ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Article 1

Dalton, B. & Grisham, D. “eVoc Strategies: 10 Ways to Use Technology to Build Vocabulary.” The Reading Teacher, 64.5 (2011), pp. 306-317

The instructors, Bridget Dalton and Dana Grisham, term electronic vocabulary “eVoc” and list 10 strategies, there are 5 the most innovative and applicable strategies :

1.    Using visual representations of words in text.  Since vocabulary relies heavily on the interaction between words, showing students the frequency and type of words that appear in text can help them think through word relationships.  Free websites like www.wordle.net provide this type of word-mapping ability.  Potential question to students could include, “What seem to be the most important words?” and “How do these words go together?” not to mention reading comprehension questions around main idea.

2.    Digital vocabulary “field trips”.  A vocabulary “field trip” is when a teacher presents many different sources of text to students and has them pick out and record important words which are then brought together, grouped conceptually, and discussed in various word-work ways.  A digital field trip puts this in students’ hands.  Using free websites like trackstar.4teachers.org, teachers can compile websites about a topic and makes notes on the sites to help guide students (the authors give the example of an Alaskan weather search involving sites on dogsledding, the Aurora Borealis, etc.).  The multimedia on the sites give students exposure to new words in many different modalities.

3.    Let students use multimedia to show vocabulary knowledge.  The authors suggest that there is a word of multimedia out there that students could benefit from using to show off their vocabulary knowledge.  For instance, creating a podcast or short video explaining the meaning of new words.  Another idea is that students could create Powerpoint slides with a picture that they caption to show the meaning of a word (the authors show an example of picture of three children working together that a student has captioned with a made-up conversation between the children that ends with one using the vocabulary word “contribute”).

4.    Online vocabulary games.  Perhaps the most straightforward use of the internet, the authors point to the websites  www.vocabulary.co.il, www.vocabulary.com and www.freerice.com as having strong resources and games for teachers and students.

Article 2

Beauchat, K. & Blamey, K.  “Word Walk: Vocabulary Instruction for Young Children.” The Reading Teacher, 65.1 (2011), pp. 71-75

Research has established that students need to be exposed to the same word multiple times if they are to truly understand it.  Word Walks are an adapted version of Text Walks that work best for younger students such as those in kindergarten or Pre-K.   In a Word Walk, one to two words are chosen to focus on during two days of reading the same story out loud (any more and either students could not hold the information or vocabulary instruction took too much time out of the reading block).  The components are as follows:

1.    “Before reading on the first day of the Word Walk, the teacher introduces one or two vocabulary words by showing the written word(s) on a small paper or sentence strip and making the word(s) come to life by showing a picture or prop or acting out the concept.” The teacher should provide the definition up front so that students aren’t guessing, and the teacher should also prompt the students to listen for the words in the story.

2.    During reading, the teacher pauses at each vocabulary word and reiterates the definition.

3.    After reading, there is a teacher-led discussion about the words, with the teacher going back to the places in the book where the words appeared and also providing examples of other contexts where the word might be used (e.g. for the word enormous, “Other things can be enormous too … elephants are enormous animals.”)

4.    The second day follows a similar before-, during-, and after-reading structure, but is much more student-centered, with students asked to talk about how the words are used in the story or to give examples of other contexts in which they might use the words.

5.    Throughout the two days, the students are led to repeat the words to gain familiarity.

For older students, Word Walks can be adapted to resemble the more traditional Text Walks, in which:

§  More words are used per story (3-4 words).

§  Instruction on those words occurs only over one day of reading.

§  The before- and during-reading components might be (but are not necessarily) de-emphasized, with most of the focus on the after-reading components.

Article 3         

Lane, H. & Allen, S. “The Vocabulary-Rich Classroom: Modeling Sophisticated Word use to Promote Word Consciousness and Vocabulary Growth.” The Reading Teacher, 63.5 (2010), pp. 362-370

Lane and Allen demonstrate ways that teachers can gradually build up even the youngest students’ vocabulary by modeling sophisticated vocabulary on a day to day basis.  For instance, the “line leader” can become the “classroom movement coordinator.” The weather outside can go from being “cold” to “rather brisk.” Students asked to complement one another each morning

can be taught to advance from simple words like “nice” and “happy” to “courteous” and “jovial.” Increasing the sophistication of labels for familiar ideas continually scaffolds students’ lexicons. Some important aspects of shifting to this sort of word-conscious classroom are:

1.    Be deliberate about the words you are planning to introduce.  One of the teachers highlighted in the article “made lists of word that were related to classroom routines and to different areas of the curriculum.  For each word … she searched for more sophisticated substitutes and culled these … to a list of words she believed to be manageable for her students.”

2.    Start by using advanced synonyms for words and concepts that students alreadyknow.  For entirely new words and concepts, begin with simple words before phasing in the sophisticated synonyms.

3.    Some words can be taught implicitly by replacing a simpler word in context (e.g. “Thank you, Angelo, for distributing the paper.”)  Other, more complicated words still need to be taught explicitly.

4.    Build up sophisticated vocabulary all day, from lining up to content instruction.

ESSAY

Enriching vocabulary by using any strategs has recently taken researchers’ attention to further investigate how this can be effectively used to enrich students’ vocabulary in English as a Foreign Language (EFL). This also has been a topic of concern for many English language researcher. Many studies on enriching vocabularies strategies have been conducted. However, little research is done in relation to enriching vocabularies strategy and its effect on EFL students’ vocabulary. Thus, these articles explored how students use strategies for enriching their vocabularies. Despite their similar topic, these articles have some different aspects to be compared in terms of purposes of their research, research instruments,and results.

One of the aspects to compare among these five studies is their research purposes. The projects done by Dalton, B. & Grisham, D(2011), Beauchat, K. & Blamey, K(2011), Lane, H. & Allen, S (2010) generally focused on how enriching vocabularies by using strategies employed by students in English. In contrast, Dalton, B. & Grisham, D (2011) examined how use eVoc Strategies: 10 Ways to Use Technology to Build Vocabulary and Beauchat, K. & Blamey, K (2011) Using Word Walk: Vocabulary Instruction for Young Children. On the other hand, Lane, H. & Allen, S (2010) demonstrate The Vocabulary-Rich Classroom: Modeling Sophisticated Word use to Promote Word Consciousness and Vocabulary Growth.

The second area is their instruments used in the research. Dalton, B. & Grisham, D (2011), Beauchat, K. & Blamey, K (2011), Lane, H. & Allen, S (2010)used different strategy for each research.. In addition, to get more information about students’ vocabularies,Beauchat, K. & Blamey, K (2011) use Word Walks ,an adapted version of Text Walks that work best for younger students such as those in kindergarten or Pre-K, for enriching the students’. Unlike other authors,Dalton, B. & Grisham, D (2011), term electronic vocabulary “eVoc”. They use many technologies in their research for enriching the student’s vocabulary. Lane, H. & Allen, S (2010) demonstrate ways that teachers can gradually build up even the youngest students’ vocabulary by modeling sophisticated vocabulary on a day to day basis.

The last aspect to compare among these three is their results. Among three strategy for enriching the student’s vocabulary,Dalton, B. & Grisham, D (2011), have 5 the most innovative and applicable strategies by using technology, while Al-Sohbani (2013), Hong-Nam and Page (2014), and Hou (2013) found that in a Word Walk, students choose one or two words to focus on during two days of reading the same story out loud, Lane, H. & Allen, S (2010) Students asked to complement one another. There are several important aspects aspects of shifting to this sort of word-conscious classroom.

In conclusion, there are some differences for each articles based on their research purposes, the instruments, and their results although they focus on similar research topic. Taking these three research studies’ purposes, instruments, and results into account, they can be useful for further relevant studies.Thesethree may be effective for teachers to implement into their classrooms particularly in enriching their students’ vocabulary.