Vocabulary Development & Word-Finding Difficulty Flashcards
Vocabulary 1
- Enticing vocabulary- pragmatic, discourse skill
- Receptive language assessments usually go from concrete to abstract nouns
- An assessment is a snapshot of a particular skill or time- so the score is not always accurate and the score is a very limited view
Vocabulary 2
- “Vocabulary is addressed in the Common Core Standards in every subject, at every grade level, in every state. It never ceases to be a critical component of language comprehension and use, in speaking and writing.” Judy Montgomery: Author of Montgomery Assessment of Vocabulary Acquisition
- 48 of 50 states have adopted common core standards vocab
Vocabulary Acquisition:
- At 18 months, have about 110 words expressive vocabulary (at least 50)
- Enter school with about 5,000 words in receptive/expressive vocabulary
- Up to school-age, vocabulary obtained via experiences, contexts, direct teaching (concrete nouns) a lot of direct teaching when little
- May learn some abstract nouns (letters)
- Learn 2000+ (sources vary, most say 3000) of words per school year
- Montgomery (2012) says only 400 are directly taught by teachers
- LI kids need direct instruction, even typical kids need direct instruction
Whole language approach
-Whole language approach- connections should be made across the curriculum. If you are doing plants in science, have plant spelling words and read a book about plants, in math you would have word problems about plants.
Fast Mapping Reviewed
- Mapping info seems to relate to initial vocabulary acquisition in context
- Generally map a word in 3-5 exposures
- But Montgomery says need 25 repetitions to retain a word for TYPICAL learners!
- Mapping is just the FIRST step in the process (initial exposure, how you learn a word)
Word-Concept-Thing
- Labeling (mapping?)
- Packaging (concept development continues)
—–Horizontal development (more & more of the concept, approach adult definition)
—–Vertical development (multi-level understanding, such as multiple meanings, abstract vs. literal)-polyesomous words
- Building the semantic network
- The initial part of vocabulary word-concept-thing problem. A baby sees a dog, the baby will hear dog, the name of the dog, or other words associated with the dog (thing). Concept- dog must apply to all dogs, not just the family’s dog.
- Labeling- attaching the word to a thing
Storage vs. Retrieval
- Words are encoded (stored)-engram
- Phonological/phonemic
- Conceptual
- Syntactic info- we know how we should use it
- Encoded form is retrieved
- Word-finding then is a combination of storage strength & retrieval strength
- Activation level (“Hotness”) impacts retrieval
- How hot a word is- is how easy it is to retrieve, these are high frequency words and they are not hard to retrieve
Storage vs. Retrieval
- Words are encoded (stored)-engram
- Phonological/phonemic
- Conceptual
- Syntactic info- we know how we should use it
- Encoded form is retrieved
- Word-finding then is a combination of storage strength & retrieval strength
- Activation level (“Hotness”) impacts retrieval
- How hot a word is- is how easy it is to retrieve, these are high frequency words and they are not hard to retrieve
Use it or lose it
- Often easier to retrieve something just stored
- Usually (Always?) easier to retrieve something just retrieved
- Activation and interference (competition) are considered instrumental in this
- The more you retrieve it, the stronger the engram (encoding is) , and less is required to activate (retrieve) it
- Rehearsal helps!
- If there is response competition, it is harder to retrieve due to interference or competition
Use it or lose it (Competition and Semantic network)
- Competition increases with similarity of concepts
- Have similar storage strength, activation levels are similar, so retrieval strength is weak
- Semantic network seems to be key as well
- Typically think of embedded circles or a web, with center having strongest strengths
- Center is a prototypical item or most used item
Semantic Network
- Robin may be in the center of the circle, litte storage strength, easiest to retireve
- As you move further from the center of the circle it is harder to retrieve that information.
- Chicken could be the second circle and penguin could be the furthest circle. (move further out, less semantic relationship)
Levels of vocabulary (tiers)
Tier 1- High frequency words, oral language (e.g. conversational)
Tier 2- Also high frequency, but more literate, or mature (lectures)
Tier 3-Technical, specialized words, low frequency
Tier 1 words are different for everyone
MAVA breaks words up into Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3
Word finding
- W-f difficulty occurs when the word doesn’t come out
- No word (I need the …uhm, uh, [shrug]
- Wrong word (I need the lock-I mean key)
- Struggle (I need the k, k, KEY)
- Errors are typically phonemically or semantically close
- Rarely say dinosaur when you want to say key
- Sometimes recall function and then may gesture
-Tip of the tongue phenomenon- usually happens with low frequency occurring words
Can happen because conversation is quick
Listening Vocab (Montgomery)
- the words you understand when you hear them spoken
- Largest corpus of words
Speaking Vocab (Montgomery)
- the words you know well enough to speak yourself
- smallest corpus of words (5-7K)
