Academic Vocabulary for Middle School Students

Jennifer Wells Greene, Averil Jean Coxhead

• Publisher: Brookes Publishing
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781598573053
• eBook ISBN: 9781598575835
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación secundaria

Vocabulary knowledge plays a huge role in the academic success of middle school students. But which words do students need to know to master the content in their textbooks, and how can they be learned? This book has the practical answers educators need. Middle school teachers will get five extensive, research-based lists of academic vocabulary words most frequently used in student textbooks—the words kids need to know to increase their comprehension and succeed in school. Teachers will also get critical background information on the importance of academic vocabulary, guidance on testing word knowledge, and proven teaching strategies for weaving vocabulary instruction into their everyday lessons. A great resource for in-service professional development and preservice teacher preparation courses!

HELP MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS:

• Strengthen academic vocabulary knowledge in five key school subjects
• Master the content they need to know under the Common Core State Standards
• Understand why the words they encounter in textbooks are important
• Improve comprehension and eliminate roadblocks to understanding what they read
• Increase school success (for all students, including English language learners and those with disabilities)

PRACTICAL MATERIALS: Five research-based lists of hundreds of academic vocabulary words, each one devoted to a key content area. Plus helpful discussion questions and 15 detailed vocabulary instruction activities, including "fix-ups" for struggling readers and English language learners and extensions that build on the activities.

1

Key Concepts and Ideas About Vocabulary

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ANTICIPATION ACTIVITY

1. Note down 20 words you commonly teach in class and roughly categorize them into words you think your students already know and words you think they should know. Then rearrange them from the ones you think occur more often in English to the ones you think occur least often. Finally, categorize them into words that are closely related to the subject you teach and words that are not. Have these ranking activities with the 20 words influenced the way you think about whether your students should know these words? If so, why? If not, why not?

2. How would you define academic vocabulary for middle school students? Note down your definition and see how it relates to the discussion of academic vocabulary in this chapter.

3. What word lists do you know about and use in your teaching? What might be the advantages and disadvantages of using word lists with your students?

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In this chapter we describe a frequency-based methodology for categorizing words in texts. We define academic vocabulary by comparing and contrasting it with high-frequency, technical, and low-frequency words, and we discuss some ideas related to the classification of proper nouns. From there we move into a discussion of the development of several well-known word lists created since the 1990s. Finally, we introduce the Middle School Vocabulary Lists found in Appendix A of this book (Greene, 2008), with a brief description of how they were developed.

HOW CAN WORDS IN TEXTS BE CATEGORIZED?

Categorizing words can be a very tricky process. Some words occur in all kinds of texts and everyday language. These are high-frequency words, which include words such as go, do, and, and I. A well-known categorization of vocabulary (Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002) would categorize these words as Tier 1 words, or basic words. Other words clearly belong to a particular area or subject and tend not to occur anywhere else very often at all. An example of this kind of word in science class is photosynthesis. Such words can be called technical words. Beck et al. (2002) would label these words as Tier 3 words, which would be low-frequency words, or, like photosynthesis, those used in specific domains. This tiered categorization of words is somewhat similar to the frequency-based methodology corpus that researchers use to place words into four distinct categories: high-frequency vocabulary, specialized vocabulary that includes academic and technical vocabulary, and, finally, mid- and low-frequency vocabulary.

Some words can be categorized in different ways. Think about words like Parkinson. It can be an everyday family name, but it can also be the name of a medical condition. Is it an everyday word or is it a technical word? What about accurate? In everyday terms, it seems like a common word, but in physics it has a very particular meaning. Is accurate an everyday word or is it a technical word? The answer very much depends on the context and the needs of learners. Vocabulary researchers and teachers are both concerned with making sure that learners focus on the words that learners need for their studies, and yet words do not neatly fall into groups. In the next sections we will describe the specialized vocabulary (academic and technical vocabulary) that can be found in academic texts.

WHAT IS ACADEMIC VOCABULARY?

Words that exist frequently in academic texts, but not so frequently in other kinds of texts (e.g., novels), can be referred to as academic vocabulary. These words share some other interesting characteristics. First, they are often supportive to a topic, but not central to a topic. Consider the word alternative, which suggests an option or a choice. When this word is used, the writer or speaker is usually talking about a bigger idea, and this word helps support that big idea. Another characteristic of academic words is that they often come from Greek or Latin roots (e.g., port [to carry] in the words transport and export). Finally, academic words are not high-frequency words (Coxhead, 2000). Beck et al. (2002) would likely have considered academic vocabulary to be a part of a Tier 2 list. That being said, Beck et al. left decisions about placing a specific word in a specific tier to the teacher. We believe that frequency-based evidence can be a tremendous help in making this determination.

So, one definition for academic vocabulary might be that it is the vocabulary needed for school or university study. Teachers would expect this vocabulary to occur in texts that students read and would expect students to use these words in their writing and speaking for academic purposes. In addition, as students get older and start to specialize in particular fields of study, such as molecular biology or psycholinguistics, they need to learn specialized vocabulary, which contains both academic words and the technical terms related to their content areas. Now we will look at how the academic vocabulary for middle school students, for example, is different from technical vocabulary.

WHAT IS TECHNICAL VOCABULARY?

The second type of specialized vocabulary is technical vocabulary. Whereas academic words are common across a range of different texts (e.g., science, social studies, mathematics), technical words are frequent within a specific subject. Referring back to the idea of vocabulary tiers (Beck et al., 2002), these words would be classified as Tier 3 words because they are used in specific domains. Technical vocabulary is easy to recognize in a textbook, because the words are often bolded or italicized, or they are included in charts and diagrams.

Technical words are those important to know within a specific content area (e.g., molecule in science; quadratic in mathematics) but are not as important to know (in terms of frequency) outside that content area (Nation, 2013, p. 19). An interesting point about technical vocabulary, and one that makes research in this area sometimes difficult, is that some everyday words have a technical meaning when they are used in specific contexts. For example, solution in the sciences carries a very particular meaning that is different from solution when it is used in mathematics, yet both meanings of the word are used in everyday language. Something that is significant in statistics is quite different in meaning from a significant birthday in everyday use.

For this reason, it is important to identify the technical vocabulary within each content area. This makes it easier for students and teachers to isolate the specific meaning of that word as it is used in that area. The Middle School Vocabulary Lists in Appendix A contain many of the technical words students encounter within each of the five different content areas.

To demonstrate how academic and technical words play out in academic text, we include here a few paragraphs from a seventh-grade science textbook. The bolded words (cells, cell, membrane, structure, environment, organism, organisms, functions, nerve, transport, muscle) come from the Middle School Science Vocabulary List, and of those, words that are considered technical terms are also underlined (cells, cell, membrane, organisms, organism, nerve, muscle).

Every living thing is composed of one or more cells. A cell is a membrane-covered structure that contains all of the materials necessary for life. The membrane that surrounds a cell separates the contents of the cell from the cell’s environment.

Many organisms, such as those in Figure 1, are made up of only one cell. Other organisms, such as the monkeys and trees in Figure 2, are made up of trillions of cells. Most cells are too small to be seen with the naked eye.

In an organism with many cells, cells perform specialized functions. For example, your nerve cells are specialized to transport signals, and your muscle cells are specialized for movement. (Holt Science & Technology: Life Science, 2004, p. 36)

A quick analysis shows that 20% of the words in these paragraphs are Middle School Science Vocabulary List words (each occurrence is bolded). Some of these are purely academic in nature (e.g., environment, functions, structure, transport) and others, such as cell, membrane, and organism, are technical terms (each occurrence is bolded and underlined). Note that cell is defined in the text immediately after it is introduced (i.e., “A cell is a membrane-covered structure that contains all of the materials necessary for life”). Providing definitions after the first mention of a technical word is very common in academic texts. However, notice that many Middle School Science Vocabulary List words are not defined in any way; yet, students would need to know their meanings if they wanted to read and understand these paragraphs. As an example, one of the Middle School Science Vocabulary List words (structure) that is not defined in this passage is used as part of the definition of the technical word cell.

WHAT IS HIGH-FREQUENCY VOCABULARY?

High-frequency vocabulary consists of the words people use frequently, either in speaking or in writing. The introduction to this book discussed the need for knowledge of the first couple thousand words to communicate in English every day and as a basis for reading comprehension of different texts. These high-frequency words really are the base layer of language that all learners need. Finding out exactly what these high-frequency word families are is not as easy as it may seem. Researchers have to consider many factors in order to determine which are the most frequent words in English; for example, what sources should be used to decide on those words? Would they be spoken or written texts? In what contexts? Who would be the speakers and the writers of those texts used in the list making? One ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• About the Reproducible Materials
• About the Authors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Key Concepts and Ideas About Vocabulary
• 2. The Middle School Vocabulary Lists in Context
• 3. Planning for Integrating the Middle School Vocabulary Lists into Classroom Instruction
• 4. Activities that Focus on Middle School Vocabulary List Words
• 5. Knowing a Word and Testing Word Knowledge
• References
• Appendix A. The Middle School Vocabulary Lists
• Appendix B. Methodology for the Compilation of the Middle School Vocabulary Lists
• Appendix C. Vocabulary Size Test Version A
• Index