulary knowledge but also help to develop metalinguistic awareness. English language learners benefit from studying academic Tier 2 words, which occur across many contexts. These words must be explicitly taught. Steps for explicit vocabulary instruction as described by August and Shanahan (2006) include the following:

1. Say and write the word.
2. Provide a definition with familiar terms.
3. Discuss what is known about the word.
4. Provide examples and non-examples.
5. Create sentences with the word.
6. Engage in extended discussions with the word. 

With these steps, we can build a routine for our English language learners. Here are  examples that utilize the six steps, for teaching the academic word chatter.

1. Say and write the word:

One new word from our textbook today is the word chatter.
Let me write the word for you: chatter
Say the word after me: chatter.
Remember the word is chatter. It is not the word shatter.
Do you hear and see the differences between these two words?

2. Provide a definition with familiar terms:

One definition of the word chatter is to talk very quickly or rapidly (but usually not with an angry tone).

3. Discuss what is known about the word:

(click to expand, right-click to download)

Have you ever heard someone chatter? Give me an example of this. We know that people can chatter or speak rapidly, but did you know that chatter can also mean to click your teeth repeatedly? Your teeth can chatter. Let’s make our teeth chatter.

4. Provide examples and non-examples:

People can chatter with one another. Our teeth can chatter when we are cold. A glass light bulb cannot chatter, but it can break, or shatter. A table cannot chatter, but people can sit around the table and chatter.  Let’s discuss some pictures of this.

5. Create a sentence with the word chatter (or a form of the word):

• The girls were chattering, so the teacher asked them to please quiet down.
• My teeth were chattering when we were standing outside in the cold weather.

6. Engage in extended discussions with the word:

• Can a dog chatter? Why or why not?
• Can a teenager chatter? Why or why not?
• Can a table chatter? Why or why not?

Bilingual Glossaries

(click to expand, right-click to download)

The use of bilingual glossaries can help English language learners reinforce their word learning. One example adapted from August and Carlo (2005) is below. Students complete the glossary with the teacher's help, and refer to it when speaking, listening, reading, and writing.

Morphological Awareness

Another word learning strategy for English language learners includes introducing the similarities among native language and English word parts. Students will not only build thousands of new English words, they can also make the connections for meaning across languages. Examples are listed below.

Spanish	Meaning	English	Meaning
Prefixes pre-	antes	pre-	before, in front of
re-	otra vez	re-	back, backward, again
in-	no	in-	not (also means 'in')
Roots
gram	peso	gram	to write or draw; a unit of weight
vis	ver	vis	to see
kilo	milo	kilo	thousand
Suffixes
-osis	enfermedad	-osis	disease, condition
-itis	inflamación	-itis	inflammation
-or	alguien que	-or	one who

Lastly, the use of cognates can be helpful for English language learners to expand their vocabulary knowledge. However, instructors must be aware that many false cognates exist. That is, some words are spelled and written in the same manner but have different meanings across languages. Some examples are listed below.

True Cognates Spanish	English
taxi	taxi
hospital	hospital
profesor	professor
inteligente	intelligent
explorar	explore
False Cognates (meaning)
pie (foot)	pie (a dessert)
largo (long)	large (big)
arena (sand)	arena (stadium)
carpeta (folder)	carpet (floor covering)
idioma (language)	idiom (figurative expression)

Colorín Colorado (www.colorincolorado.org) provides a list of Spanish and English cognates which can be helpful for instructors of English language learners.

In summary, English language learners benefit from explicit vocabulary instruction. It is necessary to provide them with multiple opportunities to use their recently acquired English vocabulary words. The use of word learning strategies which develop into routines can help English language learners to develop metalinguistic awareness for building word knowledge.

References:

Modeling Word Solving (Frey & Fisher)

This post is courtesy of Drs. Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher, professors at San Diego State University. Visit their website. They are the co-authors of several professional books for educators, including In a Reading State of Mind: Brain Research, Teacher Modeling, and Comprehension Instruction. Key ideas from their book are discussed below, where Nancy and Doug describe how to model "word solving" so students might learn to infer word meaning when reading independently. This entry builds on the previous post by Fisher and Frey, describing how to decide which words to teach.

Although selecting words worthy of being taught is one of the hardest things about explicit vocabulary instruction, modeling is one of the most underutilized instructional routines for ensuring students’ progress in word knowledge and word solving. Modeling word solving strategies does not focus on specific words, but rather the skills of figuring out unknown words. It’s habit building and students need to develop this habit if they are going to apply what we have taught them on their own.

Our thinking about modeling word solving focuses on students learning to look inside words and outside words for clues about meaning.

And we say this to them all of the time, “Let’s look inside the word and outside the word to see what we know.” That’s what we hope that they start to say to themselves, over time, as they come to words they don’t know.

In thinking about word solving, we have identified three categories worthy of attention during modeling: word parts, context clues, and resources (Fisher, Frey, & Lapp, 2008). Of course, modeling word solving should be integrated with other attempts at understanding the text, such as comprehension strategies and using text structures and text features. We are not suggesting that teachers focus only on modeling word solving, but rather add word solving in their shared readings and think alouds so that students have access to examples of expert thinking about words. As we will see in the examples below, modeling requires the use of an “I statement” in which the teacher shares his or her thinking with others.

Looking Inside: Word Parts

When readers come to an unknown word, one of the things that they can do is look inside the word to see if there are any clues to the word’s meaning. Understanding morphology, including prefixes, suffixes, roots, bases, and cognates, helps the reader make an educated guess about an unknown word. For example, if the reader has never been exposed to the word paleozoology, she or he can make an educated guess about this field using knowledge about prefixes and suffixes. In fact, the word is fairly easy to figure out when you remember that paleo- means old or ancient, zoo relates to animals, and -ology relates to the study of something.

But simply providing students with a morphology list is not likely to change their behavior when they come to unknown words. Instead, teachers need to model the use of morphology in understanding words. For example, while reading a sentence that contained the word heterozygous, the biology teacher modeled his use of morphology saying, “I know that hetero means different, so this must be the one that has two different alleles, or different versions, of a specific gene.”

Of course, morphology does not always work and students should be provided with examples that remind them to check other clues as well. Our favorite example of this occurred in an English as a Second Language classroom when the teacher got to the word repeat. She said, “I got this one. I know that re- means to do again. So I’m going to peat again. Wait, I have no idea what that means! I better check the context clues and look outside the word to see if I can figure this out.”

Looking Outside: Context Clues

In addition to looking inside words, students have to be taught to look outside of words to figure out their meaning. This happens through an understanding of context clues. Although context clues are not infallible, they can be helpful. There are a number of different kinds of context clues, such as embedded synonyms, antonyms, direct definitions, and the use of punctuation. Again, students need to be taught how to use these tools. Modeling provides students examples that can be built into habits.

For example, when reading about the “supermoon” predicted for March 19, 2011, the teacher noted the word fatalities in the news report. There had been quite a bit of news coverage around the world that this astronomical event, which brought the Moon into close range of the Earth, would cause widespread flooding and earthquakes. She made the connection between fatalities in the beginning of the sentence and the use of “the number dead” later in the sentence. Another example occurred when the teacher modeled using punctuation, in this case a dependent clause that contained additional and specific information about a more difficult word. As with word parts, teachers should also model when the use of context clues fail.

Again, the goal is for students to develop a habit that they can use independently when they come across unknown words. Like most of the systems we use when reading and trying to make meaning, they don’t always work. When these two systems--word parts and context clues--fail, it’s time to look further outside the word and use resources.

Looking Further Outside: Using Resources

“When all else fails, look it up” is a common motto of teachers, and with good reason. When the systems we have for figuring out unknown words within a the text do not help, it’s time to turn our attention to the resources we have at our disposal. Once upon a time, that was limited to printed dictionaries and glossaries. Today, we have a plethora of resources at our fingertips because of the Internet. For example, the visual dictionary is a great resource that student can be taught to use. The same holds for the many specialized dictionaries such as:

• Science: TSD: The Science Dictionary

• History: Babylon.com: History Dictionary

• Mathematics: A Maths Dictionary for Kids

• Art: Artlex Art Dictionary

• Sports and fitness: Babylon.com: Sports Dictionary

As with word parts and context clues, teachers should model their use of resources such as these as well as the appropriate ways to ask other people. This can be as simple as calling a friend on the classroom phone or texting someone for more information.

Modeling is an important part of explicit vocabulary instruction, but it is not sufficient in and of itself to ensure that students learn words deeply. In addition to modeling, students need intentional instruction and multiple opportunities to practice the words they are learning.

Editorial Note: To see how Frey and Fisher's "word solving" fits into the third of four components of a comprehensive vocabulary plan (Graves, 2006), read Four-Ply Vocabulary Plan.  To read about the problem with relying only on context clues to infer word meaning, read Context: Good News and Bad. To see another example of using morpheme clues and context clues to infer meaning and solve unknown words, see the portage example embedded in English: A Large Language. To see how the strategy discussed by Frey and Fisher applies to English Language Learners, see The Mindful Zen of Morphology. Also, for Spanish-strong language learners, see A Morphological Approach for English Language Learners by Carolyn Eddy. Finally, to see how to teach morphological reasoning in a deductive approach that prompts critical thinking, see the prior post by Peter Bowers.


References

Fisher, D., Frey, N., & Lapp, D. (2008). In a reading state of mind: Brain research, teacher modeling, and comprehension instruction. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Selecting Words: An Important Consideration in Explicit Vocabulary Instruction (Fisher & Frey)

This post is courtesy of Drs. Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey. Doug and Nancy are professors at San Diego State University and nationally known for their work with vocabulary and comprehension instruction. Visit their website. They are the co-authors of several professional books for educators, including Word Wise and Content Rich: Five Essential Steps to Teaching Academic Vocabulary.  Key ideas from their book are discussed in this post. In two weeks, Nancy and Doug will post again, elaborating on how to teach vocabulary effectively.

There are a number of instructional components required for students to really learn words. It’s not simply a matter of assigning words, having students define those words, and then testing them on the words. Rather, the evidence suggests that students need explicit instruction in word meanings, repeated exposure to words, opportunities for wide reading, and experiences using the words in the presence of their peers (e.g., Fisher, Blachowicz, & Watts-Taffe, 2011; Graves, 2006).

One of the most difficult aspects of quality vocabulary instruction is deciding which words are worthy of being taught. There are clearly defined categories for words, which have become part of the lexicon for vocabulary researchers and teachers. We are all familiar with Tier 1 or general words, Tier 2 or specialized words, and Tier 3 or technical words (Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002; Vacca & Vacca, 2007). These categories have guided teachers in the selection of words and facilitated an understanding of the value in learning different kinds of words.

While these categorical systems are helpful, they don’t provide teachers with concrete information about selecting words to teach. To address this, we have attempted to create a series of questions that teachers can ask to determine which words are worthy of being taught. We drew on several well-known vocabulary researchers, including Graves (2006), Hiebert and Kamil (2005), and Nagy (1988) to name the six categories useful in identify which words to teach. Figure 1 contains our questions, organized in six categories: Representative, Repeatable, Transportable, Contextual analysis, Structural analysis, and Cognitive load.

Considerations for Selecting Vocabulary Words

Topic	Questions to Ask
Representative	Is the word representative of a family of words that students should know? Is the concept represented by the word critical to understanding the text? Is the word a label for an idea that students need to know? Does the word represent an idea that is essential for understanding another concept?
Repeatability	Will the word be used again in this text?  If so, does the word occur often enough to be redundant? Will the word be used again during the school year?
Transportable	Will the word be used in group discussions? Will the word be used in writing tasks? Will the word be used in other content or subject areas?
Contextual Analysis	Can students use context clues to determine the correct or intended meaning of the word without instruction?
Structural Analysis	Can students use structural analysis to determine the correct or intended meaning of the word without instruction?
Cognitive Load	Have I identified too many words for students to successfully integrate?

Figure 1. Considerations for Selecting Vocabulary Words (Fisher & Fry, 2008)

In our teaching, we have found these categories and questions useful. For example, during a recent unit on disability as part of our integrated health curriculum, we used this system to analyze a primary source document that students were going to read in class as part of their Internet Reciprocal Teaching task. From the article about Phenylketonuria (PKU), we selected condition, inherited, gene, enzyme, recessive, and treatable, based on our knowledge of our students and their existing word knowledge. In doing so, we were able to ensure that students understood these key terms, and thus the information about this disability.

Once the words have been selected, instruction begins. There are a host of great ideas about teaching vocabulary on this blog and in a number of other published resources. To our thinking, these are less helpful if we are not clear about which words need to be taught. Having said that, even selecting words worthy of being taught will be useless if we revert to the “assign, define, test” approach to building students’ knowledge.

In sum, selecting words should be foundational in explicit vocabulary instruction, and there should be instruction!

Editorial Note: For a discussion of The Academic Word List, containing morphological families of scholarly words for older students and English Language Learners, see Academic Families of Words. One might apply Fisher and Frey's six considerations to the words in the list, to determine suitability for instruction. For helping students develop conceptual knowledge of words that meet Fisher and Frey's representative condition, read Kathleen Lord's post. For a discussion of essential words for younger students in primary grades and beginning English Language Learners, see prior posts (and books) by Michael Graves and Andrew Biemiller. For a discussion of how to understand words through structural analysis--the fifth consideration suggested by Fisher and Frey--see Morphology (MA) and follow the embedded links to specific posts concerning morphology (e.g., Bellomo, Bowers, Ebbers, Eddy, Filippini, and Henry).

References:

Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2002). Bring words to life: Robust vocabulary instruction. New York: Guilford.

Fisher, P. J., Blachowicz, C. L. Z., & Watts-Taffe, S. (2011). Vocabulary instruction: Three contemporary issues. In D. Lapp & D. Fisher (Eds.), Handbook of research on teaching the English language arts (3rd ed.) (pp. 252-257). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2008). Word wise and content rich: Five essential steps to teaching academic vocabulary. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Graves, M. F. (2006). The vocabulary book: Learning & instruction. New York: Teachers College.

Hiebert, E. H., & Kamil, M. L. (Eds.). (2005). Teaching and learning vocabulary: Bringing research to practice. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Nagy, W. E. (1988). Teaching vocabulary to improve reading comprehension. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Vacca, R. T., & Vacca, J. A. (2007). Content area reading: Literacy and learning across the curriculum (9th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Common SAT Errors and How to Avoid Them (Holt)

Thanks to Miriam Holt for contributing this post. She tutors students in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, both independently and with local tutoring agencies.  She has prepared over a hundred students for the SAT in the past six years and humorously admits, "I have come to respect the SAT." This post addresses five SAT tasks that are pertinent to reading and writing.  For each task, Miriam describes what she views as the most common types of errors; for each type of error, she offers brief suggestions for instruction. Miriam can be reached through Parliament Tutors.

1. Essay
-Writing an off-topic essay
How to fix it: Students must focus like a laser on the quote in the box and the essay prompt that follows it.  Those words must determine the topic of the essay.
 
-Spending too long on the intro paragraph and shortchanging the body
How to fix it: This pitfall can be avoided by starting with the body paragraphs, about a third of the way down the first page, and then adding the conclusion and the introduction in their appropriate spots after the body paragraphs are written.
 
-Errors in grammar and punctuation
How to fix it: Student must save time at the end to proofread.
 
-Wandering, disorganized writing
How to fix it: Student must outline to ensure the essay progresses in a clear, well-reasoned way.
 
-Accidentally proving the other guy's point: Some students set out to write an essay supporting one idea and, while writing it, find themselves making so many concessions to the other side that their essays end up supporting the other side more than their own
How to fix it: Student should write the body paragraphs first, evaluate them afterward to figure out what point they prove the best, and let that determine the conclusion of the essay.  After writing the conclusion, they should go back and write the intro paragraph, including the thesis statement.
 
-Mental lock: under pressure, the student freezes up and can't think of any examples to prove the chosen position
How to fix it: Student should create and practice using a repertoire of useful fiction, historical events, and personal stories which have material in them that lends itself well to proving the sort of positions suggested by the essay prompts.  Abraham Lincoln, the French Revolution, Huckleberry Finn, Lord of the Rings, and Romeo and Juliet seem to be popular among many students for their broad applicability, but each student must assemble his or her own favorite materials.
 
2. Critical Reading: Sentence Completion
-Over-Suggestibility: student sees an answer that "sounds good" and becomes enamoured of it, believing that the answer is correct without checking to see whether the words fit what is required by the sentence
How to fix it: Student should cover up the answer choices and read the sentence, analyzing it carefully and making guesses as to what sorts of words ought to go in the blanks, writing down those guesses in the blanks, and only then uncovering the answer choices to seek synonyms of those guesses.  Important: if the sentence has two blanks, the student should try starting with the second blank.  It's usually easier to figure out what goes in the second blank than in the first one.
 
-Disregarding unknown words and only considering familiar words: this is a tempting error that many students make because they just don't want to have to deal with words they don't know.
How to fix it: We use two different sets of strategies depending on whether the sentence has one or two blanks. These are described below. 

One-blank sentence: If it's at the end of the group of sentence completion questions, expect the answer to be a word that's more obscure than familiar.  Eliminate answer choices that seem like easy words.  Then, look at the sentence again to figure out what kind of word ought to go in the blank.  These sentences will usually incorporate a definition of the missing word into the sentence itself, so the student should locate that definition and, covering up the answer choices, think of a good word to go into the blank and then try to find something that could be a synonym for that guess from the remaining answer choices.

Two-blank sentence: Student must rate each individual word more consciously, by assigning it a plus sign if it works well in its blank, a minus sign if it is certainly not a good choice, and a zero if the student isn't sure.  Unfamiliar words get zeros.  Student should only eliminate pairs of words that have one or two negative ratings. Remaining pairs of words should be chosen based on whichever has the most plus signs.  If there are still too many choices, more choices can sometimes be eliminated based on what the relationship needs to be between the two words.  For example, if the words in the sentence's blanks need to be opposites but the words in an answer choice are synonyms, the answer choice can be eliminated.
 
-Weak Vocabulary
How to fix it: Student should devote several hours per week to studying Greek and Latin roots and prefixes.  Flash cards and mnemonics may help.  Once a student knows roots and prefixes, the words in the answer choices can be broken down to give clues about what the word means.  For example, if we're looking for a word that means something like 'irritable and quarrelsome' and must choose between sanctimonious and cantankerous, even if we have no idea what cantankerous means, we can choose it over sanctimonious if we know that sancti has something to do with holiness--completely unrelated to irritability and quarreling--and should therefore be eliminated.
 
3. Critical Reading: Passage-Based Questions
-Reading too slowly/Not absorbing the content/Zoning out/Not paying attention while reading
How to fix it: Student should try 2 things:
a. Read as though he or she will be asked to recount the entire passage from memory after one reading;
b. Skip the passage and go straight to the questions with line number references in them: read the questions, then read a portion of the passage from two lines above the reference line to two lines below to search for the answer, and then look at the answer choices to pick the best one. After answering these questions, the student should proceed to the questions that ask about the passage as a whole.
 
-Attraction to strongly-worded answer choice
How to fix it: Student should be aware that the correct answer is often moderately worded, and the answer choices with more extreme or black/white wordings--containing words like "never" and "always"--are often incorrect.
 
-Getting bogged down in reading the answer choices, taking too long to decide
How to fix it: Student should, whenever possible, read the question with the answer choices covered up and try to anticipate what the correct answer will be, and then look for that answer in the choices.
 
-Imprecise analysis of answer choices: student fails to consider everything that an answer choice is saying, and chooses it even though it is only partly correct
How to fix it: Student must be carefully precise when reading answer choices, eliminating an entire answer choice even if only a single word makes it wrong.  If the passage says dogs are often loyal to their masters, an answer choice saying "dogs are always loyal to their masters" is wrong and should be eliminated.
 
-Failure to identify the tone of the passage
How to fix it: Student should try considering what sort of voice a reader would use to read the passage aloud.
 
-Confusing the content of the 1st passage with the content of the 2nd
How to fix it: Student should pause after reading the 1st passage and jot down a few notes about its content to let the information solidify before moving onto the 2nd passage.

4. Grammar/Writing: Sentence Correction
-Confusing the object of a prepositional phrase for the subject of a sentence, and thus choosing the wrong verb, e.g. choosing “None of us are going,” instead of the correct version, “None of us is going.”
How to fix it: Students should learn to recognize prepositions and put brackets around prepositional phrases so that they can help themselves find the true subject of the sentence.
 
-Failing to consider a small word at the beginning of the sentence
How to fix it: Student should remember that just because a word shows up early in the sentence doesn’t mean it’s correct.  Scrutinize prepositions and conjunctions appearing at the beginnings of sentences.
 
-Failing to look for parallel structures
How to fix it: Student must become accustomed to requiring parallel structures in sentence construction on the SAT, even when we would not hold such strict requirements for other formal writing.  According to the SAT, this sentence is incorrect: “To call her narrow-minded is like calling water wet,” but this one is correct: “Calling her narrow-minded is like calling water wet.”
 
-Permitting a misplaced modifier
How to fix it: Students should make sure that dependent clauses with unspecified subjects are placed adjacent to their subjects in the sentence, e.g. “Carrying an umbrella, Carol didn’t mind the rain,” instead of “Carrying an umbrella, the rain didn’t bother Carol.”  The second example is wrong because, technically, it implies that it was the rain who was carrying an umbrella.
 
-Choosing the wrong pronoun #1: pronoun case
How to fix it: Student must learn the difference between a subject and an object and must clearly understand when to use which pronoun case.  If a pronoun appears as the object of a prepositional phrase, that pronoun should always be in the objective case.  The SAT loves to try to catch students who don't know this rule.
Subjective case: I, you, he/she/it/who/one, we, you, they
Objective case: Me, you, him,her/it/whom/one, us, you, them
 
-Choosing the wrong pronoun #2: pronoun number
How to fix it: Student should resist the temptation to replace words like “someone” or “anyone” or “everyone” with pronouns like “they” and “them”, because plural pronouns cannot replace singular nouns.  Instead, the student must choose singular pronouns such as “him”, “her”, “he”, “she”, and “one”.
 
-Permitting an unspecified pronoun
How to fix it: Students should be sure pronouns only appear in sentences that also explicitly state which noun the pronoun replaces.  This is wrong: “He promised to cut taxes and improve services, but he failed to keep them,” but this is right: “He made promises to cut taxes and improve services, but he failed to keep them.”  “Promised” is not a noun and cannot be replaced with a pronoun, but “promises” is a noun, so it’s fine to use a pronoun to replace it.
 
-Untrained ear: some students can’t detect grammatical errors easily because they’ve never been trained to speak or write according to the rules of grammar which the SAT uses
How to fix it: Student probably needs to take a course in grammar. 
 
5. General Test-Taking
-Student's performance starts out high and gets lower and lower as she or he moves from the beginning to the end of the test/Student can't focus on the test for 4 hours straight and gets mentally exhausted
How to fix it: Student should make sure to get enough sleep, have enough to eat and drink, and practice lengthening the attention span by, e.g. reading difficult books for several hours at a time and by taking practice tests under simulated testing conditions.
 
-Bubbling errors: student bubbles an answer in the wrong row, possibly because of skipping a question on the text booklet but forgetting to leave a blank row in the answer sheet
How to fix it: Student should bubble answers in groups of 5, or should finish all the problems on a page and then bubble in their answers all at once.  This strategy saves a little bit of time, too.
 
-Failing to complete a section
How to fix it: Student should not linger over questions in uncertainty, but rather answer as many answerable questions as possible, skimming over the difficult ones and coming back to them later if time allows, but meanwhile gathering all the points for right answers that can be easily gathered.

Miriam (at Parliament Tutors dot com)

Building Prior Knowledge of Concepts (Lord)

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Kathleen Lord is an assistant professor of Literacy Education at the State University of New York - New Paltz. Her research interests include comprehension, particularly pertaining to conceptual development and knowledge acquisition. Dr. Lord can be reached at lordk@newpaltz.edu. 

Individually, I interviewed 102 fourth graders, asking them about social studies concepts. Responses varied widely, depending on the concept itself. Three examples are shown below (interviewer’s prompts are in parentheses):

1: "What does paying taxes mean?”

Results: Only 22% provided an example of paying taxes or defined the word. Some students explained that money is collected at the store and that you pay more money than the price of the item; however, students had no idea what the money is used for.
Responses included: When you buy something and it is one dollar and you pay seven cents. (What do they do with it?) They put it in the drawer. (Then what do they do with it?) They collect it and give it back as change.”

Question 2: "What does inventing something mean?”

Results: This time, 52% provided a definition or an example of “inventing something,” referring to Thomas Edison and different inventions. Among those not receiving credit for their answers, students explained inventing something as “making something” like arts and crafts or bacon and eggs, whereas four students said, “when you lie” or “making a story up.”

Question 3: "What does making a trade mean?”
Results: A whopping 80% of the students provided correct explanations for “making a trade.” Responses included trading Yu-Gi-Oh or Pokemon cards, and trading school items such as pencils and stickers (Lord, 2007).

Students answered questions pertaining to trade, but had difficulty answering questions about taxation and invention. Why? The difference appears to be experience. Some concepts are known to young students, whereas other concepts are either emerging or are not yet known. If students have never invented something, discovered the unknown, or been involved in a rebellion, it is unlikely that they would recognize these situations when encountered in text. Often, young readers are being introduced to concepts that they have had little or no previous exposure to, and these unknown or emerging concepts may interfere with their comprehension.

Conceptual knowledge is not only important for reading in the content areas but is crucial for reading and learning, period. It is nearly impossible to reason, interpret, analyze, infer, or answer questions that require higher-order thinking if the reader does not understand the big ideas presented in the text. Inevitably, these gaps in understanding impede learning and comprehension.

Prior knowledge: It is often thought that students gain knowledge from text. Students actually modify knowledge that they already have (Catts, 2009; Kintsch, 1998). When new information connects to an existing knowledge structure, this prior knowledge (or schema) serves as a foundation for new ideas encountered in text and leads to the construction of a situation model (van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983). This is critical to comprehension and results in a deeper understanding of the information in the text. Research has repeatedly shown that children and adults with prior knowledge about a topic have better comprehension of the text than those with no prior knowledge (Chiesi, Spilich, & Voss, 1979; Pearson, Hansen, & Gordon, 1979; Spilich, Vesonder, Chiesi, & Voss, 1979; Taylor, 1979). In fact, less skilled readers can actually outperform skilled readers when they have more prior knowledge (Kintsch, 1998; Recht & Leslie, 1988; Schneider, Korkel, & Weinert, 1989; Taylor, 1979).

But where does this prior knowledge come from? One avenue is via life experiences. When a student visits various zoos on many occasions, he/she constructs a “zoo” schema. When reading about the zoo, the zoo schema (existing knowledge structure) is activated and this schema serves as an anchor for new information about the zoo. The concept of “zoo” is fairly concrete, tangible. The Bronx Zoo and the San Diego Zoo are specific examples of the concept of zoo. We generalize the concept of zoo from specific examples.

Not all concepts are concrete. Concepts can also include ways of thinking, feeling, or behaving, e.g., democracy, conflict, exploration, justice, migration, or adaptation (Walker, 2009). Specific examples of the concept of exploration include Sally Ride and space exploration, Columbus and his discoveries, Robert Ballard and his exploration of the Titanic, and famous archeologists and their specific investigations. Again, students need specific examples in order to generalize the abstract concept of exploration.

Consider the historical period prior to the American Revolution, information introduced in fourth and fifth grades. In Table 1 below, some specific topics and events are given in the left column and the recurring concepts are listed in the right column. The abstract concepts in the right column are generic ideas generalized from the specific examples in the left column.

Table 1: Topics and events with associated concepts

Specific Topics and/or Events	Concepts
French and Indian War	Conflict; treaties; compromise
Stamp Act, Sugar Act, tea tax	Taxation
Yelling "No Taxation without representation!"	Protest
Sons of Liberty; burning down tax collectors' homes; tossing tea into harbor	Rebellion
Refusing to purchase things from Britain	Boycott
Throughout the period	Independence; democracy; freedom; liberty; colonization; representative government

These concepts recur, but not only during history instruction, throughout life. If learned deeply, students will be able to access these concepts to use as prior knowledge when learning new content. Notably, if students remain either unaware of the concept/s or have had no experience with the concept/s, their comprehension of the text will be hindered.

An instructional model: We have a dilemma. How do we teach content that will eventually become the prior knowledge needed for new learning? Below, I provide a model to guide the planning process.

1. Identify concept/s: Identify concepts within the topics or events. Determine students’ understanding, as well as their misconceptions, of the key concepts that will be encountered during instruction.

2. Plan for depth and breadth: Depth is needed for schema development. Breadth is needed for transfer. Depth involves teaching so that students understand the concept well and can utilize it in new contexts. Breadth involves providing varied experiences within the concept in order to promote transfer to new contexts.

For instance, when teaching exploration, provide in-depth instruction and experiences with exploring, and then orchestrate instruction that exposes students to varied instances of explorers and exploration. Begin instruction with a known or familiar event (Columbus). Then extend to other types of exploration, providing specific instruction concerning similarities and differences among different explorers. By linking historical explorers to present-day explorers, students’ knowledge of exploration will extend beyond their limited understanding that explorers were people from centuries ago.

3. Locate material to teach the concept: Once the concept is identified, locate material to teach the concept. Select books and other resources that expose students to various situations of the same concept in order to teach for transfer. Learning can be enriched and deepened when taught with children’s literature and biographies. Additionally, literature serves as a common classroom experience to refer to throughout the unit. For instance, reading aloud a trade book about a child immigrating or sharing a book about a child escaping slavery through the Underground Railroad provide foundations to build upon.

4. Determine essential question/s: Let the students help you form these questions. Essential questions keep the unit focused. These questions are pertinent to the “big ideas” that will be encountered throughout a unit of study. Encourage students’ questions about the concept and use these to generate essential questions concerning the big ideas. During instruction, return to the questions so that students recognize how each lesson pertains to the big ideas.

For an immigration unit, consider questions such as, “Why do people move?” “How do they get there?” “How do they assimilate?” “Where do they come from and where do they go?” provide an anchor for each lesson.

5. Vocabulary: Teach vocabulary associated with the concept and revisit this vocabulary often and throughout the unit. Beyond the obvious words taught throughout an exploration unit (e.g., explore, discover, journey, investigate), include other words pertaining to character feelings and traits (e.g., tenacious, risk-taking, adventurous, courageous, intrepid, resolute) and modes of transportation (e.g., submarine, rocket, ship, Conestoga wagon).

6. Plan authentic activities and establish a purpose: Build background knowledge by allowing students opportunities to experience the concepts, while making direct connections to the to-be-learned content. One thing we can count on is that students’ authentic experiences can serve as conceptual prior knowledge. These experiences involve exploration, invention, compromise, conflict, community building, representative government, democratic leadership, and economic decisions. They include observing cycles and adaptation, creating habitats, and experiencing motion and velocity.

In the classroom, utilize familiar experiences or create common experiences to anchor subsequent learning (e.g., designing an exploration scenario; posing a dilemma in need of an inventive solution; introducing classroom elections and government; taxing students). Additionally, establish a genuine purpose for the unit such as preparing students to interview a present-day inventor, explorer, elected official, or tax collector.

These activities, in addition to reading children’s literature, provide common classroom experiences for instruction, as well as the prior knowledge needed for new learning to take hold.

Basal reading programs: If utilizing a basal reading program, the thematic unit can be enriched in similar manner. Each unit is based on a conceptual theme. Identify or modify questions provided by the publisher, and/or develop essential questions based on students’ questions. Introduce key concept vocabulary beyond the story vocabulary. Locate relevant children’s books including chapter books beyond the weekly story selections, and begin, intentionally, to teach concepts for transfer.

(Click "Read more" for the references)

The Morph in Morphology: How Form Facilitates Meaning (Bellomo)

Dr. Tom Bellomo teaches Applied Linguistics to a graduate cohort of reading educators at Stetson University; additionally, he teaches developmental reading and writing at Daytona State College. Morphological analysis is an integral part of the reading program for his college preparatory students, and he has developed a streamlined, informal curriculum to communicate essentials requisite for practical usage. He previously taught English for Academic Purposes (EAP) to non-native speakers of English, and obtained positive (quantified) results using morphological analysis among the adult L2 population (Bellomo, 2009b). Contact: bellomt@daytonastate.edu

Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning in language. English morphemes include prefixes, suffixes, roots and monomorphemic base words. In the word pianist, which is clearly derived from piano, the suffix –ist carries intrinsic meaning as it conveys the idea of ‘a specialist or player of the piano.’ Morphological analysis (MA) in vocabulary acquisition capitalizes on morpheme knowledge to derive the overall meaning of words, particularly among those that are Graeco/Latin (classical) in origin, which are often morphologically complex in nature. As a vocabulary acquisition strategy, MA can assist in unlocking the meaning of newly encountered words, especially when aided by context (White, Power, & White 1989); also, it can serve as a mnemonic when learning families of words built around the same word parts.

In reading, recognizing these meaning units is facilitated by the visual clues afforded by the morpheme. In fact, the root morph literally means form. Venezky (1967) said it well, “Orthography is not merely a letter-to-sound system riddled with imperfections, but, instead, a more complex and more regular relationship wherein phoneme and morpheme share leading roles” (p. 77). The following illustration will demonstrate how the visual form of a particular morpheme can better assist word recognition than the morpheme’s phonological composition. Were the English writing system to reflect a purely phonetic sound/symbol relationship, the words induce, reduction, and educate might be written respectively as [ĭn dōōs’], [rē duk’ shun], and [ĕj’ yōō kāt]. However, the root duc, which means ‘to lead,’ would not be apparent either aurally or orthographically since it is spoken, and consequently would be written, as dōōs, duk, and jyōōk. Moreover, in the word educate the morpheme jyōōk would be spread among three separate syllables. Yet a visual clue demonstrating a semantic connection among the words is evident due to the stable form of the morpheme duc—regardless of its pronunciation.

When children learn to read, they are taught to decode the grapheme-phoneme correspondence of print. Phoneme by phoneme a word gets encoded until aurally it is recognized—providing that the word has been heard and is known by the readers. However, if a reader had never heard a particular word before, or heard it but did not know the meaning of it, being able to pronounce the word would seldom assist in understanding its meaning. In contrast, readers seeing a new word may recognize one or more parts within it—either from other words with the same morpheme(s) or from direct instruction in roots and affixes—and infer meaning from this newly encountered word. Since stress patterns through affixation often change a morpheme’s pronunciation (note duc in reduce and reduction), visual assistance will often be more reliable than aural assistance. As the reader proceeds through the grades, the reading material becomes less contrived and words become increasingly morphologically complex. Hence, the ability to recognize morphemes and derive meaning from polysyllabic words will become increasingly invaluable as readers progress through the grades (Carlisle, 2003).

Word Frequency

Studies in word frequency demonstrated that higher frequency words are recognized more easily than words of lower frequency (Nation, 2001). However, recognition does not necessarily translate into comprehension. An early study by Howards (1964) directly challenged the long-held assumption that frequently occurring words were automatically easy words. For example, in my own perusal of the word run (Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, 1983), there were 83 separate entries for this item. Though one may know the word’s primary meaning (the action verb), it is evident that the subtle nuances of this word complicate its full comprehension. Frequency tabulations seldom factor in a semantic count; that is, a word’s frequency is tabulated irrespective of its variant meanings. Howards, therefore, disparaged reliance upon word lists and readability formulas for use in evaluating reading material, noting that frequency of occurrence does not guarantee word comprehension for the reader.

It may be more efficacious to teach longer words and words from the sciences than it is to teach little “easy” words, since polysyllabic words can be attacked with word structure skills, and since such words are typically one-meaning words. Rarely does one find a scientific word or even a polysyllabic word which has more than one meaning attached to it, whereas we have seen that the so-called “easy” words, monosyllabic words, normally have dozens of meanings attached to them. (p. 381)

In contrasting their composition, high frequency words are predominately Germanic in origin, monosyllabic, and polysemous (having multiple meanings). Low frequency words, however, are predominately classical in origin, polysyllabic, and singular in meaning. Just and Carpenter (1987) remarked:

It is interesting to note that [the] unpredictability of a derived word’s meaning from its structural constituents is much more common among frequent words than among infrequent words (Nagy & Anderson, 1984). Thus, a reader’s structural analysis of a new word he encounters is more likely to be correct if the word is an infrequent one. This is fortunate, because it is precisely an infrequent word that a fluent reader is likely not to know. (p.125)

Conclusion

Morphological analysis is viable as both a vocabulary acquisition strategy to retain the meaning of directly instructed words and as a tool to unlock the meaning of newly encounter words (word attack strategy). However, instruction will be profitable to the extent that the inclusion of critical criteria sets the foundation of any such program (Bellomo, 2009a). Briefly, these criteria comprise the following…

Stable form:
a) Teach morphemes that are visually identical in each of the target words. (Note how the morpheme dict remains unchanged in the following words: benediction, dictate, malediction, predict.)

b) Introduce the specific word part as it is spelled in English, not its classical origin. (The morpheme malus is normally seen as mal; often these three letters alone are retained across a broad spectrum of words: malefactor, malignant, malfeasance, malcontent.)

Semantic Transparency:
Words taught should exhibit a clear parts-to-whole relationship, i.e., the morpheme’s meaning is to be evident and offer a semantic clue in each of the target words. (The meaning of ject is ‘to throw.’ That sense is conveyed in each of the following words: eject, reject, interject, projectile, trajectory.)

Ubiquity:
Morphemes taught are to be found in a minimum of five words from the same family, not mere derivations that change only the part of speech, as from produce (verb) to productive (adjective). Consider duc: abduct, aqueduct, deduction, ductile, induce, seduce, etc. (Note: there are reasons for the variations duce/duct, yet for pragmatic purposes helpful to the college preparatory student, teaching and recognizing the first three letters of this morpheme would suffice.)

Eventually, the most adept reader will learn to recognize words that contain the meaningful morpheme despite shifts in phonology and/or orthography, but initial forays into morphology might follow the critical criteria described above. To read more about these nontransparent shifting patterns, click here.

References

Bellomo, T. S. (2009a, April). Morphological analysis and vocabulary acquisition: Critical criteria. Reading Matrix, 9(1), 44-56. (pdf available online, here)

Bellomo, T. S. (2009b, December). Morphological analysis as a vocabulary strategy for L1 and L2 college preparatory students. TESL-EJ 13(3), 27pp. (pdf available online, here)

Carlisle, J. F. (2003). Morphology matters in learning to read: A commentary. Reading Psychology, 24, 291-322.

Howards, M. (1964). How easy are ‘easy’ words? Journal of Experimental Education, 32(4), 377-382.

Just, M. A., & Carpenter, P. A. (1987). The psychology of reading language comprehension. Newton, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Nagy, W. E., & Anderson, R. C. (1984). How many words are there in printed school English? Reading Research Quarterly, 19(3), 304-330.

Nation, I. S. P. (2001). Learning vocabulary in another language. Cambridge: University Press.

Venezky, R. L. (1967, Spring). English orthography: Its graphical structure and its relation to sound. Reading Research Quarterly, 2(3), 75-105.

White, T. G., Power, M. A., & White, S. (1989). Morphological analysis: Implications for teaching and understanding vocabulary growth. Reading Research Quarterly, 24(3), 283-304.

Engaging Vocabulary Activities (Mohler)

Many thanks to Dr. Geri Marshall Mohler for sharing her engaging word-learning resources with us. Geri currently serves as an education consultant for the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, working with accreditation and on standards development for reading and library specialists. Previous to her work at CTC, she worked for two years at the California Department of Education in the Reading/Language Arts unit and for five years as a professor of reading/literacy at California State University, Bakersfield. Before coming to California in 2002, she taught English and reading in Nebraska middle and high schools for 18 years. Her major area of research is preschool literacy (see www.csub.edu/plpbakersfield).

In this post, I offer cognitively engaging activities for promoting word knowledge in the classroom. Prior Vocabulogic posts have made a strong case for the value of teaching vocabulary and morphology. Some of the best thinkers of our time speak to this, as illustrated in the collection of research-based quotes posted by Susan Ebbers. With such research in mind, I use this post to introduce "hands-on" activities for teaching dictionary skills, vocabulary and morphology. These activities are described in my Hands-On Vocabulary Activities packet, provided in pdf format and in Word format. These activities can be used in any content area and adapted to most learning levels (3rd to adult). Feel free to download the packet, adapt it for your own use and share it with others, freely, with my permission. A more extensive article, which contains short explanations of each of the activities, was published in 7-8-9, Poetry, Song and Rhyme (Mohler, 2009).

Vocabulary development is a reading component that is ongoing throughout life. Other components, such as phonemic awareness and phonics, have received much emphasis in English/language arts standards and curricula, but each of these, once learned, rarely needs to be re-visited. Academic language is a literacy area currently getting a lot of press. Academic language is more than vocabulary; however, it includes facility with intricate terms, complex sentence structure and syntax, text organization, and the function of transitions. Extensive and efficient vocabulary acquisition is a good place to begin developing academic language because direct instruction in vocabulary develops comprehension of academic language more than any other factor (Bromley, 2007).

To increase vocabulary, morphological awareness is essential (see many previous posts). It allows for independent access to the definitions of many words, without a dictionary, and provides a means to better understand definitions found in a dictionary and to make connections with similar words. In fact, by sixth grade, the meanings of about 60% of the morphologically complex words in school texts can be inferred by analyzing word parts in context (Nagy & Anderson, 1984). These “translations” may only imply meanings, but they can often result in a comprehensible definition. Either way, it is important that students develop the skills and knowledge to independently decipher the meanings of words using knowledge of morphology.

Many English words contain cognates—a word in a language that has the same origin, or root, as a word in a different language. Spanish-speaking English learners, in particular, need to know about cognates. Many common words in Spanish, for instance, are sophisticated words in English. The English word farming is cultivo or agricultura in Spanish. Cultivate and agriculture are English words related to farming that are derived from Latin roots, like the Spanish cognates are. Spanish-speaking students need to be recognized for their inherent understanding of words that may be unfamiliar to English-only students. (Read more about Spanish-English cognates).

Using the “Hands-On” Vocabulary Activities Packet 

(click images to enlarge and download)

The intent of the activities in Hands-On Vocabulary is to provide students with a fun way to learn about words, so they will be successful in figuring out the meaning of new or unknown words and feel comfortable using sophisticated words in speech and writing. Activities include:

• Activities 1-6: Dictionary use 
• Activities 7-10: Spelling practice
• Activities 11-24: Morphological analysis

The packet of activities includes mnemonics to help students memorize the meanings of many common prefixes and 10 root words. There are lists of affixes and root words alphabetized by word part and by meaning. Students learn how to use these resources to complete the activities. Examples of favorite activities are the “Affix/Root Word Scramble” (#18), “Sophisticated Sentences” (#21), and “Word Blocks” (#23). Each of these can be adapted for specific content area words and grow with the students’ increased knowledge of morphology.

I credit others (Ganske, 2000; Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, & Johnston, 2008) for the activities that are similar to word sorts, which are a great way to practice making sense of pronunciations and spelling, and to help students see connections in words. To save the time and paper required to make the cards for sorting, many activities in the packet are designed so they can be printed and placed in page protectors or laminated. For example, the prefix activity shown here is easily used with a page protector. Students use whiteboard markers to mark and write answers.

Students who have experienced the variety of ways that words can be dissected, manipulated, and discovered will become confident, competent and curious word sleuths. I have used most of these exercises with a variety of student levels and abilities, including teacher candidates and graduate students to prepare them to teach morphology and to improve their own command of English. The activities are predominantly at the word level—sound, spelling and meaning. Sentence level and contextual activities can be incorporated through additional, integrated oral and written assignments throughout the day and year. It is also important that you model the use of morphology skills and encourage students to apply them when confronted with unknown words. Overall, it is your enthusiasm and spontaneity about words and their foibles that will create students who are interested in and knowledgeable about words.

Try these activities and see how well you do!
Questions? Send me an email (gerimohler@gmail.com) or post a comment. 

Works Cited

Bear, D. R., Invernizzi, M., Templeton, S., Johnston, F. (2008). Words their way: Word study for phonics, vocabulary, and spelling instruction (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Bromley, K. (2007). Nine things every teacher should know about words and vocabulary instruction. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 50(7), pp. 528-537.

Ganske, K. (2000). Word journeys: Assessment guided phonics, spelling and vocabulary instruction. New York: Guilford.

Mohler, G. M. (2009). Hands-on vocabulary: Activities to develop word knowledge. In S. Neufeld & J. Sawkey (Eds.), 7-8-9, Poetry, song and rhyme (pp. 36-46). Costa Mesa, CA: California Reading Association.

Nagy, W., & Anderson, R. C. (1984). How many words are there in printed school English? Reading Research Quarterly, 19, 304-330.