Vocabulary instruction

There are many studies on teaching vocabulary but few on the relationship between vocabulary instruction and comprehension. In the context of comprehension strategy instruction, vocabulary instruction promotes new word meaning knowledge by teaching readers semantic processing strategies. For example, students learn to generate questions about an unknown word by examining how it relates to the text -- or noticing how a word changes meaning depending on the context in which it occurs.

The teacher may model being a "word detective,"

looking for contextual clues to find a word's meaning, analyzing words and word parts, and looking at the surrounding text for clues to a word's meaning.

For instance, the word comprehension combines com, meaning “together” with pre-hension, meaning “able to grasp in one’s hand.” From this, an operational definition of comprehension can be constructed (e.g., putting together individual word meanings to grasp an idea).

In three studies of vocabulary instruction in a cognitive strategy context with fourth-grade students reviewed by the NRP, the instruction led to success in learning words, in use of word meanings, and in increased story comprehension. For example, in a 1982 study involving fourth-graders receiving vocabulary instruction, Isabel L. Beck and her colleagues taught the students to perform tasks designed to require semantic processing. These students performed at a significantly higher level than pre-instruction matched controls on learning word meanings, on processing instructed vocabulary more efficiently, and in tasks more reflective of comprehension. In the three NRP-reviewed studies, however, learning to derive word meanings did not always improve standardized test comprehension performance.