Vocabulary in English/Language Arts Classrooms

Vocabulary in English/Language Arts Classrooms
By D.W. Moore |S.A. Moore|P.M. Cunningham| J.W. Cunningham
Pearson Allyn Bacon Prentice Hall

Two primary goals of reading novels, short stories, plays, and poetry is to gain insights into the human condition and to participate vicariously in the text worlds authors create. To accomplish these goals, readers must understand the words they encounter. Understanding vocabulary, then, is the means to the end of literary insights and experiences. Understanding vocabulary is not the end.

Effective English teachers perform a balancing act when addressing vocabulary: they work at developing word understandings while keeping those understandings subservient to the larger purposes for which students read. They achieve balance before students read by teaching the specific word meanings needed to grasp overall passage meanings. Effective English teachers achieve balance after reading by focusing attention on the key words that elicited the messages and experiences students gained. This balancing act fits situations involving single passages as well as multiple passages.

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