Content Vocabulary

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TESL 0130

Do you remember studying content vocabulary when you were in school? In the past, teaching content vocabulary consisted of students being assigned a long list of words from their science or social studies chapter on Monday. During the week the students would be asked to look up the words, write definitions and create sentences with the words. They might also be asked to re-write the words several times or complete a worksheet with the words. Finally, on Friday, they would be given a matching test on the words to see if they had them memorized. I’m sure we can all attest to the fact that these methods are ineffective and do not help students to move content vocabulary into their long term memory. These methods should not be used in an ESL class either.
As I began to delve into the topic of teaching vocabulary, the name that came up the most was Robert Marzano. Marzano is a well-known researcher in education and is the author of over 30 books and 150 articles. In his book Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement: Research on What Works in Schools, he outlines six steps to effective vocabulary instruction.
Step one: The teacher provides a description, explanation, or example of the new term, tapping into the students’ prior knowledge.
Step two: Students restate the explanation of the new term in their own words, verbally and in writing, within a vocabulary notebook. Marzano suggests a notebook with three columns and the following headings: My Description, Representation, and New Insight.
Step three: Students create a nonlinguistic representation of the term to show their understanding, with a picture, symbol or graphic organizer, which they add to their vocabulary notebook.
Step four: Students do engaging activities that help them add to their understanding of vocabulary terms and allow for multiple exposures, including: comparing or classifying terms, discovering analogies or metaphors, and using their understanding of word parts to deepen their knowledge of the terms. After these activities, students should add new insights to their vocabulary notebook. These activities are often done with a graphic organizer.
Step five: Students discuss the terms with one another, answering any questions they might have about the words.
Step six: Students play games with the terms to provide additional exposures to the words and to foster interest and enthusiasm towards vocabulary. Some examples of games students could play include Guess My Word, pictionary, charades, bingo, or game-show type games like Jeopardy and Family Feud.  
Following Marzano’s six steps ensures multiple exposures to terms and makes vocabulary learning personalized and fun. As a result, students are much more likely to put the terms that they learned into their long-term memory, which is the ultimate goal of vocabulary learning. The types of activities described within Marzano's plan can all be used within an ESL classroom and would be effective in teaching students content vocabulary. If we, as teachers, follow these strategies, our students' vocabularies will expand and be moved into long-term memory, thus allowing for greater comprehension of text and transfer of knowledge.
One type of graphic organizer that can be used as part of Marzano's plan is the Frayer Model. For the TESL 0130 Reading and Vocabulary course I had to create a vocabulary activity based on a task-based lesson plan on reading food labels. I chose to use the Frayer Model. Using a vocabulary notebook to keep track of words they are learning is an effective way for students to increase their vocabulary. Students can review their vocabulary notebook regularly in order to improve their knowledge and understanding of the words. Below is a link to the vocabulary activity:

Reference
Marzano, Robert J. (2004). Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement: Research on What Works in Schools. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

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