Vocabulary Development Flashcards

Which type of vocabulary instruction has the strongest research support for improving reading comprehension?

Answer: Explicit, rich instruction in a small number of high-utility words with multiple exposures

Research supports explicit, rich vocabulary instruction that provides deep processing and multiple encounters with a limited set of high-utility words, which leads to durable word learning.

Isabel Beck's Tier 2 words are best described as:

Answer: High-frequency academic words useful across many contexts, such as analyze and fortunate

Tier 2 words are high-frequency, high-utility words that appear across many content areas and academic texts but are not typically part of everyday conversational vocabulary.

A teacher introduces the word 'persistent' by providing its definition, showing it used in two different sentences, asking students to compare a persistent person to a lazy one, and then having students rate their own persistence. This approach exemplifies:

Answer: Rich, robust vocabulary instruction with deep processing

This multi-faceted approach combining definition, contextual examples, comparison, and personal connection characterizes the rich, robust vocabulary instruction recommended by Beck and colleagues.

Which vocabulary strategy helps students use context clues to infer word meaning?

Answer: Teaching students to examine surrounding sentences and signal words for meaning clues

Context clue strategies teach students to use the words and ideas surrounding an unknown word, such as definitions, examples, and contrast signal words, to infer meaning during reading.

Word consciousness refers to:

Answer: An interest in and awareness of words, their meanings, and their uses

Word consciousness is a disposition toward noticing, appreciating, and being curious about words, including their origins, nuances, and power, which motivates vocabulary growth.

Which instructional approach builds morphological awareness to support vocabulary development?

Answer: Teaching common prefixes, suffixes, and roots so students can analyze unfamiliar words

Morphological awareness instruction teaches students the building blocks of words, empowering them to analyze and infer the meaning of tens of thousands of derived words.