Speaking of vocab--Hirsch's article on the importance of vocabulary

[ElizabethB]

I have been recovering from our last house and a move, so I'm not sure if has been posted already or not, but thought it was interesting, especially in light of the recent vocab threads.

 

http://www.city-journal.org/2013/23_1_vocabulary.html

 

Feel free to comment on the article and add any vocabulary building strategies that have been helpful for you. I learn vocabulary from reading, but found that my daughter needed more, I will comment about that later.

 

(Our last house made me sick, possibly a VOC from farm chemicals, and we had to move. I am feeling better since the move but have been a bit busy with unpacking and various move related things. We move so often we were reluctant to move again, but when I ended up in the hospital from the house we decided it was time to have a practice move for our upcoming summer move...)

[serendipitous journey]

Thank you, Elizabeth! I thoroughly enjoyed the article. Though since Hirsch has always had a bent toward cumulative-knowledge approaches, I'd be curious to see another interpretation of the studies.

 

Makes good sense, that's certain.

 

ETA: on reflection, I thought I'd toss out that we've known some families who had trouble with the French system (the old-style one): their children were not thriving in it. But I have also heard that it is responsible for relatively good academic achievement in developing countries that have inherited it (Haiti, for example). Both of these things could easily be true, of course ...

[regentrude]

So the fastest way to gain a large vocabulary through schooling is to follow a systematic curriculum that presents new words in familiar contexts, thereby enabling the student to make correct meaning-guesses unconsciously. Spending large amounts of school time on individual word study is an inefficient and insufficient route to a bigger vocabulary. There are just too many words to be learned by 12th grade—between 25,000 and 60,000. A large vocabulary results not from memorizing word lists but from acquiring knowledge about the social and natural worlds.

 

This. Scrap the vocabulary flashcards and word lists. Teach the students some actual content with good materials that use a wide vocabulary. In other words: have them read good books and have the listen and talk to people who possess a large varied vocabulary and who have something interesting to say with all those words.. I would consider this common sense.

 

That is how vocabulary is approached in other countries. I grew up in Germany, and I have always been puzzled by the emphasis on memorizing fancy words in this country because nothing remotely equivalent exists there. You acquire vocabulary by reading and listening to people speak about content.

If I think of people I know here in the US who do posses a large vocabulary, I find that these people are simply well read and used to engaging their minds in learning about something, and not sitting and memorizing word lists.

 

If vocabulary is related to achieved intelligence and to economic success, our schools need to figure out how to encourage vocabulary growth.

But this is actually backward! Vocabulary does not create intelligence and economic success - it is simply a reflection that the person has also acquired the related content knowledge. He emphasizes in his article the importance of content for vocab retention. I would argue it is the content understanding that creates the economic benefit, not merely the vocabulary knowledge.

So, what we need is not to teach more vocabulary, but more content! The vocab will follow.

[Alte Veste Academy]

 

 

This. Scrap the vocabulary flashcards and word lists. Teach the students some actual content with good materials that use a wide vocabulary. In other words: have them read good books and have the listen and talk to people who possess a large varied vocabulary and who have something interesting to say with all those words.. I would consider this common sense.

 

That is how vocabulary is approached in other countries. I grew up in Germany, and I have always been puzzled by the emphasis on memorizing fancy words in this country because nothing remotely equivalent exists there. You acquire vocabulary by reading and listening to people speak about content.

If I think of people I know here in the US who do posses a large vocabulary, I find that these people are simply well read and used to engaging their minds in learning about something, and not sitting and memorizing word lists.

 

 

But this is actually backward! Vocabulary does not create intelligence and economic success - it is simply a reflection that the person has also acquired the related content knowledge. He emphasizes in his article the importance of content for vocab retention. I would argue it is the content understanding that creates the economic benefit, not merely the vocabulary knowledge.

So, what we need is not to teach more vocabulary, but more content! The vocab will follow.

 

If I could like this a thousand times, I would. ;)

[SunnyDays]

Interesting article! I do agree with Regentrude that wide and varied reading is the best way to ingest new vocabulary. That said, I think many students can benefit from additional sources, but I'm not a fan of books that just throw out random words with no context. We're using MCT, and I like the approach of teaching stems (roots, prefixes, suffixes) that let a student apply those pieces to new words that they see.

[Susan of Croton]

Vocabulary: Reading and learning vocabulary in context is great, but slow. A language-rich classical homeschool program can accelerate and augment this natural process, and grades 6 and up should check out

 

The Word Within the Word, by Michael Clay Thompson (Amazon has it reviewed as well, Rainbow Resources carries it, too, plus a homeschool-oriented teacher's manual).

 

Each week has a list of word roots to memorize (!!) and then there are multiple exercises to help with the infiltration of the stems and their derivatives into the mind. I think of it as a turbo-charger for the brain. Divergent thinking is encouraged, word analysis, an intuitive approach, analogies, word stories to help students discover the "word within the word" and quotes from great literature using target vocab all make the kid. The mood of the book encourages word-play and a fruitful dialogue between teacher and student.

I absolutely agree with posters that a large vocabulary is a result of a lot of reading and inquiry, not the cause of it. Perhaps one difference between German and English is that there are so many more English words, or so we are told. We in America have an odd relationship with our words. I think that spelling bees are an American (or perhaps English-speaking) phenomenon.

 

I'm skeptical of the practical value of a large vocabulary, beyond some working point. For example, I know what the word "terpsichorean" means, but I'm not nearly sanctimonious enough to use it in speech or writing (with the exception of this kind of irony). However, I do need to be pragmatic about the value of knowing these sorts of words for getting good SAT scores, and so I teach this vocabulary by direct instruction. I can't believe that direct instruction is less effective than reading. How many SAT vocab words are there in, say, "Tale of Two Cities", compared to the weeks it takes to read it? The words at the high end of the SAT vocabulary lists are so rare that I don't think it is possible to learn them just by reading literature. I'd rather focus on reading good literature, learning foreign languages, and writing instruction, but those are hard to have standardized tests for, and so they aren't directly tested by college entrance exams. The somewhat good news is that I think I can do a good enough job on the SAT prep kinds of teaching without ignoring the "good stuff', but I am somewhat saddened that I have to do it at all.

[Julie Smith]

For example, I know what the word "terpsichorean" means, but I'm not nearly sanctimonious enough to use it in speech or writing (with the exception of this kind of irony).

 

That was an interesting article.

 

And now I know what terpsichorean means, and perhaps I'll find a way to use it when I next go dancing.

 

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/terpsichorean

[Alessandra]

Elizabeth --

 

Thank you! That is one of the best E.D. Hirsch articles I have ever read. I have a little booklet from CK -- Reading Instruction: The Two Keys, the two keys being decoding and understanding vocabulary as a way to comprehension. The authors talk about creating domains -- several to many n=books on one subject area in order to build vocabulary. And the CK Teacher Handbooks have two types of vocabulary for each section -- a small list of words kids should learn & know and a larger list of 'domain' words that teachers should try to incorporate into discussions. I used to write these on a file card and try to use them. I'll have to get back to this!

 

One other part of the article that fascinated me was the part about France. I guess I missed the past 20 years or so. I had no idea how far they had fallen.

 

I truly wish that there were some kind of content standards here in the U.S. My kids ps reading, while not quite as bad as what Hirsch described, was all over the place. Very little non-fiction, almost no classics. Coherence -- fuggedaboudit.

[Mrs Twain]

If you liked this article, you should read Hirsch's book The Knowledge Deficit. It goes into detail about the data and research, and how the Core Knowledge Sequence was developed. I consider this book to be the best one on education that I have read. It has helped me more than anything else in developing my method of homeschooling. It can be discouraging to read articles like the one linked above because the school system is so hopeless. However, we who homeschool have control over our curricula. It is relatively simple for us to implement effective teaching strategies, and therefore I find Hirsch's writing to be quite encouraging since I can personally apply the methods with my kids.

 

As far as teaching vocabulary, I have often said that I think my kids have learned more new words from Word Girl on PBS than from any of our vocabulary workbooks. Recently, my five year old asked me when we were going to eat lunch because she was "famished". Upon further questioning, I found out that she learned that word from Word Girl, of course.

 

The Word Girl show is about a perfect method for learning vocabulary. The characters continually use the new words in various contexts throughout the episode, so that kids can appreciate the mearnings and how the words are used in speaking. Word Girl at least once directly explains the meanings of the new words. Sometimes a character (usually a bad guy) pronounces the new vocabulary word wrong, and Word Girl corrects his pronunciation. Too bad there isn't a Word Girl show for SAT vocabulary! I haven't yet thrown out the vocabulary books, but I can't say that I haven't toyed with the idea.

 

On a side note, Zula Patrol has almost gotten to be required watching because it has introduced them to a lot of new science vocabulary and content knowledge. Sometimes I wonder if that was made to be a supplement to BFSU.

[ElizabethB]

So, what we need is not to teach more vocabulary, but more content! The vocab will follow.

 

I generally agree, although my daughter did need a bit more, I'll explain in the next post.

 

Interesting article! I do agree with Regentrude that wide and varied reading is the best way to ingest new vocabulary. That said, I think many students can benefit from additional sources, but I'm not a fan of books that just throw out random words with no context. We're using MCT, and I like the approach of teaching stems (roots, prefixes, suffixes) that let a student apply those pieces to new words that they see.

 

My daughter also benefits from a bit more, I also like learning stems, they are interesting to learn, especially across languages.

 

Vocabulary: Reading and learning vocabulary in context is great, but slow. A language-rich classical homeschool program can accelerate and augment this natural process, and grades 6 and up should check out The Word Within the Word, by Michael Clay Thompson (Amazon has it reviewed as well, Rainbow Resources carries it, too, plus a homeschool-oriented teacher's manual). Each week has a list of word roots to memorize (!!) and then there are multiple exercises to help with the infiltration of the stems and their derivatives into the mind. I think of it as a turbo-charger for the brain. Divergent thinking is encouraged, word analysis, an intuitive approach, analogies, word stories to help students discover the "word within the word" and quotes from great literature using target vocab all make the kid. The mood of the book encourages word-play and a fruitful dialogue between teacher and student.

 

That looks interesting, thanks! I have some of MCTs other things but do not have that yet. The new edition on their website looks especially interesting, they have added this: "each lesson now has historical discussions and illustrations that offer students a greater understanding of the classical roots of the English language"

 

How many SAT vocab words are there in, say, "Tale of Two Cities", compared to the weeks it takes to read it?

 

Interestingly, the most vocabulary packed book I have read recently was Stephen R. Donaldson's "Against All Things Ending." I read very quickly, though, so I do gain vocabulary efficiently from reading. Reading on my iPad Kindle is even more efficient for vocabulary building, I'm much more inclined to click on a word there than to look up a word from a regular book.

 

That was an interesting article. And now I know what terpsichorean means, and perhaps I'll find a way to use it when I next go dancing. http://www.thefreedi...m/terpsichorean

 

:lol: :lol: :lol:

[Alessandra]

If you liked this article, you should read Hirsch's book The Knowledge Deficit. It goes into detail about the data and research, and how the Core Knowledge Sequence was developed. I consider this book to be the best one on education that I have read. It has helped me more than anything else in developing my method of homeschooling. It can be discouraging to read articles like the one linked above because the school system is so hopeless. However, we who homeschool have control over our curricula. It is relatively simple for us to implement effective teaching strategies, and therefore I find Hirsch's writing to be quite encouraging since I can personally apply the methods with my kids.

 

As far as teaching vocabulary, I have often said that I think my kids have learned more new words from Word Girl on PBS than from any of our vocabulary workbooks. Recently, my five year old asked me when we were going to eat lunch because she was "famished". Upon further questioning, I found out that she learned that word from Word Girl, of course.

 

The Word Girl show is about a perfect method for learning vocabulary. The characters continually use the new words in various contexts throughout the episode, so that kids can appreciate the mearnings and how the words are used in speaking. Word Girl at least once directly explains the meanings of the new words. Sometimes a character (usually a bad guy) pronounces the new vocabulary word wrong, and Word Girl corrects his pronunciation. Too bad there isn't a Word Girl show for SAT vocabulary! I haven't yet thrown out the vocabulary books, but I can't say that I haven't toyed with the idea.

 

On a side note, Zula Patrol has almost gotten to be required watching because it has introduced them to a lot of new science vocabulary and content knowledge. Sometimes I wonder if that was made to be a supplement to BFSU.

 

Oh, I read the Knowledge Deficit a long time ago, but you are inspiring me to reread it. I'll go to my local library, which has it, tomorrow. Now I'll have to find out if 'Word Girl' is available on the internet (no TV here) -- it sounds like a fantastic show.

[ElizabethB]

My daughter's vocabulary is behind what it should be based on what she reads and her other LA abilities--spelling, foreign languages, grammar, etc. While her vocabulary is above grade level, it was behind her other language arts grade levels and also behind where it should be based on her reading level and what she has read.

 

My husband is brilliant at math and physics, but not great at foreign languages. He had 4 years of German, but when we lived in Germany, I was better able to communicate and understand with my 2 years of German than he was. Once, I read a billboard and said "if I only know what that one word meant, I could figure out what that sign means." My husband replied, "Well, I have no idea what the sign means but that word means "______." I told him what the sign probably meant. He responded that that was just a guess. A few months later, we were visiting France. We were trying to find something, I can't remember what (this was all 10+ years ago, the actual words are foggy.) Based on the signs and my knowledge of Spanish, I told him that I thought one of the words was close to what we were looking for so we should head in that direction. He said that we had no idea if my guess was right or not so why should we go that way. I replied that there was a good chance that it was right since they shared a linguistic background, and even if I was wrong, there was a chance I was right and we had to pick a direction anyway. (I was probably right since it was the right way!) It was then that I realized that that was why he had a problem learning languages--he was too reluctant to make an educated guess about word meanings, even when the context was excellent for making an educated guess.

 

I found that my daughter had to be taught explicitly how to use context to build her vocabulary. We also work on word roots and using those to help narrow her understanding of new words. She learns much better from context and from similar words, Latin Alive with its emphasis on derivatives is much easier for her than the more random brute force word memorization of Latin for Children. (I switched to Latin Alive from LfC last year after I noticed that she was generally only easily retaining those words where I could figure out a derivative on my own.)

 

I have been using McGuffey's readers to help teach her to figure out words from context. "The Word Within the Word" looks like it is structured well--the layout will also also us to be efficient, just reading over the sentences for words she doesn't know or for when she knows the word but doesn't realize how the stem is used in that word. It looks much better laid out for that than Caesar's English.

[SailorMom]

Wonderful article. I have noticed for years (well - since I began paying attention) that kids who are read to when they are young usually do well in school. Now, no one can say that there is a direct correlation between being read to and education because some will argue that this is just because the parents spend more time with the kids in general, or care more about education, etc., and this has a long term affect on parental involvement in academics.

That said, what I have seen is this:

Children that are read to from the time they are born do better in school. Children who are read books that are at least one or two 'grade' levels OVER their current level do even better academically. I think this is because of verbal exposure to more vocabulary (and more difficult vocabulary) over a long period of time before they would be able to read the words - hence, giving them a longer time to build a larger vocabulary.

When my sons were younger, other parents would make jokes about the books I was reading my kids - saying that there was no way kids their ages could understand the books. My argument was that they never would be able to understand them if they weren't exposed to them.

Another thought... I know many people (not specifically here, all over the place including in public schools) think that in-depth science is a waste of time in early elementary school. Some even say not to bother until 6th grade. I've noticed, however, that my sons have a much better grasp of scientific concepts that their peers who were not exposed to science until later in their education. I believe this is because that, while they surely didn't retain all of the information, they were exposed to it over and over again over a much longer period of time and at increasing levels of complexity. This exposure obviously included scientific vocabulary in context or 'domains'.

[dhudson]

I think it is worthwhile to note that reading books to them that are out of their reading level also helps to develop Vocab. For instance, we stopped and looked up slaternly today as my kids didn't know what it meant. We then work on using it in a sentence during the day.

[redheadmom]

I think that vocabulary requires multiple approaches. Learning root words is a great way to decipher context. I am using this with my dd and will continue through middle if not high school.

 

Secondly, I think that reading to children develops language, as well as content and syntax. Most of the books that were read to me as a child were books much older stories and novels. I am using this same approach with my children. Even babies and toddlers benefit from Dr Seuss and nursery rhymes. Plus, there is a much wider and varied range of words used in written works compared to speaking.

[LaughingCat]

I have a little booklet from CK -- Reading Instruction: The Two Keys, the two keys being decoding and understanding vocabulary as a way to comprehension. The authors talk about creating domains -- several to many n=books on one subject area in order to build vocabulary.

 

It appears to me that many in this thread took the article as supporting reading widely yet what I read him saying was more like the quote above - read multiple items in 1 subject in order to build vocabulary. In fact he dismisses reading multiple unrelated items as "incoherence and fragmentation".

[Julie Smith]

It appears to me that many in this thread took the article as supporting reading widely yet what I read him saying was more like the quote above - read multiple items in 1 subject in order to build vocabulary. In fact he dismisses reading multiple unrelated items as "incoherence and fragmentation".

 

I think you can do both at once. We read widely. But we often stick to a subject. So we might hear about a subject from SOTW, lets take the Odyssey for example. Then we read a picture book or two about the Odyssey. We listened to Mary Pope Osburne's retelling of the Odyssey. We also listened and read about things that connect to the Odyssey, "The Tale of Troy" by Benedict Flynn. We studied about the Greek Gods mentioned in the Odyseey by listening to the "D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths", and listened to Jim Weiss "Greek Myths", "She and He Mythology" and "Heroes in Mythology". We then tired to tackle "The Children's Homer" by Padraic Colum. Some of the above we listen to twice just cause.

 

So in the above case we read widely in 1 subject. But we do that for almost all subjects we meet in history, and sometimes science. We also read many things unrelated to were we are in history.

 

We read all the Little House books, most twice. Lots of time to learn and understand the things mentioned in that time period. (What a gingham dress is for example)

 

I think the key is if you read lots then you are able to read widely and in-depth at the same time.

 

Note: When I say read in most cases I mean my boys listen well I read, or dh reads, or we all listen to an audio recording together.

[Julie Smith]

I think that the article makes a point for picking a good spine for your subjects (history, science) and follow rabbit trails whenever they pop up.

 

Then, of course top it all off by watching James Burke in Connections (season 1 and 2 only).

[ElizabethB]

If you liked this article, you should read Hirsch's book The Knowledge Deficit.

 

I just got the book and am halfway done, it is interesting. I'll add more thoughts when I finish the book, I have several pages bookmarked already.

 

I think you can do both at once. We read widely. But we often stick to a subject....

 

I think the key is if you read lots then you are able to read widely and in-depth at the same time. Note: When I say read in most cases I mean my boys listen well I read, or dh reads, or we all listen to an audio recording together.

 

:iagree: