I was honestly underwhelmed by the chapter we read on building vocabulary. Allen made a lot of great points, especially those about helping kids learn new words by drawing on their prior knowledge with her example of the word-of-the-day activity and strategies for committing words to permanent memory with the word walls. What struck me was how worksheet and text-based the learning remained, particularly since this chapter came after one about very creative forms of YA Lit. Written words need only be decoded in books and on assignments for a relatively small amount of a student’s day. The rest of the time they’re talking and listening (in school and out).

I think one of the best ways to make new vocabulary words more meaningful to kids is to have them speak them. That way the words can literally jump off the page and acquire meaning and value outside of academic settings. Most importantly, they are more readily experimented with when spoken. I remember a teacher I had in elementary school who literally transformed a dull vocab workbook into an amazingly fun and interactive word-meaning experiment. After the usual copying definitions, we did a section of the workbook that involved matching each vocab word to a list of potential synonyms and other words that had to do with its meaning or connotation. But the best part was that the teacher didn’t ask us to do this part on paper, she asked us to argue (amongst ourselves and with her) for why each of the possible words was or wasn’t related to the meaning of the vocab word. It was great because it gave us a chance to use the new words in several spoken sentences (not just one on a worksheet) and really clarify their exact meanings for our whole class. I also remember that when I was a kid I learned the most new words from listening to adults say them and trying my best to mimic their usage of them. It just seemed like my teacher’s approach mirrored real life–using the words by trial and error until their meanings in multiple contexts became clear. My tutoring at VAST has greatly reinforced this belief because I so often hit stumbling blocks with kids who don’t want to change vocab sentences that don’t make sense once they’ve written them down. To them the assignment is done, immutable.

I am positive there is still a need for written vocab building work, but I’m also positive there is a much bigger place for spoken vocabulary improvements and innovations besides just listening to audiobooks.