Vocabulary Strategies

In working with both adolescents and adults, the teaching of strategies to improve comprehension and use of vocabulary is critical. When given reading material in therapy sessions, I find that many students skip over unfamiliar words (especially if they are difficult to pronounce), and subsequently miss important information. In missing this information, their comprehension of the passage may be negatively impacted. Students need to be taught to "tackle" these words. Some of the strategies I've used are summarized below:
1) "Flag" the page (with a sticky note) and come back to it at the end of the chapter,
2) Stop and break down the syllables to decode the word, then look up the meaning in the dictionary,
3) Utilize context clues to derive meaning,
4) Stop and ask someone to help determine the meaning, and/or
5) Use a thesaurus to find a synonym for the target word.

Most often, the student lacks motivation to take the extra time for use of vocabulary strategies. However, students should be shown the benefit of expanding their vocabulary for comprehension and expression.

In my therapy sessions, students are always given a "word of the day". They are required to look up the definition and then use the target word in a sentence. Each week, the vocabulary words are reviewed, and most students take pride in the fact that they are learning new words. Recently, one of my students said that he feels like he "sounds smarter" when he is able to use a new vocabulary word. Hopefully, this will bring a sense of excitement to continuing to expand his vocabulary!