How to Grow a Student’s Vocabulary

Jack Farrell

Trustee, Mammoth Unified School District

In last week’s article making the case for including non-fiction in students’ summer reading, I asserted that the best way to acquire an academic vocabulary is through wide and deep reading. This is not only my opinion; it is a view widely held by researchers and is incorporated into the California Language Arts Framework: “One of the strongest predictors of reading comprehension in general and vocabulary development in particular is the amount of time students spend reading (Chapter 2, p. 24).” Why then the popular belief that vocabulary growth is a function of word lists, for example, the weekly vocabulary lists in schools, or the vocabulary lists that comprise SAT test-preparation guides? My suspicion is that lists are a compensatory strategy, a tacit acknowledgement that students are not engaged in content area reading and that these lists represent the last, best way of acquiring this highly desirable vocabulary.

Let me offer you a personal test. Have you ever used a word in a sentence and then someone asked you to define it and you couldn’t? I’ll bet that you immediately felt a bit foolish, almost a fraud. If you can’t define a word that you just used, you must not then really own it. This is completely wrong. When you cannot define a word you have used properly, it only means you have never looked it up. In point of fact, as adults we have only looked up a fraction of the words we use properly daily in our speech and written discourse. The vast majority of the words we use we have acquired through context, that is, through repeated encounters in text or through listening. It is only after multiple exposure to words in context that we acquire such words and begin to use them properly ourselves.

Words lists can never provide us with the vocabulary acquired through broad reading, both fiction and non-fiction. The framework calls for students to read one million words of running text per year by the end of 8^th grade and two million words by the end of the 12^th grade. These goals are very ambitious. A middle school student would have to read about 9 pages a day (approximately 300 words per page in juvenile books). That’s every day for the entire year. If all the reading were done within the school day, it would be 18 pages per day. A senior in high school is expected to read about 12 pages per day (400 words per page in adult books). Once again, if restricted to just school days, the reading demand rises to approximately 28 pages per day.

This reading goal cannot be easily accomplished within the school day. For the goal to be a realistic one, the schools need substantial support from parents. Students need to be reading outside school all year long, and especially over the summer.

Let’s never forget that the most important reading influences in a student’s life are his parents and his home environment. A home where books abound and parents model good reading habits is a powerful predictor of academic success.