The Acquisition of Science Vocabulary PDF Download

Author: Lisha Cabral
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English language
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
Accessing vocabulary in the content areas requires different approaches than in the typical English Language Arts classroom. In the sciences, there are at least three characteristics that create the necessity to approach vocabulary differently; the novelty of the concepts the vocabulary represents to students, the inordinate amount of new words encountered in the sciences, and the lack of explicit vocabulary acquisition instruction provided by science teachers. If students were able to leverage their understanding of words and word meanings and improve their automaticity of understanding the morphology of words, they may be able to improve their overall comprehension of text as well as concepts. The Matthew Effect and the Reciprocal Model both underscore the causal nature of the vocabulary-reading comprehension relationship. They also support the sense of immediacy necessary to keep children from falling further and further behind their peers. It is possible, even at the intermediate level, to enhance a student's reading comprehension skills and content area conceptual understandings through direct vocabulary study. This study documents the benefits of using Greek and Latin word parts in ELA to acquire vocabulary and understand new concepts in science in grade four and five classes. Students who participated in direct, explicit instruction of Greek and Latin word parts outperformed students who did not in identifying unfamiliar science concepts that utilized those word parts. Students indicated conceptual understanding of the scientific concept behind a nonsense word due to their familiarity with a science-related morpheme, thus indicting an opportunity to help students better understand new, content area vocabulary as well as the concepts represented by that vocabulary.