Vocabulary

Vocabulary in my opinion is something that should be learned or taught naturally. I feel that during my tutoring sessions the vocabulary words that I pick are always basically useless. On many occasions they are words that he is already surprisingly familiar with. One strategy that I found very effective was the self collection. We read through the story and found words that the student did not know the definition. We talked about the word, used context clues to come up with our own definition, looked the word up in the dictionary, and talked about what the word means in the sentence. I also used this method un knowingly during my social studies lesson. As I listened to the students read, the words that they stumbled over we would go back and indirectly discuss what that word means and what it tells us about the story. This is the way that I best learn vocabulary. To be completely honest, I would just memorize a definition for a test and forget all about it the second after I turn the definition in. The only way to know if your student really has learned something is to assess them on an application level, and no, this does not mean using the word in a sentence. Receptive vocabulary may be greater than expressive, but expressive can be enhanced if we teach our students how to use words, model good vocabulary, make connections, use authentic teaching, and encourage students to use a higher level of vocabulary in their daily life.