Incidental or Intentional?


Incidental or Intentional?

Shouldn’t all learning and educational practices be intentional?

There should be a mix of both, especially when it comes to vocabulary learning. Think about all of the words you know… and the ones that you don’t! We come across words almost daily that we have to decipher using context clues in the moment while we are reading. Many of our young learners of low socio-economic-status come to us with limited background knowledge and exposure to rich conversations, and are therefore at a loss when compared with more affluent families and children. We have to bridge this gap with a mixture of resources and repeated exposure to new words. 


Incidental Vocabulary and Disciplinary Literacy

As my previous post was centered around Disciplinary Literacy, I would now like to draw in incidental vocabulary learning to the discussion. In order to expose students to disciplinary vocabulary one author states that we should, “Select texts that bring new vocabulary words into the classroom conversation.” (Wright, et. al, 2017). Even if these new words aren’t explicitly taught, exposure to the words and classroom conversations will help students build background knowledge about the concept. After reading these words with students, use of a word wall will further the exposure to words and help to create a language rich environment.

“...opportunities for children to learn vocabulary incidentally through presentations of words in their environment are critical.” (Christ, et. al 2018). What this means for students is that we have to present disciplinary texts, digital and print, to maximize exposure and possibilities for learning.


How Does Incidental Vocabulary Learning Happen?

It doesn’t come easy! Neither children or adults typically learn a new word definitively the first time they see or hear it. One study found that in order to increase vocabulary gains, words need to be presented once a day, for a minimum of three days. The reason for this is that different social contexts and interactions can happen around new words from day to day. The more experience students have with varying uses of vocabulary, the more likely it is that there will be knowledge retention.. 


What Resources or Strategies Should Be Used?


The information above comes from two articles, Hearing Words, Learning Words: How Different Presentations of Novel Vocabulary Words Affect Children’s Incidental Learning (Christ, et. al, 2018), and Learning Vocabulary Through E-Book Reading of Young Children with Various Reading Abilities (Lee, 2017). 

When read-alouds are used in conjunction with classroom conversations, there are greater opportunities for students to learn incidentally (Christ, et. al, 2018). Studies support that the combination of read-alouds and conversations has greater effects than when they are used individually. 

E-books with a digital dictionary and animated pages have proven to teach students more words than online texts without those features (Lee, 2017). With this knowledge, educators can plan for scaffolding in those texts that have multimodal features. 


In conclusion, studies have shown that, “...children with greater receptive vocabularies had greater performances in the oral story modalities (i.e. storytelling and adult read-aloud)...” (Suggate, et. al, 2013) However, the same study also suggested that independent reading was a good strategy to use for incidental vocabulary learning with good comprehenders, but a struggle for lower readers. We must bridge the gap for our learners! It is vital to expose students to words in order to build those vocabulary skills which in turn service reading comprehension. 


References:

Christ, T., & Chiu, M. M. (2018). Hearing Words, Learning Words: How Different Presentations of Novel Vocabulary Words Affect Children’s Incidental Learning. Early Education and Development, 29(6), 831–851.


Lee, S. H. (2017). Learning vocabulary through e-book reading of young children with various reading abilities. Reading and Writing, 30(7), 1595–1616.


Suggate, S. P., Lenhard, W., Neudecker, E., & Schneider, W. (2013). Incidental vocabulary acquisition from stories: Second and fourth graders learn more from listening than reading. First Language, 33(6), 551–571. 

Wright, T. S., & Gotwals, A. W. (2017). Supporting Disciplinary Talk From the Start of School: Teaching Students to Think and Talk Like Scientists. The Reading Teacher, 71(2), 189–197.

Comments

  1. Sally BeachOctober 26, 2020 at 1:12 PM

    I like how you make the case for what I am calling planned incidental learning of vocabulary words. Nice infographic as well.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownOctober 30, 2020 at 6:14 PM

    I can tell you are a passionate educator who wants all your students to have the learning opportunities they deserve. Reading your post taught me new ideas and helped me make connections to my own teaching and what I can do better. For example, I never approach texts with the mindset of the valuable vocabulary I could be introducing to my students, but now I see why it is crucial for building literacy.
    Your post is full of studies to support your stance on why it is important to increase the incidental vocabulary our students come across through reading in our classes!

    ReplyDelete

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