Building Academic Vocabulary
From Richard and Jo Anne Vacca's Content Area Reading: "Teaching words well removes potential barriers to reading comprehension. It is no wonder that resarch has documented
a strong link between vocabulary developmetn and reading comprehension (National
Reading Panel 2000; Pressley 2002a)." (Vacca, 2008, p. 147)
Students need to be familiarized with the academic vocabulary associated with English. New terms should be taught with the use of descriptions, examples and experiences. Having comprehensive understanding of a word's meaning is dependent on understanding how the word relates to "direct experiences, concepts, and [other] words" (Vacca, 2008, p. 147). Here are few ways that I teach academic vocabulary: