How I Teach Students to Use Context in Vocabulary Learning

  • vocabulary context analysis
  • 03 June, 2023
  • 22 Comments

Teacher question:

I recently read an interview that you did. When you talk about kids needing to recognize when they don’t know a word and how to figure it out – did you mean to leave them on their own to do that? When you mention ‘passive scaffolding’ it makes me think you do. I know a lot about vocabulary instruction and my view of passive scaffolding as a first-line technique is pretty dim. Glossaries or dictionaries are frustrating. What kids need is to be able to integrate relevant aspects of word meaning into the context to come up with an understanding of what the sentence means and how it adds to understanding of the text overall. And helping students cultivate that ability is best achieved through teacher-student interactions, questioning and discussion. Am I misunderstanding your views on this?

RELATED: Why I Encourage Teaching Children to Read Disfluently

Shanahan responds:

I believe good vocabulary instruction has five goals: (1) Increase the numbers of words that children know and the richness of their understanding of those words; (2) Build an understanding of morphology (the meaningful parts of words and how words relate and make meaning); (3) Develop an ability to infer or estimate word meaning on the basis of context; (4) Foster an appreciation of diction and awareness of how words convey tone and an author’s attitude; and, (5) To teach students to use dictionaries, glossaries, and thesauruses effectively. A good regime of vocabulary instruction will try to accomplish all of those.

My comments in that interview were focused specifically on goal 3, teaching students to use context to determine the meanings of unknown words that readers may confront in text. My belief is that most reading programs tend to include a handful of context exercises and then undermine those lessons with how they guide reading the rest of the year.

Think about it.

The publisher or teacher tries to anticipate words that students might not know in an upcoming reading selection. This prediction invariably leads to pre-reading lessons aimed at building familiarity with those likely-to-be-unknown words. This makes a certain kind of sense. To the extent that the kids manage to learn the words their reading comprehension of that text should be elevated.

But I don’t think that’s the right goal.

I don’t care how well the students comprehend a story that I’m teaching. At least not initially. I do care about what they learn that will help them to read successfully on their own.

To me that means that those kinds of words should not necessarily be pre-taught.

Someone should take a good look at the text. Can the meanings of any of those words be figured out from context (or from morphological analysis)? If they can be, then those words should not be pre-taught.

We need to give students a chance to deal with such of words in real reading situations.

Think questions – not reading preparation lessons.

If a word’s meaning can be determined from context, the teacher should be prepared with a question that will reveal whether students got it. If they did, that’s great. There’s nothing more to be done.

But if they don’t, then teachers need to take them back to the text and guide their efforts to determine the meaning. In some cases, this might be a demonstration. In other cases, the teacher may point out the key information. In still others, it might be nothing more than a direction to reread the sentence or paragraph.

That’s what I mean by passive scaffolding. The teacher should know what she is trying to teach – she wants the kids to use context to determine word meanings. The students, however – in this kind of lesson – won’t even know which words the teacher has focused on. Their task isn’t to use context, like in a worksheet exercise, but to read the text with comprehension. That’s why I prefer questions about the text rather than questions about the words.

For example, look at the following sentence that I lifted from a fourth-grade text:

When the prairie plants were uprooted, the animals that depended on them lost their food source.

Students, I think, can get the meaning of “uprooted” from the context, the morphology, or a combination of the two. Of course, I can ask students right out, “What does uprooted mean?” Or, “What does the author mean by uprooted?” Those are legitimate vocabulary questions.

However, my preference would be a question like, “What caused the animals to lose their food source?” That is not a direct vocabulary question, but a comprehension question that can only be answered by dealing with the vocabulary.

If the student answers, “Because the prairie plants were uprooted,” then I’ll ask directly about the meaning of that word. Or, if they say, “Because the prairie plants died,” I might ask, what word did the author use to reveal that fact.

The point is to get them to use the vocabulary to make sense of the text and those kinds of questions guide them to think about the word meanings in a comprehension-centric fashion.

Defining words is just one of many skills that one must orchestrate during a successful read. The teacher should only scaffold if the students fail to make sense of what the author was trying to communicate with that word. That’s what makes it passive. The teacher is observing carefully and responding to student behavior, not trying to lead things or to head things off.

That doesn’t mean there is no place for introducing some words prior to reading. Not all words can be kenned through context or morphology, so giving kids a leg up on a challenging text is very reasonable – especially if you think those are valuable words.

That doesn’t mean that there is no place for worksheets or digital exercises for practicing with context or morphology. But students need support in using context and morphology in real reading situations, too. You can’t provide that kind of support if you’re always pre-introducing the words, trying to avoid a problem instead of getting the kids to confront it.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t still teach those words that you had the students deal with through context or morphology. The meaning of those words can be reinforced through direct instruction after the reading.

If I understand your concern:

No, my point was not to suggest that just having kids read would be sufficient to build vocabulary skills. As a student myself, I read a lot, but paid little attention to word meanings. If I didn’t know a word, I just kept rolling. My comprehension didn’t take off until I made a concerted effort to expand my vocabulary – an effort that included being sensitive to unknown words, using context and dictionaries to figure them out, and lots of drill and practice. With that kind of regimen, my reading comprehension soared.

I had to do that on my own.

Our students should have more help than that, including that kind of passive or responsive vocabulary teaching. I think the confusion has to do with the word, “passive.” The lesson is passive from the students’ point of view since no one is going to tell them ahead of time the purpose of the lesson or the words that are the focus of this part of the lesson. But what is passive for the student is highly active for the teacher. She has familiarized herself with the affordances of the text and is going to probe to determine whether the students successfully made use of these affordances to comprehend the text. If not, she is ready to intervene with teaching geared to getting students to address that omission. Her teaching is responsive (perhaps a better description) and, yet, her watchfulness is not that general attentiveness to teachable moments, but a highly focused sensitivity to specific student behaviors in very specific parts of the text.


READ MORE: Shanahan On Literacy Blog

Comments

See what others have to say about this topic.

Joan Sedita Jun 03, 2023 02:39 PM

Thanks Tim for pointing out that teachers need to use a combination of direct and indirect teaching to grow students' vocabularies, and build their ability to use strategies for determining the meaning of an unfamiliar word. Students benefit from explicit instruction for how to use context (when it is available) to figure out the meaning of an unfamiliar word, with lots of guided practice using examples that come up opportunistically in text already being used. Vocabulary experts refer to this, along with use of morphology, as "word learning strategies." Readers of your blog might find helpful a January blog post I wrote that offers specific instructional suggestions for teaching use of context: https://keystoliteracy.com/blog/vocabulary-strategy-use-of-context/

Sarah Tantillo Jun 03, 2023 02:39 PM

Thank you!!! I deeply appreciate how clear, thoughtful, and nuanced your explanation is! I added the link to recommend it to users of my TLC "Building Robust Vocabulary" page here: https://www.literacycookbook.com/page.php?id=4. Cheers, ST

Sherry Moser Jun 03, 2023 02:50 PM

Thumbs up to pointing out your entire point by reflecting on the term ‘passive.’ Another thumbs up to the use of ‘kenned’ as a passive example. That’s why I told my education students to subscribe to your blog.

Gina Jun 03, 2023 03:03 PM

Love that word “responsive”…like a doctor diagnosing the problem…prescriptive to what the students need

Katie Jun 03, 2023 04:14 PM

Thank you for this explanation! While on the subject of vocabulary, what do you think of using Beck and Mckeown routines?

Paul Zavitkovsky Jun 03, 2023 04:21 PM

Thank you, Tim, for naming the distinction that clarifies what we're actually trying to do here: "I don’t care how well the students comprehend a story that I’m teaching. At least not initially. I do care about what they learn that will help them to read successfully on their own."

Timothy Shanahan Jun 03, 2023 05:02 PM

Katie--

I love most of their stuff (I've learned more on vocabulary from them than from anyone), especially their earlier work where they focused on 4th and 5th graders. Wonderful insights -- and some of the only vocabulary research to find instructional practices that raise reading comprehension.

tim

Timothy Shanahan Jun 03, 2023 04:59 PM

Paul--

Thanks for highlighting that point. So many teachers, programs, and teacher educators seem confused on that point. They everything possible to enable high comprehension of the text the students are to read (teaching with easy text, reading the text to the students, preteaching the vocabulary and text information, focusing heavily on the illustrations)... those practices, for the most part, miss the point.

tim

Lauren Jun 03, 2023 08:56 PM

It would be really great to have small sets of readers with vocabulary differentiated by: Words to frontload, words which can be figured out using context, and or morphology, etc... In addition it would be nice to have words that would work well for exploring synonyms or antonyms or semantic gradients. While I'm asking, maybe some lines of questioning to deepen vocabulary understanding and some suggested morphological derivations to explore meaning: captivity, captivate, capture etc...I teach eight intervention classes per day and it would be nice to have some of the groundwork laid out. Do you know of any texts like this with some vocabulary lesson preparation already done for the teacher? I guess something independent of a large adopted textbook series.

Melanie Jun 03, 2023 09:27 PM

Thank you, Tim, for clarifying the benefits of 'questioning' as an instructional strategy when my students are learning vocabulary and contex clues, your simplified examples will greatly broaden my instruction. I do often use this strategy, however, not as the goal and the focus you presented. And it appears so simple too. Sounds like 'passive scaffolding' is partly a quick formative assessment? How would your suggestions posted benefit 2nd graders in a Gifted/High Achiever classroom (with the understanding that it can benefit all K-12, but in particular this population)?

Dr. Bill Conrad Jun 04, 2023 03:21 AM

Excellent article, Tim. Better to teach the children to fish for themselves rather than always giving them fish.

The use of probing questions linked to the text is a form of formative assessment where the teacher uses questions to collect just in time data about student vocabulary knowledge, diagnose the vocabulary needs, intervene using the text to help organically build student vocabulary knowledge, and finally monitor to ensure that the student has vocabulary understanding that fits the context of the text!

Formative assessment continues to rock our world!

Timothy Shanahan Jun 04, 2023 01:49 PM

Melanie--

I don't think there is anything special about this for that population. However, even among high achievers, you will find kids who are superficial about understanding (this might even be specific to certain kinds of books). This approach encourages kids to be aware of their own limitations (they need to watch for what they do not understand and to be honest about that). It also encourages them to make the effort to figure out the word (kind of like a puzzle).

tim

Timothy Shanahan Jun 04, 2023 01:52 PM

Lauren--

I don't of programs like that. The big programs that guide student reading tend to preteach vocabulary and limit context work to occasional exercises. Vocabulary programs often are separate from comprehension (or they limit the comprehension work to sentences or brief, artificial paragraphs. It would be great if the core programs would identify (1) words students may not know; (2) words that are important to undertanding the text; (3) words the meanings of which can be determined by context ans (4) morphology.

tim

Jackie Jun 04, 2023 02:27 PM

In this sentence, "To me that means that those kinds of words should necessarily be pre-taught," I think you left out the word "not."

Timothy Shanahan Jun 04, 2023 10:11 PM

Jackie-

Thanks. Got it.

tim

Peter Jun 05, 2023 01:15 AM

Many thanks for this post Tim. It resonates for me from my "structured word inquiry" (Bowers & Kirby, 2010). You have referenced that work kindly in some of your blogs. I hope this comment is a helpful frame on your important post.

I particularly appreciated the following:

"I don’t care how well the students comprehend a story that I’m teaching. At least not initially. I do care about what they learn that will help them to read successfully on their own.

To me that means that those kinds of words should not necessarily be pre-taught.

Someone should take a good look at the text. Can the meanings of any of those words be figured out from context (or from morphological analysis)? If they can be, then those words should not be pre-taught.

We need to give students a chance to deal with such of words in real reading situations.

Think questions – not reading preparation lessons."

It seems to me that you are reflecting a key aspect of the scientific inquiry of "structured word inquiry" here. I see a common reaction against anything with "inquiry" in the teaching approach these days. The typical frame is that we have to choose between "inquiry" and "explicit instruction." This to me is a false dichotomy. The only kind of "inquiry" based instruction that is productive and deserves the title REQUIRES explicit instruction. I wholeheartedly agree that we need to give children experiences of working out the meanings of word in the context of real reading situations. And we need teachers to be prepared so that they can provide explicit instruction about the various questions and tools we can use to work out the meaning of words. And as you point out morphology is one key part of this. Consider the sentence example you shared:

"When the prairie plants were uprooted, the animals that depended on them lost their food source."

As you point out the word "uprooted" provides an opportunity to find the base of that word with this structure (up + root + ed ? uprooted). And doing so can make sense of the meaning of this word, and compression of the sentence. If students are in classrooms with teachers that regularly analyze word with morphological matrices and word sums, students will be better at noticing the morphological cues when they read in any context. Teachers can create a habit of mind of being word scientists who know how to identify hypotheses of spelling-meaning connections, and provide explicit instruction about how to test whether those hypotheses stand up.

We need explicit instruction that equips students to be effective independent inquirers of words.

And when we investigate words with matrices and word sums, we notice that the relationship between morphology and phonology is crucial. For example, the pronunciation of the word "action" makes it less salient that the base is spelled "act" and builds words including "actor" (act + or ? actor), "acting" (act + ing ? acting) and "action" (act + ion ? action). The shift in pronunciation of the base makes the spelling-meaning connection more difficult to teach. So we can use morphology to explain grapheme-phoneme correspondences that are not understandable without considering the phonology of the morphological family. See a Grade 1 lesson doing this kind of explicit instruction at this link: https://tinyurl.com/act-family

Students in this class will be better at noticing and inquiring into meaning cues in the spellings of words like the sentence you shared, because they are working in this context of explicit instruction about how to investigate words -- including using word sums to falsify connections that are not real.

And that sentence has other very rich words that can act as launching pads for the meaning of many words, and for oiling the gears of scientific orthographic inquiry.

Consider "depend" with this structure (de + pend ? depend).

That bound base comes from a Latin root 'pendere, pensus' for "hang, weigh". Some words in this morphological family include:

independent, impending, suspend, and pendulum!

Discussing the underlying meaning "hang, weigh" helps students link understanding of one word to novel words. This is the kind of generative vocabulary learning we found in our vocabulary intervention that introduced the phrase "structured word inquiry" (Bowers & Kirby, 2010).

At this page on my website, you can see a student use the morphological problem-solving we've been learning for him to self-correct the spelling of the word "surface" that we encountered in a study of tectonic plates. When he started to write-out-loud the structure, he recognized that the base of "surface" must be "face." As he says "like the face of the water is the surface". There is also a video of kids doing spelling-out loud of graphemes and morphological structure that is inherent in this kind of work.

See those videos here: https://www.wordworkskingston.com/WordWorks/Spelling-Out_Word_Sums.html

Finally, I just want to add a comment about "context." I like the frame that words have two kinds of "context." There is the temporary context of the meaning of a word in a sentence. For example the word "table" has very different meanings if I say "Eat at the kitchen table." or "Table that idea for later."

The second kind of context is "permanent context" of underlying meaning of the base that we get from its root. In SWI we call that the "orthographic denotation". The idea of "weigh, hang" is the permanent context of meaning for any base that derives from that root. We can link that permanent meaning to the temporary meaning of a word in a given sentence.

Sue Hegland did a talk for the IDA recently that I think is just brilliant at introducing these ideas to educators. See that video here: https://tinyurl.com/HeglandSWI

Thanks for your comments on this. I hope these comments are productive for you and your audience.

Pete

Gail Venable Jun 05, 2023 08:56 PM

I found this in your post particularly rich for considering what generative directions that morphological instruction can take.

"However, my preference would be a question like, “What caused the animals to lose their food source?” That is not a direct vocabulary question, but a comprehension question that can only be answered by dealing with the vocabulary.

If the student answers, “Because the prairie plants were uprooted,” then I’ll ask directly about the meaning of that word. Or, if they say, “Because the prairie plants died,” I might ask, what word did the author use to reveal that fact."

Imagine if one path taken were to ask what it means for people rather than plants to be uprooted. Plant that are uprooted might die, and the animals that depend on them have to find new sources of food. People who are uprooted from their homes, by war, by eviction, by natural disaster like fire or flood might move and need to find new sources of support, but may ultimately rise above their uprooting and thrive in new soil (literal or figurative). The children who depend on uprooted parents (figuratively "hang" on them, to follow up on Pete's example) would have to adapt to their new surroundings. An investigation of synonyms might follow - why might we more likely to use "transplant" rather than "uproot" when we take a plant out its soil and replant it elsewhere else for the purpose of helping it to grow bigger. What are the connotations of "uproot" and "transplant"? How are they similar and different?

Of course it will be the decision of teachers and readers when it is appropriate to dig more deeply into a particular word and its family, but experience with morphological investigation makes rich pathways of study available, enriching vocabulary, facilitating word choice in writing, and improving reading comprehension.

Matt Jun 08, 2023 09:28 PM

Tim - you mentioned that Beck et al have 'some of the only vocabulary research to find instructional practices that raise reading comprehension.' Which studies are you talking about?

Courtney Pippenger Jun 10, 2023 11:07 AM

This is a good explanation of how to address context clues when students are reading a text. Although using strategies to aid in comprehension is the primary goal when working with vocabulary, do you ever encourage teachers to use extension activities to help students expand their own speaking and writing vocabularies aside from reading lots of texts?

Timothy Shanahan Jun 10, 2023 05:14 PM

Courtney--

Indeed. There is certainly much more to teaching vocabulary than what is in this blog. More extended work on the nuances of the words that are taught (beyond simple definition), lots of review and additional opportunities to apply the words all should be available.

tim

Timothy Shanahan Jun 10, 2023 08:57 PM

Matt-

McKeown, M. G., Beck, I. L., Omanson, R. C., & Perfetti, C. A. (1983). The effects of long-term vocabulary instruction on reading comprehension: A replication. Journal of Reading Behavior, 15(1), 3-18.

Beck, I. L., Perfetti, C. A., & McKeown, M. G. (1982). Effects of long-term vocabulary instruction on lexical access and reading comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology, 74(4), 506-521. doi:https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.74.4.506

McKeown, M. G., Beck, I. L., Omanson, R. C., & Pople, M. T. (1985). Some effects of the nature and frequency of vocabulary instruction on the knowledge and use of words. Reading Research Quarterly, 20(5), 522-535. doi:https://doi.org/10.2307/747940

tim

Erika Jul 26, 2023 10:17 PM

Thank you for your post. I really enjoyed reading about your perspective on vocabulary knowledge. I agree that teachers often front-load the vocabulary to avoid loss of comprehension. While doing this, we often unintentionally rob students of their opportunities to become problem solvers while they read.

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How I Teach Students to Use Context in Vocabulary Learning

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