Teacher, you pour your heart into preparing and delivering your lessons. Are you sure your learners even understand the words you are using?
I recently posted an article about The Seven Laws of Teaching by John Milton Gregory. Gregory’s third law, The Law of the Language, says “The language used as medium between teacher and learner must be common to both. Use words understood in the same way by the pupils and you – language clear and vivid to both.”
Gregory includes ten to fifteen rules for teachers to use to implement each law. Two rules associated with the law of language are use the simplest and fewest words possible and try to increase both the pupil’s vocabulary and understanding.
Simple words
Encourage your students to express themselves often so you get a good understanding of what they know and the words they use. Choose your words wisely when you speak and use the simplest words you can. When you prepare written material for your students make it below their expected reading level. The average adult American has a reading level of between 7th and 8thgrade.[i]This means many adults will have a reading level well below 7thgrade. Likewise, many younger students will not read at their grade level. Short words and sentences are easier to understand than long words and sentences.
Build vocabulary
Sometimes the right word will not be familiar to your students, so you should always have a plan to spend a few minutes working on increasing your students’ vocabulary. What are strategies for increasing a person’s vocabulary? After doing a little research, here are a few ideas I found.
1. Pick a word you think may be challenging and ask your class to explain the meaning. You will get an idea of the level of their understanding. Trying to explain the meaning of a word may help your students realize they know more than they thought.
2. Provide a concise definition in your own words or from a dictionary or have them look up words.
3. Provide a detailed definition. Explore the various nuances and meanings of the word.
4. Use pictures or drawings to illustrate new words.
5. You may try physically demonstrating the meaning of certain words. Terms can be demonstrated through actions and expressions. I recently purchased a book called The Emotional Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression. It provides descriptions of physical signals and behaviors that convey over a 120 human emotions such as acceptance, amazement, anger, terror, and, worry. This could be a great tool to help you learn how to act out emotions for your learners.
6. Use synonyms, words with similar meaning, and antonyms, words with opposite meanings.
7. Use associated words. They have a related meaning to the word you are introducing.
8. Have your students practice writing sentences using the new words. Then have the students share their sentences. Try to create an atmosphere where mistakes are acceptable, so your students can accept constructive feedback from you or their fellow students.
I recently discovered a website called Visuwords (www.visuwords.com) that combines several of the above steps. The site describes itself as an online graphical dictionary where you can look up a word and find meanings and associations with other words and concepts. The site produces diagrams reminiscent of a neural net. This site may give you some ideas for introducing new words to your students.
What ideas do you have for increasing student vocabulary?
[i] Lisa Marchand, “What is readability and why should content editors care about it?”, Center for Plain Language, March 22, 2017, https://centerforplainlanguage.org/what-is-readability/