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Theodore Whitfield's avatar

"Still, none of this fully explains how some students are able to acquire the vast number of words they need to be successful readers."

Well, how about basic cognitive ability, colloquially termed "IQ"? In general, some people are just naturally smarter than others, and the people who are naturally smart tend to do a better job of acquiring vocabulary (as well as learning substantive content). That's true across all demographics -- I attended a private high school where all the students were white and upper middle class, and it was clear even among that privileged group that some of the students were operating with stronger cognitive abilities than others.

Of course native cognitive ability (IQ) isn't the only determining factor. But it's interesting that as I read this article this issue is never raised as an explanatory factor.

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Nora Krieger's avatar

Excellent article.

We need to give children more experiential learning (exposure to places, things, and ideas) by going into the neighborhood and out of the neighborhood where they will be exposed to a broader vocabulary. In addition, having children do some long term investigations of topics and be read to and read by themselves using the phonetic tools (along with context) to sound out words and discuss their meanings is another way to broaden their background knowledge in an interesting format.

They also need to do more writing to demonstrate what they have learned, which would give them another opportunity to use new vocabulary. Our receptive vocabularies are always better than our expressive oral vocabularies.

One thing that I noticed many years ago in the South Bronx was that there were words on standardized reading tests that were totally unfamiliar to these young children who were living in an urban environment. That is why it is so important to connect knowledge, decoding skills, and meaning together.

Children need to do more writing where they use the new vocabulary to explain their understanding of the content they are and have learned.

All these parts of comprehension are tied together.

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