Unlocking Vocabulary: Direct and Indirect Learning Strategies for Students

Vocabulary acquisition is a cornerstone of effective communication and reading comprehension. Students learn vocabulary through a variety of contexts such as talking, interacting, and playing with others; listening to stories; watching television; and attending school. While a great deal of vocabulary is learned indirectly, some vocabulary should be taught directly. This article explores both direct and indirect methods of vocabulary learning, highlighting their importance and practical application in the classroom and beyond.

The Significance of Vocabulary

Vocabulary refers to the words we must know to communicate effectively. In general, vocabulary can be described as oral vocabulary or reading vocabulary. Oral vocabulary refers to words that we use in speaking or recognize in listening. Vocabulary plays an important part in learning to read. As beginning readers, children use the words they have heard to make sense of the words they see in print. Word knowledge is crucial to reading comprehension and will determine if students are going to be ready to comprehend texts they read in middle and high school. Comprehension is more than just knowing to acknowledge words and remember meanings and if students don’t know the meanings of the words in a text they are reading, comprehension is impossible. Students’ reading comprehension and overall success relates strongly to the extent of their vocabulary knowledge. The relationship of vocabulary to reading comprehension gets stronger as reading material becomes more complex and the vocabulary becomes more extensive.

As beginning readers, children use the words they have heard to make sense of the words they see in print. Consider, for example, what happens when a beginning reader comes to the word dig in a book. As she begins to figure out the sounds represented by the letters d, i, g, the reader recognizes that the sounds make up a very familiar word that she has heard and said many times. Vocabulary also is very important to reading comprehension. Readers cannot understand what they are reading without knowing what most of the words mean.

Direct Vocabulary Learning: Explicit Instruction

Direct vocabulary learning refers to students learning vocabulary through explicit instruction in both individual words and word-learning strategies. Direct vocabulary instruction aids in reading comprehension. The National Reading Panel (2000) found that vocabulary should be taught both directly and indirectly and there is not one best method for vocabulary instruction. By demonstrating the usefulness of words, teachers use direct instruction to help students develop their vocabulary. For instance, teachers can show students how authors choose particular words to convey certain meanings.

Benefits of Direct Instruction

Direct instruction helps students learn difficult words, such as words that represent complex concepts that are not part of the students’ everyday experiences. Specific word instruction, or teaching individual words, can deepen students' knowledge of word meanings. In-depth knowledge of word meanings can help students understand what they are hearing or reading. Before students read a text, it is helpful to teach them specific words they will see in the text.

Strategies for Direct Vocabulary Instruction

Teaching Specific Words: Before students read a text, it is helpful to teach them specific words they will see in the text. A teacher plans to have his third-grade class read the novel Stone Fox, by John Reynolds Gardiner. In this novel, a young boy enters a dogsled race in hopes of winning prize money to pay the taxes on his grandfather's farm. The teacher knows that understanding the concept of taxes is important to understanding the novel's plot. Therefore, before his students begin reading the novel, the teacher may do several things to make sure that they understand what the concept means and why it is important to the story.
Using Dictionaries and Other Reference Aids: Students must learn how to use dictionaries, glossaries, and thesauruses to help broaden and deepen their knowledge of words, even though these resources can be difficult to use.
Repeated Exposure to Words: A second-grade class is reading a biography of Benjamin Franklin. The biography discusses Franklin's important role as a scientist. At every opportunity, therefore, the teacher draws her students' attention to the words. She points out the words scientist and science in textbooks and reading selections, particularly in her science curriculum.
Using Word Parts: Knowing some common prefixes and suffixes (affixes), base words, and root words can help students learn the meanings of many new words. For example, if students learn just the four most common prefixes in English (un-, re-, in-, dis-), they will have important clues about the meaning of about two thirds of all English words that have prefixes. Learning suffixes can be more challenging than learning prefixes. This is because some suffixes have more abstract meanings than do prefixes. For example, learning that the suffix -ness means "the state or quality of" might not help students figure out the meaning of kindness. For example, -less, which means "without" (hopeless, thoughtless); and -ful, which means "full of" (hopeful, thoughtful). Latin and Greek word roots are found commonly in content-area school subjects, especially in the subjects of science and social studies. As a result, Latin and Greek word parts form a large proportion of the new vocabulary that students encounter in their content-area textbooks. Teachers should teach the word roots as they occur in the texts students read.
Teaching Affixes: Affixes are word parts that are "fixed to" either the beginnings of words (prefixes) or the ending of words (suffixes). A second-grade teacher wants to teach her students how to use the base word play as a way to help them think about the meanings of new words they will encounter in reading. To begin, she has students brainstorm all the words or phrases they can think of that are related to play. The teacher records their suggestions: player, playful, playpen, ballplayer, and playing field.
Creating Word Walls: A third-grade teacher identifies the base word note. He then sets up a "word wall," and writes the word note at the top of the wall. As his students read, the teacher has them look for words that are related to note and add them to the wall.

Effective Direct Instruction Techniques

Extended Instruction: Children learn words best when they are provided with instruction over an extended period of time and when that instruction has them work actively with the words.
Repeated Exposure: Students learn new words better when they encounter them often and in various contexts. The more children see, hear, and work with specific words, the better they seem to learn them. When teachers provide extended instruction that promotes active engagement, they give students repeated exposure to new words.
Making Connections: Another strategy that can be used is to help students make connections to new words they are learning. Teachers can encourage students to actively construct links between new information and previous knowledge they have about a word. As students become cognizant of this process their memory about new words will increase.
Student-Friendly Definitions: Teachers could also allow students to say and write new vocabulary words while providing a student-friendly definition for the word. Providing a definition that is meaningful for students is more impactful and helps to build upon students’ existing vocabularies rather than just providing dictionaries for students. Providing meaningful examples of vocabulary words and allowing students to also share examples will help students to understand word meanings and build their vocabulary.
Real-World Connections: One of the best ways to help students remember and retain new vocabulary words is to connect a new word to an object in the real-world. While pictures and flashcards are good, real-world items are even better to help students retain new vocabulary knowledge.

Indirect Vocabulary Learning: Implicit Acquisition

Most vocabulary is learned indirectly. Indirect vocabulary instruction involves students’ learning words and their meanings through daily conversations and through independent reading. Young children learn word meanings through conversations with other people, especially adults. As they engage in these conversations, children often hear adults repeat words several times. They also may hear adults use new and interesting words. Children learn word meanings from listening to adults read to them. Reading aloud is particularly helpful when the reader pauses during reading to define an unfamiliar word and, after reading, engages the child in a conversation about the book. Children learn many new words by reading extensively on their own.

Fostering Indirect Learning

Reading Aloud: You can encourage indirect learning of vocabulary in two main ways. First, read aloud to your students, no matter what grade you teach. Students of all ages can learn words from hearing texts of various kinds read to them. Reading aloud works best when you discuss the selection before, during, and after you read. Text Talk is an approach to read alouds that is designed to enhance young children’s ability to construct meaning from decontextualized language. (Beck & McKeown, 2001; Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002). The ultimate goal of a Text Talk lesson is twofold: 1.) Getting children to talk about the text, considering ideas using decontextualized language to improve comprehension, and 2.) the acquisition of vocabulary. In order to increase comprehension, teachers are reading while adding interspersed discussion to focus, monitor, and scaffold learning; helping the children to respond to the text rather than the illustrations.
Encouraging Independent Reading: The second way to promote indirect learning of vocabulary is to encourage students to read extensively on their own. Rather than allocating instructional time for independent reading in the classroom, however, encourage your students to read more outside of school. Vocabulary can be the catalyst for building reading comprehension skills, as understanding a text depends largely upon vocabulary knowledge. While estimates range slightly, many specialists estimate that a reader needs to understand a minimum of 90% of the words in a passage in order to make meaning from it, as well as to begin learning the remaining 10% of words (Hirsch, 2006). Readers who know fewer words miss out not only on understanding a text, but also learning new words, further limiting their understanding of future texts.

The Role of Context Clues

Students also need to be able to determine the meaning of words that are new to them but not taught directly to them. They need to develop effective word-learning strategies. Using context clues. Context clues are hints about the meaning of an unknown word that are provided in the words, phrases, and sentences that surround the word. Context clues include definitions, restatements, examples, or descriptions. Not all contexts are helpful, however. Some contexts give little information about a word's meaning. An example of an unhelpful context is the sentence, "We heard the back door open, and then recognized the buoyant footsteps of Uncle Larry." A number of possible meanings of buoyant could fit this context, including heavy, lively, noisy, familiar, dragging, plodding, and so on.

Here’s an example of using context clues:

knocked over a lamp, which crashed to the floor. The animals ran past Tonia, tripping her. She fell to the floor and began sobbing. Tonia's brother Felix yelled at the animals to stop.

Teacher: The context of the paragraph helps us determine what commotion means. There's yelping and crashing, sobbing, and yelling. And then the last sentence says, "as the noise and confusion mounted." The author's use of the words noise and confusion gives us a very strong clue as to what commotion means. In fact, the author is really giving us a definition there, because commotion means something that's noisy and confusing-a disturbance.

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Word Consciousness

Another way you can help your students develop vocabulary is to foster word consciousness-an awareness of and interest in words, their meanings, and their power. Word-conscious students know many words and use them well. You can help your students develop word consciousness in several ways. Call their attention to the way authors choose words to convey particular meanings. Encourage students to play with words by engaging in word play, such as puns or palindromes. Help them research a word's origin or history.

Striking a Balance: Integrating Direct and Indirect Approaches

The scientific research on vocabulary instruction reveals that (1) most vocabulary is learned indirectly, and (2) some vocabulary must be taught directly. Educators know how important vocabulary instruction is for our students. As one of the five core components of reading instruction, vocabulary is essential in helping teach students how to read. The National Reading Panel (2000) explains that the core components of reading instruction include phonemic awareness, phonics and word study, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Specific strategies that teachers can use to extend vocabulary instruction in their classroom include the addition of both direct and indirect instructional strategies.

Research also shows that elementary students should learn approximately 3,000 new words each year. This means that if students are learning approximately 400 words per year through direct instruction then they must learn the remaining 2,600 words through indirect instruction. As they read, students can usually get by with some words at the unknown or acquainted levels.

Selecting Words for Direct Instruction

You won't be able to directly teach your students all the words in a text that they might not already know. You will probably to be able to teach thoroughly only a few new words (perhaps eight or ten) per week, so you need to choose the words you teach carefully.

Important words: When you teach words before students read a text, directly teach those words that are important for understanding a concept or the text. Your students might not know several other words in the selection, but you will not have time to teach them all.
Useful words: Teach words that students are likely to see and use again and again.
Difficult words: Words with multiple meanings are particularly challenging for students. Students may have a hard time understanding that words with the same spelling and/or pronunciation can have different meanings, depending on their context. Looking up words with multiple meanings in the dictionary can cause confusion for students. They see a number of different definitions listed, and they often have a difficult time deciding which definition fits the context. Idiomatic expressions also can be difficult for students, especially for students who are English language learners.

Tiered Vocabulary

Vocabulary words are often divided into three tiers for instruction, with complexity increasing from Tier 1 up to Tier 3.

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Tier 1 Vocabulary: Basic words that frequently appear in everyday conversations. Examples: friend, speak, bright
Tier 2 Vocabulary: Words that appear in academic discourse and text across subject areas and topics. Examples: evidence, analyze, dynamic
Tier 3 Vocabulary: Low-frequency, content-specific words. Examples: peninsula (social studies), circumference (math), metaphor (language arts)

Words that are unknown to students, necessary to understand a text or unit, and used in other contexts that students are likely to encounter will typically be Tier 2 words, and sometimes Tier 3 words. However, students with specific needs might require instruction with some Tier 1 words. For example, English language learners who are learning conversational as well as academic language may require direct instruction with idioms (e.g. the meaning of “throw in the towel”) or false cognates (e.g. éxito in Spanish means success, rather than exit) that appear in a text.

Vocabulary Intervention

Intervention in education is defined as a set of action items that a teacher or administrator can take to improve a child’s academic progress. Vocabulary intervention involves using strategies with the specific goal of developing and expanding children’s word knowledge. All children learn some word meanings indirectly through daily conversations with adults and other children, by listening to adults read to them, and by reading on their own. According to a meta-analysis of research, the probability that children will learn new words while reading is about 15 percent (What Works Clearinghouse, 2011). Therefore, additional instructional supports are critical to ensure all students acquire the necessary vocabulary for success. Vocabulary instruction is an essential piece of building reading skills among all children, including children who have already reached grade-level proficiency (Young-Davy, 2014).

Typically, explicit instruction includes providing students with the definition of a word using terms at their level of understanding, presenting multiple examples and non-examples of the word, giving students opportunities to use the word in discussion, and checking for understanding. Using instructional routines, providing instruction in morphology, teaching words in clusters, and connecting words to texts are other components of explicit instruction shown to improve vocabulary knowledge. Multiple practice opportunities are essential. Hearing, speaking, reading, and writing words in various contexts over extended periods of time builds students’ breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge. Students’ knowledge is further strengthened when vocabulary instruction is implemented school-wide across all subject areas.

While vocabulary knowledge is critical to reading, some literacy challenges are related to other components of reading, like word study and fluency.

Preparing for Vocabulary Instruction and Interventions

Perhaps the most important step in preparing for vocabulary instruction and interventions is identifying words to teach. With limited time, it’s not possible to address every word students will encounter, so maximizing instructional impact with intentional word selection is key. When choosing words for direct vocabulary instruction, look for words that are:

Unknown to students
Necessary to understand a text or unit
Used in other contexts that students are likely to encounter

In addition to word selection, the following teaching strategies are helpful to keep in mind when planning vocabulary instruction:

Use sentence starters to ensure students repeat target words in their responses.
Leverage dual coding to improve students’ understanding and recall. Dual coding is a process of combining both words and visuals, like images and graphic organizers, to convey information. For example, when learning about photosynthesis, students can create a diagram using both words and pictures
Provide, or ask students to generate, examples and non-examples to deepen understanding of words through contextual information.
Review often to provide multiple exposures to a word in various contexts.

Instructional approaches will vary depending on the words you are teaching, the contexts they appear in, and the needs of your students.

Vocabulary Intervention Activities

Support students' vocabulary building with research-based vocabulary intervention activities. Instructional routines are a useful tool for delivering explicit vocabulary instruction. Once students learn the steps of routines, cognitive load is reduced, allowing them to focus on the words they are learning rather than the method of delivery. Graphic and semantic organizers are other effective tools for vocabulary intervention. They can be paired with routines to help students visualize word meanings in different ways, making them easier to integrate and remember.

Essential Words Routine

Use a graphic organizer to introduce target words with definitions, examples, and non-examples. Students can then practice using the words through collaborative turn-and-talk activities. Or, instead of providing the information, have students work in groups using texts and reference materials to complete the graphic organizer on their own while you circulate the room to assist when needed. Intervention programs, like Read 180, provide resources to help students build vocabulary knowledge. The example below shows a Concept Organizer from Read 180 that asks students to identify characteristics, examples, and non-examples of the vocabulary word.

Frayer Model

Another graphic organizer that can help with direct vocabulary instruction is the Frayer model. When students use this model they define the word, give characteristics of the word, list examples and non-examples of the word, and, in some cases, create an illustration to accompany the word.

Semantic Mapping

Semantic mapping provides a visual grounding similar to graphic organizers, but through a different process. It can be as simple as students writing a word in the middle of a page and then listing all related terms around it, or a bit more advanced where students make connections between words, group them, and assign categories. Semantic mapping helps students understand how multiple words fit together and supports concept knowledge.

Morphemic Analysis Routine

Because there isn’t time to teach all words students will encounter, it can be useful to teach strategies for approaching unfamiliar vocabulary. The steps below give students practice analyzing morphemes to determine the meaning of new words.

Find the root, prefixes, and/or suffixes.
Use reference materials, other words that contain the same word parts, and context clues to think about what each part of the word means.
Combine the meanings of the parts.
Try the possible meaning in the sentence and ask yourself if it makes sense.

Multiple opportunities to practice using new words is a crucial part of vocabulary instruction. Incorporating brief review activities will help students practice and remember the meanings of important words.

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