Fostering Word Consciousness

Recent vocabulary questions from chapters 21 and 22 of The Scarlet Letter

How many words does a student have to know? Well, according to Michael Graves, in printed school English, there are about 180,000 words. The average 12th grader knows about 50,000 (The Vocabulary Book). And we all want our students to be above average--even the ones who start out with the majority of their words being in a language other than English.

Yes, schools need to teach vocabulary, but at the maximum students could effectively absorb, say, 2 per day (can you imagine learning 2 new words a day 5 days a week 34 weeks out of the year for 13 years straight?), that’s still not enough. Yes, reading bolsters vocabulary learning. And awareness of new, cool, and related words as we read can put rocket boosters on that!

How do we create a learning inclination that pays attention to words? This unit (on The Scarlet Letter) in AP English 11, one of the daily assignments is to bring in at least 2 words from the reading (with the page number you found it on) that you didn’t know or (if you knew them all—which doesn’t happen often in The Scarlet Letter) that is descriptive and interesting and you want to remember to use more in your writing.

At the beginning of the period we spend 10 minutes talking about those words. (I actually set a timer minutes or we could spend half the period on this). First I go around the class and take a word (and its page number) from each student. Then we look at the words. Some are simply archaic, obsolete, or literary—but we use those descriptors. They’re part of our working vocabulary now. And we understand what those archaic, obsolete, or archaic words mean for the text we’re reading, if it’s frequent and important (betimes = early, as in “I got up betimes this morning to monitor the long bus into Naha” or wont [no, it’s not a typo for want, though you’re on the right track if you read it that way, but it’s not pronounced like won’t]). And morion—it’s in that section about the martial parade, right? so it’s got something to do with soldiers and armor, but given everything else, I think that’s all we need to know. 

But sometimes I find out words students didn’t know that I never would have picked for a vocabulary word—like flit or precipice. And I’m so glad they are willing to ask the question! Then there are the other words that I may or may not have picked—venerable, vehemently, zenith—but when students pick them, I say—GREAT word! 

We talk about etymology. When they first asked about somnolence, I asked them what you call it when you can’t sleep. They all knew insomnia. So a few days later when they asked about somnambulant I asked again about the words for not sleeping. Is the other part related to ambulance? Actually, yes. Ambulance comes from the French term hospital ambulant—or mobile [horse-drawn, and I assume they mostly walked, as galloping would jar the patients] field hospital.

After we’ve talked about enough etymologies, students begin making connections that had never even occurred to me—and sometimes they’re right! 

• Is sentinel related to sentient? (Sentient being a vocabulary word we’d had earlier in the year. The question had never occurred to me, but when a student asked and I did the research, I found out is probably is!)
• Is propagate related to propaganda? (Similar to above.)

Sometimes they realize they did know a word, though they had never made the connection before. 

• Oh! Plebeian! Yes—I do know that because it’s how online reviewers I read dis something.
• That’s what my contacts are: ochre!
• Melee—I know that from video games!

And once their vocabulary antennae are up, they come back and report other places they encounter the words: We read despotic in history class! It was talking about US government actions during the Red Scare, and I knew that it meant tyrannical!

Yes, I take all these words and pick approximately 20 every 2 to 3 weeks for a vocabulary quiz. I put them on my word wall, on Quizlet for practice, and we practiced in groups slapping the card when the definition was read and telling stories using the dealt cards. But the most delightful thing has been just the fostering of a community of learners that notice and talk about words. My peer coach observed my AP class this week, and one of her comments was, "Students were so responsive when talking about vocabulary!"

What do you do in your class to foster word consciousness? 

 

Piece of our word wall in the background there...