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.
