(Pytash) All About Words

 

Let me preface this entry by saying this: I love words. I love learning new words and I love using new words. I realize that this probably makes me an vocabulary nerd, but I'm all right with that.

On to the chapter!

The most important quote from this chapter, in my opinion, is:
"So much of what happens in schools seems artificial to students, a series of meaningless assignments that they must perform for the teacher or else fail" (Jago 27).

            Wow! When I was a teenager, that was pretty much how I would have described most of the classwork. I know that most students feel that the work is a pass/fail thing rather than something to build upon and grow from. How can we change this? Can we? In all honesty, is there a way to get students excited about classwork?

"Vocabulary experts tell us that for reasonable reading comprehension a student needs to know 90-95% of the words" (Jago 22).

While I most certainly expected this, I'm not sure that students are anywhere near this level of vocabulary. I would say that there are students who are at or above this level, but many more are distinctly below 90% vocabulary understanding.

        Jago offers that students need to read more. What I agree wholeheartedly with Jago about is the use of classic (canonical) texts to accomplish this. The majority of words in young adult literature is already known to most teenagers. Think of the book Twilight for example. There aren't a whole lot of words there that students will have to look up to understand. Dickens and Poe, on the other hand, offer a stronger variety of unknown words to students. I feel that we most definitely should be using these texts in order to improve student vocabulary.

        This also brings up a point from class. When Dr. Pytash asked us to split up into groups based on which author resonated with us the most, I was torn between Kittle and Jago. I absolutely love Jago's enthusiasm and push toward using classical texts. I also love Kittle's idea that critical analysis is a bit overdone and gets redundant. I would love to combine the two; why not use classical texts but give various assignments rather than solely critical analysis papers? That's my little tangent for now.

"Poe's choice of vocabulary had been successful" (Jago 26).
I really liked the exercise Jago used to discuss an author's vocabulary choices. Having students find words which comprise the mood and tone of a text is a good way to test their understanding of those elements as well. There are many embedded ideas here, as students are learning vocabulary, working on mood and tone, reading for comprehension and analyzing words to find common meanings, ideas and themes.
When I read the four steps to knowing a word, I was left wanting more.

"Stage 1: Never saw it before.
Stage 2: Heard it, but don't know what it means.
Stage 3: Recognize it in context as something to do with...
Stage 4: Know it"             (Jago 29).

My immediate questions were:

• How do you know when you "know" it?
• Is it when you can define it?
• Is it when you can give parts of speech?
• Is it when you can use it in a sentence?
• A combination of all three?

 

Once I flipped the page and kept reading, I was given these two tidbits:
"'Knowing' a word involves more than the word's definition. It also means knowing how a word functions in different contexts. [...] A full and flexible knowledge of a word includes an understanding of the breadth of a word's use" (Jago 31).

While both of those sentences seem to be saying very similar things, they don't really answer what I want to know. How do you know when you "know" a word?

Classroom Idea:
        One of the things which I have been thinking about lately, prompted mainly by tutoring at Firestone High School, was how to incorporate vocabulary in the classroom. I am very much a fan of putting words around the classroom which students have found difficulty with. My idea: a word cloud.
        I want to keep an open area of wall space where students can put words as they come across them. What should be on each card? I would like:

• the word
• part of speech
• definition
• use it in a sentence

 

Also, I find that having a large edition of a dictionary where students can access it at all times is a great idea. If a student is doing silent reading or is being challenged by a word used in class, they can look it up and add it to the word cloud. They should also share the word and the card information with the class, so that everyone is informed.

While I was reading and annotating this chapter, I made a large frown-face next to one sentence:
"Of course such vocabulary is only common in written text" (Jago 29)

        This made me incredibly sad. I am seeing a great decline, even in my own short lifespan, of words failing to be used. I admit that the majority of my vocabulary becomes evident when I am writing as opposed to when I am speaking. However, I try to use fun and interesting words just to spice things up.

        One thing I would like to see is teachers using challenging words in their classroom in regular dialogue. Rather than solely emphasizing words during times of intense vocabulary study, introduce and familiarize students to words all of the time. In everyday discourse, we should be asking our students to speak properly and with less "text speak." I was appalled by how many students these days want to write directly in texting lingo, as if they truly did not know proper sentence and word formation.
Alas, I find myself in a word bereft of words yet dominated by "lol" and "c u l8r."

Til nex time, gbye!