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Over the years, estimates of student vocabulary size have varied greatly, hindered in part by issues such as the types of vocabularies being considered (e.g., receptive/ productive or oral/print). Depending on how they approached such issues, early vocabulary researchers reported figures ranging from 2,500 to 26,000 words in the vocabularies of typical grade 1 students and from 19,000 to 200,000 words for college graduate students (Beck & McKeown, 1991). As researchers began to define more clearly what they meant by vocabulary size, the estimates became more precise. At the present time, there is considerable consensus among researchers that students add approximately 2,000 to 3,500 distinct words yearly to their reading vocabularies (Anderson & Nagy, 1992; Anglin, 1993; Beck & McKeown, 1991; White et al., 1990).

Perhaps a more useful way to approach the issue of vocabulary size is to consider the number of different, or unique, words in the typical texts that students read in schools. But this approach also raises questions. For example, what counts as a unique word? Is the possessive form of a word different from the original word and therefore unique? Can it be assumed that a student who knows the word laugh also knows the words laughed, laughing, and laughter? Drawing on a database of more than 5 million words taken from a sample of school texts used in grades 3 through 9, Nagy and Anderson (1984) grouped unique words into families. The students’ knowledge of the root word would help them determine a related word’s meaning when they encounter that word in a text. To be included in a family, the relationship of a word had to be “semantically transparent.” That is, the meaning of the related word can be determined by using knowledge of its root word and the context of text. Therefore, words within a family related to the root laugh can include laughed, laughing, and laughter but not laughingstock. Based on this definition, Nagy and Anderson estimated that school texts from grades 3 through 9 contain approximately 88,500 distinct word families. Clearly, acquiring meanings for this many words is a formidable task.

Yet somehow most students do steadily acquire a large number of new words each school year. To understand the magnitude of this accomplishment, consider what learning this number of words would require in terms of instruction. To directly teach students even 3,000 words a year would mean teaching approximately 17 words each school day (e.g., 3,000 words/180 school days). Estimates vary, but reviews of classroom intervention studies suggest that, in general, no more than 8 to 10 words can be taught effectively each week. This means no more than approximately 400 words can be taught in a year (Stahl & Fairbanks, 1986). Using a simple calculation, 3,000 - 400 = 2,600, produces the conclusion that students must find ways other than direct classroom instruction to learn words.

So how do students acquire so many new words? An extensive body of research indicates that the answer is through incidental learning – that is, through exposure to and interaction with increasingly complex and rich oral language and by encountering lots of new words in text, either through their own reading or by being read to (National Reading Panel, 2000). However, such incidental encounters cannot ensure that students will acquire indepth meanings of specific words (Fukkink & de Glopper, 1998). For some words, such as those that are crucial for understanding a literature selection or a content area concept, most students need to have intentional and explicit instruction. We discuss each of these ways to acquire vocabulary in later sections. First, however, we examine what “knowing” a word means.

Establishing exactly what it means to know a word is no easy task. Is “knowing” a word being able to recognize what it looks and sounds like? Is it being able to give the word’s dictionary definition? Research suggests that, in general, the answer to these questions is no. Knowing a word by sight and sound and knowing its dictionary definition are not the same as knowing how to use the word correctly and understanding it when it is heard or seen in various contexts (Miller & Gildea, 1987).
Acquiring “Ownership” of Words
Here is how the process of acquiring word knowledge appears to occur, based on the research of Nagy, Anderson, and Herman (1987). Developing understandings of word meanings is a long-term process, one that involves many encounters with both spoken and written words in varying contexts. Here’s how one group of researchers describes this process: On the first encounter with a new word, a student stores in memory some information about how the word fits into what he is reading. This information is reinforced each time he sees or hears the word. With each new encounter, the student picks up more information about the word from its use in various contexts. As a result, the student gradually acquires “ownership” of the word.

Nagy and Scott (2000) identify several dimensions that describe the complexity of what it means to know a word. First, word knowledge is incremental, which means that readers need to have many exposures to a word in different contexts before they “know” it. Second, word knowledge is multidimensional. This is because many words have multiple meanings (e.g., sage: a wise person; an herb) and serve different functions in different sentences, texts, and even conversations. Third, word knowledge is interrelated in that knowledge of one word (e.g., urban) connects to knowledge of other words (e.g., suburban, urbanite, urbane).

What all of this means is that “knowing” a word is a matter of degree rather than an all-or-nothing proposition (Beck & McKeown, 1991; Nagy & Scott, 2000). The degrees of knowing a word are reflected in the precision with which we use a word, how quickly we understand a word, and how well we understand and use words in different modes (e.g., receptive, productive) and for different purposes (e.g., formal vs. informal occasions).

Knowing a word also implies knowing how that word relates to other knowledge (sometimes called word schema). The more we know about a specific concept, for example, the more words we bring to our understanding of that concept. Because we have individual interests and backgrounds, each of us brings different words to shape that understanding.

Finally, knowing a word means being able to appreciate its connotations and subtleties. When we know a word at this level, we can use and recognize it in idioms, jokes, slang, and puns (Johnson, Johnson, & Schlicting, 2004).

What’s a Word Schema?

A word schema is a network of knowledge related to a word (Nagy & Scott, 1990). Word schemas involve both semantic knowledge about the connections of word meanings to specific concepts and linguistic knowledge about words, such as their roots and their relationships to other words with the same roots. Here is an example.

    Ramona is four years old. Already she has a fairly large schema for many simple concepts. For example, to her, the word dog includes knowledge about the general concept of “dog” as an animal, knowledge of one or two kinds of dogs, such as her Lab, Gus, and her neighbor’s poodle, Misty. It also includes specific information about Gus, such as the sounds he makes, and how he uses his legs when he runs and walks. As a result, the word dog can activate many other words for Ramona to use to talk about dogs.

    As Ramona grows older, she might add “dog” knowledge that ranges from the names of famous dogs in books, movies, and TV shows to how to train a dog, to the names for parts of a dog’s anatomy. She might also learn that the word dog can mean more than an animal and be able to use the word in expressions such as “I’ll dog you until you do what I told you to,” “that was a dog of a movie,” or “I’m dog tired.”

    Ramona has also learned that words with similar word parts can have shared meanings, although she is also aware that what seems like a root word may be something altogether different. Thus, when Ramona encounters dog-eared, dogpaddle, and doggedly in texts, she examines the context of their use to see if their meaning is associated with the appearance or actions of dogs.

   
by Fran Lehr, M.A., Lehr & Associates, Champaign, Illinois
    Jean Osborn, M.Ed., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
    Dr. Elfrieda H. Hiebert, Visiting Research Professor, University of California - Berkeley