Reflection 8: More On Vocabulary (Baumann & Graves)

My best friend as an ELL.

When I was a new ELL student a little over ten years ago (once an ELL, always an ELL?), my best friend was my pocket translator. Even with my pocket translator, attempting to read an excerpt from the literature book used to take days as I looked up every word's definition in the paragraphs. And even when I knew every word's definition, putting together the meaning was still very difficult due to my lack of understanding for the English syntax. On top of all that, the fact that words often have multiple meanings made reading even more tricky. I remember trying on different definitions until the sentence made sense. Needless to day, reading that literature book was a very frustrating experience. In one of this week's articles ("Commentary: What Is Academic Vocabulary?"), Baumann and Graves talk about teaching "academic vocabulary" starting from the academic vocabulary classifications to selection methods for teaching vocabulary. By dividing the key vocabulary into categories (domain/content-specific academic vocabulary, general academic vocabulary, literary vocabulary, metalanguage, symbols, etc.), teachers can help ELLs and native speakers gain a better understanding of vocabulary and the nature of writings in English.

As the authors said in the beginning of the article, researches on academic language often involve studying ELLs (rather than native speakers). The classification and selection methods for vocabulary teaching in this article would definitely benefit ELLs--especially new ELLs who have little knowledge about the nature of the English language. By bringing to their attention that English academic vocabulary can be roughly divided into a number of categories, what kind of vocabulary words belong to each category, and how does studying words in each category differ, ELLs can gain a better understanding of English as a whole.

"Jerk" in math and physics.

At the end of the article, the authors give an example of different math words in each category (except for literary vocabulary category). Two of the categories that I found important are domain-specific academic vocabulary and general academic vocabulary. Especially in math and science, there are many general academic words that have different meanings than in other subjects and everyday context. Bringing to students' attention these general academic words and how they're unique in mathematical context can deepen students' understanding and even make these words memorable to them. An example is the math/physics word "jerk," which means the third derivative. We had a lot of fun learning about "jerk" in calculus. So, turns out, jerk is the third derivative of the position function, or the change in acceleration (first derivative is velocity and second derivative is acceleration). And when you ride in a car and the car's acceleration changes, you literally feel like you are being jerked around (thus the term "jerk" for third derivative). I think learning about these general academic vocabulary in math could even pretty memorable and fun!

"Jerk" in the real world...

What I like the most about this article (after I looked past how boring it is) is that it suggests to teach vocabulary using academic vocabulary categories. Just knowing what words are content-specific and what are general academic words can help ELLs out a lot when they're "deciphering" the meaning of a sentence. Similarly, native speakers can gain deeper understanding of their language and create and make connections with their existing schema.