Lecture 2: The Spelling-Meaning Connection

The Spelling-Meaning Connection

Lecture 2

I

Q RXU ¿UVW OHFWXUH ZH GLVFXVVHG ¿YH FRUH SULQFLSOHV RI HIIHFWLYH

YRFDEXODU\OHDUQLQJVWDUWLQJZLWKFOHDUGH¿QLWLRQVSXWWLQJZRUGVLQWR

context, making connections between known concepts and new words,

exploring the morphology and etymology of words, and chunking words

by meaning in our mental lexicons. This last principle takes advantage of

the fact that our minds organize information, including words, according to

VFKHPDRUPHQWDO¿OHIROGHUV,QWKLVOHFWXUHZH¶OOGHOYHDELWGHHSHULQWR

the morphological system of English to explore one of the big “secrets” of

vocabulary learning: Just as our minds organize language, so, too, language

has a system for organizing words.

Building a Large Vocabulary

z The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is generally considered to

be the most authoritative dictionary of the English language. The

second edition of the OEDLQFOXGHVPRUHWKDQGH¿QLWLRQV

z Most of us “know” only a portion of these words, meaning that

we understand them if we encounter them in reading. And most

of us feel comfortable using an even smaller portion in expressive

language—speech or writing. For example, a common estimate for

the average vocabulary of a high school graduate is approximately

40,000 words, and for an average college graduate, approximately

60,000 to 75,000 words.

z Of course, there is no way that anyone can obtain a 75,000-word

vocabulary through direct instruction, one word at a time. That’s

why traditional word-by-word approaches to learning vocabulary

aren’t the most effective. Instead, most people who possess large

vocabularies acquire them through reading. As adults, we pick

up the vast majority of new vocabulary incidentally through

meaningful reading in connected text.