Computers Tips and Notes

There are two main reasons most vocabulary programs fail at helping students acquire new vocabulary faster.

1. Everyone is lumped onto the same level of difficulty with no regard for their skill level.

2. They don’t take the student through the material enough times to embed the information in their long term memory.

There are huge differences in the spoken vocabulary (pre-reading) of kids entering the first grade. Research has shown that first graders in the top 5% have a productive vocabulary of 7000 words while the students in the bottom third of the class only knew about 1500 words. The interesting thing is that this isn’t attributed to IQ because the student’s that only knew 1500 words were able to learn new words just a quickly as the student’s with the larger vocabularies. Instead it is attributed to their environment - specifically how much time did they spend talking to their parents or other adults and how much were they read to or did they read themselves.

For the most part schools are not aware of the vocabulary level of the incoming students. Since a pre-readers vocabulary can only be measured orally schools are not equipped to measure it. The problem is that if nothing is done to improve the vocabulary of a student that is behind they will continue to get farther and farther behind. Each year the material they will work with is going to be more difficult adding to their frustration and often time low self esteem. What is the solution? We must find out the vocabulary level and build a customized training path based on that information. The results will come very quickly as they improve their vocabulary. The challenge today is that current training methods are using a one size fits all approach. Most of the time students are being presented with word list where they already know a large part of it or even more frustrating is when they are presented with material that is way beyond their level. In the first scenario they won’t be challenged and in the second scenario it will be so hard they will quit in frustration. Either way they aren’t going to improve their vocabulary enough to matter.

What does an intelligent vocabulary learning path (a “perfect practice” path) look like? It must give students enough multi-mode repetitions to put a new word’s primary meaning, spelling, and pronunciation into their passive (”I recognize but don’t necessarily use that word”) vocabulary. It must make the word-recognition automatic so that when a new word is encountered in reading is absorbed immediately, without bringing the whole show to a stop!

Finally, learners must find the practice path enjoyable or they will never get enough repetitions to put the new words into long-term memory. Students must “fall in love with practice,” in other words, if they are ever going to close the vocabulary-reading gap and catch up to their peers.

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